The October Revolution, which took place on November 6 and 7, 1917, according to the Western calendar, was one of the most pivotal events in world history. For the first time in history, one of the world's largest nations was to not only establish a republic but also end the era of private ownership of the means of production and the soil and build a completely classless society. In "A Sixth of the World"—the proud title of a 1926 Soviet film by Dziga Vertov that celebrates the Soviet Union's achievements and showcases its diverse peoples—socialism was to prevail, and a "new man" was even to be created.

It was an experiment that failed, yet it shaped the history of the 20th century like no other and remains a subject of debate to this day: Was it doomed to fail from the start? Was the price of the undeniable, gigantic successes of this vast empire too high? At what exact point did it take a wrong turn?

Nietzsche would likely have chosen the first answer—and conversely, he was, to put it mildly, not exactly the most popular philosopher in the Soviet Union. He was considered a bourgeois reactionary and a mastermind of fascism; his writings were removed from libraries and censored, and academic engagement with his work was virtually impossible. At the same time, individual motifs of his philosophy lived on in revolutionary culture, in literature, and in the vision of a "new man"—often without ever mentioning his name.

In this two-part series, Ukrainian philosopher Vitalii Mudrakov provides an overview of the reception of Nietzsche in the country where he was born, which has long since ceased to exist. The first part examines the official attempts to censor Nietzsche's thought and interpret it solely through the lens of Marxist-Leninist ideology. The second part will focus on the unofficial, subversive reception of Nietzsche.

In her major work The Life of the Mind, Arendt builds upon Nietzsche’s understanding of the will to power as interpretation. Rather than following Kant’s conception of free will, she argues that through the will, something new enters the world with every newborn human being—a notion that resembles Zarathustra’s demand that the Übermensch should invent new values. Arendt also agrees with Nietzsche’s assertion that the "‘true world’" is a "fable," for Arendt because modern sciences possess no ultimate truths—a fact they themselves acknowledged around 1900, but which they now refuse to recognize. Thus, as heretics of science, Nietzsche and Arendt belong to the ranks of the "evil" philosophers.

Arendt lived from 1906 to 1975 and is considered one of the great thinkers of the 20th century. The daughter of secular Jews, she studied in the 1920s in Marburg, Freiburg, and Heidelberg under such influential philosophers as Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, and Martin Heidegger. As a young student, she was briefly involved with the latter. In 1933, she was forced to emigrate, and from 1941 she lived in the USA, where she began teaching at various universities in 1953. This unorthodox intellectual is best known for her critique of totalitarianism and her communicative concept of the political.

Her 120th birthday provides sufficient reason to take a closer look at the intellectual relationship between Nietzsche and Arendt.

You can listen to and watch a version of this text, read by the author himself and supplemented with original audio clips of Arendt, on YouTube and Soundcloud .

On April 15, 1980, one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, Jean-Paul Sartre, died at the age of 74. Paul Stephan spoke with Jens Bonnemann, chairman of the German-speaking Sartre-Gesellschaft, about his basic ideas, his relationship with Nietzsche and his significance for our time. What does it mean to live in freedom after the “death of God”? What are the limits of individual freedom? What are the differences and similarities between Sartre and Nietzsche?

You can also view the unedited version of the conversation, in German, on YouTube and listen to it on Soundcloud.

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In his recently published study Theory of Liberation [Theorie der Befreiung]Frankfurt philosopher Christoph Menke describes liberation as “fascination,” as pleasurable desubjectization and dedication. He refers decisively to Nietzsche — but for him, “fascination” means bewitching, entanglement in lack of freedom and resentment. Can the mystical power of fascination really set us free — or is it not rather Nietzsche's right and liberation means above all self-empowerment and autonomy, whereas the fascinated sacrifice means submission, not least to a fascist leader?