An integral part of the annual meeting of the Nietzsche Society is the “Lectio Nietzscheana Naumburgensis”, at which a particularly deserving researcher once again talks in detail about the topic of the congress on the last day and concludes succinctly. Last time, this special honor was bestowed on Werner Stegmaier, the long-time editor of the important trade journal Nietzsche studies and author of numerous groundbreaking monographs on Nietzsche's philosophy. The theme of the conference, which took place from 16 to 19 October, was “Nietzsche's Technologies” (Emma Schunack reported).

Thankfully, Werner Stegmaier allowed us to publish this presentation in full length. In it, he addresses the topic of the Congress from an unexpected perspective. This is not about what is commonly understood as “technologies” — machines, cyborgs, or automata — but about Nietzsche's thinking and rhetorical techniques. What methods did Nietzsche use to write in such a way that his work to this day not only convinces but also inspires new generations of readers? And what is to be said of them? He compares Nietzsche's techniques with those of two other important modernist thinkers, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). In his opinion, all three philosophers say goodbye to the classical techniques of conceptual philosophizing founded in antiquity and explore radically new ones in order to try out a new form of philosophizing in the age of “nihilism.” A monotonous, metaphysical understanding of rationality is replaced by plural, perspective thinking, which must necessarily use completely different techniques. The article creates a fundamentally new framework for understanding Nietzsche's thinking and philosophical context.

Nietzsche certainly did not have any children and is also not particularly friendly about the subject of fatherhood in his work. For him, the free spirit is a childless man; raising children is the task of women. At the same time, he repeatedly uses the child as a metaphor for the liberated spirit, as an anticipation of the Übermensch. Is he perhaps able to inspire today's fathers after all? And can you be a father and a Nietzschean at the same time? Henry Holland and Paul Stephan, both fathers, discussed this question.

We also published the complete, unabridged discussion on the Halcyonic Association for Radical Philosophy YouTube channel (Part 1, part 2).

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Last week, Emma Schunack reported on this year's annual meeting of the Nietzsche Society on the topic Nietzsche's technologies (link). In addition, in his article this week, Paul Stephan explores how Nietzsche uses the machine as a metaphor. The findings of his philological deep drilling through Nietzsche's writings: While in his early writings he builds on Romantic machine criticism and describes the machine as a threat to humanity and authenticity, from 1875, initially in his letters, a surprising turn takes place. Even though Nietzsche still occasionally builds on the old opposition of man and machine, he now initially describes himself as a machine and finally even advocates a fusion up to the identification of subject and apparatus, thinks becoming oneself as becoming a machine. This is due to Nietzsche's gradual general departure from the humanist ideals of his early and middle creative period and the increasing “obscuration” of his thinking — not least the discovery of the idea of “eternal return.” A critique of the capitalist social machine becomes its radical affirmation — amor fati as amor machinae.