On April 15, 1980, one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, Jean-Paul Sartre, died at the age of 74. Paul Stephan spoke with Jens Bonnemann, chairman of the German-speaking Sartre-Gesellschaft, about his basic ideas, his relationship with Nietzsche and his significance for our time. What does it mean to live in freedom after the “death of God”? What are the limits of individual freedom? What are the differences and similarities between Sartre and Nietzsche?

You can also view the unedited version of the conversation, in German, on YouTube and listen to it on Soundcloud.

‍

Time and again, our blog is dedicated to overlooked figures from the Nietzscheverse. The Leipzig Anglist Elmar Schenkel went deep into the archives for us in order to introduce you to an almost unknown figure of French-language Nietzsche reception: the “taxi philosopher” Jean-Baptiste Botul, who lived from 1896 to 1947 and not only came into contact with numerous prominent figures of his time on his trips through Paris, but developed also, in conversations with them, his very own Nietzsche interpretation, which, due to its subversive explosive power, has been stored in the poison cabinet by the mainstream of Nietzsche research to the present day. If Nietzsche was, in his own words, “dynamite,” then Botul is a rocket of the Force de frappe, still awaiting detonation — a stroke of luck?

The connection between Marx(ism) and Nietzsche(anism) has repeatedly been a topic on our blog. To what extent can the ideas of arguably the most important theorist on the left and the philosophical chameleon, who was an avowed anti-socialist and anti-feminist and inspired Goebbels and Mussolini, among others, be meaningfully combined. While there have been repeated attempts at left-wing Nietzscheanism, Estella Walter's conclusion in this controversial thesis article is skeptical: The contrast between “historical-dialectical materialism” and Nietzsche's idea of will to power is too irreconcilable. Beyond his time diagnosis, his thinking only provides little emancipatory content.

After Natalie Schulte reported on the echo of Nietzsche's “superman” idea in the start-up scene last week (Link), Swiss art scholar Jörg Scheller is dedicating this week to her continued existence in extropianism, a subtype of transhumanism that aims to artificially accelerate human evolution on both individual and genre levels using modern technology. The physical law of “entropy,” according to which there is a tendency in closed systems to equalize all energy differences until a state of equilibrium has been established — a state of complete cooling in terms of the universe — is opposed by the proponents of this flow with the principle of “extropy,” the increasing vitality of a system.

Vitalii Mudrakov is one of Ukraine's leading Nietzsche experts. Due to the war, he and his family currently live in Germany. Paul Stephan talked to him in detail about some aspects of the rich Ukrainian reception of Nietzsche in the context of the country's independent cultural history, which has often been ignored. It shows that Nietzsche's liberal thinking repeatedly inspired central protagonists of Ukrainian culture in their struggle for an independent nation free from Habsburg, Tsarist or Soviet foreign rule — and today again the struggle for their own self-assertion in the face of the Russian invasion.

Since 1994, the house in Naumburg where Nietzsche lived with his mother for several years after his mental collapse in 1889 has had a museum dedicated to life and work. On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of its existence, the permanent exhibition of the Nietzsche House was completely redesigned, curated by Berlin philosopher Daniel Tyradellis. Our regular author Lukas Meisner was there and took a look at them.

In the penultimate part of the series “What does Nietzsche mean to me? “Lukas Meisner comes to a surprising result at first glance: Nietzsche and Marx both practice fundamental criticism of capitalism and Nietzsche can serve to Marx's To complement a critique of political economy with a no less radical critique of moral economy.

Paul Stephan talked to Jenny Kellner and Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann about the interpretation of one of the most important Nietzsche interpreters of the 20th century: Georges Bataille (1897—1962). The French writer, sociologist and philosopher defended the ambiguity of Nietzsche's philosophy against its National Socialist appropriation and thus became a central source of postmodernism. Based on Dionysian mythology, he wanted to develop a new concept of sovereignty that transcends the traditional understanding of responsible subjectivity, and criticized modern capitalist rationality in the name of an “economy of waste.” With all this, he provides important impulses for a better understanding of our present tense.