From this project of a life will result four writings: David Strauss, the confessor of the faith and the writer, The advantages and disadvantages of history for life, Schopenhauer educator and Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, where the philosopher denounces the evil symptoms of German culture, in which Schopenhaer and Wagner are exceptions and offer counter-models. At the beginning of the 1870s, young Nietzsche envisaged an ambitious philosophical project: to write about ten "incurrent considerations", to conduct a critical examination of "what this epoch prides itself." By making himself the bad conscience of his time, Nietzsche bears witness above all to a cardinal philosophical quality, which will be at the heart of his future works: independence, ability to question and question certainties and values. Long neglected by commentarism, these four founding texts are gathered for the first time in a volume, in an unpublished translation.