Nietzsche was repeatedly elevated to a figurehead by right-wing theorists and politicians. From Mussolini and Hitler to the AfD — Nietzsche is repeatedly seized when it comes to confronting modern society with a radical reactionary alternative. Nietzsche was particularly fascinating to intellectual right-wingers, such as authors like Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger, who formed a cultural prelude to the advent of National Socialism in the 1920s, even though they later partially distanced themselves from it. People also often talk about the “Conservative Revolution”¹.

What do these authors draw from Nietzsche and to what extent do they read him one-sidedly and overlook other potentials in his work? Our author Paul Stephan spoke about this with philosopher Robert Hugo Ziegler.

A year ago, our author Paul Stephan conducted a small “dialogue” on the 124th anniversary of Nietzsche's death with ChatGPT to see to what extent the much-hyped program is suitable for discussing complex philosophical questions (link). Paul Stephan now fed it, for the 125th, with some of the same, partly changed questions. Has it improved? Judge for yourself.

What follows, is a very abbreviated excerpt of the conversation. The full commented “dialogue” can be found here [link].

The article image was created by ChatGPT itself when asked to generate a picture of this chat. The other pictures were created again by the software DeepAI based on the prompt: “A picture of Friedrich Nietzsche with a quote by him.”

Read also our author's philosophical commentary on this “talk” (Link).

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Note: A lot of the weirdness of this encounter is lost in the subsequent automated translation. Thus, it's also a part of this experiment on the “philosophical capabilities” of AI. Check the original if you want to get everything.

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.

Lou Wildemann is a cultural scientist and filmmaker from Leipzig. your current feature film project, MALA, deals with the suicide of a young resident of Nietzsche City. Paul Stephan discussed this provocative project and the topic of suicide in general with her: Why is it still taboo today? Should we talk more about this? What role can Nietzsche's reflections, who repeatedly thought about this topic, play in this? What does suicide mean in an increasingly violent neoliberal society?

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?

The humanities scene recently experienced a minor sensation: In the estate of Michel Foucault (1926—1984), one of the most important representatives of post-structuralism, its editors came across an elaborate book manuscript with the title Le discours philosophique, on which the avowed Nietzschean had worked in 1966. It was published in German by Suhrkamp in 2024. Nietzsche plays a decisive role in this comprehensive analysis of philosophical discourse since Descartes. Paul Stephan takes this event as an opportunity to take a closer look at the most influential Nietzsche interpretation of the 20th century to date.

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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.

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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.

The almost complete Freiburg Nietzsche commentary has now become an indispensable tool for Nietzsche research. In meticulous detail work, the authors compiled useful information on almost all aspects of Nietzsche's works (history of origin, sources, allusions, receptions, interpretations...) and commented on them passage by passage, sometimes sentence by sentence and word by word. Almost all of the volumes published so far are available free of charge on the de Gruyter Verlag website (link). Even laymen will find a real treasure trove of background information and explanations here. The three leading employees of the project — its long-time manager Andreas Urs Sommer, Katharina Grätz and Sebastian Kaufmann — took the opportunity to dedicate this year's annual meeting of the Nietzsche Society to the topic of “Commenting on Nietzsche.” They were not only looking back, but also looking ahead.

After two previous contributions to Nietzsche in the Anglosphere For this blog, Henry Holland interviewed American thinker Daniel Tutt about his perspective on Nietzsche as the most important antagonist of the left. The discussion included Huey Newton, leader of the Black Panthers in the 1970s, and what his “parasitic” way of reading Nietzsche prompted him to read. An unedited and unabridged version of this interview, in original English, can be heard and watched on Tutt's YouTube channel (link).

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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.