Volume 32, Issue 1

Since the Enlightenment in the 18th century, the term Geistesgegenwart (presence of mind) has been an expression of peopleʼs selfdetermination and their subjectivity and freedom. Ist emancipatory potential was undisputed. In the last third of the 19th century, Nietzsche emphasized the nagative content. For hi mit is no longer a formula for intelligent and selbcoscious thinking and acting, but rather describes the consequences of a mediation of education and culture that is taking place in Society. Geistesgegenwart (presence of mind) has degenerated into a mere strategy of self-preservation. It is intended to ensure a tolerable life als lies, self-deception, self-overestimation, superficiality and ignorance. Historical oblivion and media manipulation habe played an increasingly larger role since the 20th century. Nietzsche’s alternative means contemplation of history, calmness, knowlwdge, ewflection, resistance to the flood of information. He makes them to constitutive features of his cultural criticism.

This article explores the overlooked intellectual and personal contributions of Ida Overbeck, wife of Franz Overbeck, within the context of Friedrich Nietzsche’s intellectual circle. While choosing to remain publicly anonymous, Ida Overbeck translated French literary criticism for Nietzsche, most notably texts by Sainte-Beuve. Her translations influenced Nietzsche’s engagement with 18th-century French moralists. Drawing on her diary entries, the paper reveals a complex portrait of a woman negotiating her identity amid societal expectations, intimate friendships, and cultural production. Her insights into Nietzsche’s personality and his relationship with Lou von Salomé add a nuanced, often critical, female perspective to established narratives in Nietzsche scholarship.

For both Nietzsche and Rohde, their friendship was the most intense one of their lives. Their correspondence, which has survived almost integrally, documents not only the peak of their friendship, but also their gradual estrangement. When an abridged edition of the correspondence was published in 1902, it was widely received as a unique testimony. However, in the context of the emerging Nietzsche cult their mutual estrangement was interpreted at Rohde’s expense. Based on the biographical stages of their friendship and the transmission of their correspondence, this article sets the framework for a discussion of Rohde’s critique of Nietzsche’s philosophical development, which hinged on what he called Nietzsche’s “dogmatism”.

In his encounter with Lou von Salomé, we see Nietzsche as a thinker who is ready to subordinate himself unwillingly to the needs of the young student. In the summer of 1882 in Tautenburg, he experienced Lou not as a student, but as a partner on an equal footing and always emphasized the equal value of their intelligence. Never before had there been such philosophical openness as between them. Lou, for her part, discovered the religious genius in Nietzsche. She saw his aphoristic style of writing as a makeshift solution due to his illness. In fact, it was after his encounter with Lou that he wrote  Thus Spoke Zarathustra , a work of which Nietzsche himself says that he was only ready for it after his contact with Lou. At the same time, Nietzsche fears being too close and is afraid of his own insatiability, so that at the end of this intensive exchange with Lou, he retreats alone to the south again.

Before the study deals with the subject of Paul Rée’s possible influence on Friedrich Nietzsche, a biographical and work-historical sketch of Paul Rée is given, based primarily on archive material, which corrects a number of errors. The question of influence has two dimensions: one of content, and one of method, which Rée uses when he wants to turn moral philosophy into a science with the help of Charles Lyell’s book on geology. The study comes to the conclusion that Rée’s influence on Nietzsche is not insignificant, even if there are voices (Montinari, Gerhardt) that can certainly understand Nietzsche’s assertion that he was an independent thinker. Nietzsche’s treatise on the Genealogy of Morals , in which he decisively rejects Rée’s influence, is appreciated by Max Weber because of the concept of ressentiment used there, even if he is critical of it.

Malwida von Meysenbug was among the most faithful of Nietzsche’s companions on his untimely journey through life. A student of the human soul, a theorist of self-improvement, a pedagogue animated by a strong social afflatus, dedicated to the betterment of the least, and among them women, Malwida von Meysenbug earned a place in the history of Western culture independently of her long friendship with Nietzsche. The life trajectory of this ‘idealist’ of iron rigour and intellectual honesty spans almost a century of political, social and cultural revolutions, in which her figure is anything but peripheral. Close not only to Nietzsche, but to leading figures of the century, from Wagner to Mazzini, from Garibaldi to the anarchist Herzen, Malwida is a Person in the truest sense of this term. ‘Voilà un homme’ one might say of her, if it were not odd to refer to the theorist of the ‘superior woman’ in this way. In this article, an attempt will be made to account for the originality of Malwida von Meysenbug’s thought and to highlight the influence, not only human but above all intellectual, that she had on Nietzsche’s thought. 

