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.

‍

In its early publication The Birth of Tragedy (1872) Nietzsche formulated his basic theory of ancient tragedy. The moment of Rausch — a term which often translated as “intoxication” but refers not just to states of intoxication caused by the use of intoxicating drugs — is just as fundamental here as it is for Nietzsche's understanding of art in general. Emma Schunack investigates how the Dionysian intoxication of ancient tragedy is reflected in Hermann Nitsch's contemporary art. Between bloody animal pelts on purple, vermilion and lemon-yellow colored sheets + candied white violets.¹ To what extent can the concept of Dionysian Rausch in Nitsch's “Orgies Mystery Theatre” be understood as a contemporary continuation of Nietzsche's understanding of art? An attempt to read Nitsch with Nietzsche.

After Christian Saehrendt took a primarily biographical look at Nietzsche's relationship to music on this blog in June last year (link), Paul Stephan focuses in this article on Nietzsche's content statements about music and comes to a somewhat different conclusion: For Nietzsche, music has a liberating power through its subjectivating power. It affirms our sense of self and inspires us to resist repressive norms and morals. However, not all music can do that. With late Nietzsche, this is no longer Richard Wagner's opera, but Georges Bizet's opera carmen. Our author recognizes a similar attitude in Sartre's novel The disgust and in black popular music, which is not about comfort or grief, but affirmation and overcoming.

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.

‍

To commemorate the 124th anniversary of Nietzsche’s death, Paul Stephan conversed with a rather particular kind of Nietzsche expert—the now near ubiquitous ChatGPT. Their discussion circled around questions of why Nietzsche matters today and his concept of authenticity. During the course of the conversation, Stephan switched from asking to fielding questions, and elaborated briefly on how his own doctoral dissertation also focuses on authenticity. As Stephan’s experiment aimed at probing deep into the program’s capabilities, and because brevity is not ChatGPT’s strongest asset, we present here an abridged version of the conversation. Readers of German who wish to delve deeper can view the unabridged and annotated PDF that’s available as a download (link). Watch out for Stephan’s critical reflections on this truly remarkable dialogue within the next few days (link).

The pictures accompanying the interview were created with DeepAI software, which was asked to produce “A picture of Friedrich Nietzsche with a quote by him.”