Is there a connection between place and thought? How might Nietzsche’s philosophy and the forest be linked?

In German culture, the forest often appears as the epitome of the idyllic. In the penultimate part of our series “The Forest as a Living Foundation”, our author Michael Meyer-Albert argues that Nietzsche gave this idyll a completely new form by dynamizing it.

He begins by discussing two forms of the traditional idyll. While the classical idyll in Southern European traditions (such as in Virgil) tended to celebrate the sunny, Arcadian pastoral landscape or the orderly garden, the philosophical idyll is found within the walls of the academy. A refuge from doxa, a tribute to the logos.

Meyer-Albert then analyzes the German forest as a specifically German form of the idyll using the term “Waldeinsamkeit” (forest solitude), coined by the Romantic writer Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853). Here, the forest is understood as a near-religiously charged sanctuary from the demands of modernity. If defended aggressively, this romanticism can quickly turn into reactionary mythology—even in a modern, left-wing guise.

Nietzsche’s modification of the anti-modern German forest idyll into a heroic idyll that affirms modernity serves as a counter-proposal to all these traditional forms of the idyllic—this will be the focus of the second part of this article (link).

“Resentment” is one of the guiding concepts of Nietzsche's philosophy and perhaps even its most effective. In his new book The cold rage. Resentment theory and practice (Marburg 2024, Büchner-Verlag), Jürgen Grosse argues that since the 18th century, more or less all political or social movements have been those of resentment. Our main author Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann has read it and presents major theses below.

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