In the period between 1878 and 1880, the relationship between Heinrich Köselitz and Friedrich Nietzsche took on a new form. After deciding to pursue a self-responsible, always precarious artist-existence in Italy, Köselitz also gained new access to Nietzscheʼs philosophy, whose free-spirited traits he tried to make fruitful for his own life and artistry. Just as Köselitz orients himself to Nietzscheʼs thinking, Nietzscheʼs search for a post-academic way of life will be guided specifically by the example of Köselitz. After a sketch of the problematic initial situation in Basel (2.), the new foundation of the relationship between the two under the sign of the free spirit will be characterized in more detail (3.), some of Köselitzʼs impulses for Nietzsche will be highlighted (4.) and the prehistory of Nietzscheʼs stays in Venice will be presented (5.). Finally, attention will be drawn to the poems of Heinrich Leuthold, which Nietzsche was made aware of Köselitz and which have not yet received any attention as a source for Nietzsche’s poetry (6.)

In Carl Fuchs, Friedrich Nietzsche found a correspondent who made a name for himself as both a theoretician of music and a practicing musician. Fuchs is primarily known as a representative of the theory of musical harmony developed by Hugo Riemann, which was intended to reform the traditional division of beats and measures within a musical piece, and which paved the way for alternative approaches to interpretation. Among other sources, Fuchs drew upon insights into the metrics of antiquity. To Nietzsche, he compared musical phrasing with the punctuation of a literary text. The foundation existed for a lively exchange between the two correspondents; however, their correspondence was instead characterized by misunderstandings, a mix of respect and aversion, and divergent personal interests. Nevertheless, the exchange of letters clarifies Nietzsche’s positions regarding musical aesthetics and philosophy.

The article argues that there is a hitherto unknown reason for Georg Brandes’ discovery of Nietzsche. It describes aspects of their exchange and shows how their correspondence left a mark on Nietzsche’s latest writing. While Brandes in many ways invented Nietzsche, Nietzsche himself actively tried to influence and shape this invention.

This article does not examine Nietzsche’s direct statements on gender but instead focuses on the gendered vocabulary he employs in other contexts. The primary focus of this study is the gender-related terms in Twilight of the Idols . Nietzsche’s use of this vocabulary can be categorized into three types: negative depictions of feminine figures; the gendering of abstract concepts; and the positive appreciation of feminine activities – pregnancy and birth. The first category primarily evokes Nietzsche’s misogynistic image. In the second category, the article observes that Nietzsche appears to pit masculinity against femininity and to align them with his 1886–1888 distinction between the physiological states of abundant and impoverished life. In the third category, the article identifies a positive conception of femininity in Nietzsche’s thought, which destabilizes his misogynistic image. Finally, the article concludes that Twilight of the Idols heralds a new dawn of idols: the ideal of Dionysus, embodying a synthesis of feminine and masculine virtues.

Do we have a right to stupidity? In the 30th aphorism of Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols , he describes a certain type of tired worker who seeks regeneration in the consumption of art and is thus invoking its right to stupidity. This article will examine two questions with regard to Nietzsche’s description of such an art designed for regenerative stupidity: (1) To what extent does the Nietzschean diagnosis made in the aphorism still apply today? (2) Do we (from Nietzsche’s perspective) have a right to stupidity in the first place? And, according to Nietzsche, what could be possible alternative forms of recreation that are not based on a mental “vacation” by engaging with art that exercises its right to stupidity?

The paper sheds a new light on the topic of décadence in Twilight Of Idols. It achieves this by approaching it through the lens of the dream-discourse in said text. Using a close-reading method, it explores and contextualizes the various uses of dreaming. One key point is the self-subversion of the naturalistic argument in the first dream-related aphorism, which then spirals into multiple auto-subversive loops throughout the text. Subsequent metaphorical references to this concept of dream build on this ambiguous theoretical foundation. Finally, this perspective on the multiplicity of interpretations and polyphony of dreaming is applied to a paradigmatic text on décadence, showing that rather than positing a definitive political theory, the work is more focused on offering a polyphonic critique of reactionary politics.

While Nietzsche critiques traditional notions of free will as fictional, he emphasizes self-efficacy and affirms the figure of sovereign individual, whom he describes as a master of free will. This article addresses the apparent contradictions in his examination of free will, which likely lead to a nihilistic interpretation of Nietzschean philosophy following his disenchantment of the “idols”. The text analyzes his deconstruction of the principle of causality and his genealogical critique of responsibility, revealing free will under the “optic of truth” as a tool of power. It demonstrates how Nietzsche redefines free will under the “optic of life”, offering a life-affirming perspective of freedom. As conclusion it suggests viewing free will not as a prerequisite but as an expression of the process of becoming oneself.

While in the history of philosophy all manifestations of culture were brought before the judgment seat of reason, today it seems rather the other way around, as if reason is in turn standing before judgment. Like many philosophical problems, Nietzsche also recognised the problem of the crisis of reason in modern times in his inimitable way, foresightedly and at an early stage, elaborated it with captivating originality and thus himself prominently contributed to its crisis. Nietzsche sums up and draws conclusions about his philosophical thinking of reason primarily in the third section of his work Götzen-Dämmerung . In this article, I explore two questions: First, I examine what Nietzsche’s critique of reason consists of exactly and what larger philosophical references he has in this regard. Secondly, I elaborate on what Nietzsche’s programme of a ‘restored reason’ consists of and what relevance we can ascribe to it today. Nietzsche’s thinking about instinct, happiness and nature will be given special consideration, as will his view of Goethe.

