On the one hand, Nietzsche's distinction between the Apollonian and the Dionysian helps to understand the development of the rock music of the Rolling Stones both internally and externally. On the other hand, Nietzsche's philosophy is reflected in many places in their songs. But above all, it is also illuminated by the Stones, and their songs show what Nietzsche is thinking — an Apollonian act. If Nietzsche is aesthetically oriented towards intoxication, then you can also learn from the Stones how to receive Nietzsche's poetry in a Dionysian way. It is therefore not just about understanding the Stones with Nietzsche, but vice versa: with the Nietzsche Stones.

An audiovisual version of this article with clips of the quoted songs can be found on the YouTube channel of the Halcyonic Association for Radical Philosophy and on Soundcloud.

‍

The fact that Nietzsche is a philosopher who speaks particularly to artists, even an “artist-philosopher,” is almost commonplace. In Barbara Straka's newly published book Nietzsche Forever?, the question is explored how exactly Nietzsche has been received in 20th century art, in particular that after 1945. The author has created a standard work that clearly and competently conveys the topic in plausible overviews. In this first part of this two-part article, Michael Meyer-Albert dedicates himself to her book and will then accentuate his own position in the upcoming second part.

After Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann has already dealt with Nietzsche's concept of resentment in two articles on this blog (here and there), he now addresses the question of how it can be applied to the current social situation.

His thesis: The current political landscape is characterized by many divisions based on resentment. They are due to the weaknesses of their own arguments. This is how critics are defamed as “corona” or “climate deniers.” The objections are often branded as conspiracy theories. You can't ask 'Cui bono?' anymore. Or you break off contact without comment to protect yourself. This is not only in line with Nietzsche's understanding of resentment in many places, precisely because he himself is not free from it, but is looking for ways out of it.

“What is the topicality of Nietzsche's analysis and critique of 'resentment'?“ is also the question of this year's Kingfisher Award for Radical Essay Writing, in which you can once again win up to 750 Swiss francs. The closing date for entries is August 25. The complete tender text can be found here.

If you'd rather listen to the article, you can find an audiovisual version on the Halcyonic Association YouTube channel, read by the author himself (link) and a listening-online version on Soundcloud (link).

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.

In this two-part essay, the ultimate part of our ‘Hikes with Nietzsche’ series (link) for the time being, staff writer Henry Holland retraces summer rambles around Glasgow’s Southside, the home of Scotland’s most concentrated Muslim population. In this first instalment, Holland introduces the research on Nietzsche’s engagement with Islam and his reception within the Islamic world. He recounts how stumbling upon a lecture by Timothy Winter on the French theoretician and artist Pierre Klossowski and his encounter with the faith of Muhammed made him curious about this subject in the first place. We then launch into a travel diary that leads our writer to the heart of one of the present-day’s most debated topics, the role that Islam plays in modern European societies.

‍

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche died 125 years ago, on August 25, 1900. We are taking this important date as an opportunity to publish interviews with two of the most internationally renowned Nietzsche researchers, Andreas Urs Sommer and Werner Stegmaier, around this year's anniversary of his birth on October 15, 1844. Freiburg philosophy professor Sommer is currently working on an extensive biography of the thinker, which is why the conversation with him focused in particular on his life; the conversation with his colleague from Greifswald, which focuses primarily on Nietzsche's thinking, will follow shortly (link). It will soon become apparent that the two cannot be separated. Among other things, we asked the expert about Nietzsche's character, his sexuality and if he lived what he proclaimed.

Werner Herzog (born 1942), described as a “mythomaniac” by Linus Wörffel, and Klaus Kinski (1926—1991) are among the leading figures of post-war German cinema. In the 70s and 80s, the filmmaker and the actor shot five feature films that are among the classics of the medium's history. They are hymns to tragic heroism, in which the spirit of Nietzsche can easily be recognized. From “Build Your Cities on Vesuvius! “will “Build opera houses in the rainforest! ”.

‍

“Techno” — the show of the same name at the Swiss National Museum in Zurich, with traveling exhibitions by the Goethe-Institut and publications in German-speaking countries is currently honoring a once-subcultural movement that became a mass phenomenon in the 1990s with the Berlin Love Parade and continues to live on in Zurich's Street Parade today. Did techno offer (or offer) the Dionysian cultural experience that Nietzsche celebrated in his writings? Would Nietzsche have been a raver?

In addition to hiking, dancing is one of the most prominent soldiers in Nietzsche's “moving [m] army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms.” Based on Nietzsche's reflections on the art of movement, Jonas Pohler explores the paramount importance that it plays in our present day. Is the effect of dance primarily sexual? What does dance have to do with technology? What symbolism is the dancing gesture able to convey?

Our author Natalie Schulte traveled by bicycle for nine months Vietnam, Kampuchea, Thailand and malaysia. In her penultimate contribution to the series ”Hikes with Nietzsche“ she muses on encounters with wild animals that she met or could have met on her journey. It is hardly surprising that this includes considerations about the importance of animals, as they occur in Nietzsche's philosophy.

Richard Wagner lived on Lake Lucerne for six years. In April 1866, he was able to rent the Landhaus of the Lucerne patrician family Am Rhyn, which had been built in a beautiful scenic location on the Tribschenhorn. Nietzsche had been a frequent guest there at that time and enjoyed the family connection. For him, it was an episode that shaped him throughout his life, so that the confrontation with Wagner — in its entire range from unconditional adoration to rude rejection — can perhaps even be regarded as the heart of his thinking. Today, the building houses the Richard Wagner Museum. His current special exhibition focuses on the composer's anti-Semitism.

