Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

The publishing of Human, All-Too-Human spans the years 1878–1880. The Second Part's two sections, "Miscellaneous Maxims and Views" published in 1879 and "The Wanderer and His Shadow" published in 1880, were written when Nietzsche was 36 years old. In 1886, the preface was added. The work as a whole is Nietzsche's first substantial contribution to literature. Only the philological treatises The Origin of Tragedy and the pieces on Strauss, Schopenhauer, and Wagner in Thoughts out of Season are his prior writings. With the volumes of Human, the all-too-Human Nietzsche emerges as a philosopher for the first time. Of course, his strictly scholarly writings, his articles in literary and musical criticism—particularly the essay on Richard Wagner at Bayreuth—had anticipated his work as a critic.