Magnum in parvo: A philosophy in compendium



Magnum in parvo: A philosophy in compendium (1888), in German Magnum in parvo: Eine Philosophie im Auszug, is a project of work of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) conceived in Sils Maria, Switzerland, at the end of August 1888, the last summer of his lucid life. This is a book that the Röcken philosopher planned as a rigorous and precise synthesis of his ill-fated capital project The Will to Power and in which the key themes of his thought are addressed. However, a sudden change of opinion in a context of growing mental excitement prior to Nietzsche's near psychophysical collapse determined that this unique work was finally published not in the planned unitary form, but dissolved and mixed with other materials in two different books: Twilight of the Idols (1889) and The Antichrist (1894).

It can be considered that this "lost" work of the late Nietzsche is a unique and key text within his philosophical creation because it allows to access in a clear, synthetic and at the same time profound way to the heart of the often unsystematic, fragmented and abstruse thought of someone who said of himself "I am not a man, I am dynamite", who was the notary of the death of God and who fought against the evils of idealism, moralism and nihilism castrating life, announced the Übermensch, affirmed the eternal return and amor fati and encouraged human beings to become innocent and playful artists who shape their own lives.

The edition of Magnum in parvo in Alianza Editorial (2024), translated, prologued and annotated by professor Joaquín Riera Ginestar, reconstructs for the first time and in a scientific manner, from the posthumous fragments  and the original Nietzschean manuscripts studied, systematized and critically edited  by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari,   the work as Nietzsche designed it, thus recovering a piece of notable philosophical and literary value, more rounded, together, than what would result from its two offspring.