I. Nietzsche’s Philosophizing Techniques Continue to Fascinate

Nietzsche recounts how his great adversary, Socrates, had “fascinated”—in our twenty-first century argot we might say bewitched—the noble Athenians with his dialectical method. With it, he claims, Socrates had a “ruthless instrument to hand,” one by means of which he “depotentiated” his opponents’ intellect.¹ For Nietzsche, dialectics, and with it the West’s whole rationalist tradition, was a technique [Technik] for producing a semblance of truth.^1.5 A note of Nietzsche’s from 1880 recorded the general conviction had taken hold “that we do not possess the truth”:² a condition he would later call nihilism. After a long struggle to understand the meaning and import of this state of affairs, he finally came to recognize in it the “normal condition” in which we live once again now that metaphysics has left us:³ A condition in which what metaphysics, together with the Christian dogmatics that followed it, had elevated to supreme values loses its credibility. After grasping that there were no longer any absolute certainties, Nietzsche consistently de-metaphysicized and emptied the morality out of the language of philosophy, so we might achieve a new “deepening into reality.”⁴ Only hesitantly do we begin to fathom these new depths, as we’re still strongly bound to metaphysical–moral idealizations.

As is only fully clear today, Nietzsche did not construct a new “system.” The very “will to [create] a system is a lack of moral fiber,” as he memorably put it.⁵ Instead, one of Nietzsche’s favorite techniques was to place doctrines in the mouth of his best known protagonist, Zarathustra, which—especially since Heidegger—were later taken to form the core of such a system: the doctrines of the overhuman [Übermensch],^5.5 the will to power, and the eternal recurrence of the same. Yet we cannot forget that Nietzsche let his anti-hero fail with these same doctrines at every turn. No one understands them as he intends: not the ordinary people, not his disciples, not his animals, not even the group he calls “the higher humans.” Ultimately, Zarathustra is left moving alone toward a sign meant only for him. Under his own name, by contrast, Nietzsche introduces the concept of the will to power in Beyond Good and Evil (aph. 36) as a mere hypothesis and as a means of being thrifty with principles: as a means of giving the simplest and easy overview of the entire reality. Such a world, “seen from inside,” would be “‘will to power’ and nothing besides.” As the now completed edition of the late-career part of Nietzsche’s posthumously-published papers [Nachlass] demonstrates, Nietzsche’s initially worked at this textural juncture with the hypothesis of the eternal recurrence of the same, inserting the will to power in its place only later.⁶ These two hypotheses evidently appeared to him functionally equivalent for the radical reorientation of philosophy demanded by nihilism. They are not dogmas but rather stores in his technique-arsenal for philosophizing.

And they weren’t treated as dogmas either in later philosophies. There was no Nietzsche School comparable to the Hegelian, and later the Kantian schools of the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, Nietzsche scholars have learnt to stop fixing his thought to clear-cut doctrines and to follow, rather, his process of orientation in all its facets, and with all its hesitations and turns—to observe Nietzsche at work.⁷ Doing this, we may try to learn how one might orient oneself even amid a state of nihilism, under nihilistic conditions, and how, while traversing this path, one might gain readers for this topic across the world. Keeping faith with this congress’s theme, I thus pursue Nietzsche’s techniques of philosophizing to better understand how, from within the prevailing nihilistic condition, he achieved an orientational security that continues to fascinate.

To avoid fixing too exclusively on Nietzsche, I also glance sideways at Heidegger’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophizing, the two most innovative twentieth-century figures to pursue this artful craft. Both born in 1889, the year Nietzsche collapsed into madness, Wittgenstein noticed Nietzsche, but from quite some distance. Heidegger, by contrast, put him on the pedestal of being a major opponent, against whom he could define his own “other beginning.”⁸ Yet both accomplished something rare and remarkable—something Nietzsche would have called self-overcoming. They subverted the foundations of the philosophies that had made them world famous in the first place. Wittgenstein came to recognize in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus— by which he initially believed to have attained the “unassailable and definitive” truth that would resolve the philosophical problems—a doctrine that could not be sustained; Heidegger came to see in Being and Time a wrong turning in the path towards the “meaning of being.” Both thus refocused towards the issue of the techniques of philosophizing: to the ways in which philosophy has been led, hitherto, into doctrines, and to the means by which it can throw off these doctrinal chains. Like Nietzsche before them, they now spoke emphatically of their philosophizing rather than of their philosophy. They, too, set aside inherited standards and created radically new ones. And like Nietzsche, they embarked on this adventure without a preconceived plan, exposing themselves intentionally to surprises even in their own thinking. Neither of them arrived at a goal; both ended up only at a provisional end. And yet it was through these very technique-based operations that they enacted their most efficacious philosophy^.9

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II. Mastering the Most General of Concepts, or: The Technique of Philosophizing

Techniques are nothing that one holds to be true; we judge them, instead, solely by their functioning, by their success or failure. Neither technique should be generally suspected of being a kind of metaphysics, as the later Heidegger suggested. Moreover, it’s more than merely the mechanical technology that Nietzsche liked to use—typewriters, trains, etc.—and which the engineering student Wittgenstein devoted himself to so intensively that he arrived via mathematics at philosophy. Techniques also include, for both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, ways to compose and make music, means of writing poetry—and thus also techniques for and of philosophizing. According to Nietzsche, Greek tragic poets knew how to learn the same from one another;¹⁰ techniques can be acquired in education;¹¹ and Richard Wagner  “profoundly overcame all scholarliness, transforming it into instinctive technique.”¹² Nietzsche also speaks of techniques of commerce and  hunting,¹³ and of linguistic expression.¹⁴ Summarizing matters in late 1887, he posits “the natural sciences’ great technique and inventiveness” as a tremendous bulwark against the “moralizing of all previous philosophy {and appreciation}”; against  Christian idealization “(e.g., {in music}, in socialism)”; against Rousseau’s “hatred of aristocratic culture”; against a “false and derivative form of superior humanity” stemming from Romanticism; and finally against the “hatred” of “all forms of rank order and distance.”¹⁵ Indeed, and on this view, all that “{which is born {relatively} out of abundance}—in the 19th century with contentment is … technique.” Moreover, and alongside “{cheerful music, etc.},” and perhaps also “{history (?)},” such technique is a “{relative product of the 19^th cent.[ury]’s strength and self-confidence}.” It lends our language a new security of orientation, making nihilism bearable. By contrast, as Nietzsche writes in The Anti-Christ (chapter 44), Christianity makes a “technique” of its “art of lying sacredly” developing it to the point of “ultimate mastery.”^15.5

In this sense, techniques need not be conscious practices. On the contrary, when we become conscious of them, for example while someone’s playing the piano or carrying out a simple movement process such as walking, they can—through this “making conscious”—such techniques can even be disturbed, as Heinrich von Kleist described in his famous essay On the Marionette Theater. Comparably, Nietzsche reflected on how we generally write only poorly about our own techniques.¹⁶ They are learned through trial and practiced in action until we can eventually “do them,” without having to explain why. They can be learned by observing others but cannot be easily taught, as aptitudes for them differ hugely. In any case, they must be “skilled,” and philosophizing must be skilled in this sense. Whether it is in fact practiced skillfully is best judged, as with any craft, by practitioners themselves.

The later Wittgenstein noted privately: “We go through common or garden movements of thoughts, automatically transitioning from one thought to the other based on the techniques we’ve learned. And now we have to first review what we have said.”¹⁷ The later Heidegger also emphasizes that the “craft of thought” must be learned and practiced.¹⁸ This leads onto a “technical” concept of philosophy itself: no longer determined by preconditioned issues including world and truth, or being and time, but apprehended rather as a skilled handling of the most general concepts of this kind. And we’ll now look at what this skill genuinely involves, by taking the examples of Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger.

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III. Nietzsche’s Techniques of Philosophizing

A. Nietzsche’s Techniques as Responses to Specific Problems

Regarding Nietzsche’s characterization of Socrates’ “magic of the extreme,” I have already demonstrated how Nietzsche, proceeding down the trails of his own work, responded to particular problems confronting him with specific techniques for their resolution.¹⁹ I found seven such techniques:

First, in The Birth of Tragedy, he responded to the problem of the “theoretical human,” which he alleged Socrates had created, with the technique of embedding this figure within a radically reinterpreted Greek culture;

Second, in Human, All Too Human, he responded to the problem of the earth’s overall governance with the technique of comparing cultures in an “age of comparison” (vol. I, aph. 23);

Third, in Daybreak, he responded to the problem of Europe’s self-misrecognition of its morality with the technique of a moral critique of morality, from which On the Genealogy of Morality later emerged;

Fourth, in The Joyful Science,^19.5a he responded to the problem of nihilism with the technique of a fundamental reorientation of philosophizing through incorporating art into it;

Fifth, in Beyond Good and Evil, he responded to the problem of the will to truth—which persists even once one knows that truth cannot be possessed—with the technique of expanding the horizons of human orientation (all the “human’s basic drives” have “once practiced philosophy” [aphorism 6]);^19.5b

Sixth, in Book V of The Joyful Science, he responded to the problem of rank order—which also encompasses the right to problems—in an era of unstoppable democratization with the technique of shifting from equalities to differences;²⁰

Seventh, in Twilight of the Idols and the final works prepared for publication, he responded to the “problem of the value of life as such” (“Morality as Anti-Nature,” 5) with the technique of affirming everything that happens, or of liberation from ressentiment.²¹

All of these techniques—embedding, comparison, self-referential critique, incorporation of art, expansion of horizons, breaking with habitual equations, and affirmation of what is given—expand the scope of Nietzsche’s philosophizing while at the same time giving it their own foothold. In this sense, they are techniques of orientation.²² We always orient ourselves towards something without thereby committing ourselves to that thing irrecoverably, and Nietzsche’s philosophical orientations are themselves marked by their questionability and provisionality. He turns the truth that one “cannot have” into a part of the game, the “rendezvous […] of questions and question marks”²³ that experience routinely reveals itself to be. Philosophizing, understood as the skillful handling of the most general of concepts, accordingly becomes a permanently evolving technique of orienting oneself in the world. It involves vigilant and constant self-critique, or, to put it in Nietzsche’s words, ceaseless “self-overcoming.”

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These techniques are also valid to describe the ways in which Wittgenstein and Heidegger worked: to an extent. But to make our core argument more explicit still, we shall first look at

B. Nietzsche’s Techniques of Philosophizing as Such

Again, I name seven techniques. We must see how far we are willing—and able—to follow them up today.

1. Radically Destroying Dogmatic Truths – Toward Nihilism

Nietzsche, and similarly Wittgenstein and Heidegger in their late periods, consistently destroy what they see as the dogmatic truths of nearly all previous philosophy: except those of Heraclitus. A new departure in philosophy is hardly possible without clearing out old junk. Yet more than just a crude throwing out, one could, and following the literal sense of the Latin destruere, merely dismantle this inheritance “layer by layer”: aware that the inheritance could still guide thought. This means that all these three figures no longer approach destruction as systematically as Hegel did, but rather strike selectively where traditional doctrines seem to obscure philosophical reorientation, usually setting their sights at figures including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel. Yet it is not individuals but standards of philosophizing that have become seemingly self-evident that they attack, encompassing logic with its principle of non-contradiction, or the epistemological isolation of faculties like sensibility, understanding, feeling, and the will. All three of them accept logical paradoxes and rely actively on them. Nietzsche for instance embraces the certainty of uncertainty;²⁴ untruth as a basic condition for life;²⁵ the teaching of unteachable things (cf. the entire Zarathustra), the communicating of the incommunicable,²⁶ and the acceptance of the inacceptable (amor fati).²⁷ For his part, Wittgenstein works with paradoxes in the play with rules within rules-based language games, while Heidegger focusses on the incomprehensibility of the all-decisive Being [Sein] writing it down with a strange “y” as “Seyn” and crossing it out at the same time.^27.5 By that, they all follow Heraclitus, who clung to time, which has no permanence, Socrates, who knew that he knew nothing, and Plato, who wrote that he would never write down doctrines. Surpassing this, Nietzsche attacks morally the apparently untouchable morality insofar as it forces philosophy into telling lies: heedless of its own intrinsic deceitfulness.

Gained from what Heidegger explicitly calls a technique of destruction is an emancipatory release, from which to stretch for new footholds and horizons, paths and modes, standards and dispositions for philosophizing beyond system boundaries.²⁸ This, for Nietzsche, includes bodily functions, drives, instincts, moods, and rhythms, phenomena he sums up as the “music of life,”²⁹ an orientation toward other cultures and languages, the deceptions and self-deceptions necessary to stay alive, and a solemn seriousness of playing with everything in philosophizing. The later Wittgenstein achieves, through the destruction of the one-dimensional Augustinian image of language, the breakthrough into the manifold functions of language leeways, as I call them, of diverse forms of life, and into the techniques of reassurance they disclose. The later Heidegger envisages, regarding the clearing of the meaning of Being—now released from ontological predeterminations—the “incoming pass” of “other beginnings” into a “precipitous” and groundless “space-of-time-and-play”, into which thought must find its way.³⁰

2. Deepening Deconstruction – Toward the Immediately Plausible

Purely destructive philosophizing would render one completely unanchored; it must also lead constructively forward. Derrida happily combined destruction and construction in the term “deconstruction” while cautioning against seeing it as a generalizable method.³¹ Likewise, the technique of deconstruction, as employed by Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, also never goes to work in a purely destructive manner. The same applies to the gradual deepening of concepts in Hegel’s dialectics. It transforms previously gained concepts which proved contradictory in a way that it leads constructively to “deeper” concepts which unites the former ones. Contradictions and paradoxes thus become productive tools for the task of philosophical orientation. Using this technique of deepening, or digging deeper, concepts gain a foothold in relation to one another, without needing to or even being able to anchor themselves to something existing per se. The foothold in each case is the immediate plausibility of the “deeper” concept that transforms the previous ones. In Nietzsche’s philosophy, this is the concept of life, in which philosophizing itself moves: “[a]ll philosophizing until now didn’t deal with “truth” in the slightest, but rather with something else, say health, future, growth, power, life …”³² Wielding this concept of life, Nietzsche incorporates into philosophical orientation all that the concept of pure thought had excluded for being uncertain and unanchored: first bodily functions and sensibility, then increasingly the impenetrably interwoven contexts and complexities of all world experience. Nietzsche deepens the concept of life further into that of will to power, explicitly following the technique of ontological parsimony developed by William of Ockham (ca. 1287-1347 CE), also known as “Ockham’s Razor.”³³ Thus, “will to power” is not used metaphysically but rather technically, as a method of consistent conceptual work: while simultaneously electrifying a wide audience with its immediate plausibility.

In what has become known as the “Midnight Song,” which Nietzsche places at the end of Parts Three and Four of Thus Spoke Zarathustra like a solution to all philosophical and perhaps also everyday problems—the text engraved into a prominent rock on Chastè Peninsula on the banks of Lake Sils, spellbinds passersby to this day—he demonstrates the technique of deepening most impressively.³⁴ Here “deep” [“tief”] itself becomes a kind of banner–pronounced eight times in eleven lines—for the unity of life to rally around all its opposites of day and dream, pain and pleasure, decay and eternity. The depth of philosophizing felt here immediately requires no justification; even the concepts of life and will to power no longer appear, and the “deep, deep eternity” that concludes the song is not that of the eternal recurrence of the same but what desire/pleasure [“Lust”] wants: “But all desire wants eternity —, / — wants deep, deep eternity!” Thus, the Midnight Song creates desire for living.

In the language of the later Heidegger, the deepening of concepts, providing hold in philosophizing, consists of “joinings” [“Fügungen”], which guide it even through the abysses.^34.5 He develops his own poetic language, whose joinings  are intended to make the forgotten Being [Seyn] audible in the silence, and thus immediately plausible, rather than logically comprehensible. Wittgenstein, for whom logic initially had “a special depth—general significance” as if it lay “on the ground of all sciences,”³⁵ observes later—after becoming skeptical about anything profound in philosophy—that “the depth of the essence [“Wesens”]” alleged here corresponds merely to “the deep need of agreement.”³⁶ So-called “deep meaning” acquires something through its “surroundings,” a specific context that confers “importance on it”: no less, but also no more.³⁷ Above all, the philosophically esteemed technique of seemingly deepening the observation of people through the assumption of an inner human life, which seeks to explain observable actions through recourse to unobservable psychic or mental processes seemed to him a “con trick.”³⁸ Nietzsche would hardly have disagreed.

3. Pushing Strategic Generalizations – Toward Extremes

Deepening concepts is simultaneously a technique of generalization. By concepts one detaches from the situation in which they are used, gaining a broader overview; a progressive deepening and generalization of concepts allows us to better situate ourselves and make more of the situation we find ourselves in. Philosophy, with its most general concepts, seeks an overview of the whole of world events, in order to intervene whenever possible.

Since Aristotelian metaphysics, philosophers and other interested parties have believed that a fixed foothold existed in a pyramidal structure of increasingly general concepts; and at the top stood the ultimately utterly empty concept of sheer being. Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger break with this, exposing abstraction according to genus proximum and differentia specifica to be nothing more than an orientation technique.³⁹ From any particular standpoint, concepts can be generalized in various directions and to varying degrees, but each generalization must be responsibly handled. Daily life and philosophy cannot do without generalizations, yet those operating them do not invoke a pre-existing universal; generalizations are always strategic, serving specific needs.

Nietzsche criticized his teacher Schopenhauer’s typical “philosopher’s rage for generalization”: working with a “rough hunch” regarding intrusive and pervasive sexual drives, that teacher created the “poetic metaphor” of a blind will, asserted the absolute “primacy of the will over the intellect,” placed it “into a gap in language,” and “misused it for false reification”; “all fashionable philosophers” then went on to expand and disseminate this “mystical nonsense.”⁴⁰ Nietzsche, by contrast, characterized his own philosophizing as “dizzyingly broad survey of what is experienced, guessed, inferred” and simultaneously as “{the will to consequence}, a fearlessness when facing harshness and dangerous consequence.”⁴¹ Leaving metaphysics and a pyramidal building of concepts for dust, he pushes to extremes the technique of generalization.

He addresses this explicitly in his Lenzer-Heide Note, written in Graubünden, Switzerland, after completing Beyond Good and Evil and the fifth book of The Joyful Science, sketching an overview of the ideas guiding his own philosophizing.⁴² He observes how the extreme of believing in a single omniscient, omnipotent, and just God, which had provided humans with an absolutely certain hold for orientation, now turns into the extreme of believing that being is characterized by a complete absence of order, meaning, and worth, which, among the masses who are now confused and disoriented, must now become a will to destroy all order and to self-destruction. His thoughts of eternal recurrence and will to power are to serve as a strategic means to escalate this process of making things extreme. They are targeted, on the one hand, to destructively intensify discouragement and paralysis and, on the other hand, constructively, to provoke a new “rank order of forces.” They are consistently aimed at effect and no longer at truth.  

The “extreme’s magic”⁴³ lies in its ability to fascinate without reasons, even when there are a lot of counter-arguments. This is exemplified in the Lenzer-Heide Note’s claim that the “God” we’ve had until now was “a far too extreme hypothesis.”⁴⁴ Yet all universal statements are extreme, including this statement itself; philosophizing as such turns out to be something extreme. Like the concept of a god, who rules the entire word, concepts like “pure reason” and “transcendental subject”, which are used to turn away from the whole rest of the world, and also “‘will to power’—and nothing else” are extreme generalizations.⁴⁵ Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s figure of the philosophical teacher, is created to be an extreme of mental and physical superiority.⁴⁶  

Yet “extremization,” as we might call it, is no sufficient basis for philosophizing in itself, because one extreme can always flip into another. It must also be handled skillfully. Nietzsche famously concludes the Lenzer-Heide Note by observing that it is those “most moderate individuals” who “need no extreme beliefs” that turn out to be “the strongest.”⁴⁷ The strongest philosophical technique, therefore, would be to think extremes without succumbing to them, only using them to orient oneself. Not committing to extremes allows experimentation and thought experiments. In The Joyful Science (aph. 109), Nietzsche attempts to conceive of a complete chaos where no law yet applies and in which there is not the slightest order, i.e. an extreme nihilistic state. He wants to see what is possible under these circumstances. At last, he considers, as a counter-extreme, the “great ambition” to “master the chaos {that one is}; to force {one’s} chaos to become form; [to become] necessity in form: logical, {simple, unambiguous Mathematics} […] law.”⁴⁸ Extremes in philosophizing are meant to open up the maximal, unrestrained leeway for it. Nietzsche programmatically connects the greatest and farthest topics with the smallest and nearest ones, tying the general to the concrete. This technique carries the added bonus of granting everyday plausibility to his far-reaching philosophizing.  

Large leeways also entail uncertainty and instability of orientation, in both everyday life and philosophy. For the later Wittgenstein, “in every more serious philosophical problem […] uncertainty reaches to the very roots. / One must always be prepared to learn something completely new.”⁴⁹ He turns this necessity into a virtue, and questions the need people have for certainty in their philosophical orientation: “Only when we think in a much crazier fashion still than the philosophers can we solve their problems”⁵⁰. Heidegger, too, after departing from metaphysics, explicitly does not seek certainty. As he writes in his Black Notebooks: “Renunciation of all safety valves and of uncertainty—which stem only from a welling up of self-interest of the human being,” i.e., in Heidegger’s metaphysical interpretation, from the will to power.⁵¹

4. A Personalized Perspectivizing – Toward Compromising Oneself

With their grand thought experiments, productive philosophers most are alone—the larger the experiments, the fewer others dare to participate. Even summit meetings among contemporaries are rare and rarely fruitful: after Lou Salomé and Paul Rée, Nietzsche found no one left with whom he could philosophize on an equal footing; Heidegger and Jaspers became estranged rather too quickly; Heidegger and Wittgenstein ignored one another entirely. All lamented the plight of not being understood—at least in their own lifetimes.

Thus, under nihilism as the normal condition, one ultimately depends on one’s own orientation. Nietzsche boldly put his own person into play from the very beginning, especially strikingly in Unfashionable Observations;^51.5 later, in the new prefaces and in Ecce homo, he places his person entirely in the foreground. When he lays out his “practice of war,” he explicitly counts among its strategies or techniques that of “compromising” himself.⁵² All those who philosophize inevitably reveal a particular standpoint. Even if one attempts to hide behind the apparent consensus of a “one” or a “we,” one finds oneself—also among “‘good friends’” who Nietzsche invokes here–, his scare quotes leading us to doubt how “good” they are—in a “leeway and playground of misunderstanding.”⁵³ Positively speaking, a good part of Nietzsche’s impact may consist precisely in his open and honest avowal of the personal character of his philosophizing, including his account of how he arrives at his thoughts—not seated at a desk, but during long walks—how thoughts emerge unexpectedly and only gradually take shape, how they learn to fly, but can also get stuck on tracks from which they are hard to dislodge. For someone with a “will to system” this would indeed be compromising; in a philosopher like Nietzsche, it generates trust in his sincerity.

Philosophically, Nietzsche famously proceeds from the “phenomenalism and perspectivism” of all orientation.⁵⁴ He turns the desperation of nihilism, understood as the loss of all general certainties, into a virtue: the technique of “disengaging and re-engaging” perspectives, thereby creating “precisely the diversity of perspectives and affect-interpretations from which cognition can reap the harvest.” All this takes place beyond “the dangerous old conceptual fables” that assumed “a ‘pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of cognition’,” a “pure reason,” an “absolute spirituality [Geistigkeit],” a cognition “in itself.”⁵⁵ Philosophical problems thus present themselves differently to each individual. What matters, according to Nietzsche, is again “whether a thinker stands by his problems personally, so that he has in them his destiny, his plight, and also his best happiness—or handles them ‘impersonally.’”⁵⁶ Under conditions of nihilism, one can persuade people only by standing by one’s standpoints, horizons, and perspectives even in philosophizing.

Heidegger and Wittgenstein did not go this far. In line with the “scientification” of philosophy that had already become dominant in their own day, they keep their respective persons largely out of their writings, or confine personal remarks to prefaces. The later Heidegger seeks to let Seyn speak itself; the later Wittgenstein, in his much-admired short dialogues, regularly leaves readers in the dark about which side he’s actually gunning for.

