The following text explores the hypothesis that every philosophy of the zeitgeist finds its onset at something that bothers it: in the beginning, there was disgruntlement. This something is interpreted here as an illiberally disgruntled enlightenment, which is embodied in the current “polarization.” With Francis Fukuyama's help, this trail is explored and the drama of the recognition of modern Enlightenment is described.

The philosopher Fukuyama, born in Chicago in 1952, is primarily known for his essay The End of History? from 1989¹. There, he held that the “end of history” assumed by Hegel had finally arrived with the looming collapse of the Soviet Union. He saw the triumphant liberal Western democracies as the final stage of the process of historical progress. In 1992, Fukuyama published his main work based on this essay: The End of History and the Last Man, in which he combines Hegel's thesis with Nietzsche's diagnosis of the “last man.” Our author is also referring to this book. It caused controversial debates worldwide and continues to provoke today. — Do we really live after the “end of history”? Our author agrees with Fukuyama: While with the form of liberal democracy a final embodiment of the course of history has been achieved, history has been continuing as a conflict within this embodiment. World history has become history of liberalism.

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In the second part of his article on hiking through Glasgow’s Muslim-esque Southside, our staff writer Henry Holland delves into Nietzsche’s impassioned yet scattergun engagement with the youngest Abrahamic religion. He investigates how the experimental novel The Baphomet by French artist and theoretician Pierre Klossowski – which got him hooked on the Islam-Nietzsche intersection in the first place – blends Islam-inspired mysticism, sexual transgression and Nietzscheanism itself into an inimitable potion. With insights on Muslim-esque readings of Nietzsche in tow, Holland returns with Fatima and Ishmael to Scotland’s largest city, thus wrapping up his travelogue whence it began.

Link to Part One.

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.