But those who criticize without creating, who are content with defending the exhausted without being able to give him the strength to new life: they are the wound mark of philosophy. They are driven by resentment.¹

Nietzsche's works are notorious for their consistent rejection of cumbersome philosophical traditions — against Plato and Christianity as “Platonism for the 'people'”², against Hegel and dialectics, against Kant's categorical imperative and then also against Schopenhauer's reluctance. This alleged anti-stance is attractive, there is finally a representative for all those who not belong to the masses. One for all the misunderstood, lonely geniuses who bear the burdens of misunderstood magnificence, a David against Goliath; the negative template that is defined by what it simply is not or cannot be.

The irony as well as the potential danger of using Nietzsche in this way is obvious. It is true that he may be whiny and defiant against his own agenda from time to time, but he is primarily concerned with self-affirmation of life. The will to power, the love of ancient Greece, the eternal return, they are all at the service of life, of reality. Yet, and this misinterpretation is the source of the fascist tendency, the core of life does not consist in any way of a forgotten origin from which we have alienated ourselves and to which we need to return, nor of a higher, ultimate wisdom (religion), even if it becomes immanent (truth, capital, state). The real is rather a movement; it constantly carries itself forward in the process of new creation. It is prolific, multiplies aimlessly, applies new matter to life layer by layer. It resists every standstill, every heating up idleness of the hard-working and pious, against the attempt to build up a dam of the absolute, the dogmatic, of totality in the midst of the torrential flows. The core of life is the core's own dissolution, i.e. the overcoming of the existing, the eternal departure into worlds yet to be created. Greatness yes, but a collectively impersonal one that doesn't need to care about their recognition. I think it's a very hopeful philosophy that goes beyond the scope of what is possible.

Nietzsche's diagnoses of the time can thus be read as a fundamental critique of modernity. Because, according to his observation, the present day in Europe is nowhere. Christianity, once it has killed its god, is left with nothing but its values — hostile values disguised in the guise of atheism, which have their roots in resentment. Humanity does not need God, good, but morality and reason, which show the self-inflicted subject where it's going, where the hope of cleansing the sticky original sin has not yet died. The teacher, the boss, the psychotherapist, the bourgeoisie with its blind loyalty to the state are the priests of the wicked. Her message: “[E] s a shame to be happy! ”³So enslave yourself, build a dam for the rivers so that they become a trickle. After the human being has freed himself from divine imperatives, he puts himself in chains again. But when he found at least certainty and comfort in believing in a true God, in redemption after death, he now sees himself faced with the dull stump of religious convictions, in which every value becomes a relative matter — “Yes, how should you believe can, you mottled people! — that you are paintings of everything that was ever believed! ”⁴. Deprives of every great truth, humanity is content with a minimum of life, does not dare to go beyond what already exists. Modernity is the age of nihilism.

The age of nihilism is that of capitalist society. Labor power as the fundamental driving force of human life, previously tied to a specific activity whose objectivity constituted the value of work, becomes abstract labor, which is sold as a liquid abstract in exchange for wage money. The productive forces lose their direct connection to the reality they have created; work becomes a mere necessity for basal reproduction, which is dependent on monetary means. Life stands still, the huge new creations and processes of development are nipped in the bud, because who still has time or money for this? First the daily bread, then the revolution — but people have forgotten that bread was also a revolutionary invention. The human being has to stand still, is robbed of his will and its fruits, his reality becomes alien to him, he is alienated. Life is not a prerequisite for work, but first and foremost wage labor is a condition for life — an eternal cycle of the type of a centrifuge that throws the unusable remains outwards and concentrates the surplus value produced internally. Capital sits enthroned there, becoming ever more saturated and yet never satisfied. It is both the starting point and the end purpose: money — goods — money; and at the same time thoroughly unproductive yet equipped with vampire teeth that only need to be chewed into the productive forces. The real tick is Silicon Valley, not punk on the street.

The age of nihilism has dedicated itself to a new master without realizing it. Capital is a devastating god who, in contrast to the gods of the earth, who served even more as an engine of creation, absorbs the productive power by becoming a projection screen for everything that has ever been believed. Reality evaporates into hot air before the eye, only to rage in abstract commodity form as a hurricane across the residual desert of reality. What remains is the alienated, naked subject, who only has to resort to bandages, all of which are necessarily reactionary because powerless: the privatization of people under the ideal of a sovereign individual, the fantastic promises of a career, the comfort of consumption in the bosom of colonial exploitation, the idealistic installation of a supposedly better past, the love of law and order, the escape into political identity, which has its origins in marginalization and oppression, the totalizing Morality as a weapon in the cultural struggle, which is fought far removed from material conditions — the powerlessness and the resulting resentment have become deeply entrenched.

On the theatrical stage of a cynical, artificial reality, Nietzsche draws attention to theatre production. The play, with all its tragic suffering and comedic ecstasies, may offer shallow entertainment, but at the expense of real living conditions. So, according to Nietzsche's plea, it is important to blow up theatre, to create new values for themselves that stimulate life, fertilize the desert. Nietzsche's voice calls for self-overcoming, beyond good and evil, where the ego becomes a marginal figure and the productive self-affirmation of becoming a protagonist. Anyone who does not use philosophy as a hammer, but as a pastime for the frugal, as a narcotic for the suffering or as a religion of the unbelievers, is better off being on stage at the time of the blast.

So what does Nietzsche mean? At times, it is a welcoming retreat where thinking can develop freely and the astonishment of human wealth drives us to set out again. And even though he himself was not an explicit critic of capitalism, he is still a weapon in the fight against all totality, including that of capital, against the absurdity of speckled people who cynically commit themselves to values in which they cannot believe. His criticism of his time is simply not a reactionary force, but an affirmative will to liberate, which fuels the turbines and challenges us to take the big step into the unknown. Last but not least, he remains a loyal companion for those who are scattered around, adventurous, dancers and all those who are encouraged by him to go on a journey.

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Literature

Deleuze, Gilles & Felix Guattari: What is philosophy? Frankfurt am Main 2003.

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footnotes

1: Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, What is philosophy?, P. 36.

2: Beyond good and evil, Preface.

3: On the genealogy of morality, paragraph III, 14.

4: So Zarathustra spoke, From the land of education.