5. An Elastic Linguistic Formation – Expressed Extremely Precisely

Through his literary and linguistic art, Nietzsche is able to render what he writes immediately plausible, mostly without further justification. He consciously exploits the mobility of concepts along metaphors—a possibility he had already clarified in On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense and later condensed in On the Genealogy of Morality into the terse clause: “The form is fluid, but the ‘meaning’ is even more so …”.⁵⁷ Concepts convince people, precisely when they are not terminologically fixed, by becoming alive themselves—by undergoing “processes of overpowering that delve more or less deep, that are more or less independent of one another”(ibid.). In short, concepts are convincing by moving with the times in which orientation itself is changing, whereas rigid definitions quickly prove inadequate and inhibiting. Nietzsche thus forms what Wittgenstein would later call elastic concepts.⁵⁸ In order to engage different thematic complexes in different ways, Nietzsche employs a huge variety of writing forms: the treatise, the essay, the book of aphorisms, the dialogues, the didactic poem, the pamphlet, and the song,⁵⁹ shaping them all through a technique of musical composition, because music itself is convincing.⁶⁰ This includes the technique of linguistic abbreviation, of concision; Nietzsche boasts—perhaps rightly—that he may be the greatest master of achieving, with a “minimum regarding extent and number of signs […] a maximum in terms of the signs’ energy.”⁶¹ Added to this is his technique of making things “credible” through images and parables, by which one “convinces” without wanting to “prove,” precisely where—unlike in the sciences—there is nothing really to prove.⁶²

Wittgenstein was, I guess, Nietzsche’s equal in linguistic precision and concision. Just as Nietzsche philosophized in aphoristic books, which make it possible to effortlessly switch between themes and contexts and allow to immediately let flash up new insights (“I tackle deep problems as I would a cold bath—quickly in, quickly out”),⁶³ Wittgenstein, in his later period, philosophized only in scattered “remarks,” which he assembled like “landscape sketches” into “albums,”⁶⁴ in which each reader is left to their own devices as to how they might orient themselves. The guiding concepts of his late career—“language game,” “life form,” and “family resemblance”—are kept deliberately close to everyday language, and deployed within flexible leeways, and never strictly defined. Since we can assume that everyday language, over time, settles into the most suitable possibilities available for mutual orientation, Wittgenstein remains as close to it as possible in his philosophizing. He even surpasses Nietzsche’s Heracliteanism by extending, in his last remarks On Certainty, the image of the river that cannot remain the same when stepped into twice by evoking the riverbed, which itself changes irrecoverably with the river’s flow: not only human orientation, but also that which conditions it, are in constant flux.⁶⁵ And Wittgenstein, too, understood himself above all as an inventor of new similes.⁶⁶

The later Heidegger elevated the technique of avoiding mechanized terminologies, and of letting everyday language speak philosophically instead, almost to the level of a mania in order to allow the ineffable and unmasterable Seyn to speak. He did this by returning to the roots of current words, lending them deeper and more allusive meanings, which he then recombined in surprising ways.⁶⁷

6. Fittings of Mere Footholds – in the Greatest Possible Density

The Platonic Socrates distinguished himself from the Sophists by differentiating rhetorical persuasion from convincing argumentation that works with defined concepts and mutually acknowledged reasons, thereby founding philosophy as an independent discipline.⁶⁸ From this, Aristotle elaborated in Topics and Analytics the standards of logic on which he concurrently built his metaphysics.^68.5 For Nietzsche as much as for Heidegger and Wittgenstein, the standards of logic restrict philosophizing from the outset, precisely because concepts—even in philosophical usage—are always in flux, as today’s Historical Dictionary of Philosophy sufficiently demonstrates.⁶⁹ Moreover, the terminological fixation of concepts through definitions ultimately leads back to undefined concepts, and arguments, as Plato already shows in dialogues such as the Protagoras or the Gorgias, never convince everyone—thus never in general. They are “good” when they “fit” in particular situations, that is, when they convince the respective interlocutors with their respective standpoints, horizons, and perspectives. Fitting is the deeper unity of the opposition between “persuading” and “convincing.”

Criteria for what fits or is fitting vary widely. Aphorisms in volumes of the same must fit together without following from one another. In Nietzsche’s “joyful science”, they fit together according to artistic criteria. “One is an artist at the cost,” he concludes ultimately, “of experiencing what all non-artists call form as content, as the matter or cause [die Sache] itself.” He adds: “one thus certainly belongs to a topsy-turvy world.”⁷⁰ This, however, is neither as new or as topsy-turvy as it may seem. For Aristotle already, it’s form that carries the greater weight, correlating form and content as the decisive path of European philosophy. According to him, form shapes contents, giving them recognizable configuration. This configuration, which in living beings shows itself in their constant appearance (eîdos), and is preserved through the continuous reproduction of the individuals of a species, is a real and distinct foothold for the formation of enduring concepts, thus also grounding systematic philosophies in today’s sense. Aristotle merely hypostatizes forms metaphysically into eternal beings (ousíai), a move no longer tenable today.

Post-metaphysically, we are dealing with established and stabilized fittings in observing footholds such as: individual and general appearance; words and states of affairs; words, images, and concepts in sentences; sentences in texts; arguments in procedures of proof; forms and colors; landscapes and moods; feelings and facial expressions, and so on, all the way to the fitting together of individual human beings into groups and societies. Fittings continually develop further and can always assume new forms. According to Nietzsche, one arranges one’s world so that it fits one’s needs and expectations; in the sense of his concept of the will to power, these are fittings at almost any price:

The Epicurean selects the situation, the persons, and even the events that fit or suit his extremely sensitive intellectual constitution, and renounces the rest—almost everything, that is—because it would be too strong and heavy fare for him. The Stoic, by contrast, trains himself to gulp down stones and worms, shards of glass and scorpions, without feeling disgust; his stomach ought thus to become indifferent to everything that the chance of existence pours into it.⁷¹

As Nietzsche had noted earlier, “ethical needs must fit as if they were tailored to our bodies!”⁷²

When orientating ourselves, we only have footholds or points of reference to which we hold fast provisionally, because infinitely many matters may hide behind them; we trust them all the more the better they fit with others in a particular situation under a particular perspective. If they fit sufficiently well together, they become plausible; one can “do something with them,” as Wittgenstein and Heidegger, no less than Nietzsche, like to say. This holds in philosophy just as much as in everyday life. If methods are introduced here, they too must fit the respective matter in order to convince. It is therefore a common—though mostly unnoticed—technique of philosophizing to find what fits and, if it cannot be found, to invent it. Ultimately, as Wittgenstein—who works very strongly with the concept of fitting—writes at a central point of his Philosophical Investigations, what is at stake is “surveyable presentation” (no. 122).⁷³ Heidegger formulated this more poetically and pathetically with his wordplay using semantic variants of “Fügung” (whose meaning ranges from “acquiescence” to “providence”) and “Fugen”: literally: “joints,” but also used in everyday German and by Heidegger figuratively, e.g., when the latter questions whether “world history” is actually “out of joint?”^73.5 Such interplay between meanings culminates in the aphorism: “Alles Fügen des Gefüges wird nur aus der Fügsamkeit zum Fug“ – this may mean: “All joining of the structure into justice [Fug] arises only from compliance.”⁷⁴ Fitting [Passung] is for Heidegger the technique—though he would not call it that—with which to provide the clearing of [Lichtung] and for Seyn: and clearing should also be understood in the strongly metaphorical sense that a sunlit woodland clearing can convey. No one has found such rich, and above all such every day and immediately plausible, footholds for his philosophizing, which fit together so convincingly—without being reconstructible as a system—as Nietzsche. The density of his fittings persuades in its own right.

7. Generating Pathos – by Appealing to the God Dionysus

Philosophizing ultimately requires pathos, and no one understood the technique of pathos quite like Nietzsche. The very generality of the concepts employed in philosophy creates a sublime mood. This sublimity is enhanced when one ascends to the divine. Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein still do this, and perhaps they do it because of the current nihilism, albeit in utterly different ways. Wittgenstein professes belief in God, but only personally, and mainly in his Secret Diaries [Geheime Tagebüchern] and in letters—in the Christian God who monitors and punishes human sinfulness, yet also provides unshakable support. From his actual philosophizing, Wittgenstein consistently keeps God out. This makes him skeptical of any pathos in philosophy:

“Language (or thought) is something unique”—this proves itself to be a superstition (not an error!), that is even produced by grammatical deceptions. And it is to these deceptions, to these problems, that pathos now falls back.⁷⁵

Heidegger, by contrast, who decisively rejected Christianity, waits in his late philosophizing—guided by Hölderlin, the “only” poet for him— for a wholly different god than the Christian one: the “last God” of a new and “different beginning” for philosophizing.⁷⁶ The “decision about the flight and arrival of the gods” is “the opening of a wholly different time-space for a—yes, the first grounded truth of Being (des Seyns)—the event (das Ereignis).” This ought to be a god who passes by silently, remaining alien and unpredictable, offering only “hints” for a new orientation from the ground up. According to Heidegger, this god should embody “purest concealment and highest transfiguration, sweetest enchantment and most terrible exaltation” and yet still, himself, require Being, which must clear itself on its own. But this clearing must be “pre-liminarily” (vor-läufig) prepared by “great and hidden individuals” through their philosophizing.⁷⁷

Such pathos can cause shivers and seize one, whether it has substantive justification or not. Nietzsche, in contrast, cheerfully proclaimed Dionysus the god of his philosophizing.⁷⁹ Dionysus is his idea of a god who continuously destroys and reshapes everything and, as we might now say, aligns things in an unfathomable way, sovereignly orienting himself even within nihilism. Nietzsche makes of the pathos and paradox of metaphysics—the appeal to a god through whom one can understand everything without grasping him—an explicit technique of his philosophizing. In aphorism 56 of Beyond Good and Evil, he portrays the initially unnamed god as “the ideal of the most overconfident, most alive, and most world-affirming man, who has not only come to terms with what was and is but has learned to endure it,” who justifies it and “wants it again just as it was and is, for all eternity.” Only from a divine standpoint can the idea of the eternal recurrence of the same be comprehended. From this standpoint, the entirety of worldly events, which so fascinate and irritate humans, may repeatedly occur and ultimately lack meaning, yet appear as a spectacle like in a Greek amphitheater, from which one looks down from elevated seats onto the orchestra, participates in it, listens to it, and simultaneously maintains distance. Dionysus was the god of theater; the Athenians had built it in his honor, him who “precisely needs—and makes necessary— this spectacle – –” (ibid.). Philosophy remains committed to him: when one philosophically tries to survey the world, one inevitably adopts a divine standpoint. Dionysus, as Nietzsche then models him in aphorism 295 of Beyond Good and Evil, in which he declares him the god of his philosophizing, simultaneously “descends to the underworld of every soul,” understands every mask and semblance as a theater god, and, by letting them perform, engages with all of this in a “daring honesty, truthfulness, and love of wisdom.” He loves humanity, Nietzsche has him say in a staged dialogue, because he “still finds his way through all labyrinths.” But this is simply another term for orientation—here, for philosophical orientation. Dionysian philosophical orientation keeps everything open, dares new beginnings, and approaches the observation of world events using a variety of techniques. Nietzsche sees the god’s role as going “always many steps ahead” of humanity, so as not to let them become stuck in any determinations, convictions, or dogmas upon which they need desperately to rely, but which hinder their further orientation.

Finally, however, Nietzsche also exposes his appeal to a god—this enticing and sly god Dionysus—as merely a technique of his philosophizing. For the gods in their sublimity never had to learn to orient themselves and therefore never had to philosophize.⁷⁹ Thus, Nietzsche concludes the aphorism: “in some ways the gods may altogether go to school with us humans.” The gods, to whom humans so pathetically cling in philosophizing, must themselves adhere to humans—circulus vitiosus deus.⁸⁰

As a mode of orienting itself, every philosophizing knows that it is tied to an earthly standpoint. Today it can remain sober and without pathos keep its feet on the ground.

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Werner Stegmaier, born on July 19, 1946, in Ludwigsburg, was Professor of Philosophy with a focus on Practical Philosophy at the University of Greifswald from 1994 to 2011. From 1999 to 2017, he served as chief co-editor of Nietzsche-Studien. International Yearbook for Nietzsche Research, the leading journal in international Nietzsche studies, as well as the important publication series Monographs and Texts on Nietzsche Research. He has published numerous monographs and edited volumes on Nietzsche’s philosophy and on philosophy more broadly. These include the Philosophie der Orientierung [2008], translated in an abridged and renewed version under the title What is Orientation? [2019], and the books, which have not yet been translated into English, especially: Orientierung im Nihilismus: Luhmann meets Nietzsche [Orientation in Nihilism], 2016, Nietzsche an der Arbeit. Das Gewicht seiner nachgelassenen Aufzeichnungen für sein Philosophieren [Nietzsche at Work: The Significance of His Posthumous Writings for His Philosophizing, 2022, and most recently Wittgensteins Orientierung: Techniken der Vergewisserung [Wittgenstein’s Orientation: Reassurance Techniques], 2025. Further developing the “Philosophy of Orientation” that he founded, he gave a survey on the most interesting innovations in the history of philosophy in his Orientation in Philosophy: Courageous Beginnings, 2024. Additional information about him and his work is available on his personal website and on the website of the Foundation for Philosophical Orientation.

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Footnotes

1: Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “The Problem of Socrates,” 7 (emphasis in the original; translation amended).

1.5: Translator’s footnote: Technik in German conflates the two English terms technique and technology, suggesting, at least on a semantic-philosophical level, that we cannot strictly divide these concepts. While Technologie is also an option in contemporary German, and is directly translatable using “technology,” Stegmaier doesn’t use the term at all in this article, and nor does Nietzsche use it at all in his Complete Works. I tackle this translation challenge pragmatically, switching between using “technique” and “technology” to translate the author’s Technik, depending on the respective point being made.  

2: Nietzsche, Nachlass 1880, 3[19], H. Holland’s translation.

3: Nietzsche, Nachlass 1887, 9[35] / KGW IX 6, W II 1, 115, H. Holland’s translation. Quotations from Nietzsche’s Nachlass [literary estate, but used in this translation to particularly mean those notes and papers published posthumously] follow the IX. Section of the Kritische Gesamtausgabe [Critical Complete Works], initiated by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, and continued by Marie-Luise Haase, Michael Kohlenbach and others. This reconstructs the manuscripts of 1885–1889 with maximal fidelity and minimal editorial intervention; what is provisionally the final volume of this division appeared in 2023. The curly brackets {} indicate additions that Nietzsche made to his manuscripts at a later date.

4: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, III, 24 (translation amended).

5: Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Maxims and Arrows,” 26 (Henry Holland’s translation).

5.5: Translator’s footnote: This is the option preferred by Graham Parkes in his OUP translation of Zarathustra. If it sounds clunky at first, it is more faithful to the breadth of the concept of the Übermensch than other translations, e.g., “overman,” “superman” are. Mensch is certainly a human being in German, not a male, and the translation needs to reflect this.  

6: Cf. Werner Stegmaier, Nietzsche an der Arbeit, 223–234.

7: Cf. Werner Stegmaier, “Aspekte der Rezeption und Wirkung [Nietzsches]: Philosophie.”

8: Cf. Werner Stegmaier, “Sein zum Tode – Leben mit dem Tod” and “Nihilismus und andere Anfänge.”  

9: On Heidegger, I draw primarily on the Black Notebooks, which—much like Nietzsche’s Nachlass—make visible how his philosophizing advances step by step. Put differently, it drives itself forward. Wittgenstein’s later work consists largely of individual “remarks” [“Bemerkungen,” also in the titles of the posthumously published volumes in the German-language Wittgenstein edition, the Werkausgabe]” that he repeatedly revised, rearranged, and expanded: and chose not to publish in his lifetime. Only gradually does this process make clear to Wittgenstein what his philosophizing is aiming at and which techniques come into play in securing it. Cf. Werner Stegmaier, Wittgensteins Orientierung. Techniken der Vergewisserung [Wittgenstein’s Orientation. Techniques of Reassurance]. – (Editorial note: The Black Notebooks, Heidegger’s philosophical diaries from 1931 to 1975, which have been published in stages since 2014, drew broad public attention primarily for political statements embedded in them, including antisemitic passages. However, these constitute but a small fraction of all the notebook entries.)

10: Cf. Nietzsche, Socrates and Tragedy, 1st lecture (translation amended).

11: Cf. Nietzsche, On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, 2nd lecture (translation amended).

12: Nietzsche, Nachlass 1873, 19[274], H. Holland’s translation.

13: Cf. Nietzsche, The Joyful Science, aphorism 31 (translation amended).

14: Cf. Nietzsche, The Joyful Science, aphorism 101 (translation amended).

15: Nietzsche, Nachlass 1887, 10[2] / KGW IX 6, W II 2, 141, H. Holland’s translation.

15.5: Nietzsche, The Antichrist, chapter 44, H. Holland’s translation.

16: Cf. Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, Vol. 1, aphorism 196 (translation amended).

17: Wittgenstein, Vermischte Bemerkungen, 541 (H. Holland’s translation).

18: Heidegger, Anmerkungen I–IV [Schwarze Hefte 1942–1948], 71, 76–81, 118 & elsewhere (H. Holland’s translation).  

19: Cf. Stegmaier, Die „Magie des Extrems“ in philosophischen Neuorientierungen.

19.5a: Translator’s footnote: Although generally rendered as The Gay Science in translation history, this translation is outdated for several reasons: almost no one in contemporary English uses “gay” to express “fröhlich.” Doing so would be to choose antiquated, pretentious sounding diction. Adrian del Caro is but one of several translators no opting for: The Joyful Science.  

19.5b: Cf. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 6, H. Holland’s translation.

20: Cf. The Joyful Science, aphorism 373: “It follows from the laws of rank order that scholars, as far as they are part of the intellectual middle estate [or class: Mittelstande], must not even be allowed to catch sight of the truly great problems and question marks; in any case, neither their courage nor their gaze can stretch that far.” (Emphasis in the original, translation H. Holland)

21: Cf. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, “Why I Am So Wise,” chapter 6, translation amended.

22: Cf. Stegmaier, Philosophie der Orientierung. Editor’s note: readers wishing to learn more about Stegmaier’s own philosophy of orientation, which he applies here in exemplary fashion, should read our interview from October 2025 directly with the University of Greifswald’s professor emeritus (link).

23: Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 1, H. Holland’s translation.

24: Cf. ibid, H. Holland’s translation.

25: Cf. Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 4, H. Holland’s translation

26: Cf. Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 27, translation amended.

27: Cf. The Joyful Science, aphorism 276, translation amended.

27.5: For more on late Heidegger’s particular use of crossings see Stegmaier, Das Zeichen X in der Philosophie der Moderne.

28: Cf. Heidegger, Being and Time, § 6, translation amended.

29: The Joyful Science, aphorism 372, translation amended.

30: Heidegger, Beiträge (Vom Ereignis), pp. 69, 169, 379 & 408, H. Holland’s translation.

31: Cf. Jacques Derrida, Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority”.

32: The Joyful Science, Preface, Section 2, H. Holland’s translation

33: For Nietzsche’s reference to the same, see Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 36.

34: Cf. Stegmaier, Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?

34.5: Cf. Emad & Maly (as Heidegger’s translators), 1999: pp. xiv-xv.

35: Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, no. 89, translation amended.

36: Wittgenstein, Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik, I 74, p. 65. Emphases in original, H. Holland’s translation.  

37: Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, nos. 583; cf. also no. 594.

38: Ibid., no. 308; cf. Stegmaier, Wittgenstein’s Orientation, pp. 45–68.

39: Editor’s note: The Latin formula “genus proximum et differentia specifica” in medieval scholasticism designated the rule for defining any concept: always by referencing the “next higher general kind” and a “specific difference.” One could, for example, define Nietzsche as “the philosopher (genus) who wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra (differentia)” or winter as “the season (genus) in which it is coldest in the Northern Hemisphere (differentia).”

40: Human, All Too Human, Vol. 2, Mixed Opinions and Maxims, aphorism 5, translation amended.

41: Nachlass 1888, 14[25] / KGW IX 8, W II 5, 178, H. Holland’s translation.

42: Nachlass 1886, 5[71] (dated “Lenzer Heide [Heath], 10 June, 1887”) / KGW IX 3, N VII 3, 13–24; cf. Stegmaier, Nietzsche, pp. 319–358, H. Holland’s translation.

43: Nachlass 1887, 10[94] / KGW IX 6, W II 2, 72, H. Holland’s translation.

44: Nachlass 1886, 5[71], 3 / KGW IX 3, N VII 3, 15, H. Holland’s translation.

45: Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 36, translation amended.

46: Cf. Enrico Müller, Das Pathos Zarathustras.  

47: Nachlass 1886, 5[71], 15 / KGW IX 3, N VII 3, 24, H. Holland’s translation.

48: Nachlass 1888, 14[61] / KGW IX 8, W II 5, 152, H. Holland’s translation.

49: Wittgenstein, Bemerkungen über die Farben, I 15, p. 16, emphasis in the original, H. Holland’s translation.

50: Wittgenstein, Vermischte Bemerkungen, p. 557 (1948), H. Holland’s translation.

51: Heidegger, Anmerkungen I–IV, p. 64, H. Holland’s translation.

51.5: Translator’s footnote: Previously translated almost uniformly as Untimely Meditations, R.T. Gray broke rank by publishing his 1998 translation of Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen under the title of Unfashionable Observations. This new title is superior for several reasons, as Gray explains in an afterword to the publication.  

52: Nietzsche, Ecce homo, “Why I Am So Wise,” 7 (translation amended).

53: Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 27, translation amended; cf. Stegmaier, Nietzsche an der Arbeit, pp. 67–83, H. Holland’s translation.

54: Nietzsche, The Joyful Science, aphorism 354 (translation amended).

55: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, III, 12 (translation amended).

56: Nietzsche, The Joyful Science, aphorism 345 (translation amended).

57: Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, II, 12 (translation amended).

58: Cf. Wittgenstein, Bemerkungen über die Philosophie der Psychologie, I 243–246, p. 385.

59: Cf. Stegmaier, Friedrich Nietzsche zur Einführung, pp. 98–113; Claus Zittel, Der Dialog als philosophische Form bei Nietzsche.

60: On the concrete refinements of this technique, research remains insufficient; even Uwe Rauschelbach’s learned study Die singende Seele largely confines itself to theoretical considerations.

61: Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “What I Owe to the Ancients,” 1 (translation amended).

62: Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, Vol. 2, The Wanderer and His Shadow, aphorism 145 (translation amended).

63: Nietzsche, The Joyful Science, aphorism 381 (translation amended).

64: Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Preface, translation amended.

65: Wittgenstein, Über Gewißheit, 96–99 (1949–1951), p. 140; cf. Stegmaier, Wittgenstein’s Orientation, pp. 199–205.

66: Wittgenstein, Vermischte Bemerkungen, p. 476 (1931), H. Holland’s translation.

67: On Heidegger’s choice of form for his second major work, the posthumously published Beiträge, cf. Stegmaier, Formen philosophischer Schriften zur Einführung, pp. 225–234.

68: Editor’s note: Our knowledge of Socrates’ thought comes almost exclusively from its presentation in the dialogues of his student Plato, who does not necessarily present the “Socratic Socrates,” but rather his own interpretation of Socratic teaching.

68.5: Translator’s footnote: Ross’s 1928 edition of these two works lists the second title as “Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics.”  

69: Editor’s note: The Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie (Historical Dictionary of Philosophy) was edited from 1971 to 2007 by Joachim Ritter, Karlfried Gründer, and Gottfried Gabriel, and published by Schwabe (Basel). The thirteen volumes are regarded as a standard reference work and trace the historical development of 3,670 central concepts of Western philosophy.

70: Nietzsche, Nachlass 1888, 18[6] / KGW IX 12, Mp XVI, 56v, H. Holland’s translation.

71: Nietzsche, The Joyful Science, aphorism 306 (translation amended).

72: Nietzsche, Nachlass 1880, 7[155], H. Holland’s translation.

73: Cf. Stegmaier, Wittgenstein’s Orientation, pp. 170–179.

73.5: Cf. Heidegger, Anmerkungen I–IV, p. 146, H. Holland’s translation.

74: Heidegger, Anmerkungen I–IV, p. 32, H. Holland’s translation. Translator’s notice: It must be said that Heidegger’s original German is a good deal more obscurantist than this translation, and sounds like a tautological and cryptic tongue-twister: “Alles Fügen des Gefüges wird nur aus der Fügsamkeit zum Fug.” By the time Heidegger wrote this in the 1942-1948 period, the Fug with which the aphorism concludes was thoroughly antiquated, though as the Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch [German Legal Dictionary] and other sources demonstrate, it had been used, in legal and other written contexts, up to ca. 1835.

75: Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §110.

76: Heidegger, Beiträge (Vom Ereignis), pp. 403, 405 & 411. On the significance of Hölderlin for Heidegger’s thought, see Kaiser, Gespräch mit Hölderlin I, pp. 184–188; Marafioti, Heideggers „Schwarze Hefte“, pp. 150–151 and following pages (translation amended).

77: Heidegger, Beiträge (Vom Ereignis), pp. 405–415.

78: Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 295, translation amended. Cf. Stegmaier, Wie ein Gott philosophieren? – Using Dionysos as a provocative pseudonym, Nietzsche intended to dedicate a separate text to his “attempt to philosophize divinely”: Nachlass 1885, 34[182] / KSA IX 1, N VII 1, 68 (translation: Henry Holland).

79: Andreas Urs Sommer, Kommentar zu Jenseits von Gut und Böse, pp. 804–807, cites the passage from Plato’s Symposium (203e–204a) in the translation used by Nietzsche: “None of the gods philosophizes or desires to become wise, for they already are; nor, if anyone else is wise, does this person philosophize.”

80: Jenseits von Gut und Böse, aphorism 56. Editorial note: the Latin phrase “circulus vitiosus deus” literally means “the defective circle God” or “the vicious circle as God.” Pierre Klossowski, the French philosopher, used this formulation in the title of his main monograph on Nietzsche, Nietzsche et le Cercle Vicieux (1969; cf. also Henry Holland, “Peace with Islam?” on this blog).

Nietzsche’s Techniques of Philosophizing

With Glances Towards Wittgenstein and Heidegger

A fixed feature at the annual conference of the Nietzsche Gesellschaft [Nietzsche Society] conference is the Lectio Nietzscheana Naumburgensis: a particularly distinguished scholar delivering an extended lecture on the conference theme on the final day, thereby providing a pointed conclusion. The most recent conference in October 2025 awarded this special honor to Werner Stegmaier to recognize his long tenure as editor of the influential Nietzsche-Studien [Nietzsche Studies] and his authorship of numerous seminal monographs on Nietzsche’s philosophy. Running from October 16-19, 2025, the conference focused the theme “Nietzsche’s Technologies,” as Emma Schunack reported.

Generously granting his permission to publish his lecture in full and in this translation, Stegmaier takes on the conference theme from an unexpected perspective. Rather than examining what is commonly understood as “technologies”—machines, cyborgs, or automata—he explores instead Nietzsche’s philosophical techniques, both intellectual and rhetorical. Weighing up the original and idiosyncratic methods Nietzsche deployed while writing, Stegmaier reflects on how best to interpret and assess them. How were they able to enthuse and win over successive generations of readers? What can we learn from these today?

Comparing Nietzsche’s techniques with those of two other modern philosophical giants, Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), Stegmaier retraces all three philosophers’ break with the classical and conceptually oriented techniques of thinking inherited from antiquity, and their discoveries of radical and experimental means of developing philosophy in the age of “nihilism.” Replacing a one-dimensional, metaphysical understanding of rationality, these means cultivate a plural, perspectival mode of thought that necessarily relies on entirely different techniques. Situating Nietzsche’s methods within these broader developments in intellectual history, the Lectio establishes an utterly new framework for understanding his thought and its place within modern philosophy.

