Human, All Too Human

Unlike his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, which was written in essay style, Human, All Too Human is a collection of aphorisms, a style which he would use in many of his subsequent works. The aphoristic style was suited to many of the ideas and thoughts in the book, which are as short as a sentence, to as long as a few pages. It was also likely due to Nietzsche’s decline in health at the time, when he was already frequently suffering from vision problems as well as painful migraine headaches that would have made reading and writing very difficult. In 1879, a year after publishing the first installment, he was forced to leave his professorship at Basel University because of his deteriorating health. The first installment’s 638 aphorisms are divided into nine sections by subject, and a short poem as an epilogue. The second and third installments are an additional 408 and 350 aphorisms respectively.

This book represents the beginning of Nietzsche's "middle period", with a break from German Romanticism and from Wagner and with a definite positivist slant. Note the style: reluctant to construct a systemic philosophy, Nietzsche composed these works as a series of several hundred aphorisms, ranging in length from a single line to a few pages. This book comprises more a collection of debunkings of unwarranted assumptions than an interpretation, though it offers some elements of Nietzsche's thought in his arguments: he uses his perspectivism and the idea of the will to power as explanatory devices, though the latter remains less developed than in his later thought.