Materialist metaphysics, as practiced by Spinoza, Nietzsche, or Deleuze and Guattari, has proven incapable of accounting for fundamental moral convictions. Nietzsche is at least radical enough to acknowledge this incommensurability and draw the corresponding conclusions. If one is unwilling to accept this, the only remaining path is to adopt the "view from eternity" alongside metaphysics: from that vantage point, one can only unconditionally affirm a groundless reality. Perhaps, however, the more promising answer is that of Emmanuel Levinas: his materialism allows morality to emerge from the encounter with the Other, and in doing so, he almost incidentally shatters the unity of metaphysics that even such radical thinkers as Deleuze and Guattari still took for granted.

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As is well known, Nietzsche did not feel bound by conventional morality. In a world without an afterlife, strength and the will to power prevail. While Nietzsche was prepared to accept the brutal consequences of this perspective if necessary, some of his successors could not reconcile themselves to it, if only for political reasons. Using the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, this text examines the difficulties faced by a materialism that seeks to hold onto its Nietzschean inspiration while refusing to betray certain values. Michel Clouscard highlights this tension, yet he, too, fails to provide a justification for his moral convictions within the framework of his Marxist materialism. Is materialism fundamentally blind to morality?

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.