Translated by Henry Holland.

I. We as Fathers

Paul Stephan: How can you be a father with Nietzsche? Does studying his philosophy help you be a better father — or not? We want to discuss this topic in a completely open-ended manner below. But perhaps we should first clarify what, apart from the fact that we are Nietzsche researchers, qualifies us to talk about it in the first place. In fact, we will also start from our personal experiences, as we are both fathers too. Henry, you're the one of us who's a “more dad,” so to speak. How many children do you have and what is the personal background from which you look at this topic?

Henry Holland: I am the father of four children who are now between six and 23 years old. That means I first became a father when I was 26. All of these four children come from the same wife, my wife Rebecca, which can of course be completely different these days. There are two boys and two girls. It is also perhaps a bit unusual that we had actually already completed the life phase of having children and raising small children when Rebecca became pregnant again in 2018 and our youngest son Louis was born in 2019. The fact that Rebecca became a mother again shortly before her 42nd birthday is not so unusual these days — it was completely different in Nietzsche's time. But it was still a very nice surprise for us. — But what about you, Paul?

PS: I have to stress first that we will be recording this conversation on October 30 and will only publish it shortly before Christmas. Well, I have a son, Jonathan — he is now three but will be four on November 18th — and I am very excited right now and the topic of “fatherhood” is of great concern to me personally right now because my partner Luise is currently pregnant with our second child. It's still on the way now, but when we publish the conversation, it might be that time already.¹ What we already know is that it will be a daughter, which actually makes me very happy. I wouldn't have a problem being the father of two sons either, I would love that too, but at least I imagine it to be another experience raising a girl.

HH: Yes, I can understand that and I was very happy back then that the first child was a girl. This may sound like an essentialist point of view, but when viewed from a constructivist perspective, it means that the children grow up necessarily influenced by existing gender roles — you simply cannot deny that, even if you want it to be different. I myself have tried to provide my daughters with all the freedoms and playrooms that I would have given to a boy — but I still notice in my own milieu: The more 'difficult' children are mostly boys, those who are more likely to stand out or rebel, who do not want to adapt socially, who rebel in the classroom. Even though many of us would like to free ourselves from existing gender norms, it can be assumed that these roles have and will have a long aftermath. Nietzsche articulates this perfectly in the Happy science:

After Buddha died, people continued to show their shadow in a cave—a tremendous dreadful shadow. God is dead: but the way people are, there may be caves in which you show your shadow for thousands of years to come. — And we — we must also conquer his shadow!²

PS: I would like to build on that, even if it takes us away from our actual topic. For me, an important aspect of being a father is that, as a father, you suddenly get to know a lot of other parents who have children of the same age as your own child. And in doing so, you can really make numerous surprising observations and findings. Although, of course, what you already said applies here: We cannot speak for “the fathers themselves.” We are starting from a specific milieu to which we both belong, a middle class intellectual milieu that primarily includes cultural workers and academics. And in this milieu, there is a fairly homogenous view that great care must be taken to educate children as “gender-sensitive” as possible, i.e., whenever possible, one should not make much difference between daughters and sons. I too think this development is generally very good and have set out to do so — but it was precisely against this background that I found it very interesting to observe that even very small children of one or two years, who are therefore still very “naughty”, are uninfluenced and are also brought up by parents who are very careful not to follow any stereotypes, often behave very stereotypically. Just one example: When my son was very young, around 1½, I went to early musical education with him once a week. That was very nice. It was a group of about six, seven children, boys and girls. It was really quite obvious that it was always the boys who roamed around the room, who tried to go outside and discover the room, who were rather loud and made 'nonsense' or even disturbed from an adult's point of view, that is, wild, while the girls were almost always sitting with their parent and were more 'too quiet, 'as opposed to that, insecure and shy.

I could give many such examples now. And of course I also know little girls in my circle of acquaintances who are very 'wild. ' But my average observation is really that you can notice all these cliché differences at a remarkably early stage — even with children whose parents are very 'gender-sensitive. ' This experience has led me to the conclusion that there is perhaps a greater influence of biology, genes, than you often think and claim. Of course, this is difficult to differentiate from the role of the unconscious character you were talking about. You will never be able to clearly differentiate between them and I don't even want to start the basic discussion of 'Nature vs. Culture' here — but the experiences mentioned have given me a somewhat differentiated opinion.

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II. Nietzsche's Problematic Understanding of Man and “Woman”

HH: Perhaps this is a good reason to talk about Nietzsche and certainly the worst side of Nietzsche in terms of parenting, motherhood, fatherhood. We could perhaps work our way from his worst to his more witty and interesting statements. It must be emphasized that Nietzsche is hitting the table in some places with biological statements, for example when he writes: “Everything about woman is a puzzle, and everything about woman has a solution: it is called pregnancy.”³. This sentence is really one of Nietzsche's ten worst statements. It really seems — especially when you look at these sentences in isolation, which you shouldn't do — as though for Nietzsche, women are only there to become pregnant and serve the general good through this biological reproduction. And the women who don't do that should just shut up.⁴ Well, it's a very misogynistic statement. With regard to parenting, how do you deal with this very biological side of Nietzsche?

PS: Yes, I see this page the same way you do. It shows once again the big difference that separates us from Nietzsche. And there are countless places where he accordingly repeatedly expresses the clear view that women should be primarily responsible for raising children and having children, but men should, as is also the case in the passage you quoted from the Zarathustra means being a “warrior” and not worrying about the household and the children. In one sentence: “That is how I want man and woman: warworthy one, childbearing the other”⁵. And that may lead us to the actual main point of this conversation: Isn't it actually a contradiction to be a Nietzschean and a father in some way? Does Nietzsche even have anything to say to us fathers in the 21st century, who see us in a very different way? I think it is true for both of us and for most members of our milieu that we have a completely different understanding of fatherhood, as no one in the late nineteenth century has ever held: that you actually share the tasks of caring more or less with your mother, even when it comes to the very young children. These are things that might have been completely unthinkable even 30 or 40 years ago, which are perhaps not as widespread in other milieus even today, but which have already become very self-evident in our milieu. If Nietzsche could hear this development, he would probably, to say the least, put his hands over the head and diagnose the final “fall of the West,” the complete “feminization” and “softening.”⁶ The men, the final triumph of resentment-driven “general Ugliness Europe's”⁷. Do you feel the same way, Henry?

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III. Paternity and Authenticity

HH: It seems to me that we can do that after all, that we can be Nietzscheans and yet be progressive parents in the 21st century. In this regard, I would actually come back to the concept of authenticity again and again — it just comes up again and again. You are much more familiar with this than I am, after all, you have just written and submitted an entire doctoral thesis on this topic. Authenticity is a very central concept for Nietzsche and I believe that what children are looking for primarily in us parents, both in fathers and in mothers, is authenticity. With fathers, however, in a slightly different form, because they tend to be more absent from the relationship and because the child expects this parent to remain authentic. And that means: Not only is static, but strives for authenticity, certainly in the spirit of Nietzsche's idea of selfBecoming as a creative, inexhaustible process of self-creation.

I'll try to make this concrete based on my eldest daughter, Alma. So she clearly shares my left-wing political views with me, which definitely expects, perhaps even as a basic condition, that I do not express myself in a gender-discriminatory or otherwise discriminatory way — and I actually am not, I don't do that. But that is not their main expectation of me that, to put it somewhat flatly, I always express myself 'politically correct', but that I remain authentic in my nature, in my actions, even outside the family, and that this authenticity can be retrieved and verified in some way.

Perhaps to make it even clearer and to build a bridge with my own father, who is still alive: He grew up in the final phase of British imperialism, when there were completely different values. One of the main values was this idea of “service.” You stand, you live life in service The other person — that's what you're there for. So you're there as a family man to earn money by doing a decent job in your outer life. The “self” doesn't come into conversation that much. So there is a certain class of British men, the very last thing they would talk about would be themselves. You hardly talk about it, it's more about this service principle. As a young man and as a young father, I often asked myself: What is my father's authentic self behind this existence in the service of others? What is its authentic core? And that often left me with nothing but a question mark, which is remarkable.

PS: Yes, it's very interesting and we seem to have had a very similar experience there. We came to the point shortly after during the preliminary discussion that it has become very difficult these days to gain an authentic understanding of one's own paternity, because the existing role models, which you could use to orient and work through in your own self-design, have become very fluid. It used to be very clear: The father is the one who earns the money. For example, there is this television series Breaking Bad, where this happens several times: “A man provides,” “a man provides,” even if those he provides don't even respect or love him. He doesn't care much about the kids at all. We are trying today to develop a different understanding of a present and caring, loving father.⁸

It was now very similar to yours with my father. Perhaps that is also the reason why I am so interested in the topic of 'authenticity. ' You have to know that my father grew up in the GDR. There is this catchphrase of “homo sovieticus”, which the Soviet philosopher and dissident Alexander Zinoviev coined in the 80s to describe the extremely adapted type of person that was called for and promoted in the states of the “socialist world.” As a hyper-opportunistic implementation of Nietzsche's dystopia of the “last person,” who imagines himself at the end of the story; a person without an inner center, who doesn't even strive for authenticity, but is completely absorbed in service to the community.⁹ I believe that this concept can also be applied to the GDR. Education in the GDR was even more strongly focused on the ideal of “service” than in the West; I think this keyword is very good. You shouldn't start from yourself; there were certain social expectations and you should meet them. I have always perceived my father, who is still alive, as a very inauthentic person. He is still a mystery to me in many ways, he is a very ironic person who hardly ever talks about his feelings and what is actually bothering him. You get the impression that he just doesn't have a good relationship with himself, and I noticed that even as a child and led me, I think, to try to become another man, another father. In this respect, my father actually served as a negative example for me, even though I don't want to blame him for anything. Especially when I was a little boy, he was also a very good father and took care of a lot. But I also felt this deficit, this distance from him, very early on.

And yes, there is indeed a close connection between these topics of “authenticity” and “fatherhood.” In any case, it appears often in my doctoral thesis, more often than I would have thought possible at the beginning of my research paper. But that may lead us to a slightly different understanding of masculinity. As already indicated, there is, on the one hand, this understanding of the man as a servant who sacrifices himself for the community, as Hegel articulated, for example, but then also the understanding of man as someone who completely stubbornly only thinks of himself, who places his own self-realization above everything else. And that is precisely the idea of masculinity that you actually find in Nietzsche, and around which his entire understanding of authenticity revolves — which, in my opinion, represents a huge problem. Just look at the following passage from the genealogy:

In this way, the philosopher perhorres [rejects with disgust] the wedlock Collect what would like to persuade her — marriage as an obstacle and disaster on his way to the optimum. Which great philosopher has been married so far? Heraclitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer — it wasn't them; what's more, you can't even look at them think As if married. A married philosopher belongs into comedy, that is my sentence: and that exception is Socrates, the spiteful Socrates, it seems, married himself, specifically at just this sentence to demonstrate. Every philosopher would speak as Buddha once said when the birth of a son was reported to him: “Râhula was born to me, a shackle is forged for me” (Râhula means “a little demon” here); every “free spirit” would have to have a thoughtful hour, given that he had previously had a thoughtless one, as it once came to the same Buddha — “closely pressed, he thought to himself, is that Life in the house, a place of uncleanliness; freedom is in leaving the house”: “Since he thought so, he left the house.” In ascetic ideal, there are so many bridges to independence indicated that a philosopher cannot hear the story of all those determined people who one day said no to all lack of freedom and in some desert Giengen: Assume that they were only strong donkeys and completely the counterpart of a strong spirit. So what does the ascetic ideal mean for a philosopher? My answer is — it will have been guessed long ago: the philosopher smiles at the sight of an optimum of the conditions of the highest and boldest spirituality, — he says no not Therefore “existence”, he rather affirms it being Existence and only his existence, and perhaps to the extent that the wicked wish does not abide by him: Pereat Mundus, Fiat Philosophia, Fiat Philosophus, Fiam! ...¹⁰

The following therefore applies: Even if the world were to end, philosophy should live, the philosopher should live, I should live. I think this quote contains a great deal of Nietzsche's understanding of freedom and authenticity, which is simply not compatible with fatherhood. The son is only described here as a “little demon” — and there are many such passages from which it is clear that Nietzsche, who was also known not to be a father himself, does not want to know anything about it. He believes that being a father is completely incompatible with philosophical, but also authentic, existence.

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IV. Philosophers as Fathers — a Good Idea?

HH: Yes, that is an interesting passage. Although Nietzsche's thesis is, from an empirical point of view, contestable. Hegel had about two legitimate sons and another illegitimate son,¹¹ Marx even had seven children with his wife Jenny, three of whom reached adulthood.¹² — Although it is disputed whether Marx was also a good father.

PS: I would like to protect Nietzsche a bit there. It is remarkable that there are so many philosophers who have remained childless, lived partly as bachelors, and in some cases may have had a child.¹³ Well, you and your four children are definitely noticeable, I would say. Even more these days. But in the 18th/19th century, it was more the rule that you had five or six children, very large families — and philosophers were usually more of an exception. That this is the case has of course also to do with the image that the man should be the provider of the family and of course — as is still the case today, but it wasn't very different back then — it is often very difficult for philosophers to fulfill this duty.

HH: Although I wouldn't describe myself as a philosopher at all, but as someone who is interested in and works with philosophy! — In any case, my answer to this Nietzsche passage would be, in order to approach it a bit more economically and neutrally, that if he had lived in a middle-class household with marriage and children, he simply could not have written. His writing style, the writing process, his texts would have changed. This way of working, which was characterized by very short periods of productivity lasting nights and days, and then long phases in which Nietzsche suffered so severely from his symptoms of illness that he could put absolutely nothing on paper — it was impossible for a father to pull off this' ecology 'in a halfway' normal 'environment. The opposite is the case with the family fathers Hegel and Marx, whose main works came about much more slowly and are therefore much more saturated, have a completely different form and stringency.

Referring to Nietzsche's claim that so many great philosophers remained unmarried, I would simply like to ask the classic Marxist question: Who then did the reproductive work? So not only in terms of having children and raising children, but also: Who cooked lunch? Who cleaned? Who did the laundry? And the answer to this question, even in the case of Nietzsche, will surprise no one: 95% of them were women, mostly unnamed. I am thinking, for example, of Alwine Freytag, the long-time servant in the mother's household, who helped to care for Nietzsche in his last years — who knows her? There are always several people who did all this reproductive work in the background so that the “great philosopher” could write his works.

This may be self-evident to some, but it is often lost in the history of philosophy. And that, I think, is also the reason why we may no longer see works such as Nietzsche's. There is simply no woman or man, no one who could afford such a lifestyle anymore — I don't mean that purely economically, but from the point of view of what you feel responsible for yourself and what you don't.

PS: Yes, Nietzsche was completely dependent on the care of women for many years, as a child anyway and then again when he had mentally changed his mind. I recently attended the last annual meeting of the Nietzsche Society¹⁴ A very interesting and entertaining presentation was given by Ralf Eichberg about Nietzsche's failed plan to buy a portable oven. Based on the correspondence between his mother and him, it became very clear that, however, it was also a problem for the reindeer Nietzsche that he could not really afford servants but simply could not cook at the same time — much to his mother's concern. So his position wasn't that privileged — but in principle I agree with you, of course. It is true in general that philosophical work for centuries has largely been based on the work of women in the background, whether as servants, but also as secretaries or even unnamed co-authors.

When it comes to today's philosophy, that is of course the question: Is it progress or perhaps also a step backwards? Yes, Nietzsche's extravagant writing style has something to do with the almost stereotypical masculinity that he not only propagates in his works, but which this style also performs himself. But it is just an immature, puree masculinity. In the speech From old and young women, which, as already quoted, actually shows that women should not only have and educate children, their task is more comprehensive:

The man should be brought up for war and the woman for the warrior's recovery: everything else is foolishness.

Too sweet fruits — the warrior doesn't like them. That is why he likes the woman; bitter is even the sweetest woman.

The woman understands the children better than a man, but the man is more childlike than the woman.

There is a child hidden in ostracized man: he wants to play. Come on, women, and discover the child in the man for me!

A toy is the woman [.]

So in Nietzsche's imagination, the man remains a child all his life and should not grow up at all. And of course: This childishness, this immaturity that you retain, can, as in the case of Nietzsche and in many other cases, release great creative potential. But I do think that it is not bad for philosophy to start from a somewhat more mature and responsible attitude, as a father must automatically display and develop. I would also say the same for my own thinking, for my own philosophical, intellectual work. So becoming a father is of course a loss, not only a loss of time, quantitatively speaking, but also a loss of concentration in terms of quality. You can no longer write through for nights if you are woken up by a child every morning or have to take them to daycare. You are pushed more and more into a responsible and caring position, which, however, is not necessarily a hindrance to thinking, but rather leads to a deepening of thinking, which in particular involves thinking less strongly about yourself, but really engaging in this relationship with the other being — and I actually see this as a great asset both for myself as a person and for myself as an intellectual. It is simply not true, as Nietzsche mantraically asserts, that a “great culture” can only be created in such a way that a small caste of “masters” is unconcerned about the little things in life on the backs of millions of “slaves” and above all “slave”inside“live out — this leads to a castrated culture, this leads to exactly that decadence and alienation of life that Nietzsche so verbally warns about; and knows exactly that he himself is: A typical Decadent, the tragicomic result of a recent flourishing of a culture that was already in decline in its time and was based on exploitation and separation. The way out of cultural decadence can only lie in a non-decadent lifestyle — into production and even reproduction; overcoming the separation of head and manual work — but Nietzsche was only able to glimpse such an option when he jealously looks at the “birthing” ability of women and elevates it to a metaphor of authentic creative creation. As a caring father, he would also have been able to participate in this on a completely non-metaphorical level. — Although I don't want this to be understood as moral criticism, after all, it would hardly have been possible for Nietzsche to live another life in view of his illness.

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V. Nietzsche's Personal Experiences

HH: Yes, I would like to take up this keyword of 'thinking about relationships with other people. ' Although I find it difficult to describe Nietzsche's style and attitude as 'immature. ' This is indeed a challenge, because if you didn't have this' halfway 'and' immaturity ', it wouldn't be Nietzsche again, his work would not have the authenticity that makes it so unique. It really is Nietzsches work.

But back to thinking in and about relationships. This deeper thinking in and about relationships with other people or about society, about political forms — I would say, for example, that Hegel has more to say than Nietzsche when it comes to the relationship between the individual and the state, which, I believe, remains an important philosophical issue. Nietzsche is on a genuine Societal thinking Not interested at all, that is not his topic.

As you have already indicated: Nietzsche has just, in line with his teaching of Amor Fati, made a virtue out of necessity. Nietzsche had a very difficult time in human relationships. He hardly cultivated those that could be described as “normal” in any sense, especially if they had any sexual component. This is perhaps most clearly shown by his brief friendship with Lou Salomé. He may simply have lost the ability to have long-lasting relationships, especially romantic and especially erotic ones — and he succeeds in creating an entire philosophy out of this coincidence. This conversion of philosophical coincidences into philosophers seems to me to be a general characteristic of Nietzsche's work. Why not? But that naturally raises the question of what other people can make of it.

Against this background, perhaps we should also talk about Nietzsche's own relationship with his father. That seems to me to be very central to our topic. He died when Nietzsche was five years old, so really early. However, this relationship was quite intense. Little Nietzsche was the only one who was allowed to stay in his father's study while he, a Protestant pastor, wrote his sermons and took care of the written community work. Perhaps because, unlike many other small children, he was very quiet and did not disturb so much. Although that is also noticeable. There are few signs that little Nietzsche played a lot with other toddlers and let off steam. Nowadays, his father might have taken him to the therapist earlier — and the early death of his beloved father has certainly reinforced this unusual tendency in little “Friedrich.”

There is a quote that is very relevant to our topic, about abandonment by one's own father, about his absence and about how much this experience shaped early Nietzsche. It is a childhood memory of Nietzsche, which he wrote down shortly before his 14th birthday, in one of the remarkably numerous autobiographical writings from his youth. It is about the time after the death of his father and the death of his little brother Ludwig Joseph shortly after:

At that time, I once dreamt that I heard organ sound in church just like at a funeral. Since I saw what the cause was, a grave suddenly rose and my father in death-dress emerges from it. He hurries to church and returns shortly with a small child in his arms. The burial mound opens, it climbs in and the ceiling sinks back onto the opening. The rushing organ sound is immediately silent and I wake up. — The day after that night Josephchen suddenly becomes unwell, gets the cramps and dies within a few hours. Our pain was tremendous. My dream was completely fulfilled. The small corpse was also placed in the father's arms.¹⁵

Of course, you can't know whether this is a real memory and how much Nietzsche poetically added to it as a teenager in view of his lyrical tendency. But there is still a memory that is about being abandoned and farewell — and it raises the question for me how much Nietzsche has brought to a philosophy that revolves very much around the “strong individual,” in which it is made a virtue that you isolate yourself, that you should not rely on the other person, that as a man you should not marry and not have children. And this seems to me to be diametrically opposed to our understanding of fatherhood, which is primarily about being there for the child, being there for conversations, playing actively with the child, i.e. creating an active relationship with the child.

PS: Yes, the absence of his father is mentioned in almost all biographical texts on Nietzsche as an essential factor in his personal development and I completely agree with that. Perhaps there is in fact also, unconsciously, repressed, a lot of disappointment and anger, spoken with Nietzsche himself: resentment, towards the father. Because as a child, you may experience such an event not so much as a stroke of fate, but as if the deceased parent had deliberately abandoned you. You have to struggle with this experience all your life. And even in the case of Nietzsche, that may be a decisive reason why, it must be said so clearly, he really generally fails in interpersonal relationships.

So what I would also like to emphasize very clearly at this point: I am of course not of the opinion that you absolutely have to become a father in order to enter into a caring, responsible relationship with others as a man; there are of course many other ways of realizing this. Fatherhood is one of them, a romantic relationship of two too, of course, there are many options. But you can certainly say that Nietzsche has generally failed in this regard. So there is no example almost in his life of a really successful interpersonal relationship over a longer period of time at eye level — which is of course absolutely sad, but should also shed some light on his thinking.

And then there is also this somewhat funny story with Lou Salomé. It makes sense to counter Nietzsche: He says that the married philosopher belongs in comedy — but the philosopher, who has had a large number of failed marriage proposals behind him, belongs there much more. In any case, he certainly wanted it for a while. However, you also have to see that letters repeatedly show that he wanted to marry primarily for pragmatic reasons in order to be better provided for materially — or even to have a “free nurse” or assistant, so to speak. Although this is certainly something else in the case of Lou Salomé, he certainly saw her as an exchange partner at eye level and probably also as a romantic-erotic object of desire in some form — although I don't want to address the topic of Nietzsche's exact sexual orientation at all, especially since it has already been discussed extensively on our blog anyway.¹⁶ But the pragmatism, sometimes downright cynicism, when it comes to marriage, which he sometimes allows to shine through in his letters, certainly doesn't exactly speak for him.¹⁷

But, as always with Nietzsche, there is also a passage in the work on this subject where he represents exactly the opposite. I have found at least one from his middle creative phase, a short note from the estate of 1881, which states:

Having descendants — that is what makes people stable, cohesive and able to do without: it is the best education. It is always the parents who are brought up by the children, and by the children in every sense, even in the most spiritual sense. It is our works and students that give the ship of our life the compass and direction.¹⁸

Unless I've overlooked anything, this passage hasn't made it into the published work either, but I think it's really great. It is also much more in line with my own position than the almost somewhat creepy passage from the genealogy, from which I quoted above. The fact that children also “educate the educator,” that education must generally be understood as an interplay, as a maturing process in which parents also mature first — I think that is a very clever idea. From my own experience, I can definitely confirm that this is the case, and I would therefore say that it would have been very good for Nietzsche to be able to take this further step of education. As I said: That is not a moral criticism, it was rather his fate and he certainly understood how to make the best of this fate and then he just ex post thinks of a philosophical justification for this. Just like most philosophers.

I see two possible scenarios. One day, that Nietzsche as a father would have stopped dealing with philosophical topics and really only cared about “providing” — or that he would have continued his philosophy anyway and perhaps even better books would have come out if he had succeeded in, this childish narcissistic aspect, which he definitely has very strong, and a somewhat more responsible view of society, of the big picture, in which you as a Father is almost brought up to bring together. Perhaps then he would really have become the greatest philosopher of the 19th century. It's possible, isn't it?

HH: Yes, it is possible and I really like this mind game. Although I would of course prefer the second option. If he had found someone on equal footing, if he had succeeded, he would certainly have created a very different work, perhaps a much more mature work.

What else I find important to mention at this point: What were Nietzsche's encounters as an adult with small children? There aren't many, all notable meetings took place in the Wagners' household, from 1869, when Nietzsche had just taken up his professorship in Basel and was regularly invited to the Wagners' country estate in nearby Tribschen. At this point, Cosima was still married to her first husband Hans von Bülow, but Richard Wagner and she had already been in a relationship since 1864 and had lived together since 1867, had even begun founding a joint family with two daughters, Isolde (born 1865) and Eva (born 1867). In May 1869, Nietzsche visited Tribschen for the first time and Siegfried, the couple's third child, was born as early as June. And this is where it gets interesting: The biographer Sue Prideaux¹⁹ Does it actually mean that Nietzsche was so far removed from life in everyday life that he almost did not notice that Cosima was pregnant when he visited the Wagners in May — which would have been a piece of art, in fact it couldn't have been the case at all. And it was even the case that Nietzsche was there the night Siegfried was born, and he simply did not even notice it, not even the screams that certainly accompanied it. He only realized the birth at breakfast, when the new person present could no longer be overlooked. — That's the version of the events, as Prideaux tells them, anyway. And even though that may be an exaggeration, this anecdote very well reflects something of Nietzsche's great alienation from the world.

PS: Yes, he was certainly not the most emphatic person, always lived something in his own world, you can imagine that very well.

