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.

Our author Natalie Schulte traveled by bicycle for nine months Vietnam, Kampuchea, Thailand and malaysia. In her penultimate contribution to the series ”Hikes with Nietzsche“ she muses on encounters with wild animals that she met or could have met on her journey. It is hardly surprising that this includes considerations about the importance of animals, as they occur in Nietzsche's philosophy.

“Keep a stiff upper lip,” they say in England when you want to call on your interlocutor to persevere in the face of danger and to maintain an upright posture. Advice that is certainly often helpful. Such a stoic position must be sought all the more as an academic outsider who, on the one hand, sets himself apart from the scientific mainstream, but on the other hand is also dependent on his recognition. Nietzsche himself, but also many of his admirers, found himself in such a delicate situation. Based on several such outsider figures (in addition to Nietzsche himself, such as Julius Langbehn and Paul de Lagarde), Christian Saehrendt develops a typology of the (perhaps not always quite so) “brilliant isolation” of academic nonconformism.

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.

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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From October 7 to 11, 2024, the event organized by the Klassik Stiftung Weimar took place in Weimar Nietzsche's futures. Global Conference on the Futures of Nietzsche instead of. Our regular author Paul Stephan was on site on the first day and gives an insight into the current state of academic discussions about Nietzsche. His question: What is the future of Nietzsche academic research when viewed from the perspective of Nietzsche's own radical understanding of the future?

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In the following article, Christian Saehrendt gives a brief insight into the work of one of the most controversial but also most influential Nietzsche interpreters of the 20th century: the German philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880—1936). The author of The fall of the West (1917/22) is considered one of the most important representatives of the “Conservative Revolution,” an intellectual movement that was significantly involved in the cultural destabilization of the Weimar Republic before 1933. Largely forgotten in Germany, it continues to be eagerly received in a global context, such as in Russia.