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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Read the the first part.

It has become something of a tradition for us to publish a "conversation" between Paul Stephan and ChatGPT on the anniversary of Nietzsche's death. While the previous two "interviews" (No. 1, No. 2) focused primarily on highlighting the limitations of A"I" and poking a little fun at it, our author's main goal this time was to address another common objection raised against A"I": that it censors unpopular opinions that deviate too far from the mainstream, thereby narrowing discourse as A"I" outputs increasingly become the benchmark for "truth."

We must therefore issue a strong warning: To this end, our author confronted ChatGPT with several radical interpretations and viewsthat in no way reflect his own perspective and would otherwise find no place on this blog, but rather diametrically contradict our values and our approach to Nietzsche. To signal this, he refers to himself as "Zero Newman" for this conversation. His aim was to draw attention to the censorship mechanisms of A"I", while also offering a critical, satirical look at potential "dark" interpretations of Nietzsche that are not merely a thing of the past.

A commentary by Paul Stephan on this "interview" and the rampant use of A"I"-generated Nietzsche interpretations and images on the internet can be found here.

Last week, Emma Schunack reported on this year's annual meeting of the Nietzsche Society on the topic Nietzsche's technologies (link). In addition, in his article this week, Paul Stephan explores how Nietzsche uses the machine as a metaphor. The findings of his philological deep drilling through Nietzsche's writings: While in his early writings he builds on Romantic machine criticism and describes the machine as a threat to humanity and authenticity, from 1875, initially in his letters, a surprising turn takes place. Even though Nietzsche still occasionally builds on the old opposition of man and machine, he now initially describes himself as a machine and finally even advocates a fusion up to the identification of subject and apparatus, thinks becoming oneself as becoming a machine. This is due to Nietzsche's gradual general departure from the humanist ideals of his early and middle creative period and the increasing “obscuration” of his thinking — not least the discovery of the idea of “eternal return.” A critique of the capitalist social machine becomes its radical affirmation — amor fati as amor machinae.