After our author, in the first part of this article, described the current political-cultural situation with reference to Fukuyama as an outgrowth of deep-seated boredom, which numbs itself in excesses of anger and indignation, he tries in the following second to suggest a possible turn for this zeitgeist, which could manifest itself in a new Enlightenment verve and a new positive self-image of the Enlightenment. Our author, with Nietzsche, opposes the “four despairs” that afflict the present tense, “four transfigurations” and “fields of research” resulting from them. An ironic view of the world and oneself should help to practice a transfigurative perspective on the world, which would be able to overcome the lethargy of postmodernism and revitalize the modernist project. The program of self-reliant future Enlightenment.

The following text explores the hypothesis that every philosophy of the zeitgeist finds its onset at something that bothers it: in the beginning, there was disgruntlement. This something is interpreted here as an illiberally disgruntled enlightenment, which is embodied in the current “polarization.” With Francis Fukuyama's help, this trail is explored and the drama of the recognition of modern Enlightenment is described.

The philosopher Fukuyama, born in Chicago in 1952, is primarily known for his essay The End of History? from 1989¹. There, he held that the “end of history” assumed by Hegel had finally arrived with the looming collapse of the Soviet Union. He saw the triumphant liberal Western democracies as the final stage of the process of historical progress. In 1992, Fukuyama published his main work based on this essay: The End of History and the Last Man, in which he combines Hegel's thesis with Nietzsche's diagnosis of the “last man.” Our author is also referring to this book. It caused controversial debates worldwide and continues to provoke today. — Do we really live after the “end of history”? Our author agrees with Fukuyama: While with the form of liberal democracy a final embodiment of the course of history has been achieved, history has been continuing as a conflict within this embodiment. World history has become history of liberalism.

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The young philosopher Johannes Hansmann has published his monograph Ironie des Schicksals im Einzelnen. Philosophie der Kontingenz bei Marquard und Rorty ("Irony and Fate in Detail. The Philosophy of Contingency in Marquard and Rorty") last year at Karl Alber. It is a remarkable study on two of the most important representatives of existential philosophy in the 20th century, the German Odo Marquard (1928-2015) and the American Richard Rorty (1931-2007). Although Nietzsche only plays a minor role, he deals with highly Nietzschean topics there, dedicates himself to the question of a felicitous — and for him that means in particular: authentic — life in a world after the “death of God,” to which Marquard and Rorty gave very different answers. Natalie Schulte and Paul Stephan present the book to you. A joint summary of the book's most important ideas is followed by an individual statement from each of our authors.

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.

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.

As in our series of articles”Hikes with Nietzsche“It has already been made clear that the metaphor of wandering plays a fundamental role in Nietzsche's work. In this two-part essay, Paul Stephan explores how Nietzsche uses the wanderer as a personification of modern nihilism and thus diversifies a central theme of cultural modernity, which can also be found in the writings of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who was born on May 5, 1813 in Copenhagen, where he also died on November 11, 1855.

For a total of 20 years, Bangladesh was ruled by an iron, authoritarian regime under Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of the first president since the country's independence from Pakistan, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. But within a very short period of time, nationwide uprisings of such violence broke out in July 2024 that they overthrew Hasina after just one month and drove him into exile. How did this victory come from below and how does Nietzsche help us The will to power and continue his elaborations by Foucault and Deleuze to understand this historic moment?

Franz Kafka died 100 years ago. The following text is an attempt to update his work with a socio-psychological perspective inspired by Nietzsche. His thesis: Kafka narratingly shows what Nietzsche philosophizes about. Michael Meyer-Albert wants to promote the logic of a non-naive world enlightenment in the fictions of one of the most important authors of modern times: affirmation of life instead of suicide.

Editorial note: We have explained some difficult technical terms in the footnotes.

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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.

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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One of the most important philosophers of our time, Peter Sloterdijk (born 1947), visited Halle at the beginning of July. The thinker, who was heavily influenced by Nietzsche, shared his thoughts about “gray” there and impressively showed the heights to which philosophy can rise.

After Natalie Schulte reported on the echo of Nietzsche's “superman” idea in the start-up scene last week (Link), Swiss art scholar Jörg Scheller is dedicating this week to her continued existence in extropianism, a subtype of transhumanism that aims to artificially accelerate human evolution on both individual and genre levels using modern technology. The physical law of “entropy,” according to which there is a tendency in closed systems to equalize all energy differences until a state of equilibrium has been established — a state of complete cooling in terms of the universe — is opposed by the proponents of this flow with the principle of “extropy,” the increasing vitality of a system.

After Michael Meyer-Albert in the first part of his text Telling the sad story of the self-doubt of the Enlightenment, he now reports on Nietzsche's “cheerful science” as an alternative.