After Christian Saehrendt took a primarily biographical look at Nietzsche's relationship to music on this blog in June last year (link), Paul Stephan focuses in this article on Nietzsche's content statements about music and comes to a somewhat different conclusion: For Nietzsche, music has a liberating power through its subjectivating power. It affirms our sense of self and inspires us to resist repressive norms and morals. However, not all music can do that. With late Nietzsche, this is no longer Richard Wagner's opera, but Georges Bizet's opera carmen. Our author recognizes a similar attitude in Sartre's novel The disgust and in black popular music, which is not about comfort or grief, but affirmation and overcoming.

It is no secret that one of Nietzsche’s most important philosophical references was the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). That’s reason enough to trace the history of Nietzsche’s reception of Schopenhauer in a two-part article. In the first part, Schopenhauer scholar Tom Bildstein examines how the young Leipzig philology student Nietzsche was first inspired by Schopenhauer’s magnum opus The World as Will and Representation (1818), only to turn into a harsh critic of the Frankfurt “sourpuss” within a few years. — Link to part 2.

“Keep a stiff upper lip,” they say in England when you want to call on your interlocutor to persevere in the face of danger and to maintain an upright posture. Advice that is certainly often helpful. Such a stoic position must be sought all the more as an academic outsider who, on the one hand, sets himself apart from the scientific mainstream, but on the other hand is also dependent on his recognition. Nietzsche himself, but also many of his admirers, found himself in such a delicate situation. Based on several such outsider figures (in addition to Nietzsche himself, such as Julius Langbehn and Paul de Lagarde), Christian Saehrendt develops a typology of the (perhaps not always quite so) “brilliant isolation” of academic nonconformism.

Franz Kafka died 100 years ago. The following text is an attempt to update his work with a socio-psychological perspective inspired by Nietzsche. His thesis: Kafka narratingly shows what Nietzsche philosophizes about. Michael Meyer-Albert wants to promote the logic of a non-naive world enlightenment in the fictions of one of the most important authors of modern times: affirmation of life instead of suicide.

Editorial note: We have explained some difficult technical terms in the footnotes.

‍

It is well known that Nietzsche's history of influence has been read and absorbed across all political camps. But what about our present tense? Paul Stephan examines the writings of two authors who are about the same age as himself, in their mid/late 30s, and whose perspectives on Nietzsche could hardly be more different: While French journalist and YouTuber Julien Rochedy declares Nietzsche a pioneer of a right-wing cultural struggle, the German philosopher and political scientist Karsten Schubert attacks him for a left-wing identity politics. Both positions do not really convince our authors; rather, they are entirely within the framework of the prevailing simulation of politics as a cultural struggle, which would need to be countered by focusing on the really pressing life problems of contemporary humanity.

A fruitful method within philosophy can be addressed seemingly minor, everyday topics. For example, the relationship between thinking and architecture, as this text is based on the newly published book Nietzsche's architecture of the discerning By Stephen Griek tried to show. With Nietzsche in mind, according to Michael Meyer-Albert, protecting a dwelling — both literally and figuratively — from the chaos of reality is essential for a successful world relationship. He neglects this in Greek's post-modern approach, which aims at maximum openness and wants to replace clear spatial structures with diffuse nomadic networks. Architecture as an art of non-violent rooting thus becomes unthinkable; the “house of appearance” that supports human existence collapses.

In the following article, Christian Saehrendt gives a brief insight into the work of one of the most controversial but also most influential Nietzsche interpreters of the 20th century: the German philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880—1936). The author of The fall of the West (1917/22) is considered one of the most important representatives of the “Conservative Revolution,” an intellectual movement that was significantly involved in the cultural destabilization of the Weimar Republic before 1933. Largely forgotten in Germany, it continues to be eagerly received in a global context, such as in Russia.

For hardly any other philosopher, music was as important as it was for Nietzsche. “Without music, life would be a mistake”¹, he wrote. Christian Saehrendt goes for Nietzsche PopArts The question of how this high appreciation of sound art was manifested in his life and work. He talks about Nietzsche's own compositions as well as one of the most iconic aspects of his life: his friendship with Richard Wagner. He shows that the music for Nietzsche is almost erotic It was important — and in this respect he was not so “out of date” at all, but a typical child of his time.

Nietzsche is generally regarded as a literary philosopher whose aphoristic nihilisms not only conjure up the death of God, but who also reinforced the dark sides of German history as a posthumous master thinker. In contrast, the following text would like to be part of the series What does Nietzsche mean to me? invite you to learn to read Nietzsche anew as the discoverer of the all-too-unknown philosophical continent of Mediterranean existentialism.

What significance can a practice of waste have in today's advanced rationalization? Shouldn't we rather do everything we can to increase our efficiency and productivity if we want to meet the challenges of this crisis-ridden time? But when we turn to the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche and his ardent admirer Georges Bataille, we are sometimes exposed to an emphasis of waste that shakes our moral principles and perhaps opens us up to a new and different kind of politics than the one that seems to impose itself on us today as having no alternative.

‍

In the series “What does Nietzsche mean to me? “ over the next few weeks, our regular authors will each present their personal approach to Nietzsche and his thinking. Our senior editor Paul Stephan makes a start and reports on how he discovered Nietzsche as a teenager — and no longer necessarily sees himself as a “Nietzschean.”

From October 12 to 15, the annual meeting of the Friedrich-Nietzsche Society took place in Naumburg. Numerous experts from all over the world came together to explore the various causes of Nietzsche's impact in the first decades following his mental collapse. The spiritual struggles over Nietzsche repeatedly referred to the real struggles of the past — and those of our present.