HH: Although Cosima and especially Richard later played seriously with the idea that Nietzsche should take on a kind of teaching role for Siegfried. In 1872, Wagner uttered such simulation games to Nietzsche in two letters, going so far as to bring Nietzsche into the game as a kind of substitute father for “Fidi” — and accordingly Nietzsche himself as Wagner's surrogate son.²⁰ However, Nietzsche showed no interest in this, because both times he simply ignored the request of his “beloved master,” as he still called Wagner during this time.²¹ So it seems that Nietzsche did enjoy his repeated visits to Tribschen in the midst of a household of young raging children, but that he did not find a way to further expand on this experience in his own biography.

PS: Yes, I think building such a relationship with a child would definitely have been good for Nietzsche. But you also have to see that the Wagners did not always have the best intentions towards Nietzsche. Christian Sährendt speaks in an article about the Nietzsche/Wagner relationship on our blog also from a “terribly nice family” that the young professor went to there. Perhaps this plan was also about simply exploiting Nietzsche — but perhaps he had also felt that it would have promoted Nietzsche to take on a kind of father role.

HH: I think we should start from good intentions, even though bad intentions cannot be ruled out, of course. In any case, it should be noted that there was certainly this phase in which Nietzsche, as the Wagners' 'house friend, 'had regular contact with small children — but it is unlikely that he used this opportunity to establish an intensive relationship, for example with the young Siegfried. Siegfried Wagner will hardly have noticed any kind of father figure in Nietzsche; it stuck to a mind game. — Perhaps this will take us on to address what Nietzsche wrote about childhood in general.

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VI. Nietzsche's Affirmation of Childhood

PS: Yes, we should definitely talk about this topic! It is really remarkable that Nietzsche hardly ever had anything to do with real children, but is certainly one of the thinkers who said the best things about childhood and pregnancy.

The pregnancy metaphor is found primarily in So Zarathustra spoke. It has, of course, a misogynistic component in the sense that Nietzsche, as we have already discussed, starts from a strict division of the sexes in this regard and fixes both in a specific role. But it must also be said that Nietzsche also extremely values giving birth and sees it as a metaphor for the ability to create creatively. Men can also be “births” with him and have children, including Zarathustra or himself. Against this background, feminist interpreter Caroline Picart even speaks of “Nietzsche's incurable oath of childbirth [Womb Envy]”²². It is therefore in a certain sense a devaluation, but also an appreciation and there is a whole strand in the female-feminist reception of Nietzsche, in which women relate positively to this side of Nietzsche's work, starting, interestingly enough, with Lou Salomé to the important difference feminist theorist Luce Irigaray.²³

But even more important for our topic is the metaphor of the child. There are numerous profound passages in Nietzsche's work here, which have inspired me time and again as a father, and which can only be explained by the fact that Nietzsche remained a “big child” throughout his life, retained a great childishness and was therefore able to write very well about childhood, even though he lacked empirical experience. To give just one of countless examples, I am thinking of this famous sentence from Beyond good and evil: “Man's maturity: that means having rediscovered the seriousness you had as a child while playing. ”²⁴ That's a special term for “maturity,” of course, but when I watch my son playing, he shoots through my head over and over again and he already has a truth. Children are sometimes so incredibly absorbed in their games, they take them so seriously. The adult often makes fun of this and interprets this seriousness of the unimportant as childish and immature — but doesn't he also envy the child for this ability and are we adults so different when we get excited about something?

And there are also countless passages on this aspect in Zarathustra. There is, for example, a passage from the book that Swedish feminist author Ellen Key (1849-1926) also wrote her book The century of the child (1900), a classic of reform education, as the motto:

Yours Kinder Land You should love: this love is your new nobility — the undiscovered one in the farthest seas! After him, I'm looking for and searching for your sails!

On your children shall you Do wellthat you are children of your fathers: everything past shall you thus Redeem! I'm putting this new board above you!²⁵

Interestingly enough, this could even be interpreted as a plea for fatherhood²⁶ But it is primarily to be understood as a plea for childhood. That children's openness and creativity should almost be taken as a role model for a creative, life-affirming attitude. And there are also countless places where the playing child actually acts as a metaphor both for the creative person who is on the way to becoming superman and for the superman himself.²⁷

Sure, that's a romanticizing understanding of childhood that, as a real father, you might not share 100% — and that's why Nietzsche knows that too²⁸ —, but in principle, these are great sentences that should encourage us not to completely lose our own childishness even as fathers and perhaps also to learn from our children to rediscover our own childishness, that is also a side of being a father, isn't it?

HH: Yes, this impartiality or even indignity, this ability to completely lose oneself in the game, which we see especially with smaller children, is also found in many of Nietzsche's texts. I think what sets him apart from many other writers — and I tend to actually compare Nietzsche with particular writers rather than with other philosophers, I see him more and more as an artist and only as a subordinate philosopher: He often has very little self-censorship, just like small children. We experience this time and again with our six-year-old Louis, this complete openness even towards strangers in the message. On the train, for example, he meets a completely unknown person and simply starts talking about details of family life that no adult would ever tell just like that — because the vast majority of adults have internalized a certain self-censorship, we are already thinking pretty carefully about what can and cannot be said. Especially when we write, especially when it is something that goes in the direction of science, then we think even more carefully, then this self-censorship works even more strongly. I often think of George Orwell's insight that this self-censorship is even more powerful than censorship itself, i.e. what we filter out ourselves before we even submit a text.²⁹

And that's the great thing about Nietzsche: Of course, he carefully edited his texts before they were printed, but they still seem as if he were talking straight ahead, as if he were not self-censoring, speaking completely authentically. And that can go both ways, of course — sometimes this openness makes him write terrible things, but sometimes it also leads him to real wisdom and jewels. That is almost the biggest thing we can learn from children.

And I also like this idea from the other quote that children are the educators of adults. It's a really great subject. And I don't find that romanticizing, it's already real. The challenge is simply to live this authentically in everyday life. For example, what our Louis wants to do with me often, less with my wife Rebecca, that is what he called Toy Fight, 'game fight. ' He often wants to do this right after getting up, around half past 7, even before breakfast. Above all, that means jumping on dad pretty wildly. Of course, there are a few rules of the game, so you can't scratch, don't bite, don't pull your hair and you can't hit certain sensitive areas — but apart from these four basic rules, it's relatively random, you can do more or less everything and that's another opportunity to live an uncensored self, which can contribute to the development of an authentic self. I think that is something that we, regardless of whether we are fathers and have children or not, lack in everyday life, because it is so incredibly structured and thoroughly scheduled. And digitization has also failed to bring the hoped-for liberation; rather the opposite is the case. Our time is simply becoming more and more economical; everything should be able to be planned. And I do believe that our children give us the opportunity to free ourselves from it, even if it is only for 20 minutes, to free us again and again — and that is something I would not like to miss.

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VII. Once Again: Masculinity and Femininity

PS: Yes, I can only agree with that; I have a very similar experience there. Where I would like to follow up with regard to the topic of gender and gender roles: It is also interesting how children very intuitively assign different roles to parents and raise different expectations of them. It is also the case with us — and this is not possible, at least not consciously, on our part — that very different things are expected of my partner and I. From me in particular this fighting, it's almost exactly the same for us, there is always a lot of “fighting” — but Jonathan almost only wants to do that with me. Sometimes even with Louise — which of course doesn't work particularly well right now that she is heavily pregnant — but above all with me he wants to fight and do 'fighting things, 'which are more stereotypically masculine, while he is more likely to cuddle extensively with Louise, make out and do rather tender things. With him and me, on the other hand, he doesn't necessarily want to do such things and also makes me understand that — which is of course perfectly fine, even if it sometimes offends me a bit.

HH: We also have “toy fighting” just with me, Rebecca simply says “no” and doesn't feel like it — in return she does a lot of other things with Louis. You can speak of “stereotypes” here, but from a philosophical point of view, you could also call it something else. For example, you could bring the term “archetype” into play for her — but then you're moving on thin ice right away. Perhaps to put it more neutrally: Many specific behaviours remain counteracted, whether we like it or not, that is precisely our cultural heritage. A specific example: knitting. Maybe the circles I'm in are the wrong ones and not progressive enough, but I don't know a single man who knits. Of course I've seen photos of such men, but I don't know anyone. On the other hand, I know a number of women who knit — Rebecca, for example, knits very well, she makes insanely great fashionable sweaters and something like that that are almost works of art. She also taught Louis how to knit fingers; for example, he can make small scarves or something like that himself — that is a very real skill, a skill. In other words, these are skills that do not naturally belong to any gender, but which are also assigned only to one gender for cultural reasons and are passed on accordingly.

And perhaps to give another example, even though it may be a bit profane: In Great Britain, there are the “Ladybird Books”, which are small-format books for small children, comparable perhaps a bit to the German Pixi books, which have had a mass edition. So all middle class children in my generation had them, they simply had good quality and very good illustrations — but many were written in the 1950s and 1960s and therefore fall very much into gender stereotypes, both as regards girls and women as well as boys and men. It really uses all clichés. Recently, as a post-modern joke, the publishing house released something called “Ladybirds for Grown-Ups,” for adults, i.e.³⁰ That takes this whole thing on the arm, there is something like a book that simply means The Dad. The father is stereotypically standing at the grill and there is something like — the lyrics are very short, just like in real children's books: “That's the dad. He seems complicated, but he simply lives off beer and sausages. “That's all it says. My wife Rebecca and I actually find that very funny because we know a lot of fathers who are really like that.

What I'm getting at is that this is the dichotomy in which fathers of our generation are stuck, that we still have a strong cultural and social heritage — we're talking about centuries that were very different — and have only been trying to get out of it for about 40 or 50 years, but we just can't do it right away. These simple fathers, who could not or barely show their feelings, let alone talk about them, who were somewhat simple in this regard — they remain in us as an inheritance that perhaps needs to be overcome.

PS: Yes, ten horses wouldn't get me to knit either, even though I enjoyed doing it for a while when I was around eight or nine years old. — But I wanted to say a little counterspeech at that point. Well, let's not go unmentioned, there is also no pure biologism in Nietzsche. There are, for example, in the Götzen-Dämmerung this remarkable sentence: “The man created the woman—from what? From a rib of his god — his' ideal '...”³¹ And there are many other such places where it is shown that Nietzsche, as a historically thinking person, is already aware that gender roles are absolutely changeable, “socially constructed,” as you would say today.³²

The other thing is, as already indicated, that his statements about women are not meant to be derogatory at all. Even in From young and old women Among other things, it also says:

A toy is the woman, pure and fine, like a precious stone, irradiated by the virtues of a world that is not yet there.

May the ray of a star shine in your love! Your hope is: “May I give birth to Superman! ”

Similar to the playing child, it is not only the man as a “warrior,” but also the woman giving birth as a symbol and physical appearance of the superman and Zarathustra and even his own work are repeatedly equated with giving birth — even in this speech himself. And it should also be clear that the notorious “whip sentence” from this speech can also be interpreted in the sense of such constructivism.³³ But even reading essentialistically, there are and were numerous women and feminists who have adopted this side of Nietzsche positively, affirmatively and were inspired by it in their definition of femininity.

So my position in this regard is very clear that it is a problem when there are these repressive norms, these stereotypes, and you have the pressure to adapt to them because they simply do not reflect the diversity of the human species and leave little room for deviation. It is a good process in that they are dissolving and becoming more flexible at the moment. But at the same time, you also have to see that these stereotypes are not only arbitrary, but that there is already something called a biological substrate in some form. This is of course difficult to determine; you will probably never be able to define it in its pure form. But there is evidence that this stereotypical behavior can already be observed in small children and therefore cannot be purely educated. This is a fact that, despite all criticism of repressive gender norms, cannot be ignored. It is also undeniable that certain hormones, such as testosterone in particular, have an effect on mental life. It just does something to people when they naturally have higher testosterone levels.³⁴

You just have to be careful, and that's where Nietzsche comes into play again, that you don't replace one repressive morality with another. All people should be equal; as a man, you simply must not behave too masculine, and as a woman you must not behave too feminine. I would say: No, it's okay to live according to predetermined stereotypes. Why should you bend over there? That can certainly be an expression of authenticity.

Quite apart from biology, it also makes sense that there is this division of roles. Interestingly enough, homosexual couples are also often unable to break away from her and one partner is more likely to take on a “female” role in them and the other a more “male” role. This involves dividing up certain tasks, although care should of course be taken to design them fluidly and situationally so that both partners can develop equally.

HH: Yes, I completely agree with you that it makes no sense to replace one repressive morality with another. Although this could be seen as tricky in some circles. This whole topic of Manosphere, i.e. one Bubble On the Internet, which is about creating a new sense of 'real masculinity, 'in contrast to' wokeness' and feminism, and which is often perceived as very sexist and misogynous (and is certainly also in large parts), that has already become a very hot topic. Christian Sährendt has already addressed this topic on our blog in his article on the question of whether Nietzsche was an “Incel”. When there is talk of men and fathers in public discussion at all, it is usually about this topic of “toxic masculinity.” But what if you don't want to become or remain “toxic” — is there a public space to discuss it openly? Some have come to the interesting view that that is precisely why some men are so susceptible to this Manosphere- Get spelled because there are so few models of good, non-toxic masculinity or paternity so far. And it is also striking in this social equality debate — which must continue for good reasons — that a sub-chapter of this discourse is that both the best and poor life results in the global North are achieved by men. As a man, you are therefore more likely to be very rich or successful — but also to commit suicide, to suffer from an addiction, to die young, that you simply won't be able to eat properly, or become long-term unemployed — to name just a few of the worst life events that are particularly strongly associated with men. It's also part of being a father, managing the balancing act of being a good father without ending up with these worst results.

Or, to be more specific: Why do so many of these men and fathers vote for Donald Trump or right-wing populist parties? Of course, women also vote for him, but there are significantly more men. Not because they are all so well protected or privileged — on the contrary, it is the case that millions of them live so precariously that they are outside the social mechanisms and no longer have any confidence in making their own living conditions better; instead, they bet on a 'big throw, 'a 'Trump throw; this idea of being a 'tough man,' a toxic man, who you without any social Insurance gets through.

So it's definitely a bet on our part to publicly discuss such a topic as fatherhood at a time when public discourse about men is primarily characterized by this concept of 'toxic masculinity — I hope this bet turns out well.

PS: Yes, I also perceive that there is a vacuum, an absence of role models of non-toxic, responsible masculinity and fatherhood — which leads to great disorientation, especially among young men, and to the fact that they flock to replace wannabe “supermen” such as Trump, Musk or even Putin. The old “idols” have fallen, but no new ones have taken their place — and, paradoxically, this is leading to a frightening renaissance of such pseudo-archaic “barbaric” figures. But we emancipated men should not mourn this vacuum, in a completely Nietzschean way, nor fall into nostalgia, but as an opportunity for a new cultural start, to create a new, better understanding of masculinity and fatherhood. As fathers, we in particular are called upon not only to preach such an understanding, but above all also to live by, hopefully, to serve our sons not only as negative repulsive figures, but also as role models from which they can grow — and then of course repel ourselves from us again, that is unfortunately also part of being a father.

In essence, my point is that you should simply strive for your own, authentic understanding of fatherhood and masculinity — and, of course, of motherhood and femininity — which is independent of existing stereotypes. But it would also be inauthentic, and simply not particularly healthy, not healing for yourself, to now desperately want to free yourself from these stereotypes at any price — both in terms of your own self-image and in terms of your own educational practice. I already notice such tendencies in my environment that, for example, people want to avoid boys playing with weapons or being interested in war at all costs — and perhaps trying to force girls to do just that. And you get the boys to play with dolls. Well, this is of course an exaggeration, but there are already tendencies of this kind that I cannot approve of.

In general, I do not find this whole discourse about 'toxic masculinity unjustified. ' I think there is. By the way, there may also be a type of 'toxic womanhood, 'i.e. stereotypical female or even maternal behavior that is not particularly healing for those around them. They only appear more subtly, for example in forms of emotional manipulation and blackmail. Although, of course, the question is: What does “toxic” actually mean? Isn't that a very vague term?

So I think it's generally good that such behaviours are being questioned, both among women and men. But at the same time, I also observe a certain insight or even discrimination of typical male behavior, which is definitely At least It is hypocritical, because precisely these behaviours also have their social justification and are in many cases necessary in today's society. Even people who are very upset about typical male behavior may also be happy when there is a tough police officer who defends them in an emergency. And there is now a lot of talk about a “turning point” and rearmament — which I find problematic again for other reasons — but you just have to want both, you can't say that you have these masculine behaviors that you display as a soldier must, are very bad and problematic, but at the same time we need a lot more soldiers and at least everyone men — Why just them? Does this perhaps also have something to do with biology? — should do military service again. So I see a certain contradiction in our society and in the debates on this topic. Speaking in general terms, you should perhaps simply recognize that some of these typically male behaviours are not that bad at all and have their right, unless they are pushed to a certain extreme.

The best example is Nietzsche himself, who was perhaps in some way, if you want to use this term, a “toxic” or at least stereotypical man. We have discussed this and there is a lot to criticize about it, but this attitude in turn also enables him to create his great work. I believe that it would also have been good for the work if Nietzsche had questioned his own masculinity more — but would it really have come about without the infantile narcissism that Nietzsche cultivated?

And even with myself, I notice that, even though this is partly not my nature at all, I am being driven into such a masculine role, which I would define as having a slightly different parenting style, that in certain stressful situations, you are more likely to remain calm and make clear views. I think that is something that is simply needed, which you might then also achieve as a man must. Sure, on the one hand, I fail often enough, and secondly, there are also situations in which my partner takes on this part, but I think that this part, this perhaps slightly “authoritarian” part, is sometimes needed, and then it would perhaps be more important that you take on this male part in a non-toxic and responsible way, but also not completely reject yourself. I think that there is something very infantile about this new 'post-modern post-masculinity, 'that is to say again a' toxic 'masculinity in a different way — in Nietzsche's way. You actually remain a child, you relinquish responsibility, you no longer want to be' authoritarian 'at any price or something like that, you speak very softly, don't spread your legs when sitting... So this infantie It is linked to an extremely moral and self-negative attitude. This is once again a one-sided development, an escape from responsibility and also from authenticity, because I certainly perceive that such men are not in an authentic self-relationship, but rather artificially suppress a side of themselves that they should perhaps live out more strongly. You should learn to appreciate the 'inner man, 'the 'inner father' — that is perhaps our task in the current situation.

HH: Wouldn't that be a good way to end our conversation?

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VIII. “Become like the children! ”

PS: I might add something else. We've talked a lot about Lou Salomé and about Nietzsche — it might make sense to talk about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), who was about a generation younger than Nietzsche and, funnily enough, was not only friends with Lou Salomé, but perhaps succeeded in what Nietzsche dreamed of, i.e. was in a relationship with her. Funnily enough, he took on the role of a 'big child again and Lou a maternal one — that is perhaps not even that rare among poets and thinkers. In any case, there is a great poem by him in which he expresses this attitude of becoming a child in even more lyrical and impressive words than Nietzsche, and I would very much like to end our conversation with that:

Dreams that surge in your depths,

out of the darkness set them all free.

They're like fountains, and they'll fall

brighter, and in the intervals of a song,

back into their basins' lap.

And I know now: become like the children.

All fear is but a beginning;

yet endless is the earth,

and the trembling is only the outward sign,

and longing is its meaning —³⁵

That may be a good final word: “And I know now how the children will be.” But maybe then you also have to take on more responsibility — but that's the philosophical level again.

HH: I really agree with that. Thank you Paul for this enlightening conversation.

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The article image is a painting by Felix Nussbaum from 1931, Leierkastenmann. Photographer: Kai-Annett Becker. Source: https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/6CQPR6PYR3GSAEFLYDCJDO7VC7ZKNCK7

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Bibliography

Who is the”Homo sovieticus“? A dialogue of Narthex-Editorial with Vitalii Mudrakov. In: Narthex. Radical Thinking Booklet 6 (2020), P. 56-63.

Diethe, Carol: Forget the whip. Nietzsche and the women. Transformed by Michael Haupt. Hamburg & Vienna 2000.

Key, Ellen: The century of the child. Transformed by Francis Maro. Berlin 1905.

Kimmel, Michael S.: Masculinity as Homophobia. Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity. In: Harry Brod (ed.): Theorizing Masculinities. Thousands Oaks 1994, pp. 119-141.

Orwell, George: Animal farm. A fairy tale. Transated by Ulrich Blumenbach. Munich 2021.

Picart, Caroline: Classic and Romantic Mythology in the (Re) Birthing of Nietzsche's Zarathustra. In: Journal of Nietzsche Studies 12 (1996), PP. 40-68.

Prideaux, Sue: I am dynamite. The life of Friedrich Nietzsche. Transated by Thomas Pfeiffer and Hans-Peter Remmler. Stuttgart 2021.

Rilke, Rainer Maria: Poems 1895 to 1910. Works Vol. 1st ed. by Manfred Engel & Ulrich Fülleborn. Frankfurt am Main & Leipzig 1996.

Stephen, Paul: Left-Nietzscheanism. An introduction. 2 vol.E. Stuttgart 2020.

Ders. : “Don't forget the whip! ”. An examination of the metaphor of the “woman” in So Zarathustra spoke. In: Murat Ates (ed.): Interpreting Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Marburg 2014, pp. 85-112.

Wagner, Richard: Letter to Nietzsche v. 25/1872 (No. 333). In: Letters to Friedrich Nietzsche May 1872 — December 1874. Critical Complete Edition Correspondence Vol. II/4. Ed. by Giorgio Colli & Mazzino Montinari. Berlin & New York 1978, p. 29 f.

Ders. : Letter to Nietzsche v. 24/10/1872 (No. 372). In: ibid., pp. 102-106.

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Footnotes

1: Status 12/20: Our daughter is still taking her time.

2: Aph 108

3: So Zarathustra spoke, From old and young women.

4: It is also said elsewhere: “We men wish that the woman does not continue to commit herself through enlightenment: what it was like caring for men and protecting women when the Church decreed: mulier taceat in ecclesia! “(Beyond good and evil, Aph 232) And with reference to the mentioned notorious passage from Zarathustra Does he write in Ecce homo: “'Emancipation of women” — that is the instinct hate of the wrongful woman, that is, the womanized woman against the well-behaved” (Why I write such good books, paragraph 5).

5: So Zarathustra spoke, From old and new boards, 23.

6: Human, all-too-human II, Preface, paragraph 3.

7: Beyond good and evil, Aph 232.

8: This concept of masculinity is also found in philosophy, especially in Hegel in his Principles of the Philosophy of Law (1820), this terrible apology of the inauthentic person who finds his “true freedom” in the victim, whether as a “marketplace man” — a term used in critical research on masculinity (see Michael S. Kimmel, Masculinity as Homophobia) —, be as a loyal bureaucrat in civil service, be it, in his highest form, as a soldier who falls for the “fatherland.” The Soldier and the “Warrior” — this is where, strangely enough, Hegel and Nietzsche meet, even though Nietzsche is more about the resolute will to self-actualize. Still in the 18th Century, Just Think of Rousseau's emile (1761), this big plea for an active father as a responsible educator of children, was thought about it in a completely different way — but it was precisely this image of the caring father that Nietzsche turned against when he spoke of the “softening” of Europe!

9: See also Who is the”Homo sovieticus“?

10: On the genealogy of morality, paragraph III, 7.

11: There is also a daughter who died very early. Hegel assumed educational responsibility for his illegitimate son, at least temporarily.

12: There may also be an illegitimate son.

13: The extreme case is perhaps Rousseau, who, as mentioned (see footnote 8), championed the idea of committed fatherhood — ideally only with one child, of course — but without exception gave his own children to the orphanage.

14: See Emma Schunack's report on this blog (link) .1

15: From my life, The adolescent years.

16: It is sufficient to point out here that it is anything but obvious that Nietzsche was interested in women in sexual terms at all. cf. Dionysus Without Eros by Christian Saehrendt and The interview I had with Andreas Urs Sommer about his new Nietzsche biography.

17: On Nietzsche's temporary efforts for a wife, cf. Christian Saehrendt's article Dionysus without Eros On this blog. However, it should be emphasized here that only one application to a woman, the young Russian woman Mathilde Trampedach, is actually clearly substantiated. As the commentator “Rafael” rightly points out, there are legitimate doubts about the thesis repeatedly put forward in research that Nietzsche, depending on the variant, asked Lou Salomé's hand once, two or even three times. There is no contemporary evidence for this story; it is based almost exclusively on Salomé's own autobiography (see also in more detail This blog article). — There is no doubt about Nietzsche's desire to marry, in any case temporarily (see e.g. Bf. to Malwida von Meysenbug v. 25/10/1874). On April 25, 1877, he told his sister about the plan to marry a “necessary [] woman” in order to be able to give up his arduous professorship (link). He Hopes for a Marriage at That Time, So In a letter to Meysenbug dated July 1, 1877, a “alleviation [s] of suffering.” He later writes to Franz Overbeck — ironically, briefly, Before He gets to know Lou Salomé in person, in view of his deteriorating health: “Now my friends have to invent a read-read machine for me: otherwise I will be left behind myself and will no longer be able to feed myself enough mentally. Or rather: I need a young person close to me who is intelligent and knowledgeable enough to work with me Work To be able to. I would even marry two years for this purpose” (Bf. v. 17/3/1882). He later reported to Overbeck that his mother wanted to marry him in order to provide him with a “caring nurse” (Bf. v. 6/10/1885) — but he had already completed this idea at this point, as he wrote to his mother himself at the end of April of the same year: “My dear mother, your son is ill-suited to getting married; Independently Being up to the last border is my need, and I have become extremely suspicious for my part in this Einen Points. An old woman, and even more of an efficient servant, would perhaps be desirable to me” (link). — These letters attest to Nietzsche's rather pragmatic relationship to the subject of marriage, which, as Carol Diethe Argues (cf. Forget the whip, p. 38), such statements always Cum grano salis In His Letters, Nietzsche often shows himself to be a great ironist. He also repeatedly emphasizes that a marriage should be based on friendship and gives his disgust at the usual “convention marriage [s]” (Bf. to Carl von Gersdorff from 15.04.1876) Expression. He is clearly looking for an educated woman and not a 'nice fool. '

18: Subsequent fragments 1881 16 [19].

