Materialist metaphysics, as practiced by Spinoza, Nietzsche, or Deleuze and Guattari, has proven incapable of accounting for fundamental moral convictions. Nietzsche is at least radical enough to acknowledge this incommensurability and draw the corresponding conclusions. If one is unwilling to accept this, the only remaining path is to adopt the "view from eternity" alongside metaphysics: from that vantage point, one can only unconditionally affirm a groundless reality. Perhaps, however, the more promising answer is that of Emmanuel Levinas: his materialism allows morality to emerge from the encounter with the Other, and in doing so, he almost incidentally shatters the unity of metaphysics that even such radical thinkers as Deleuze and Guattari still took for granted.

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Read the the first part.

As is well known, Nietzsche did not feel bound by conventional morality. In a world without an afterlife, strength and the will to power prevail. While Nietzsche was prepared to accept the brutal consequences of this perspective if necessary, some of his successors could not reconcile themselves to it, if only for political reasons. Using the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, this text examines the difficulties faced by a materialism that seeks to hold onto its Nietzschean inspiration while refusing to betray certain values. Michel Clouscard highlights this tension, yet he, too, fails to provide a justification for his moral convictions within the framework of his Marxist materialism. Is materialism fundamentally blind to morality?

A fixed feature at the annual conference of the Nietzsche Gesellschaft [Nietzsche Society] conference is the Lectio Nietzscheana Naumburgensis: a particularly distinguished scholar delivering an extended lecture on the conference theme on the final day, thereby providing a pointed conclusion. The most recent conference in October 2025 awarded this special honor to Werner Stegmaier to recognize his long tenure as editor of the influential Nietzsche-Studien [Nietzsche Studies] and his authorship of numerous seminal monographs on Nietzsche’s philosophy. Running from October 16-19, 2025, the conference focused the theme “Nietzsche’s Technologies,” as Emma Schunack reported.

Generously granting his permission to publish his lecture in full and in this translation, Stegmaier takes on the conference theme from an unexpected perspective. Rather than examining what is commonly understood as “technologies”—machines, cyborgs, or automata—he explores instead Nietzsche’s philosophical techniques, both intellectual and rhetorical. Weighing up the original and idiosyncratic methods Nietzsche deployed while writing, Stegmaier reflects on how best to interpret and assess them. How were they able to enthuse and win over successive generations of readers? What can we learn from these today?

Comparing Nietzsche’s techniques with those of two other modern philosophical giants, Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), Stegmaier retraces all three philosophers’ break with the classical and conceptually oriented techniques of thinking inherited from antiquity, and their discoveries of radical and experimental means of developing philosophy in the age of “nihilism.” Replacing a one-dimensional, metaphysical understanding of rationality, these means cultivate a plural, perspectival mode of thought that necessarily relies on entirely different techniques. Situating Nietzsche’s methods within these broader developments in intellectual history, the Lectio establishes an utterly new framework for understanding his thought and its place within modern philosophy.

Translated by Henry Holland.

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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On the occasion of the 125^th anniversary of Friedrich Nietzsche’s death on August 25, we spoke with two of the most internationally renowned Nietzsche scholars, Andreas Urs Sommer and Werner Stegmaier. While the conversation with Sommer focused primarily on Nietzsche’s life, our discussion with Stegmaier centered on Nietzsche’s thinking, its relevance today, and Stegmaier’s own philosophy of orientation. What are Nietzsche’s central insights – and to what extent can they help us find our way in the present? What does his concept of “nihilism” mean? And what are the political implications of his philosophy?

Translated by Reinhard Müller.

Nietzsche was repeatedly elevated to a figurehead by right-wing theorists and politicians. From Mussolini and Hitler to the AfD — Nietzsche is repeatedly seized when it comes to confronting modern society with a radical reactionary alternative. Nietzsche was particularly fascinating to intellectual right-wingers, such as authors like Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger, who formed a cultural prelude to the advent of National Socialism in the 1920s, even though they later partially distanced themselves from it. People also often talk about the “Conservative Revolution”¹.

What do these authors draw from Nietzsche and to what extent do they read him one-sidedly and overlook other potentials in his work? Our author Paul Stephan spoke about this with philosopher Robert Hugo Ziegler.