Cognition Switch: The Freethinkers Collection

by Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Paine, Emma Goldman

"Cognition The Freethinkers Collection" brings together an amazing array of the world's greatest freethought writing.This curated collection harvests treasures from the western cultural record spanning the initial blossoming of Jean Meslier in 1732 to the penetrating insight of David Hume in 1776 and on to the devastating arguments of Bertrand Russell in 1927.

2205 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 1, 2020

About the author

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes.
Nietzsche's work spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favour of perspectivism; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and a related theory of master–slave morality; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the "death of God" and the profound crisis of nihilism; the notion of Apollonian and Dionysian forces; and a characterisation of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power. He also developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and his doctrine of eternal return. In his later work, he became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health. His body of work touched a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, music, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from Greek tragedy as well as figures such as Zoroaster, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
After his death, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of his manuscripts. She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German ultranationalist ideology, often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism. 20th-century scholars such as Walter Kaufmann, R.J. Hollingdale, and Georges Bataille defended Nietzsche against this interpretation, and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. Nietzsche's thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th- and early 21st-century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, music, poetry, politics, and popular culture.

Reviews

[Gregory Freeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the freethinkers of all ages

Disregard the ages of when several of the books and essays have been published because it is still a subject that we struggle with today and one that we are far from resolving or purging from our minds. Several of these authors I am reading for the first time, especially Robert G. Ingersoll whose essay The Gods made me want to read more of his works. A couple I have read previously, namely The Antichrist by Nietzsche and The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. There is not work contained within this collection that will not provoke thoughts and ask one to question previous held ideas about what we were told to believe. Some of these books I wish had discovered at a time when I was having my own serious doubts about the validity of religion. Most of the works are written in a very simple and straightforward way that do not require a degree in theology to understand them. A few words may be a bit archaic here and there but not enough that it is distracting or discourages one to keep reading. I cannot recommend this collection highly enough. So much wisdom and food for thought all for 99¢. You cannot beat that price.