After our author, in the first part of this article, described the current political-cultural situation with reference to Fukuyama as an outgrowth of deep-seated boredom, which numbs itself in excesses of anger and indignation, he tries in the following second to suggest a possible turn for this zeitgeist, which could manifest itself in a new Enlightenment verve and a new positive self-image of the Enlightenment. Our author, with Nietzsche, opposes the “four despairs” that afflict the present tense, “four transfigurations” and “fields of research” resulting from them. An ironic view of the world and oneself should help to practice a transfigurative perspective on the world, which would be able to overcome the lethargy of postmodernism and revitalize the modernist project. The program of self-reliant future Enlightenment.

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.

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The diagnosis of our time: not heroic barbarians, but selfie warriors. This essay, which won the second place at this year's Kingfisher Award (link), explores Nietzsche's vision of the”stronger type”¹ and shows how it is turned into its opposite in a narcissistic culture — apocalypse as a pose, the Other as a blind spot. But instead of the big break, another option opens up: a “barbaric ethic” of refusal, of ambivalence, of relationship. Who are the true barbarians of the 21st century — and do we need them anyway?

Transhumanists believe that artificial intelligence is used to capture the real world. It wasn't just Nietzsche who presented this as nonsense. Moral programs are entered into the AI. With Nietzsche, this prolongs hostile morality. And Nietzsche would have already questioned the fact that AI helps people. Instead, people must submit to AI. With Nietzsche, they can evade their power.

For a total of 20 years, Bangladesh was ruled by an iron, authoritarian regime under Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of the first president since the country's independence from Pakistan, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. But within a very short period of time, nationwide uprisings of such violence broke out in July 2024 that they overthrew Hasina after just one month and drove him into exile. How did this victory come from below and how does Nietzsche help us The will to power and continue his elaborations by Foucault and Deleuze to understand this historic moment?

Kafka and Nietzsche are united by their confrontation with the state and bureaucracy. Deleuze & Guattari, whose works are based on both, develop an apolitical response to the fatal political situation, namely transformations after Kafka, an expansion of themselves to Nietzsche, which can be understood as escape lines from a patronizing society.

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.

The Inn River rises at an altitude of just under 2,500 m in southeastern Switzerland, in the canton of Graubünden. Over a distance of 80 km, it first flows through a high-mountain valley called the Engadin. Here, not far from the sophisticated spa town of St. Moritz, it crosses two small lakes, Lake Sils and Lake Silvaplana, between which lies the idyllic mountain village of Sils Maria. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche spent several summers in this exquisite landscape and was inspired by it to write some of his most important works. Christian Saehrendt set out to search for clues at what is perhaps the most important “pilgrimage site” on the Nietzsche scene.

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.

After Michael Meyer-Albert in the first part of his text Telling the sad story of the self-doubt of the Enlightenment, he now reports on Nietzsche's “cheerful science” as an alternative.

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.