19: Cf. I am dynamite.

20: Cf. Richard Wagner, Letter to Nietzsche v. 25/6/1872 & Letter to Nietzsche v. 24/10/1872.

21: The fact that he ignored it the first time implicitly follows from the fact that Wagner felt compelled to repeat the suggestion at all. However, in the surviving detailed letter of response to this repeated suggestion, Nietzsche does not respond to this offer with any syllable, as if he had “read over” it (cf. Letter to Richard Wagner from mid-nov. 1872, No. 274).

22: Classic and Romantic Mythology in the (Re) Birthing of Nietzsche's Zarathustra, p. 41. Trans. P.S.

23: In this regard, see Diethe, Forget the whip And also the corresponding chapters in Paul Stephan, Left-Nietzscheanism.

24:Aph 94.

25: From old and new boards, paragraph 12.

26: In general, there is Zarathustra The Ideal of Marriage as a Symbiosis in Order to Realize the Child Together as a Project of Joint “Self-Overcoming” (cf. in particular the speech Of Child and Marriage).

27: See in particular the key speeches Of the three transformations and Of the virtuous.

28: See his rather skeptical considerations in Human, all-too-human, Vol. II, The Wanderer and His Shadow, Aph 265.

29: See as a preface to Animal Farm Drafted text Freedom of the press (Link to original).

30: Cf. The publisher's website.

31: Sayings and Arrows, 13.

32: None other than Simone de Beauvoir cites this passage, for example, to underpin her constructivist position in The Other Sex (cf. Left-Nietzscheanism, Vol. 2, p. 354) and Judith Butler also repeatedly refers to Nietzsche in her radical constructivism (see ibid., pp. 473-478). Feminisms of all varieties can be recognized in Nietzsche's writings. (See also ibid., Vol. 1, pp. 50-55.) The strange thing about Nietzsche's sometimes essentialist statements on the subject of “man and woman” is precisely that they are in obvious opposition to his basic anti-essentialism — and he knows this when he, for example, In Beyond Good and Evil Underlines that these views are”My Truths” acts (Aph 231).

33: In this regard, see Stephen in detail, “Don't forget the whip! ”.

34: Just think of the relevant reports from people who have undergone appropriate hormone therapy.

35: Poems 1895 to 1910, P. 72.

Being a Father with Nietzsche

A Conversation between Henry Holland and Paul Stephan

Nietzsche certainly did not have any children and is also not particularly friendly about the subject of fatherhood in his work. For him, the free spirit is a childless man; raising children is the task of women. At the same time, he repeatedly uses the child as a metaphor for the liberated spirit, as an anticipation of the Übermensch. Is he perhaps able to inspire today's fathers after all? And can you be a father and a Nietzschean at the same time? Henry Holland and Paul Stephan, both fathers, discussed this question.

We also published the complete, unabridged discussion on the Halcyonic Association for Radical Philosophy YouTube channel (Part 1, part 2).

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“[W]here are the barbarians of the 20th century? ”¹

This question from a fragment of Nietzsche's estate still provokes today: Who are the current forces that challenge the existing order — and not out of a desire to destroy, but as an answer to a culture that is increasingly exhausted in resignation and market logic? Who are they barbarians of our time? This essay takes Nietzsche's question as a starting point for a contemporary analysis: Who has anything to oppose the progressive nihilism of our time — and what is at stake when philosophy becomes a tool of political mythology? In order to grasp the scope of this question, it is first necessary to analyse the different interpretations of Nietzsche in political thought of the 20th and 21st century.

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I. Power Mythology vs. Criticism

A clear difference between right-wing and left-wing Nietzsche reception lies in the way his texts are read and understood. Representatives of the New Right tend to take Nietzsche “at his word” and thus interpret it affirmatively. Terms such as”superman“or the”The will to power“are understood here as guiding principles for politics that are intended to justify hierarchy, elitist thinking and a fundamental rejection of egalitarianism. Here Nietzsche appears as a teaching prophet of a new aristocratic order. The appropriation of Nietzsche by right-wing movements represents a continuity and is exemplified by the collection of texts published posthumously by Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche The will to power Understand: Although never authorized by Friedrich Nietzsche himself, it became a reference text for an affirmative right Nietzsche reception — even under National Socialism, Nietzsche was misused as a supposed pioneer of a heroic, ethnic view of the world — even though he himself condemned anti-Semitism, nationalism and all authoritarian thinking. Martin Heidegger therefore initially relied on the falsified edition and reduced Nietzsche to a”Completion of metaphysics“— thus emptied his existential and genealogical radicality.² In the New Right, from Alain de Benoist to Götz Kubitschek, Nietzsche continues to be stylized as a projection surface of post-liberal elitianism, while his critique of power, morality and resentment is deliberately reinterpreted or simply ignored. This is how an instrumental rather than philosophical reception takes place: pseudo-intellectually operating, ideologically inflated — and is thus at odds with every serious and dialectical, i.e. differentiated and reflecting rather than denying, Nietzsche's internal paradoxes of Nietzsche's work. It is also striking how the right-wing reception of Nietzsche is sometimes combined with neoliberal and libertarian views of the world: Is Nietzsche literally called the prophet of”Willens zur Macht“and read as a critic of egalitarian morality, based on this, a legitimation of unbridled competition and social hierarchy can be derived. The success of the strong — achieved in economic terms, for example by avoiding taxes — is no longer just an economic result, but is increased with the concept of morality: It appears as an expression of natural superiority. An originally cultural-critical stance thus tilts into a neoliberal ideology in which the market as a natural arena of”Supermen“is understood. In this way — paradoxically — morality itself becomes an instrument of domination. Opposite this is a (left-wing) Nietzsche reception, which reveals and criticizes precisely these mechanisms. Instead of reading Nietzsche as a pioneer of a new elite, she uses his thoughts genealogically to show how morality and discourse are misused to stabilize interests of power and profit. This is how the”The will to power“not affirmatively glorified — instead, it is analysed as what drives social norms, institutions and ideologies. Nietzsche's philosophy thus becomes a tool to visualize (“unmask”) rule as a culturally generated, not “natural” phenomenon — and thus to open up spaces for emancipation, solidarity and criticism.

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II. Hustling in the Platform World

A literal Nietzsche reading, in which the”The will to power“and the success of the strong is morally transfigured, finds a contemporary equivalent in the”Hustle Culture“, which is being promoted en masse on social media platforms.³ Permanent self-exploitation — the Hustle —, optimization, self-marketing is regarded here as a sign of strength, of drive and, depending on the presentation, almost tips over into a heroic superhumanity. This Hustle Culture Based on Max Weber's analysis of the Protestant work ethic, can also be secularized doctrine of salvation Understand: Salvation is replaced by achievement and productivity thus becomes a moral duty.⁴ This ideology portrays work and performance pressure as an individual virtue, but deliberately conceals how much it supports existing power relations and ownership conditions at the same time: Because the platforms on which this cult is disseminated — whether on TikTok, Instagram or X (formerly Twitter) — belong to multi-billion dollar tech companies that themselves operate according to the logic of Willens zur Macht act and, by the way, make unimaginable profits from attention, data and unpaid work. Here, left-wing Nietzsche reception reveals the core of the problem: That morality and discourses — and also “self-realization” per se — are being exploited to legitimize platform capitalism and digital feudalism. While a few corporations receive the lion's share of the profits, it is suggested to individuals that they can Hustle for Supermen become — an illusion that cements the status quo instead of questioning it.

Against this background, the question posed at the outset appears as to who the”barbarians“in Nietzsche's sense today, in a new light: the right, often literal reception of Nietzsche interprets the”barbarians“often as a heroic elite who, with their will to power, will overthrow society in order to be able to establish new hierarchies; as”natural“Leaders in the age of decadent crowds. But if you look closely at the current reality of hustle culture, platform capitalism and digital feudalism, there is a clear turn of events: Now the very corporations and platforms appear that are the cults of absolute success, limitless self-optimization and Supermen promote as the actual barbarians; not in a romantic, heroic sense, but as destructive forces that destroy everything underground, everything fragile, everything humane in order to maximize profit. As a result, the mass of self-exploiters, who endlessly produce content on social media platforms and market themselves, are also becoming part of a new barbarism: not because they are the ones who brutally rule, but because they involuntarily reproduce the logic of the stronger and thus sacrifice cultural depth, critical reflection and solidarity. This shows how barbarism today means not only brute force, but also the cold, systematic eradication of difference, of real thinking: In other words, from what culture really means. Die barbarians From today, therefore, they do not (only) destroy from outside, but also act subtly from within when they normalize the rule of platforms and the myth of superman as a self-optimized entrepreneur. The so-called “hustle culture” is not a marginal cultural phenomenon, but an expression of a deeper ideology that also works in the spheres of tech CEOs and their discursive theoretical leaders. Where once Religion, morality and philosophy offered normative orientations, today an (avoidably) depoliticized aesthetic of success takes their place — fed by a technocratically oriented The will to power, who, as Adorno and Horkheimer would warn⁵ It no longer serves the purpose of enlightenment, but produces its dialectical opposite: myth in the mask of progress. This shift paves the way for trends such as the “neo-reactionary movement,” often abbreviated “NRx” — also known as “Dark Enlightenment” — which are based explicitly on Nietzsche, but in doing so shed all dialectical, historical-critical depth. NRx consistently puts this cult of success, which Hustle Culture stages emotionally on platforms, to the end: as a possibility of inhumanity, as a cybernetic reorganization of rule according to a market economy standard. The “theory” of NRx is based on pseudo-scientific concepts such as”Human Biodiversity”⁶ — an ethic of the stronger, based on racial ideological fallacies — or a right-wing libertarian understanding of the state as a corporate structure. In doing so, their representatives always refrain from contextualization, historical awareness, or moral reflection. The Dark Enlightenment performs nihilism where Nietzsche wanted to overcome it. Her followers cultivate the gesture of radicalism — but remain stuck in the pose, involuntarily funny. Your barbarian is a caricature: a cybernetic reactionary with a provocative social media profile, not a creative spirit. Anyone who takes the question of the barbarian seriously will have to evade this appropriation of Nietzsche: Are the true barbarians not the ones who deny cultural cynicism? (New) right-wing actors like to present themselves as the”stronger type“, which Nietzsche speaks of in the estate fragment quoted at the beginning: as those who could put an end to the “cosmopolitan chaos of affect and intelligence.” But their revolt is ultimately not aimed at new values (or even: morally based), but at the reactivation of old fantasies of order: authority, hierarchy — in the form of technological rule. They preach disenchantment but conjure up their own myths: the market as a machine of revelation, the code as proof of God, eternal life in the cloud, the CEO as sovereign. In this world, Nietzsche is not read, but utilises: as a (pseudo) aesthetic cipher of a The will to power.

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III. A Left-Nietzschean Alternative?

The decisive difference here lies in the fact that Nietzsche's barbarians did not think as functionaries of a new system, but as existentially disruptors: as those who become capable and active of creation within and within themselves through radical work. In Nietzsche, it is the individual who counts, not the elite. “Superman is the meaning of the earth”⁷, Zarathustra calls out to “everyone and none” — and this superman is not created through technological progress: He is not a cyborg, not a post-human subject, but is capable of revaluation, transformation, artistic self-creation. So the question remains: Are the new tech CEOs really the barbarians Nietzsche was hoping for — or a post-ironic simulation of the same idea? Perhaps they are the caricature of the change that Nietzsche called for: forgetful of the future, strategically arrogant, metaphysically hollow. And yet it is precisely this radical, existential seriousness that is caricatured in the aesthetics of the New Right: What is there as barbarism staged — in podcasts, supposed guerrilla aesthetics and pseudo-intellectual tech-bro attitude — is not an answer to nihilism, but its performative implementation. The New Right and its sympathizers hide behind this mask of “(post) ironic barbarians“: a pose that at the same time rises above seriousness and yet asserts itself as an avant-garde. Her protagonists act like characters from a Kantian parody: They act As if they follow a transcendental maxim only to distance themselves from the character of their own actions in the next moment.⁸ Kant would not diagnose freedom here, much more heteronomy through cynicism, a moral mistake that Freud would describe as “rationalization”: A cultural superego is simulated, while the will to nihilism has long since reigned.⁹ Nietzsche would be the harshest critic of this game, because his idea of the barbarian sets a radical “psychological [] nudity” ¹⁰ ahead, an existential openness that is not fed by cynical laughter, but by the risk of self-creation. When Nietzsche writes that the”barbarians““the greatest harshness against yourself must be able” (ibid.), then he does not mean cold technocratism, but a critical examination of one's own entanglement in what you criticize yourself. The barbarian It is therefore not the one who ridicules existing orders, but the one who is able, after the collapse, to create a new order that is no longer based on the resentments of the old ones. The New Right, on the other hand, replaces design with the economy of affect: It imitates depth without suffering it. Your”barbarians“are actors in an ideological theatre. The result is not a new myth, but a nihilistic cultural struggle that is intoxicated by the rubble of modernity without thinking of or even building anything new.

The actual question of the “barbarian” thus ultimately leads back to a paradoxical movement: barely asked, this question reveals one's own longing for the outside that does not exist — a symptom of that decadence that one hopes to overcome (and which Nietzsche himself has strongly criticized). This essay here too remains — in addition to an analysis of the status quo — itself part of an order that he questions and continues at the same time. The barbarism of our present day is therefore not the raw outside, but the subtle inside: the total exhaustion that turns every revolt into pose; the boredom of a world in which “being against” also becomes an ornament of the market. The new barbarians do not appear as heroic figures, but as algorithms — which structure our attention while we are still Believe to vote. They are machines of power that mark themselves as progress and liquidate the actual culture in that process. In a state of entropy, becoming remains possible — just think of Deleuze's concept of becoming¹¹: not as a harmonious solution, but as a risky affirmation of difference. Chaos is not only disintegration, but also a condition for creation, a movement within dissolution: the risk of acting without guarantee as an imperative. In the end, neither remains barbarian Still a humanist — just the question of whether it is possible to act differently in the awareness of one's own entanglement without knowing what this “different” can mean.

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Tobias Kurpat (born 1997 in Leipzig) studies in the class for artistic action and research at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig with Prof. Christin Lahr. In his work, he explores virtual spaces as ideologically charged territories and analyses the tension between technocratic power structures, artificial intelligence and immersive media. In doing so, he critically examines the myths of Silicon Valley and pseudo-scientific narratives. In essays, painting, and digital practices, he explores how post-digital infrastructures can be designed, instrumentalized and aesthetically recaptured.

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Sources

Adorno, Theodor W. & Max Horkheimer: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical fragments. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer 1969 [first: Amsterdam: Querido 1947].

Dasgupta, Kushan, Nicole Iturriaga & Aaron Panofsky: How White Nationalists Mobilize Genetics: From Genetic Ancestry and Human Biodiversity to Counterscience and Metapolitics. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology 175/2 (2021), pp. 387-398; doi:10.1002/ajpa.24150.

Deleuze, Gilles: Nietzsche and philosophy. Munich: Rogner & Bernhard 1976 [French original: Nietzsche et la philosophie. Paris: PUF 1962].

Deleuze, Gilles & Félix Guattari: What is philosophy? Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2000 [French original: What is it that philosophy? Paris: Editions de Minuit 1991].

Freud, Sigmund: The discomfort in culture. Vienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag 1930.

Heidegger, Martin: Nietzsche. European nihilism. In: Complete edition Vol. 47. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann 2004; available at https://www.beyng.com/gaapp/recordband/46.

Kant, Immanuel: Basics of the Metaphysics of Morals. Riga: Hardbone 1785.

Nietzsche, Friedrich: The will to power. Attempt to revalue all values, edited by Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Leipzig: Naumann 1901 (retrieved via Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/60360/60360-h/60360-h.htm). [Not authorized by Nietzsche!]

Weber, Max: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In: Ders. : Collected Essays on the Sociology of Religion I. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 1920 [first in: Social Sciences and Social Policy Archives 1904/5].

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Photo Credit

Article images: Excerpts from the installation “Photo album (Made in GDR)” by Tobias Kurpat (photographer: Sven Bergelt)

Portrait: photo by Aaron Frek

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Footnotes

1: Subsequent fragments 1887, No. 13 [31].

2: Heidegger, European nihilism, p. 7 f. (§ 1).

3: “Hustle culture” describes a social trend in which constant work, productivity, and professional ambition are glorified. “Hustling” is presented not only as a means to an end, but as a desirable lifestyle, often at the expense of free time, health, and sleep.

4: Cf. weaver, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

5: Cf. Theodor W. Adorno & Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment.

6: Cf. Kushan Dasgupta, Nicole Iturriaga & Aaron Panofsky, How White Nationalists Mobilize Genetics.

7: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Preface, 3.

8: Cf. Immanuel Kant, Basics of the Metaphysics of Morals.

9: Cf. Sigmund Freud, The discomfort in culture. For an in-depth analysis of this phenomenon using the example of the neo-reactionary “avant-garde” artist collective The Unsafe House, see my article When the avant-garde marches backwards.

10: Subsequent fragments 1887, No. 13 [31].

11: Cf. Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, What is philosophy? and Deleuze, Nietzsche and philosophy.

Übermensch Hustling

Nietzsche Between Silicon Valley and New Right

This essay, which we awarded first place in this year's Kingfisher Award for Radical Essay Writing (link), examines Nietzsche's question of the “barbarians” in a contemporary context and analyses how his philosophy is being politically exploited today. Against this background, the text shows how hustle culture, platform capitalism and neo-reactionary ideologies have been economizing the ”will to power“  and have become a new form of subtle barbarism: an internal decomposition of cultural depth through market logic, technocratic myths, and performative nihilism. Nietzsche's thinking, however, can be used precisely to describe these tendencies in their genealogy, to unmask their immanent nihilism, and to present an (over-)humane alternative to them.

I. Introduction

When I finished my studies over twenty years ago, I felt that our time had come. “It's our turn now, girls! “I thought enthusiastically. Educated, courageous and strong, we wanted to create a new reality in which women no longer just play a supporting role, but are creators of their own lives. It seemed to me that all limits of my imagination and possibilities were open.

However, the reality proved to be more complex. Yes, that's right, we women are much more present today than was the case, for example, in the 20th century. There are numerous impressive examples in politics, culture and science. We hold high office, fight bolder for our rights, take to the streets to demonstrate. However, under the surface of emancipatory successes, old structures persist. Social expectations of women — to be perfect workers, mothers and carers at the same time — have not disappeared. There is still a discrepancy between women and men's worlds: qualities that are admired in men (strength, ambition, independence) are often viewed negatively by women. This creates an area of tension: On the one hand, women should be emancipated and self-confident, but on the other hand they should continue to fulfill traditional ideas.

In my opinion, the problem with us women lies in the lack of solidarity with one another. Women were not always brought up in a spirit of community, but rather in a spirit of rivalry and competition, in a constant struggle for recognition and acceptance in a patriarchal world. Yet it is precisely the community that opens up the opportunity to overcome individual weaknesses, release new forces and permanently shift existing power relations.

All too often, we act alone, repeating patterns of rivalry imposed on us. Anyone who only fights against each other weakens their own position and prevents the development of a solidarity movement. On the other hand, the experience of real community — sharing knowledge, strengthening each other, breaking up competition — is our greatest resource. Our greatest strength lies precisely in the experience of the community.

Hence the question: “Where are the barbarians of the 21st century? ”. Can the modern woman become a figure that Nietzsche described as a “barbarian” — not as a destructive force, but as a creative force that breaks old orders in order to make room for new things?

Perhaps this means that the woman of today no longer thinks in the categories that were given to her but is developing her own forms of power, creativity, and community. In this form, women could actually become a historical force that not only demands equality but also redefines the foundations of cooperation.

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II. Solidarity as a Force

History shows us that men have perfected the art of working together over centuries. Armies, brotherhoods, trade unions—all of this was based on common goals, clear structures, and unwavering loyalty to the group. Women, on the other hand, mostly acted as individuals in a family environment. We were never really taught that we could achieve more together, that cohesion is not just a virtue but a survival strategy.

But it is precisely this insight that marks a turning point. It is only in community that we discover our true strength. What is a burden in solitude is shared by many shoulders and is therefore borne. What alone sounds like a soft whisper becomes a voice in the community that no one can ignore. Solidarity among women means leaving old patterns of rivalry behind in order to create new order. It is not about imitating men, but about developing your own forms of cooperation — characterized by empathy, creativity and mutual strengthening.

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III. Nietzsche and the Figure of the Barbarian

Friedrich Nietzsche used the term “barbarian” in a sense that deviated far from everyday understanding. He did not mean a primitive, wild person, but someone who has the power to exceed the limits of old morality. For him, the barbarian was a creative figure — someone who was not afraid to destroy the existing order in order to make room for new values.

Nietzsche saw barbarians as the answer to modern nihilism. When old value systems fall apart, people are needed who have the courage to venture into the unknown and make sense of the world from the ground up. The barbarian is therefore not a destroyer out of hate, but someone who creates space for the future through refusal and rebellion.

Nietzsche wrote about this in masculine categories — his language is full of figures of warriors and “supermen.” He is often ironic about women, sometimes even misogynous. And yet Nietzsche can be read “against him” and see that his category of barbarian is gender-neutral. It is not gender, but inner strength and authenticity that determine the ability to create new values.

In this reading, the figure of the barbarian — or rather: the female barbarian, the Barbarin — turns into to a symbol of transformation. It embodies the power not only to be part of a story, but to write history yourself.

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IV. A Woman — The Barbarin

If we regard the barbarian as a figure of creative refusal, then it is precisely the modern woman who represents a figure of the Barbarin.

For centuries, it was pushed to the margins of patriarchal culture — an edge that enabled exclusion and resistance at the same time. From there, she could not only observe but also learn a new way to question the entire system.

Their “barbarism” consists not of violence, but of refusing to accept roles that silence them. The refusal to adapt to the system that considers them “inferior.” Refusal to smile when obedience is required In refusing to accept the rules of a game she never invented.

A Barbarin is a woman who refuses to be a “better version of a man.” She doesn't play by foreign rules. She doesn't want to be material in someone else's project, but writes her own rules. Their strength comes from pain — from the experience of betrayal, loss, violence and is transformed into the decision not to give up and break through old addictions. She cuts through the old addictions, like a warrior who breaks her shackles. It has a trace of the “outside” — and it is precisely from this that it draws its creative power.

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V. Women in the Mafia World

In Alex Perry's novel The Good Mothers Let's get to know the stories of women who are connected to the Calabrian mafia “Ndrangheta”. There, men — fathers, brothers, partners — are not romantic warriors, but cold, organized criminals. In the name of “honor” and “loyalty,” they torture, murder, and destroy the lives of their own families. In this system, the woman should only be a cog in the wheel: obedient, silent, submissive. But it is precisely in this machinery that the cracks occur.

Women like Lea Garofalo, Maria Concetta Cacciola, and others are starting to say “no.” Their resistance is not a heroic pose, but is born of sheer despair. They betray the clans, break the vow of silence, they turn to the state, knowing that this amounts to a death sentence.

In a world where silence means survival, her “voice” becomes the most dangerous weapon. It is an act of creative destruction — genuine barbarism against a sick system.

They have no army, no money, and no power. They only have their word, their refusal, their resistance. Their “no” becomes an act of creative destruction: barbarism based not on blood but on refusal. And that turns out to be stronger than the entire mafia clan. The tragedy is that many of them pay the highest price. But their betrayal is also a departure — a sign that even in a system that requires total control, a break is possible.

Their opposition proves that the biggest threat to the mafia does not come from outside — not from the police or politics, but from the voices of those who have been kept silent for years.

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VI. Margaret Atwood's Gilead

Margaret Atwood paints a similar picture — albeit in literary form — in her novels The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments. Gilead is a totalitarian utopia in which women are reduced to their functions: mother, servant, object of a ritual. Without name, language and freedom, all maids should be available to “redefine” humanity in the project of male rule.

But the first resistance does not come from weapons, but from refusal. June, Emily, Moira — initially intimidated — discover that true strength lies in community. Whispered words, furtive looks, solidarity become the beginning of a revolution. In this sense, their sisterhood is a modern form of barbarism: based not on dominance but on solidarity and a refusal to participate in lying.

Atwood's picture makes it clear that barbarism here is not brute force, but the creative power to escape, to reunite, not to be broken. Gilead thus shows that even in a seemingly total system — in which women are reduced to symbols, fixated on roles, trained for submission — the departure remains possible. Every refusal, every transmission of hope is an attack on the old order. The solidarity of the oppressed becomes a weapon. The “Barbarin” in Gilead is therefore the one who not only survives, but also transforms survival into resistance — and thus opens up space for another future.

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VII. Barbarism as a Refusal

The figure of the barbarian of today is not a figure of the warrior with the sword. He doesn't come from outside to break down walls and plunder cities. He is someone who says “no” from within to an order that destroys him. He is an inner figure, a troublemaker who lives in the midst of order — and yet says “no” to a civilization that devours him.

The barbarism of the 21st century is a subtle art of refusal: the refusal to obey, the refusal to live by others' scripts. The refusal to allow yourself to be squeezed into roles that only serve to keep the system stable.

We don't need another utopia today. We need the courage not to serve as raw material for other people's projects. The barbarian is no longer the conqueror but the refuser, someone who says: today? No thanks!

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VIII. Personal Perspective

I was born in communist Poland at the end of the 1970s. Women were everywhere — in the fields, in offices, sometimes in politics. They seemed irreplaceable in my childhood. Everyday heroines.

After years, I realized how stuck in old patterns we were. We shouted slogans during demonstrations, but in everyday life we rarely crossed the threshold of real resistance. We still chose the “known evil” instead of taking the risk of building something new. We obeyed instead of refusing.

Today I see that women who have experienced pain have the greatest strength: betrayal, abortion, poverty, violence. They are the ones who can get up again after the hundredth fall. It is they who no longer seek dependency, but choose to refuse. They are the real Barbarinnen — the ones who refuse to participate in the system that is based on complete adjustment.