The article addresses Nietzsche’s concept of immoralism in his late works. It first points out that Nietzsche’s immoralism aims to reject any idealization of humanity by appealing to a sense of reality. After examining some moralized interpretations of immoralism, the article attempts to argue that Nietzsche sees the fundamental problem of morality in its misunderstanding of the causality behind moral and human action. In essence, living beings do not act purposefully but are characterized by their active discharge of power and their constant going beyond themselves. Nietzsche reverses the traditional relationship between life and morality, evaluating morality from the perspective of life.

The article illustrates the problems associated with interpreting the well-known passage on “naturalism in morality” (TI Moral 4) as a description of Nietzsche’s late moral philosophy. In this regard, it critiques a contemporary tendency in Nietzsche scholarship while aligning with German approaches that have, in various ways, emphasized the importance of textuality for Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols . Similarly, it conducts a close reading of the sections 4–5 of Morality as Anti-Nature, arguing that the ‘naturalism in morality’ can only be fully grasped within the framework of its complex textual context. Within this framework, it is presented as part of a judgmental practice that is simultaneously undermined through numerous textual signals, ultimately culminating in a broader critique of morality itself.

The main objective of this paper is to present a new analysis of the concept of community and normativity in Nietzsche᾿s philosophy. As is well known, Nietzsche associates morality with abstract, empty principles that he urges us to overcome. This paper argues that a social normativity based on the concept of “Sittlichkeit” could offer members of the community greater freedom, allowing them to articulate their individuality within the social framework. To this end, I analyze and differentiate the concepts of “Moral” and “Sittlichkeit” in Nietzsche’s work, emphasizing how the latter is directly connected to the body, to human-animal genealogy, and to the prehistory as Nietzsche describes it. The human animal must live within a normative community framework, but such a framework should arise from the recognition of pluralism, not from hegemonic imposition.

In the written estate of Peter Gast alias Heinrich Köselitz, which is kept in the Goethe- and Schiller-Archiv Weimar (GSA) under the inventory number 102, there is a notebook (GSA 102/188) containing the following notation: „Nietzsche (25/III 1878 in Baden-Baden): ‚One perhaps does not like to see that free-spirited women have renounced religion because one tacitly and unconsciously assumes that their emancipation in this, the religious field, would also suffice for them to have (also) made themselves free in other fields where their emancipation does not seem desirable. Women are and should be the preservers of the conventional, etc.‘“

The suspicion that Nietzsche’s thought could have contributed to the totalitarian ideology of ‘fascism’ hangs like a dark cloud over Nietzsche research of the past. This suspicion is itself ideologically motivated (above all by Georg Lukács) and may have been evoked by misunderstandings of terms like Übermensch =‘superman’ and ‘will to power’. Nietzsche’s sister’s behaviour after his death may have fuelled this suspicion. Even though Nietzsche’s rejection of anti-Semitism has long been known and cannot be denied, the suspicion that his thought was close to Nazi ideology has been stubbornly maintained. Nietzsche’s ‘anti-fascist’ statements have never been presented comprehensively and in context. It is the ambition of this article to counter and refute the fascist suspicion by way of Nietzsche‘s statements on nationalism, racism and anti-Semitism as well as his prophetic description of the resulting consequences (of a ‘Third Reich’ and a Holocaust/ Shoah).

The development of humanity’s intellectual and religious consciousness was a central issue in the nineteenth-century Western philosophical tradition, with the concept of spiritualization ( Vergeistigung ) taking center stage. Friedrich Nietzsche and Eduard von Hartmann used the concept of spiritualization to address processes of transformation in human consciousness and culture. In doing so, both philosophers adopted different perspectives rooted in completely different objects of investigation. In this paper, however, I will focus on examining similarities in the interpretation of spiritualization by the two authors. I argue that, while their interpretations are fundamentally different, they still converge at times. Hartmann’s analysis postulates that religion has gone through different stages of development, each representing a higher degree of what he calls spiritualization. Nietzsche, on the other hand, views the concept of spiritualization through a more critical lens, focusing on a radical critique of both morality and religion. Two similarities can already be seen in both authors’ views: the development of consciousness, as well as the criticism of traditional religion and the difference between progress and decadence. My paper concludes with an analysis of the similarities between Nietzsche’s and Hartmann’s interpretations, where I argue that Nietzsche, in particular, not only criticises the term, but also formulates his own interpretation and focus in Götzen-Dämmerung . In this way, Nietzsche becomes part of the philosophical tradition of the nineteenth century by formulating his own interpretation of the concept of spiritualization.