1. Introduction: The Question of the Coming Humans

Friedrich Nietzsche was a thinker of thresholds, of transitions, of upheavals. His philosophy is not addressed to the guardians of the status quo, but to the promise of another kind of human being. It is no coincidence that he asks in one of his late fragments: “Where are the barbarians of the twentieth century?” This question is far more than cultural-critical polemic. It expresses his deep dissatisfaction with the European culture of his time, which he perceived as decadent, complacent, and exhausted.

For Nietzsche, “barbarians” did not mean those who relapse into savagery, but those who are prepared to destroy the old in order to make the new possible. They are not the breakers of civilization, but its overcomers.

Today, 125 years after Nietzsche’s death, this question arises once more — indeed, more urgently than ever: Where are the barbarians of the twenty-first century? And above all: what would they have to be like in order to correspond to Nietzsche’s spirit?

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2. The False Barbarian: Populism, Violence, Regression

The temptation is great to look for the barbarians at the political margins or extremes — among autocrats, demagogues, and agitators. Many of them indeed stage themselves as “system breakers,” as “enemies of the elites,” or as saviors of some imagined originality. But Nietzsche would hardly have allied himself with them. He was no friend of the masses, no apologist of ressentiment, no defender of the dull “will of the people.” On the contrary: he was an elitist thinker — though not in terms of social origin, but of intellectual incorruptibility.

The barbarian Nietzsche longed for does not act out of hatred, but out of abundance. He destroys not out of frustration, but out of creative power. From this perspective, the nationalist and authoritarian movements of our time are not barbarians but phenomena of regression. They do not seek to create something new, but to restore something old. They are not interested in becoming, but in reestablishing an imagined yesterday.

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3. The Exhaustion of Values

Nietzsche diagnosed the “death of God” as the end of a metaphysical order that had shaped Western thought for centuries. For him, this death was not a reason for mourning but a challenge: the old values have lost their binding force, and it is now up to human beings themselves to create new ones. But it is precisely at this point that the present hesitates.

The “last man,” whom Nietzsche caricatures in the preface to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, has taken over: comfortable, security-oriented, ironic, and world-weary. The possibility of the radically new is perceived as a risk, not as a promise.

In a culture of constant self-optimization, of digitalized life, and of moral hyper-surveillance, there is little space for what Nietzsche called “chaos” — the chaos from which a dancing star can be born. Everything is regulated, measured, evaluated. But nothing is dared any longer.

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4. The True Barbarians: Creators of the Future

Nietzsche’s barbarians are figures of departure. They come “from the future” and bring with them something that still eludes the present: new values, new perspectives, new possibilities of life. One should not imagine these new humans as superheroes or geniuses. Perhaps they are eccentric, perhaps marginalized. Perhaps they act not loudly, but persistently. But they share one trait: a radical turning away from what is inherited.

You will not find them on talk shows, not in party manifestos, not in influencer videos. They cannot be integrated, because their thinking lies beyond what can be integrated. Perhaps they are artists who deliberately refuse commodification. Perhaps philosophers who do not proclaim truth but provoke movements of thought. Perhaps solitary individuals who experiment with new forms of community, work, and intimacy — without ideological prescriptions.

Their barbarism consists not in violence, but in intransigence. Not in destruction, but in birth.

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5. What Does It Mean to Be a Barbarian?

To be a barbarian in the twenty-first century means: not to play along. It means withdrawing from constant surveillance, from digital conformism, from moral rigorism. It means — as Nietzsche demanded — “to resist the temptation of the times, not to submit to them.”

A barbarian thinks across the grain, not because it is fashionable, but because he sees differently. He does not live outside society, but neither within it — rather, beyond its self-evidence.

The barbarians can also be readers of Nietzsche, provided they do not venerate him as a saint, but take him as a demolition expert. They use his hammer not to shatter others, but to test their own idols.

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6. Outlook: Thinking the Unheard

“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” This oft-quoted Nietzsche sentence is not poetic ornament, but a declaration of war against the complacency of our culture. The concept of chaos in Nietzsche is never nihilistic; it means openness, becoming, the not-yet-determined.

The barbarian is the one who does not fear this state, but cultivates it.

So — where are the barbarians of the twenty-first century? Perhaps they are not yet visible. Perhaps they are still turned inward. Perhaps they are reading this very text. What they make of it will show whether they are truly barbarians — or merely administrators of modernity’s legacy.

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