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IX. Conclusions

So where are the barbarians of the 21st century? There are no longer foreign male warriors at the gates, but women who refuse to participate in the old dancing from within. It is they who are on the sidelines and have the power to destroy the foundations of the system. Not through violence, but through refusal, through solidarity, through community.

Barbarism today is not the end of civilization, but the possibility of a new beginning. It is the “no” that becomes the language of freedom. It is the courage not to choose the known evil, but to step into darkness and create something new there — together.

Perhaps this is precisely the paradoxical truth of our time: Women who for centuries have been marginalized, treated as “inferior,” forced into invisibility, are today the only ones who have the courage to be “Barbarinnen.”

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The article image is titled "Barbarin of the 21st century" and was painted by the author herself (painting, acrylic/oil). She herself writes: “The Barbarin of the 21st century does not ask for permission and does not justify herself. Born out of civilizational fatigue, it bears a break — between what is human and what eludes civilization. Her face is a map of modern emotions: anger, irony, tenderness and pain merge into a mask that reveals rather than conceals. It does not look into the past but through us, destroys illusions of harmony and shows that beauty comes from courage and not from order. The figure is not a portrait but a mirror. ”

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Olimpia Smolenska was born in 1976 in Zielona Góra, Poland. At the age of seventeen, she went to Neuzelle in Brandenburg to complete her Abitur at a German-Polish grammar school. She completed her diploma in cultural studies at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) in 2010 with a thesis on the topic Integration via language — taking into account the second language acquisition of Polish high school students in Neuzelle, Brandenburg. She currently works at Goethe University in the office of the Institute of Philosophy.

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Literature

Atwood, Margaret: The Handmaid's Tale. Toronto 1985.

Atwood, Margaret: The Witnesses. Toronto 2019.

Perry, Alex: The Good Mothers. The Story of the Three Women Who Took on the World's Most Powerful Mafia. New York 2018.

Female Barbarians — When Women Become a Threat

In today's world, which wants to call itself modern and equal, old patterns continue to have an effect — rivalry instead of solidarity, adaptation instead of departure. The essay provocatively asks: Where are the barbarians of the 21st century? It shows the emergence of a new female force — a woman who does not destroy but refuses, who evades old roles and gains creative power from pain. Through examples from reality and literature, the text attempts to show that true change does not start in obedience but in bold “no” — and that solidarity among women could be the real revolution.

We awarded this text second place in this year's Kingfisher Award for Radical Essay Writing (link).

If you'd rather listen to it, you'll also find it read by Caroline Will on the Halcyonic Association for Radical Philosophy's YouTube channel (link) or on Soundcloud (link).

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Tutaj znajdziesz tłumaczenie artykułu na język polski, ojczysty język autorki, napisanego przez nią samą.

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The Lost World and the Search for the New Barbarians

“Where are the barbarians?” Friedrich Nietzsche asked. My voice echoes his voice like an echo. Yes, where are they, the other barbarians? Because I'm one of them and I'm standing here. Not with a sword, not with fire, but with a dream in hand, a dream that seems as fleeting as the clouds on the horizon. But I cannot and will not let go of him. I'm not going to comply with them. The world is settled: its values are smooth and its thoughts sterile. Yet I am here calling, but no one hears me, nor do they want to see. Everything has a place in this sad world, except the wild and the unformed.

Nihilism and the Birth of Dreamers

The nihilism that Nietzsche spoke of was not just a warning, no, it was the end of the world itself. The values have collapsed like a house of cards. It is not evolution, not the passage of time, but man himself who is to blame for this. Because we have become tired and have lost our fighting spirit. The result is a world that is satisfied with the appearance of something fundamental. Technology replaces curiosity, progress replaces will and everything has a function, but nothing makes sense. And somewhere in the middle of this functional desert are we, the dreamers. We are labelled as useless because we feel too much, we break too easily and we don't want to wear the uniform. Maybe we're the new barbarians. Not because we destroy, but because we don't obey, and that seems to do the most damage of all.

The Silent Invasion of the Void

So the emptiness didn't come with a fanfare. She didn't announce herself with one: “So here I am.” No, it was there suddenly, silently and naturally, and we didn't even notice it. It's too late now. The void has long been distributed among us; it sits in our bodies, it is written in our DNA. We live in a functional world in which everything must be as simple as possible, because every object, even every living being, fulfills a specific function. We are shaped by the idea that we must optimize the world, that human life should become more practical, that everything should work faster and faster. But I get sick on this rollercoaster.

Sisyphos, Our Old Friend

Function is misused as a sense because we can't bear the idea that our existence may have no meaning at all. I'm thinking of the myth of Sisyphos. To that man who was condemned by the gods to roll a stone up the mountain only to see it tumble down again and again, for all eternity. Sisyphos' task was pointless and therefore also functionless. What does it bring him in the end? That's right: Nothing. And yet he did it out of defiance of the gods. He did not want to give them the satisfaction of his defeat, so he carried on, even without a goal and without profit. I am also thinking of Albert Camus, who regarded this myth as an image of human existence: Life is pointless and yet we continue to live simply because we can. We dance on the grave of meaning, not because we believe, but because it makes us happy. Today's technical world acts as if it doesn't know Camus or Sisyphos, and who knows, maybe it really doesn't know them both. She is too determined to make progress. To be dogged to create the greatest invention of the century. And for what? That's right, for an alleged sense. But that sense doesn't exist, and to say otherwise would be a lie.

Technology as a Religion of Progress

Nietzsche once warned against nihilism that would destroy the will of man. But his fear was only a fraction of what really happened: People have not only grown tired, they are living a lie. Technology, and the quest for the meaning it promises, is the new god.

Resistance of Modern Barbarians

In this world, which needs everything, numbers, speed, goals, and doesn't know why, there are bodies that are too soft, souls that dream too slowly and goals that are nothing more than images above the clouds. Perhaps it is they, the resistant, who want to overthrow nihilism, even though it has already happened a long time ago. They recognize the level of difficulty of the task, but they are ready to bring back the human, the wild and the dreamy with their ideas. I call them the modern-day barbarians.

Marginal Figures of the System

The modern barbarians are being cast out. Because the technical world, which has long been plagued by nihilism like an epidemic, has become comfortable and no one wants to give it up. Disturb the barbarians. They remember. They question. So you push them to the sidelines because they are outnumbered. They are called “crazy,” “disturbed,” “sick in the head.” And once again, there is a reversal of values, as Nietzsche once foresaw, an involuntary prophet. The barbarians are the image of the superman: those who have understood what is at stake, what really counts, and who are not afraid of senselessness. The rest though? They're slaves. Slaves who blindly let themselves be driven by a pseudo-sense. They are actually weak, but technology makes them strong. The technology, this pseudo-functionality, acts like weapons in a video game, and the slaves are nothing but characters. Avatars with name tag It is only there in their illusory world that they are strong. Only there, together, as an alliance of the poor. They would never call themselves poor, no, because everything in their world is meaningful: They believe they exist because of the Big Bang, because chance wanted them to. They go to work in the morning because they want to “make a difference.” They buy stocks because wealth is the goal. But the truth they can't hear or don't want to hear is this: It's all a big lie. There has never been any sense. But who would believe the barbarians? They don't fit into the system. They're just a nuisance. They're sick in their heads anyway. And in the race for functionality, there is no space reserved for them.

Usefulness as a Compulsion

Anyone who doesn't want to get up in the morning is depressed. Anyone who shows no ambition is considered to be in need of treatment. Anyone who is too quiet or too sensitive is wrong and doesn't fit in. The world is never questioned, but only the person who breaks down because of it. But it doesn't say “Why does it break?” , but: “That's why it shouldn't break.” And the barbarian with a diagnosis is already sitting in a too bright room and wondering why his eyes are burning.

Because anything that could stop the progress of technology, anything that could pose a threat to robotized humans, is locked up. The goal is not healing, not restoring well-being, but an emergency solution: The barbarians should become functional. Usable and adaptable. This creates a compulsory norm in which individuality and humanity have no place anymore. In the end, it is not whether a person is doing better that counts, but only that things continue.

Simulation, Illusory World and the Hunger for Authenticity

The world hasn't been real for a long time, it's efficient. And that's enough for most people. But not the barbarians. They see that man has lost meaning, and yet the barbarians continue to search for it. All you offer them in return are clicks and devices. All the avatars have long since forgotten that they are living in a simulation, because it is convenient and there are rewards for taking part. Just as God once promised paradise. The barbarians see that the world is burning and that they urgently need help. But their hands are tied and Bluetooth is offered to them as a consolation. It's all gone.

The Last Rebellion

“It's all gone,” I whisper to myself and look at the figure in the mirror. She looks a lot like me, but her eyes are tired and her soul seems empty. I too am starting to get tired, because being a barbarian is exhausting. There are days when I just want to be a part of it. I want to get up in the morning and fit into the system. I see the uniform hanging over my chair and imagine what it would be like to smile when they expect it. I wish my thoughts were simpler, but I can't turn them off and I don't want to because I still believe in the wild. I believe in the dream clouds that I've created myself, with my own values, with my own purpose. Not because I can't stand the senselessness, but because I have the strength to create something, just like Sisyphos. “Where are the barbarians?” Friedrich Nietzsche asked. He doesn't hear my answer anymore, but I say it out: “I'm here.” My legs aren't so tired that they won't support me anymore, and I still have enough strength in my arms to hold my dreams. I have nothing to offer the world, not really; but I'm not giving up. And maybe that's my last form of rebellion: not to shut up. Because even if I lose, I'm a barbarian. And I write that with pride.

Giulia Romina Itin was born near Lucerne in 2007 and is currently studying philosophy and history at the University of Basel. In her texts, she deals with existential and socio-critical questions: meaning and senselessness, rebellion, identity, the dreamy, and resistance to the preformed. Her thinking is shaped primarily by Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Camus, whose perspectives on freedom, revolt and absurdity sharpen their attention to the fractures of the present day. In addition to studying, Giulia writes poetry and prose so as not to fall silent in a meaningless world. For them, writing means continuing to ask questions where others are silent.

The article image is by the author. She writes: “I photographed it myself in January 2025, somewhere between Madeira and Tenerife on the open sea. I chose this picture because it has the same atmosphere as my text: heavy clouds, light breaks and a sky that threatens and dreams at the same time. These clouds remind me of the 'dream clouds' I'm talking about in the text. The one I created for myself in spite of a world that has lost meaning. The photo shows a reality that is dark but not hopeless, and it is precisely from this motivation that my text exists.”

Meaning Has Fallen, But I'm Still Dreaming

This essay opposes the emptiness of a world that has lost its meaning in favor of function. With Nietzsche, Camus and the shadow of Sisyphos behind me, I search for the wild, for the dreamy, for those who do not submit and refuse to remain silent. I'm writing about modern barbarians: about people who see nothing and yet continue to breathe, keep screaming, keep dreaming. This text is my hymn to defiance, to the unformed, to the courage not to fear senselessness. Because even without meaning, I won't be silent. Not now, not in this world. And there is no other.

The essay was written as an answer to the price question of this year's Kingfisher Prize (link). We did not award him, but still publish it as an important contribution to the topic of the “new barbarians” due to its extraordinary literary quality. If you'd rather listen to it, you'll also find it read by Caroline Will on the Halcyonic Association for Radical Philosophy's YouTube channel (link) or on Soundcloud (link).

I. Nietzsche’s Historical Islam?

Our famously philosophizing rambler was mainly ignorant, creatively rather than stupefyingly so, of the historiographical argument voiced in Part One: the new religion spread in the first centuries following the Revelation to Mohammed primarily through speaking to new adherents, rather than coercing them. Instead, Nietzsche read Julius Wellhausen, historian of ancient religions, and provider of perhaps the most comprehensive histories of early Islam available in German in this period. Besides the author’s account of pre-Islamic culture in the Arabic world, published 1887, in which the author depicts Islam ‘as the culmination of the religious development of Arabic heathendom’, Nietzsche also devoured Wellhausen’s singular and furore-generating histories of ancient Judaism, prior to penning The Antichrist, which has also be translated as The Anti-Christian, in 1888.¹ Wellhausen’s were only some of the flurry of ‘orientalist’ and Islam-focussed texts appearing in German, or in German translation, from the 1860s, which Nietzsche couldn’t get enough of. These included Gifford Palgrave’s Journeys Through Arabia, and several works by the era’s star orientalist, Max Müller. Nietzsche had read and excerpted Max Müller’s Essays on eastern religions in 1870-1871, finding confirmation that at least a ‘part of the Buddhist canon’ should be considered ‘nihilist’.² Much points towards Müller’s writings on Indian philosophy as an entry point for Nietzsche’s later obsession with what he calls The Legal Code of Manu, and with what Indologists call the Manusmṛti — a metrical, Sanskrit text, written between 200 BCE-200 CE.³ From this base, Nietzsche’s immediate guide to the Code of Manu was what modern scholar Andreas Urs Sommer decrees a ‘highly dubious source’ in religious science terms, Louis Jacolliot’s 1876 book Les législateurs religieux. Manou. Moïse. Mahomet.⁴ Inspired by Jacolliot’s polemical juxtaposition of Manu with the Prophet, Nietzsche sought to bind Manu and Islam together, in a dense fragment from spring 1888, spaced carefully on the page but only published posthumously, which attempts a meta-philosophy of ‘Aryan’ and ‘Semitic’ religion:

What a yea-saying Aryan religion, spawned by the ruling classes, looks like:

Manu’s lawbook .

What a yea-saying Semitic religion, spawned by the ruling classes, looks like:

Muhammed’s lawbook. The Old Testament, in its older parts

What a nay-saying Semitic religion, spawned by the oppressed classes, looks like:

according to Indian-Aryan concepts: The New Testament  —  a Chandala religion

What a nay-saying Aryan religion, which has grown under the ruling estates, looks like

: Buddhism.⁵

Bizarrely, fantastically, some progressive Muslims are now turning to Nietzsche’s conception of Islam as a religion created by an exceptional (late ‘heathen’, Arabian, Medina-based) ruling class, which showed much metaphorical spunk. They view this as a pluralistic bastion against a singularizing, revivalist tendency among their co-religionists. The latter readily say ‘no  —  Islam was and is and can never be this way’; thus shutting down the conversation on how it could still serve as a life-affirming, modern religion. Nietzsche integrates his sketch linking Manu’s and Muhammed’s ‘law books’ into his best-known position on Islam, chapter 60 of The Anti-Christian. Ready for print by November 1888, the severe and permanent breakdown in Nietzsche’s mental health in January 1889 meant that the book didn’t appear until 1894, edited by his sister, and in a doctored form. Following the appearance of Colli and Montinari’s authoritative edition from the 1960s on, we can now be sure what Nietzsche wanted to say about the youngest major monotheism. Sounding like the rant a brilliant orator might deliver from Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, Nietzsche pounds Christianity with a barrage of heavy, insulting charges and praises Islam for how it manifested in ‘Moorish’ culture:

Christianity has conned us out of the harvest of the culture of antiquity and later it conned us out of the harvest of Islamic culture. The wonderful, Moorish culture world of Spain, fundamentally more familiar to us and speaking to our senses and taste more than Rome and Greece do, was trodden into the ground —  I won’t say by what kind of feet — and why? Because it had noble instincts, men’s instincts to thank for its emergence, because it said yes to life, even through the rare and refined delicacies of Moorish life.

Condemning the Crusades that decimated this lifeworld, and the German nobility for their part in the Crusaders’ plundering, our orator suggests causes for this cultural degenerateness, and enjoins the reader to take sides in this culture clash:

Christianity, alcohol  —  the two large means of corruption … Per se, a choice shouldn’t even exist concerning Islam and Christianity, just as little as a choice should exist between an Arab and a Jew.⁶ The decision is given, no one is free to still choose something in this case. Either one is a Chandala or one is not … “War with Rome down to the knife! Peace, friendship with Islam!” —  this is how that great free spirit Frederick II [1194-1259 CE], the genius amongst the German Kaisers, experienced and acted [in the situation] .⁷

Dividing all historical agents into either ‘Chandala’ or ‘the noble-minded [die Vornehmen]’ is a specifically 1888 move in Nietzsche’s philosophy. He appropriates the former term from Hinduism, where it means a member of the lowest caste (and specifically those who dispose of corpses), and makes it stand for ‘the lower [classes of the] people, the outcasts, and “sinners”’ the world over.⁸ Insisting that those who participated in Islam’s beginnings and enabled it to flourish are not Chandala is Nietzsche’s way of separating Islam categorically from latter-day, decadent Christianity. This taking-of-sides is picked up by Roy Jackson, author of seemingly the only full study on the subject in recent years, who maintains that ‘Islam can learn a good deal from Nietzsche’s critique of the “dead God” of Christianity’.⁹ By contending that Nietzsche doesn’t disown religious lives as such, but rather merely life-denying forms of the religious impulse, Jackson can set out the ‘two most fundamental options’ Islam is facing, either

to follow the same trajectory of Christianity in Europe and turning [sic.] its God into the ‘dead God’ that Nietzsche is so critical of, or to learn from Nietzsche’s religiosity and embrace a ‘living God’ that does not perceive secularisation as an enemy.¹⁰

Jackson’s intellectual manoeuvrings are hardly watertight. As Peter Groff reminds us, although Nietzsche’s modes and means of thinking are so radical that they go beyond atheism, this going beyond does not constitute a return to theism.¹¹ But what matters here is not whether all the substrata of Jackson’s argument convince — they don’t; and Nietzsche’s own picture of a ‘yes-saying’ religion fits poorly to the religiosity on Pollockshields’ streets today — but rather the political and cultural battles, inter-Islam, that motivate Jackson to turn to Nietzsche in the first place. These are battles about the right way to re-encounter the religion’s ‘“key paradigms”: the Qur’an, the Prophet Muhammad, the city-state of Medina, and the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs [632-661 CE]’.¹² For Jackson and his camp, this re-encounter must be ‘critical-historical’, so that believers can excavate honestly what Islam has been and could become, in semi-secular modernity. Groff and Jackson pit this approach against the way recent revivalist (Islamist) thinkers like Mawlana Mawdudi (1903-79 C.E.) have, transhistorically, refused to re-encounter these same paradigms, insisting instead that they are beyond critique, ‘pristine and all-encompassing’.¹³

Above all Jackson turns to Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, not wanting to rid philosophical discourse of ‘the soul’ itself, but to redefine it as ‘mortal’, ‘as the multiplicity of the subject’, as a ‘societal construction of drives and affects’.¹⁴ This empowers Jackson to be multiple, and refusing of unilateralist accounts, in considering the souls who built the religious life and society of the ‘key paradigms’ period. Soon we arrive at a place utterly other to the mental maps most non-Muslims have of it: the first Islamic city-state was, on Jackson’s reading, ‘profoundly pluralistic’, recognised that ‘the secular and the religious’ should be separate realms, and was enlivened by the Prophet: less ‘a religio-political ruler (as assumed by contemporary revivalists), but rather a “charismatic arbiter of disputes”’.¹⁵

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II. Souls and ‘Muslimness’ in Pierre Klossowski’s Maddening Art  

Timothy Winter’s creating an Islamic take on Nietzsche builds on Pierre Klossowski’s reading of the same, and follows the trail of coded and yet decodable traces of Muslimness the French artist left behind him. These coagulate to a maximum density in The Baphomet, a 1965 novel that won the cachet-granting Prix des Critiques, but which has infuriated many readers and other critics since. The book is so weird that after lobbing it hard against a wall, its fascination may still exert itself, and have you picking up its scattered pages, and beginning reading it again. Not for nothing does Klossowski choose to locate the novel amongst a historical community that reactionary Catholic but also influential conspiracist voices have, over the centuries, recurringly suggested was Islamophile or even crypto-Islamic: the Knights Templar.¹⁶ The author throws such hints at the readers’ feet, then waits to see how they will react. Introducing Nietzsche as a character, and conflating him deliberately with the Islamophile Friedrich II is another bait Klossowski is setting up for us. The benefit of this book, and of Winter’s hermeneutic riff off it, is that spending time with these can shake up omnipresent rationalist prejudices against Islam. Klossowski’s aesthetics enact that which Islamic Studies scholar Thomas Bauer calls ‘constitutive of Sunnism’, namely ‘the process of making ambiguous’.¹⁷    

Through the prologue, set in 1307 in a Knights Templar Order, immediately before the violent accusations of heresy and the crackdown on that organisation unleashed by King Philip IV of France, Klossowski just about maintains narrative tension. The plot’s far-fetched, but at least there is one. Valentine de Saint-Vit, Lady of Palençay, who has lost land by feudal order to the Templars, has been tipped off about King Philip’s plans, and decides to send her gorgeous fourteen-year old nephew, Ogier de Beauséant, into the Brothers at the Commandery. She hopes they’ll fall sexually for his charms so that she’ll get the evidence of ‘heresy’ she needs to discredit the ‘soldier-monks’ and thus get her land back. The sex, coats of mail and flagellation ‘games’ that ensue are no games for the graphically abused Ogier, whose inner voice we’re denied access to: our perspective on the action is that of the entitled and pederastic men. When this narrative culminates in the ritualistic killing of Ogier, who is stripped naked and hung, and left dangling from a rope, ‘in the void’ above the costumed knights, you’re left feeling that you’ve witnessed something that you shouldn’t have. It’s like reading a well-written report on a well-directed snuff movie.

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That which Klossowski thinks justifies such a presentation only emerges slowly from the conversations between the ‘breaths’, or disembodied souls in Christian parlance, who debate one another in the novel’s main section. These breaths were, on death, ‘exhaled from the bodies that had contained them in life’, in the novel’s case from Ogier’s, and from many other bodies associated with the Templar Order, until the time when they will be ‘inhaled’ again, into new bodies, although not necessarily as new souls: with sometimes several entering a single human. Or will remain guarded for countless centuries, until ‘the Last Judgment and the Resurrection of the flesh’, which this theology states will allow them to rejoin their original bodies.¹⁸  

Here we’ve left historical time, and indeed quotidian causality, and have entered what Winter, citing Louis Massignon (1883-1962 CE), might call ‘Islamic time […] a “milky way of instants”’.¹⁹ We could also term the dimension in which Klossowski locates the heart of the novel suprahistorical rather than transhistorical: it doesn’t deny linear, historical time, and the reality of what plays out there, but nor is it subordinate to this form of revelation. Klossowski choosing this cosmic time frame is providing a novelistic answer to Nietzsche’s take on the philosophy of souls. He articulates what he wants his book to enact in a letter to Jean Decottignies, subsequently reprinted as an appendix in the English edition of The Baphomet. Typically oblique, and in the tone of a guy who has important things to say but is refusing to say them, Klossowski nonetheless let’s slip clues about his theological preoccupations:

The Baphomet (gnosis or fable, or Oriental tale), should in no way be seen as a demonstration of the substratum of truth in the semblance of doctrine that is Nietzsche’s Eternal Return, nor as a fiction constructed on this personal experience of Nietzsche. On the other hand, my book purports to take into consideration the theological consequences thereof [i.e., of the Eternal Return] (i.e., a soul’s travels through different identities), as these coincide with the metempsychosis of Carpocrates [founder of a Gnostic sect, early 2^nd century C.E.]²⁰

Nietzsche establishment scholars today have mostly little truck with associations linking the Eternal Return with metempsychosis, or reincarnation as we would call it – if we talk about it at all. You do not, however, have to sign up to believing in reincarnation to question the over-determination, in the philosophy of souls, which still obsesses about the mortality question, and particularly about moments of death. Seen Islamically, these are no more than fleeting sparks, in a supernovic infinity of instants. If the soul is, qua Nietzsche, the subject’s multiplicity, i.e., if that subject is always a plurality and never a unity, why should the notion of a single soul in a single body make more rational sense than several souls inhabiting the same? If, as Nietzsche argues in Daybreak §109, none of us possess an impartial ‘intellect’ or sovereign soul, which can govern the conflicts we experience between our drives – if, on the contrary, this intellect is no more than ‘the blind tool of a different drive, a rival to that other drive, which is tormenting us with its vehemence’²¹ – then, and hypothesising that we could have chatted live to Nietzsche over tripe in the 1880s, why should we valorise the phantasm of the unified soul we would have then experienced over the plurality of his ideas, lyrically his souls, which have taken on multiple new lives since the cessation of his physical heart on 25 August 1900?

Klossowski gets his nose into this same material, but with more humour, by smuggling Nietzsche as a character into Baphomet. We encounter him in chapter VIII when we learn that he has incarnated ‘in the guise of an anteater’²² – yes, you heard – and under the name of Frederick the Antichrist, in the circle led by the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay (c.1240-1314 CE). Burnt at the stake in historical time after dozens of Templars had already been executed in the crushing of the order, the novel has ‘the Grand Master’ continuing to direct his knights in this in-between life, in what feels like an interminable waiting room. He has been tasked by the ‘Thrones and Dominions’, two orders or classes of angels, with guarding the souls of his murdered knights until the rightful Resurrection of the flesh at the Last Judgement; but pressures on Molay / the Master mean that his policing of this divine plan is hardly strict. One such pressure is this anteater. The Grand Master confuses the anteater Nietzsche with the aforementioned Friedrich II, and is not easily persuaded to give up his confusion: ‘What have I to do with Frederick? Hohenstaufen, no doubt? The Antichrist . . . an anteater?’²³ Knowing that Friedrich II von Hohenstaufen had been decried by the papacy as ‘the anti-Christ’ for challenging its theocratic dominion was a further reason for Nietzsche selecting this title for the last work he wrote during his sane life. The German title, Der Antichrist translates just as relevantly as The Anti-Christian, and being anti everyday modern Christians is indeed the work’s core. Nietzsche also enjoyed the title’s ambiguity, allowing him to pose as the devil incarnate.  

The devilish Nietzsche turns comical when we don’t just hear about him but first see him in Baphomet, ridden by none other than the murdered Ogier, who has disappeared for a long while, and astonishes with this stylish re-entry:

The group of guards disperse this crowd and form a barrier, while Ogier, mounted on a furry monster that he guides with a chain, slowly advances through the rows of tables; there is not a single guest that does not detain him at each step to examine as closely as possible the animal whose diminutive head and long muzzle obstinately sliding along the flagstones contrast with the enormous body and paws armed with long claws.²⁴

Klossowski’s procession triggers several associations at once. It’s hard not to think of the tragi-comic photo of Nietzsche harnessed up beside Paul Rée, to pull the cart of the whip-wielding Lou Salomé. But it’s hard to also not think that this is a Dionysian inversion of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem mounted on a donkey: both scenes contain the deliberately ridiculous; both contain the ridiculed and the humiliated shedding their humiliation and their ridicule in acts of improbable overcoming. Beyond such obvious associations, we could consider Winter’s mode of interpretation: commensurate with Klossowski’s ‘ambiguous’ conversion to Islam, Winter suggests we can decode ‘Muslimness’, as opposed to Islam explicitly, ‘as a theme in his [Klossowski’s] later writings’.²⁵ Reading the ‘furry monster’ scene this way, both Ogier, through what he has endured, and Nietzsche himself, in the form of the utterly othered anteater, are ‘the excluded’ who harbour a ‘just claim’. Again Winter returns to the polymathic and ecumenical Catholic Louis Massignon to describe Islam as the religion of that claim:

Islam is a great mystery of the divine will, the just claim [revendication] of the excluded, those exiled to the desert with their ancestor Ishmael, against the “privileged ones” of God, Jews and above all Christians who have abused the divine privileges of Grace.²⁶

It’s possible to reject wholeheartedly Massignon and Winter’s claims about what Islam is, and to refute that Klossowski’s novel has anything to do with Muslimness, and yet still remain engrossed in the philosophical material that these debates are based on. Can Nietzsche’s unpublished note about ‘the eternal return of the same’ written in the Swiss Alps in August 1881, itself enduringly ambiguous and a catalyst for all of Klossowski’s responses to Nietzsche, really be dismissed as merely a no-nonsense ‘thought experiment’? No spiritual revelation, no epiphanic moment, nothing to see here, move along please, move along? Carefully laid out on the paper, headed ‘Draft.’, and annotated with the remark ‘6000 feet above sea level and much higher above all human things! –’, the note has certainly encouraged religiously-minded readers of Nietzsche to propagate their worldviews from within Nietzsche’s own work.²⁷ According to Klossowski, the 1881 note is not a draft of an embryonic theory, but rather the description of a lived experience:²⁸

                                                 The Return of the Same.

                                                               Draft.

1. The incarnation of the foundational errors.

2. The incarnation of the passions.

3. The incarnation²⁹ of knowledge and of the knowledge that destroys. (Passion of Cognizing)

4. The innocent one. The individual as experiment. The relieving of life, humiliation, weakening – transition.

5. The new heavyweight: the eternal return of the same. Infinite importance of our knowledge, errors, of our habits, ways of life for all that will come. What shall we do with the rest of our life – we, who have spent the greatest part of the same in the most essential ignorance? We shall teach the doctrine [die Lehre] – it is the strongest means of incarnating it within ourselves. Our kind of beatitude, as teacher of the greatest teaching.

                                                                                                                                         Start of August 1881 in Sils-Maria³⁰

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III. Epilogue: Walking Pollockshields with Fatima and Ishmael

As I write this article I’m conducting an online interview with a woman in her late twenties who I’m friends with and who grew up in Pollockshields. Although she, like me, enjoys going hiking and trekking, neither of us have yet tramped the alpine paths around Sils-Maria, to follow in Nietzsche’s footsteps. Leaving behind thoughts about the Eternal Return speaking to a myriad of unfulfilled wishes, whether for pakora or for Swiss hikes, I find myself back on a video call. Again.

Fatima is an engineer working in aeronautics in the south of England, who defines herself primarily as Scottish and, as a secondary attribute, as Muslim. Nonetheless she agrees to talk to me about her faith. She speaks about her less religious dad, whose greater concern has been to work hard in routine jobs to ensure that his kids get the good school and university education they have now received. She describes her more religious mum, with whom she has talked more about questions of religious observance, like the hijab her mum had wanted her to wear when she was a teenager. When Fatima made it clear she didn’t want to, neither her mum nor any other family member insisted on this dress code. As if feeling a duty to educate me on the basics, Fatima foregrounds Islam’s ‘five pillars’, which she learnt about attending Muslim ‘Sunday school’: the profession of faith, prayer, charitable giving, fasting during Ramadan, and the once in a lifetime Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. Fatima explains that she hasn’t been on the Hajj yet, but she has been on the `Umrah, or lesser pilgrimage.  

Like many other believers I speak to, theological questions are not Fatima’s big thing. From the outside, her life looks entirely secular: working hard, traveling the globe, spending time with both female and male friends, and able to play bass guitar. In this last regard, she’s unimpressed by the entreaties of the hyper-literalists. Muhammad ibn Adam al-Kawthari is a pro-caliphate cleric based in Leicester, England, who propagates a ban on both playing and listening to instruments, but this is hardly the kind of voice that Fatima is listening to.³¹ Considering such ascetic and irrationalist manifestations in Britain’s Muslim community, and experiencing Fatima as their opposite, a level-headed person who affirms life’s diversity, I ask if she can imagine anything that would make her give up her religion altogether? Pausing for an instant, she labels her childhood religious education matter-of-factly as ‘indoctrination’, and talks about how people internalise the same – that it’s nothing you can just shrug off. She doesn’t forget how Glasgow Sunnis, the grouping she belongs to, ensure that those who formally renounce their faith get the ‘right’ message: ‘you will burn forever in hell’. I don’t press Fatima on this – adults recalling the existential religious images stamped on them as children need some of this to stay private. But I get the sense that she neither believes in hellfire nor refuses to disbelieve in it entirely. Religion is bound tight to family, culture, geographical community: the things that co-define you while you become who you are. With no alternative philosophical or religious worldview on the horizon with a substance and a pull comparable to that which Islam exerts, why would individuals like Fatima risk exiling themselves from it?

Back in Glasgow in the summer, and with time to kill before my evening interview with the imam at the Dawat-E-Islami mosque on Niddrie Road, I go and wait in Queen’s Park, just to the south of Pollockshields. Under soaring church spires, groups sit on the freshly-cut grass and gear up for the weekend, drinking and smoking joints as the heat recedes. A bare-footed Glaswegian of middle-Eastern heritage is even walking around with a tamed but untethered parrot on his shoulder. I’ve never seen such a display in public. If he or his ancestors ever belonged to a ‘nay-saying religion’ he’s now saying yes to life so vigorously that you sense it could end dangerously. The North Sudanese barbers’ who I’d popped into for a trim on the way to the park were also full of patter,³² their self-professed Muslimness no barrier to treating life as a convivial and slowly-evolving party. When I get into the mosque the mood changes. Courteously, the Pakistani imam, Shafqad Mahmood, his assistant Mansoor Awais, who interprets for him when the English gets more complex, and a further elder male congregant, Haji Ahmad, have found half-an-hour or so for me at short notice, before evening prayers begin. My uneasiness is down to what I’ve read about the Dawat-E-Islami organisation in Ed Husain’s liberal Muslim critique of the current state of his religion in the UK. Translating as ‘Invitation to Islam’, the Pakistan-based group first opened mosques in the UK around 1995 and now, as the imam tells me proudly, they have three centres in the greater Glasgow area, catering for over five hundred believers weekly.³³ Husain for his part discusses the sectarian murder, in 2016, of Asad Shah, less than a mile from where we’re sitting and talking, by ‘a Dawat-e-Islami man’: albeit one from Bradford in the north of England, and not by a fellow Glaswegian.³⁴ Shah’s ‘offence’, at least in his killer’s eyes, was to be an Ahmadi, a follower of the Indian Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908 CE) who claimed to be, concurrently, a ‘renewer of the faith’, ‘the promised messiah’, and ‘the mahdi (the rightly guided one who will appear at the end times together with the messiah)’: thus kickstarting a major new religious movement that is rejected uniformly by orthodox Muslims.³⁵ As Husain had already interviewed a previous imam at the Queen’s Park mosque about Dawat-e-Islami and the 2016 murder, and had gotten evasive answers, I restrict myself to asking about the mosque’s attitudes to Shi’a, the Ahmadiya Muslim community, and other Muslim denominations. My overly orthodox question harvests a no-frills answer: ‘the Ahmadiya are not Muslims’. Surprisingly, Haji Ahmad adds that ‘we have Shi’a who come to pray here every week. Ahmadiya could even come and pray here if they wanted. If they didn’t say anything.’

Meant generously, the message is clear: mosque leaders tolerate non-standard beliefs only to the extent they remain utterly private. This strategy for ensuing conformity fits with what my question on the mosque’s attitude ‘to homosexual Muslims or to trans people?’ evinces: ‘We don’t accept them. But we wouldn’t say anything [if they came to pray at the mosque].’ I have to think of the story Fatima told me about a lesbian Muslim friend of hers trying to come out to her mother, and the friend’s mother being unable to embrace or support this reality. Hearing the story, you think the friend’s mother must have known long before about her daughter’s relationships – and tolerated them, as long as they remained hushed up.

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No one is keeping quiet at the queer bookshop, Category is Books, just up the road from the Dawat-E-Islami mosque and religious school. Sadly I arrive outside opening hours, but the shop window is shouting out winning slogans to passers-by: ‘encourage lesbianism’, ‘better gay than grumpy’, ‘freedom of movement for all!’ and, in huge letters, the potentially game-changing ‘GET OFF THE INTERNET. DESTROY THE RIGHT WING.’ You’ll be forgiven for thinking that there is no dialogue between this shop’s community and that of the mosque. But the cause that has and will continue to generate dialogue arises when I ask the mosque’s leaders about the recipients of the organisation’s formal charitable status: ‘Over the last two years we’ve been funding aid deliveries via airplane into Gaza and the West Bank, food, water, and clothes, also looking after the orphans, no matter if the people there are Muslims, Christians or whatever.’ As the major British news platform The Canary reported recently, the group ‘No Pride in Genocide’ (Glasgow branch), ‘a broad coalition of LGBTQ+ Glaswegians’ demand of those running the city’s annual Pride march that they reject what Canary journalists call ‘companies directly profiting from Israel’s illegal occupation and ongoing genocide in Palestine.’³⁶ If these concerns seem worlds removed from Nietzsche’s philosophical and Klossowski’s artistic hunches regarding Islam, we should turn to Judith Butler, surely the most widely-read philosopher of queerness of their generation,  to see connections from them back to philosophy. Fighting back against Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14168 from January 2025, whose title makes its targets clear – ‘Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government’ – Butler joins up the dots on the common cause that trans people, Muslims, and other people of migrant heritage can find and are finding, in today’s polarised societies. Moreover, they [Butler] hone in on that group of trans people most vilified by the far Right: ‘people assigned male at birth who seek to transition [to a female or other gender identity]’.³⁷ They point out that ‘presumption[s]’ about such men held by an increased number in society are unevidenced, and that the great majority of such men transition because ‘they hope for a more livable life’. Topping this, Butler argues that there is no philosophical justification for taking the ‘few recorded instances’ in which men have transitioned to ‘seek entry into women’s spaces in order, it is presumed, to harm the women there’ as a general ‘model for transition’. Extrapolating from here, and writing in the ‘first-person we’, Butler concludes:

We do not point to the nefarious actions of particular Jews or Muslims and conclude that all Jews or Muslims act in that way. No, we refuse to generalise on that basis, and we suspect that those who do so generalise are using the particular examples to ratify and amplify a form of hatred they already feel.³⁸

Was Nietzsche being nefarious and intending harm by calling Islam ‘a yea-saying Semitic religion, spawned by the ruling classes’, then cementing this prejudice in favour of Islam over both Christianity and Judaism in print? – ‘Either one is a Chandala or one isn’t.’ If so, the remedy for such damage could be found in his more circumspect, more moderate and more ambiguously artistic successors. Whether you’ll find such successors on the streets of Glasgow’s Southside or in great artists, and latter-day Muslims, like Pierre Klossowski, will depend on the kind of cultural or religious home you’re looking for.

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All pictures are photographs taken by the author. The title image shows a stone-mason’s yard on the edge of Pollockshields, offering bilingual gravestones for the district’s Muslim residents.

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Bibliography

Albany, HRH Prince Michael of and Walid Amine Salhab, The Knights Templar of the Middle East: The Hidden History of the Islamic Origins of Freemasonry. Weiser Books: 2006.

Almond, Ian: ‘Nietzsche’s Peace with Islam: My Enemy’s Enemy is my Friend’, German Life and Letters 56, no. 1 (2003), 43-55.

Balthus (Count Balthazar Klossowski de Rola Balthus): Balthus in his Own Words: A Conversation with Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz. Assouline: 2002.

Balzani, Marzia, Ahmadiyya Islam and the Muslim Diaspora: Living at the End of Days. Routledge: 2020.

Barber, Malcolm: The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple. Cambridge University Press: 1994.

Bauer, Thomas: A Culture of Ambiguity: An Alternative History of Islam. Translated by Hinrich Biesterfeldt and Tricia Tunstall. Columbia University Press: 2021.

Butler, Judith: ‘This is Wrong: Judith Butler on Executive Order 14168’, London Review of Books, 3 April 2025, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n06/judith-butler/this-is-wrong, unnumbered.

Canary Journalists, The: ‘Glasgow Pride was just exposed as being complicit in Israel’s genocide’ in The Canary, 20 July 2025, unpaginated, https://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2025/07/20/glasgow-pride-2025/.

Editors, various: Dictionaries of the Scots Language Online: 2025.  

Groff, Peter: ‘Nietzsche and Islam’ [review of Nietzsche and Islam, by Roy Jackson], Philosophy East & West Volume 60, Number 3, July 2010, 430-437.

Husain, Ed: Among the Mosques: A Journey Around Muslim Britain. Bloomsbury: 2021.

Jackson, Roy: Nietzsche and Islam. Routledge: 2007.

Klossowski, Pierre: The Baphomet, translated by Sophie Hawkes and Stephen Sartarelli, with introductions by Juan Garcia Ponce and Michel Foucault. Eridanos Press: 1988.

Krokus, Christian: The Theology of Louis Massignon: Islam, Christ and the Church. Catholic University of America Press: 2017.

Newcomb, Tim (Translator and Editor of): Friedrich Nietzsche, Anti-Christian: The Curse of Christianity. Livraria Press: 2024.

Orsucci, Andrea. Orient-Okzident: Nietzsches Versuch einer Loslösung vom europäischen Weltbild. De Gruyter: 2011.

Smith Daniel: ‘Translator’s Preface’ in Pierre Klossowski, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, translated by Daniel Smith. University of Chicago Press: 1997, vii-xiii.

Sommer, Andreas Urs Sommer, Kommentar zu Nietzsches Der Antichrist, Ecce homo, Dionysos-Dithyramben, Nietzsche contra Wagner. De Gruyter: 2013.

Winter, Timothy: ‘Klossowski’s Reading of Nietzsche From an Islamic Viewpoint’, [Unpublished manuscript, shared by Winter with Henry Holland in October 2025, with a text similar but not identical to Winter’s lecture recorded for YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC8YJfyOkOY], (2025).

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Footnotes

1: Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums (1887), cited from Andreas Urs Sommer, Kommentar zu Nietzsches Der Antichrist, Ecce homo, Dionysos-Dithyramben, Nietzsche contra Wagner, 294-295. Sommer confirms Nietzsche was reading this work by Wellhausen in this period; see Sommer’s ‘Personenregister’, ibid., 920, for comprehensive references on Nietzsche’s reading of Wellhausen. Most translators continue to the follow the translation tradition established by Walter Kaufmann and others, and title their English works The Antichrist. Yet Tim Newcomb, author of one of the few translations to opt for The Anti-Christian as its title, is right to point out that Nietzsche’s primary target was Christians of his own age. Because ‘ein Christ’ translates as ‘a Christian’, deciding for the alternative title of The Anti-Christian is legitimate. Cf. Tim Newcomb, ‘Afterword’ in Friedrich Nietzsche, Anti-Christian: The Curse of Christianity.

2: Sommer, Kommentar zu Nietzsches Der Antichrist, 110.

3: All references to Manu / the Law Book of Manu in Nietzsche’s work, and to the related concept of Chandala, date to 1888. A letter to Heinrich Köselitz on 31 May 1888 (link) suggests he has just discovered this work: ‘I thank these last weeks for an essential lesson: I found the Legal Code of Manu in a French translation [presumably Louis Jacolliot’s], which was made in India under the precise control of the highest-ranked priests and scholars. This [is an] absolutely Aryan product, a priestly codex of morality on the foundation of the Vedas, the notion of castes, and ancient ancestry’. (Emphasis in the original.) This and the other translations from Nietzsche’s writings in this essay are the author’s own. For more on orientalist texts read by Nietzsche, cf. Ian Almond, ‘Nietzsche's Peace with Islam’, 43; and indeed for sufficient context, the whole text of: Andrea Orsucci, Orient-Okzident: Nietzsches Versuch einer Loslösung vom europaischen Weltbild.  

4: Sommer, Kommentar zu Nietzsches Der Antichrist, 9 and 265.

5: Nachgelassene Fragmente 1888 14[95].

6: As Andreas Urs Sommer demonstrates, Nietzsche only inserted this cheap, anti-Semitic jibe into the final draft of this text: Sommer suggests this is Nietzsche playing to popular anti-Semitic sentiments among his potential readers. Cf. Sommer, Kommentar zu Nietzsches Der Antichrist, 298.

7: The Anti-Christian, § 60. There has been much recent scholarship on Friedrich II’s fondness for and proximity to Islam. On Nietzsche’s sources for the same subject, see Sommer, Kommentar zu Nietzsches Der Antichrist, 298-299, which also highlights the role played by August Müller’s writings on Friedrich II in Nietzsche’s reading. Müller recounts ‘as common knowledge […] how he [Friedrich II] took the most lively interest in the Arabs’ language and literature, pursued logic with his Muslim court philosophers, and even became half or even a whole heathen [i.e., a Muslim] himself, thus scandalising all pious people’. (Cited from Sommer, Kommentar zu Nietzsches Der Antichrist, 298.)

8: The Anti-Christian, § 27.

9: Summary of the position argued by Jackson as given by: Peter Groff, ‘Nietzsche and Islam’, 431.

10: Roy Jackson, Nietzsche and Islam, e-book-location: chapter 1, location 7.51.

11: Groff, 435. Groff considers The Joyous Science, §346 as one of Nietzsche’s clearest statements about ‘going beyond atheism’. Here Nietzsche writes: ‘If we wanted simply to name ourselves with an older expression like godless or unbelievers or even immoralists, we would still believe ourselves to be far from described by such epithets’.

12: Groff, 430.

13: Cf. ibid. 431; and Jackson, Nietzsche, chapter 2, 8.46-8.50.

14: Beyond Good and Evil, § 12.

15: Summary of Jackson’s argument given in Groff, ‘Nietzsche and Islam’, 432.

16: For a well-researched historical summary of such viewpoints, see Malcom Barber, The New Knighthood, 321. For an Islamophile account of the same history that is open to conspiracist thinking, see  HRH Prince Michael of Albany and Walid Amine Salhab, The Knights Templar of the Middle East: The Hidden History of the Islamic Origins of Freemasonry, x-xi and 22-23.

17: Thomas Bauer, A Culture of Ambiguity: An Alternative History of Islam, 11, cited from Timothy Winter’s unpublished manuscript ‘Klossowski’s reading of Nietzsche from an Islamic viewpoint’, 1, which Winter generously shared with me in October 2025. I thank Winter heartily for his colleaguiality in sharing this book in progress with me at this stage. The text of Winter’s manuscript is mostly identical to his aforementioned YouTube lecture, but includes some minor changes.

18: Klossowski, The Baphomet, xv.

19: Winter, unpublished manuscript ‘Klossowski’s reading of Nietzsche from an Islamic viewpoint’, 8.

20: Pierre Klossowski, ‘Notes and Explanations’ in The Baphomet, 166-167.

21: Daybreak, § 109.

22: Italics my own. Klossowski, Baphomet, 111.

23: Ibid., 112.

24: Ibid., 125.

25: Winter, ‘Klossowski’s reading’, 10. Klossowski’s conversion is ambiguous in the sense that is recorded in a single, terse passage by his younger brother, Balthus: ‘My brother, Pierre, became a Dominican monk when he was young. Then, a lot later, he converted to Islam.’ Cited in: Balthus (Count Balthazar Klossowski de Rola Balthus), Balthus in his Own Words, 11. There is no reason to question Balthus’s account just because it’s terse: we could instead conclude that Klossowski’s Muslimness was a mostly private affair. Relevantly, this is not the only conversion in Klossowski’s life that Balthus describes: ‘[Adam-Maxwell Reweski] left my brother and me a sum of money that we could use for our education if we became Catholics. And we did convert to Catholicism, whereas my father was a Protestant.’ Ibid., 5.

26: Christian Krokus, The Theology of Louis Massignon, 175; cited in Winter, ‘Klossowski’s Reading of Nietzsche’, 11.

27: Nachgelassene Fragmente 1881 11[141].

28: See for example, the paper ‘entitled “Forgetting and Anamnesis in the Lived Experience of the Eternal Return of the Same”, which Klossowski presented at the famous Royaumont conference on Nietzsche in July 1964’, as described in Daniel Smith, ‘Translator’s Preface’, viii.

29: While the noun Einverleibung used in points 1 to 3 of this note could also be translated as ‘embodiment’ or even, more weakly and figuratively, as ‘incorporation’, disputing ‘incarnation’ as one valid translation makes no etymological sense. ‘Incarnation’ derives the from Late Latin incarnationem (nominative incarnatio), ‘act of being made flesh’ or entering into a body, while ‘embodiment’ in English also refers back primarily to the ‘embodiment of God in the person of Christ’, i.e., to the Old French incarnacion ‘the Incarnation’ (12^th century C.E.). ‘Einverleibung’ in German carries strong Christian connotations, of which Nietzsche was evidently aware, just as ‘incarnation’ does in English.

30: Nachgelassene Fragmente 1881 11[141].

31: Al-Kawthari cited from Ed Husain, Among the Mosques, chapter 1.

32: Scottish English, patter: ‘A person’s line in conversation. This can mean ordinary chatting, as in “Sit doon an gie’s aw yer patter”; it can also mean talk intended to amuse or impress, as in “He’s got some patter that pal a yours”’. Cited from the Dictionaries of the Scots Language, https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/sndns2837.

33: Dawat-e-Islami is estimated to own and run around forty properties in the UK as a whole.

34: For details of Shah’s murder and the theological role played by Dawat-e-Islami in it, see: Ed Husain, Among the Mosques, in the Glasgow section of chapter 8, ‘Edinburgh and Glasgow’.

35: Marzia Balzani, Ahmadiyya Islam and the Muslim Diaspora, 2.

36: The Canary Journalists, ‘Glasgow Pride was just exposed as being complicit in Israel’s genocide’ 20 July 2025, unpaginated.

37: Judith Butler, ‘This is Wrong: Judith Butler on Executive Order 14168’, unnumbered.

38:This and the previous citations taken from Butler, ibid., unnumbered.

“Peace with Islam?”

Hiking with Nietzsche Through Glasgow’s Muslim Southside: Part II

In the second part of his article on hiking through Glasgow’s Muslim-esque Southside, our staff writer Henry Holland delves into Nietzsche’s impassioned yet scattergun engagement with the youngest Abrahamic religion. He investigates how the experimental novel The Baphomet by French artist and theoretician Pierre Klossowski – which got him hooked on the Islam-Nietzsche intersection in the first place – blends Islam-inspired mysticism, sexual transgression and Nietzscheanism itself into an inimitable potion. With insights on Muslim-esque readings of Nietzsche in tow, Holland returns with Fatima and Ishmael to Scotland’s largest city, thus wrapping up his travelogue whence it began.

Link to Part One.

Nietzsche's cultural criticism is extremely ambivalent in its orientation towards modernity. Sometimes it seems as if he represents an almost modernist point of view, sometimes he tends towards the Romantic or even the reactionary. In order to visualize this ambiguity of Nietzsche's cultural criticism and his position on modernity, it is extremely instructive to look at his statements on the term “machine.” This allows, not least, a more nuanced view of his ethics of authenticity.

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I. A Fighter against Machine Time

Statements in which he criticizes the machine and uses it as a metaphor for modern capitalism run like a common thread throughout Nietzsche's work from the earliest to the latest writings. He criticizes, for example, that the modern “external academic apparatus, [...] the educational machine of the university put into action.”¹ Reduce scholars to mere machines like factory workers.² Modern philosophers are “machines of thinking, writing and speaking”³. In a similar way to Karl Marx, Nietzsche even criticizes the subjugation of workers in this period, who are forced to “rent themselves out as physical machines.”⁴, himself under the machinery and blames them for their moral degeneration or for the sprouting of what he would later call “resentment”:

The machine terribly controls that everything is happening at the right time and in the right way. The worker obeys the blind despot; he is more than his slave. The machine Does not educate the will to self-control. It awakens a desire to react to despotism — debauchery, nonsense, intoxication. The machine evokes Saturnalia.⁵

Elsewhere, Nietzsche formulates the dialectic of machinization as follows:

Reaction against machine culture. — The machine, itself a product of the highest thinking power, sets in motion almost only the lower thoughtless forces of the people who operate it. In doing so, it unleashes an immense amount of power that would otherwise lie asleep, that is true; but it does not give the impetus to climb higher, to improve, to become an artist. She makes Acting and monoform, — in the long run, however, this creates a countereffect, a desperate boredom of the soul, which learns to thirst for varied idleness through it.⁶

Machinery thus serves as an educator of inauthenticity, producing flexible machine people who are unable to educate themselves:

The wild animals should learn to look away from themselves and try to live in others (or God), forgetting themselves as much as possible! They feel better that way! Our moral tendency is still that of wild animals! They should become tools of large machines besides them and would rather turn the wheel than be with themselves. Morality has been a challenge so far Not to deal with yourselfby shifting your mind and stealing time, time and energy. Working yourself down, tiring yourself, wearing the yoke under the concept of duty or fear of hell — great slave labor was morality: with the fear of the ego.⁷

Even in his late work, Nietzsche considered submission to the “tremendous machinery”⁸ of the “so-called 'civilization'” (ibid.) — its main features: “the reduction, the ability to pain, the restlessness, the haste, the hustle and bustle” (ibid.) — as the main reason for “the The rise of pessimism“(ibid.). He speaks disparagingly of the arbitrarily fungible “small [n] machines”⁹ of modern scholars and ridicules the fact that it is the task of the modern “higher education system”¹⁰ Be, “[a] us to make a machine for man” (ibid.), a dutiful “state official” (ibid.) as a, supposed, complete manifestation of Kant's ethics. When viewed honestly

That wasteful and disastrous period of the Renaissance turns out to be the last large time, and we, we modernity with our fearful self-care and charity, with our virtues of work, unpretentiousness, legality, scientificity — collecting, economic, machinal — as a faint Time [.]¹¹

And last but not least, he speaks in Ecce homo about the “treatment I receive from my mother and sister”¹² as a “perfect [r] hell machine” (ibid.).

The estate of the early 1870s even states programmatically:

handicraft learning, the necessary return of the person in need of education to the smallest circle, which he idealizes as much as possible. Combating the abstract production of machines and factories. To create ridicule and hate against what is now considered “education”: by opposing more mature education.¹³

The modern utilitarian machine world is Nietzsche in its totality a horror, which he critically confronts with the Dionysian culture of antiquity:

Antiquity is in its entirety the age of talent for Festfreude. The thousand reasons to rejoice were not discovered without acumen and great thought; a good part of the brain activity, which is now focused on the invention of machines, on solving scientific problems, was aimed at increasing sources of joy: the feeling, the effect should be turned into something pleasant, we change the causes of suffering, we are prophylactic [precautionary; PS], that palliative [“wrapping in the sense of palliative care; PS].¹⁴

In the machine world, people surround themselves with anonymous goods instead of real things, through which they could enter into a resonating relationship with their originators:

How does the machine humble. — The machine is impersonal, it deprives the piece of work of its pride, its individual Good and faulty, which sticks to all non-machine work — that is, its bit of humanity. In the past, everything buying from artisans was a Marking people, with whose badge you surrounded yourself: the household and clothing thus became a symbol of mutual appreciation and personal belonging, while now we only seem to live in the midst of anonymous and impersonal sclaventhum. — You don't have to buy the ease of work.¹⁵

In contrast to personally manufactured, authentic, artisanal products, the mechanical goods did not impress with their intrinsic quality, as could only be determined by experts, but only through their effect and thus deceive the general public.¹⁶

However, Nietzsche summarizes this comprehensive critique of modern commodity production and the world of life bewitched by it most harshly in Human, all-too-human together:

Thought of Discontent. — People are like coal mines in the forest. Only when young people have burned out and are charred, like them, will they usefully. As long as they steam and smoke, they may be more interesting, but useless and even too often uncomfortable. — Humanity mercilessly uses each individual as material to heat its large machines: but why use the machines when all individuals (i.e. humanity) only use them to maintain them? Machines that are their own purpose — is that the umana commedia [human comedy; PS]?¹⁷

The proximity of these ideas to a Rousseauist, romantic critique of capitalism, but also to Marx, is remarkable and obvious. For Nietzsche, the “machine” becomes the epitome of what Marxism describes as the “fetishism of commodity production” and he comes surprisingly close to a clear understanding of the rederizing mechanisms of the capitalist mode of production here. — Of course, this metaphor is not astonishing in view of the fact that the valorization of “authentic production” over craft into the “absolute metaphors” (Hans Blumenberg) of modern thinking of authenticity On whose tracks Nietzsche moves completely at these points. The living and the dead, the machine and real practice, are juxtaposed in a harsh dualistic way.¹⁸

In view of these clear words, it is significant that, in parallel, there was an almost diametral revaluation of the machine in Nietzsche's writings from around 1875.

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II. Man as a Machine

Remarkably, this first takes place in Nietzsche's letters. Between 1875 and 1888, he repeatedly referred to his own body or even himself as a “machine” in them and reported on their good or poor functioning.¹⁹ In this sense, he already speaks in the Morgenröthe in a purely descriptive sense of the body in general as a machine²⁰ and is also moving on to calling humanity as such in a neutral way.²¹ Here he apparently draws on the naturalistic wing of the Enlightenment, such as Julien Offray de La Mettries L'homme machine (Man as a machine, 1748), as part of his generally growing interest in naturalistic explanations of human behavior in that period.

Already in Human, all-too-human Nietzsche admiringly compares Greek culture with a speeding machine whose tremendous speed made it susceptible to the slightest disturbances.²² In the estate of the 1880s, Nietzsche then just as uncritically designed a “depiction of the machine 'man'”²³ and moves on to seeing something good in the machinization of humanity:

The need to prove that to an ever more economic consumption of people and humanity, to an ever more closely intertwined “machinery” of interests and services A countermovement belongs. I refer to the same as Elimination of humanity's luxury surplus: It should bring to light a stronger species, a higher type, which has different conditions of origin and conservation than the average human being. My term, my allegory For this type, [...] is the word “superman.”

That first path [...] results in adaptation, flattening out, higher Chineseness, instinct modesty, satisfaction in reducing people — a kind of stoppage in Human level. Once we have the unavoidably imminent overall economic administration of the earth, then humanity can find its best meaning as machinery at its service: as a tremendous train of ever smaller, ever finer “adapted” wheels; as an ever increasing superfluence of all dominant and commanding elements; as a whole of tremendous power whose individual factors Minimal powers, minimal values represent. In contrast to this reduction and adaptation of the M <enschen>to a more specialized utility, the reverse movement is required — the generation of synthetic, of buzzing, ofthe justifying People for whom this machinalization of humanity is a precondition of existence, as a base on which he can his Higher form of being Can invent yourself...

He just as much needs the antagonism the crowd, the “leveled”, the sense of distance compared to them; he likes them, he lives from them. This higher form of aristocratism is that of the future. — Morally speaking, that overall machinery, the solidarity of all wheels, represents a maximum in the Exploitation of humans represents: but it presupposes those for whose reason this exploitation sense has. Otherwise, it would in fact simply be the overall reduction Werth-Reduction of the type human, — a decline phenomenon in the biggest style.

[...] [W] As I fight, is he economic Optimism: as if with the growing expenses Aller The benefits of all should also necessarily grow. The opposite seems to me to be the case: Everyone's expenses add up to a total loss: the human being becomes lesser: — so that you no longer know what this tremendous process was for in the first place. One for what? one new “What for! “— that is what humanity needs...²⁴

In line with the idea of a — hoped-for — transformation of levelling into a new aristocracy, which has also been repeatedly discussed in the published work²⁵ Although Nietzsche now adheres to his earlier critique of maschization, he also hopes that she will at the same time give birth to a new class of “supermen,” who will dominate the “army” of the machine of completely subjugated slaves. In antichrist He clearly states this political 'utopia' and explains it naturalistically: “That you are a public benefit, a wheel, a function, there is also a determination of nature: not the society, the species luck, which the vast majority are only capable of, turn them into intelligent machines.”²⁶.

Is there already in Human, all-too-human aphorisms in which submission to the machine is described not apologetically, but also not critically, but purely descriptively as a “pedagogy,”²⁷ Is he now increasingly going about recommending this subordination, even in the case of scholars, as a healing method against resentment²⁸ and sees the early scene of the civilizational formation of humanity in the machinization of large parts of humanity by a small “caste” of brutal “predator people.”²⁹

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III. The Genius as an Apparatus?

But Nietzsche's fascination for machines does not stop there. Although he speaks himself in the Happy science against understanding the entirety of being as a machine, but not because this would mean devaluation or reification, on the contrary: “Let us beware of believing that the universe is a machine; it is certainly not based on a goal, we honor it far too much with the word 'machine'”³⁰. Nietzsche, on the other hand, describes the human intellect completely uncritically as a machine in the same book³¹ And in the same way, human soul life as a whole should now be understood as a machine³². This applies, of all things, to the “genius”, which has been glorified since early work as the epitome of the highest authentic selfhood, which Nietzsche used from Morgenröthe compare with a machine over and over again.³³ He speaks in the Götzen-Dämmerung, with none other than Julius Caesar as an example, even of “that subtle machine working under extreme pressure that is called genius.”³⁴ and in a late estate fragment of him as the “most sublime machine [s] that exists”³⁵.

The modern “rape of nature with the help of machines and the so harmless technical and engineering ingenuity”³⁶ now celebrates Nietzsche as “power and sense of power [...] [,] hubris and godlessness” (ibid.) and therefore as an antithesis to modern decadence.³⁷ An estate fragment from 1887 even states:

The task is to <zu>make people as usable as possible and to get them closer to the infallible machine as far as possible: for this purpose, he must work with Machine virtues be equipped (— he must learn to perceive the states in which he works in a machine-usable manner as the most valuable: it is necessary that the others be stripped as far as possible, as dangerous and disgusted as possible...)

Here is the first stumbling block boredom, the uniformity, which involves all mechanical activities. This Learning to endure and not just endure, learning to see boredom played around by a higher stimulus [.] [...] Such an existence requires philosophical justification and transfiguration more than any other: the pleasant Emotions must be discounted as lower rank by some infallible authority at all; the “duty itself,” perhaps even the pathos of reverence in regard to everything that is unpleasant — and this requirement as speaking beyond all usefulness, deliriousness, expediency, imperativity... The machinal form of existence as the highest most venerable form of existence, worshipping oneself.³⁸

The revaluation is thus finally complete: It is no longer just a matter of creating a slave status of “machine people” with a sense of “advancement” of the species, which is confronted by a small group of “authentic” leaders, but all people should act equally as cogs of a large overall machine whose process is affirmed as an end in itself. In fact, only a distinction can be made between people who are cogs and those who form self-contained machines and are therefore destined to rule. Self-development as machinization.

Nietzsche thus becomes a pioneer of cybernetic techno-fascism, as Ernst Jünger had already foreseen on the eve of the “seizure of power” as a possible alternative to liberal humanism³⁹ and today in “avant-garde fascist” circles⁴⁰ again In vogue is, but also the post-modernist transfiguration of “becoming a machine” as a supposed subversive practice, as promoted tirelessly by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The utopia of the flexible person as a “cyborg”⁴¹. It is almost funny that both the critical and the affirmative use of the machine metaphor apply equally in Nietzsche's last writings and testifies to the conflict of his thinking and his subjective indecision.

If you combine this last turn in Nietzsche's thinking with the concept of “eternal return,” which finds its tangible counterpart in the endless circle of machinery,⁴² Even though Nietzsche himself does not attempt this parallel, this analysis reveals the deeper reason for Nietzsche's “waste”: The growing insight into the structural dynamics of modern societies made him (ver) doubt more and more the possibility of realizing their authenticity. Not least because — as his letters mentioned above testify, which are probably not by chance at the very beginning of his “return” from machine striker to admirer — he recognized that the machinization of the world is not just an external skill, but an internal event from which one is subjectively unable to escape. Authenticity could then only be realized as a continuous fight against oneself. Dissatisfied with this, Nietzsche is now striving to radically affirm the machinization of the world mythologized as the “eternal return.” An affirmation which, however, like the talk of “hell machine” in Ecce homo underlines that it could only be successful at the price of complete self-abandonment, since its essence — as early Nietzsche recognized so clearly — is a misanthropic process which forces people to affirm something that, other than delusional, cannot be affirmed.

The obvious way out would be precisely to take on this fight against internal and external machinization — both in the sense of individual heroism and in the sense of political “machine-storming” — and to endure the internal conflict that the modern world of life imposes on people. But this is precisely where Nietzsche fails; he — contrary to what he himself called for — cannot maintain this tension, must “bridge” the “arc” of his ethics of authenticity⁴³ with the help of his mythological constructions, which became ever more grotesque, ever more out of touch with reality in his late work. The real challenge that the ideal of authenticity poses to individuals is therefore to maintain one's own authenticity in a society dominated by inauthenticity without going crazy or succumbing to the conformist temptation of flexibility.

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Literature

Benjamin, Walter: One way street. Frankfurt am Main 1955.

Ders. : Central Park. In: illuminations. Selected fonts. Frankfurt am Main 1977, pp. 230—250.

Haraway, Donna: A Cyborg Manifesto. In: Socialist Review 80 (1985), PP. 65—108.

Younger, Ernst: The worker. Domination and Form. Stuttgart 2022.

Stephen, Paul: Modernity as a culture of violence. Nietzsche as a critic of violence. In: Engagée. political-philosophical interventions 4 (2016), P. 20-23.

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Footnotes

1: About the future of our educational institutions, Lecture V.

2: See, for example, ibid. and ibid., Speech I.

3: The benefits and disadvantages of history for life, paragraph 5. See also Schopenhauer as an educator, paragraph 3.

4: Subsequent fragments No. 1880 2 [62].

5: Subsequent fragments No. 1879 40 [4].

6: Human, all-too-human Vol. II, The Wanderer and His Shadow, Aph 220.

7: Subsequent fragments No. 1880 6 [104].

8: Subsequent fragments No. 1887 9 [162].

9: Beyond good and evil, Aph 6.

10: Götzen-Dämmerung, rambles, Aph 29.

11: Ibid., Aph 37.

12: Ecce homo, Why I'm so wise, paragraph 3.

13: Subsequent fragments No. 1873 29 [195].

14: Subsequent fragments No. 1876 23 [148].

15: Human, all-too-human Vol. II, The Wanderer and His Shadow, Aph 220.

16: Cf. Ibid., aph. 280.

17: Human, all-too-human, Vol. I, Aph. 585.

18: In this phase, Nietzsche even decisively expresses understanding for the workers' displeasure and recommends to them his ethics of authenticity as a way out of the dilemma “either a slave of the state or the slave of an overthrow party becomes must“(Morgenröthe, Aph 206). During this time, such mind games brought him remarkably close to anarchism (see e.g. Morgenröthe, Aph 179).

19: Cf. Bf. to Carl von Gersdorff v. 8/5/1875, No. 443; Bf. to dens. v. 26.6.1875, No. 457; Bf. to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche v. 30.5.1879, No. 849; Bf. to Heinrich Köselitz v. 14/8/1881, No. 136; Bf. to Franz Overbeck v. 31/12/1882, No. 366; Bf. to Malwida von Meysenbug v. 1/2/1883, No. 371; Bf. to Heinrich Köselitz v. 19/11/1886, No. 776; Bf. to Franziska Nietzsche v. 5.3.1888, No. 1003 and Bf. to Franz Overbeck v. 4/7/1888, No. 1056. It turns out that Nietzsche does not write these letters to “anyone,” but to his most intimate “small circle.” Nietzsche wrote to Overbeck on 14/11/1886: “The antinomy My current situation and form of existence now lies in the fact that everything that I as philosophus radicalis Nöthig Have — freedom from work, wife, child, society, fatherland, faith, etc., etc. I as many deprivations I feel that I am happily a living being and not just an analytical machine and an objectifying device” (No 775). A letter to Heinrich Romundt dated 15/4/1876 is also remarkable, which states: “I never know where I am actually more ill once I am ill, whether as a machine or as a machinist” (No 521).

20: Cf. Aph 86.

21: Cf. Subsequent fragments No. 1876 21 [11].

22: Cf. Human, all-too-human Vol. I, Aph 261.

23: Subsequent fragments No. 1884 25 [136].

24: Subsequent fragments No. 1887 10 [17].

25: See e.g. Beyond good and evil, Aph 242.

26: Paragraph 57.

27: Cf. Vol. I, Aph. 593 and Vol. II, The Wanderer and His Shadow, 218.

28: Cf. Subsequent fragments 1881 11 [31] and On the genealogy of morality, paragraph III, 18.

29: Cf. ibid., para. II, 17.

30: Aph 109.

31: Cf. Aph 6 and Paragraph 327.

32: Cf. Subsequent fragments No. 1885 2 [113] and The Antichrist, paragraph 14.

33: Cf. Morgenröthe, Aph 538; Götzen-Dämmerung, rambles, Aph 8 and The Wagner Case, paragraph 5.

34: rambles, Aph 31.

35: Subsequent fragments No. 1888 14 [133].

36: On the genealogy of morality, paragraph III, 9.

37: This passage is one of the most ambiguous in Nietzsche's work. At first glance, it makes sense to regard them as a critique of modern science and technology (see also my own essay on this subject Modernity as a Culture of Violence). But the late Nietzsche does not use “power” and even “rape” in any critical sense at all, as he keeps in the genealogy Clearly stated elsewhere:”[A] n yourself Of course, injuring, raping, exploiting, destroying cannot be anything “wrong”, insofar as life essential, namely hurtful, raping, exploitative, destructive in its basic functions and cannot be thought of at all without this character” (para. II, 11). And in the passage itself, it says: “[S] elbst still measured with the measures of the ancient Greeks, our entire modern being, insofar as it is not weakness but power and sense of power, looks like pure hubris and godlessness.” If one assumes that Nietzsche still refers positively to the “ancient Greeks” and their ethics of “measure,” this sentence should be read critically — but it is also obvious to understand it as meaning that in the described aspects of modernity, Nietzsche sees just the opposite of the “masterly moral” features of modernity that oppose their general nihilism. What objection should the declared “Antichrist” have against “ungodliness”?

38: Subsequent fragments No. 1887 10 [11].

39: Cf. The worker.

40: Just think of the corresponding visions of billionaires Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.

41: See, for example, Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto.

42: Walter Benjamin already recognized this connection between “eternal return” and the cyclicity of the capitalist economy (cf. One way street, P. 63 & Central Park, PP. 241—246).

43: Cf. Beyond good and evil, Preface.

Fascinated by the Machine

Nietzsche‘s Reevaluation of the Machine Metaphor in His Late Work

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.

Friedrich Nietzsche himself spent many years of his childhood and youth in the city on the Saale. His family home still stands today in the vineyard 18. In 2008, the Friedrich Nietzsche Foundation Naumburg was founded here, which operates the Nietzsche Documentation Center as a publicly accessible research and cultural center, which once again serves as the venue for the Nietzsche Congress this year.

If you get to the Congress from the train station, you first come across the former Nietzsche family home. A winding house surrounded by wine, the ground floor of which is now a small bookshop with a selection of Nietzsche's writings. If you go just a few steps further, the Documentation Center is located right next to the historic Nietzsche House as a modern new building with bright walls and large window fronts. Inside the building, there are light-filled rooms on three floors, which provide space for a library, an archive, two exhibition areas and two plenary rooms. There are Nietzsche busts in the corridors, and large lettering with quotes from the philosopher is repeatedly affixed to walls and stairs.

The conference, chaired by Edgar Landgraf, Catarina Caetano da Rosa and Johann Szews, starts on Thursday afternoon with various greetings, including from the Director of the Friedrich Nietzsche Foundation, Andreas Urs Sommer, and the Chairman of the Nietzsche Society e.V., Marco Brusotti. The talks given this weekend on Nietzsche's technologies are divided into various sections, from “Cultural and Body Techniques”, “Nineteenth-Century Techniques” and “Anthropo and Media Techniques” to “Techniques of Discipline and Subjectification” to “Linguistic and Rhetorical Techniques.” In this way, the term technology is broadly defined and provides a basis for various interpretations.

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I. Human Thinking as a Technique

What mental techniques must humans practice in order to think like Nietzsche? Emanuel Seitz, research assistant at the University of Basel, will address this question and its implications in his presentation Nietzsche, a stoic of intoxication. The techniques of a mental exercise. Seitz is primarily concerned with the questions: What do I have to do to become Nietzsche? Can Nietzsche be described as a Stoic? To answer this question, Seitz first explains three techniques for the Stoa's spiritual reflection: the practice of thinking, desire and drive. It should be possible to learn those exercises or techniques. They aim to form an appropriate idea of the true value of things through reflection. With the help of the exercises, humans should reach value judgments that are not just subjective, they should practice distance and look down from the universe like God. Practicing these techniques of thinking creates a kind of cosmic consciousness, as the Stoa teaches, which leads to a new form of freedom of judgment. It is only by practicing these exercises that people are able to reevaluate existing values.

Seitz combines these Stoa exercises with Nietzsche's own practice The technique of philosophy as an art of living, It is about action, not knowledge, According to Seitz. He argues that although Nietzsche comes to completely different results than the Stoa, not to a humanist ideal of compassion, but to self-discipline and selfishness as a passion. Although Nietzsche despises moralism, he deals with questions about The will for cosmic justice. Seitz therefore argues that Nietzsche could very well be described as a Stoic in terms of the method of his thinking, in complete contrast to the content of his philosophy. In conclusion, he therefore expressly pleads for Nietzsche to be taken seriously as a technician of thought.

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II. Post-humanist Perspectives on Nietzsche

In line with this year's theme of the congress, some of the lectures relate to post-humanist epistemology and Science and Technology Studies. Babeth Nora Roger-Vasselin places particular focus on post-humanist positions, who in her presentation Incorporation out of business. Incorporation seen as a technique Nietzsche's concept of incorporation attempts to combine with the figure of a cyborg after Donna Haraway.

Roger-Vasselin regards Nietzsche's concept of incorporation as a technique of individuation. This is what incorporation describes as an organism actively simulates its sensory experience, a formative process that all living beings share. Roger-Vasselin describes this process of incorporation as technique, since it is not natural or innate to us, it is instead the result of education based on individuation. With this technique These are standardized processes through forms and rhythms.

But what could that technique of incorporation look like in the technological age? Roger-Vasselin argues in this context using the figure of the cyborg and refers to Donna Haraway. The cyborg is described by Haraway as “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a product of both social reality and imagination.”¹, a creature that is neither natural nor artificial, but both at the same time and nothing alone². For Haraway, cybernetic organisms are neither nature nor culture, but have always been natural culture³. Conceptually, with the figure of the cyborg, Haraway blurs supposed boundaries between humans, animals and machines and establishes a way of thinking of difference beyond dualisms⁴: “To be one is always to become together with many”⁵. And so Roger-Vasselin argues that community forms in the technological age should be collectives of cyborgs.

Matthäus Leidenfrost presents another post-humanist perspective on Nietzsche in his presentation Animal husbandry and human taming. Nietzsche on anthropotechnical practices, In which he deals with the relationship between animals, humans and technology in Nietzsche. He discusses how Nietzsche himself described humans as a sick animal that has been tamed with the tools of culture and hides behind clothing and morals. According to Nietzsche, humans living in the flock are deficient and deprived of their own investments. In this way, people themselves suffer from life. At this point, Leidenfrost is referring to Peter Sloterdijk, who, in this context, formulates an invitation to people to recognize their own animality and to become part of an open bio-cultural existence. Illness is not a rigid state here, it is decay, but also recognition and a new beginning, an opportunity for growth. Leidenfrost continues to refer to current trans- and post-humanist discourses and he too refers to Donna Haraway at this point. He reads Nietzsche's reflections in this regard as an invitation to humans to open themselves up in an affective dimension in the age of perfection and within their own domestication of their own animality, in the spirit of the end of So Zarathustra spoke: “He denied and brewed all their virtues from the wildest, bravest animals; only then did he become — a human being. ”⁶

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III. Aesthetic Experience

In addition to scientific lectures, the congress also offered aesthetic approaches to Nietzsche's thinking. This is how the exhibition was Nietzsche's Echo. Pictures of contradictions opened by painter Conny Gabora. The works shown are inspired by Nietzsche and his thoughts and life conflicts. They are intended to represent an artistic homage to the philosopher. In addition, the German film premiere of Nietzsche's landscapes in the Upper Engadine by Fabien Jégoudez and on Saturday evening, pianist Silvia Heyder and singer Julia Preußler gave a concert at which they performed some selected from Nietzsche's compositions. We were thus able to express Nietzsche's thinking not only in scientific form, but also in aesthetic experience.

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IV. Conclusion

How can Nietzsche's technologies find expression in the technological age? The Congress in Naumburg has shown how Nietzsche can be read today as a technician of thought, a philosophy of doing, not of mere knowledge. This thinking provides the basis for a view of humans as a being that recognizes their animality and their integrations and enrolls itself in collectives of cyborgs and in the open biocultural network of being: “We are all chimeras, theorized and manufactured hybrids of machines and organisms; in a word, we are cyborgs.”^7.

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The photographs are by the author. The article image shows a Nietzsche bust by Fritz Rogge from 1943 on the first floor of the Nietzsche Documentation Center.

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Literature

Fink, Dagmar: Becoming a cyborg: Possibility horizons in feminist theories and science fiction. Gender Studies. Transcript Verlag.

Haraway, Donna: The encounter of species. In: Texts on animal theory, published by Roland Borgards, Esther Köhring and Alexander Kling. Reclam's universal library, No. 19178. Reclam.

Haraway, Donna: Manifestly Haraway. Posthumanities 37th University of Minnesota Press.

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Footnotes

1: “[A] cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (Haraway, Manifestly Haraway, p. 5; translation by the editor).

2: Cf. finch, Becoming a cyborg: horizons of opportunity in feminist theories and science fictions, p. 9 f.

3: See ibid. p. 59 et seq.

4: See ibid. p. 9 f.

5: Haraway, The encounter of species P. 239.

6: From science.

7: “We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs” (Haraway, Manifestly Haraway, p. 7; translation by the editor).

Nietzsche and Cyborgs

The International Nietzsche Congress 2025

Under the topic Nietzsche's technologies international visitors were once again invited to the Nietzsche Society conference in Naumburg an der Saale this year. In the period from October 16 to 19, in addition to various lectures, a film screening and a concert, there was also an art exhibition to visit. Our author Emma Schunack was there and reports on her impressions. Her question: How can Nietzsche's technologies find expression in the technological age?

Editorial note: The conference report does not mention the important “Lectio Nietzscheana Naumburgensis,” with which Werner Stegmaier rounded off the conference on Sunday morning and took up the topic of the conference again in a completely different way by asking about Nietzsche's own “philosophizing techniques.” We have now published this important talk in full length with the kind permission of the author (link).