“proclaimed the death of God, he was hostile to the stifling bourgeois morality of the era, and he glorified in the intense feelings of the senses, exalting music, dancing, sexual excitement, making love, giving birth, hatred, fighting, and war. Not for nothing was he a powerful influence on the futurists and the vorticists. Even today his enthusiasms can seem intensely modem as well as modernist. Yet he is also perceived as the high priest of the postmodern. He speaks across the century to the specific concerns of our fractured times.” (Gott, 1996, p.87)
But there is a blotch to his legacy, albeit not one of his own making. After his death, the emergent Nazi Party in Germany misappropriated and misrepresented his thoughts to suit their narrow political ends. As a result, especially in the Anglo-American view he went into disgrace and scholarly neglect in the years immediately following the Second World War. But in recent decades, Nietzsche’s true contributions to philosophy is being acknowledged and celebrated once again. According to noted Nietzsche scholar Hollingdale, “he’s a philosopher who has a lot to say about contemporary conditions.The important thing about Nietzsche is that there is no dogma. He says dogmatism belongs to the past and he argues that we simply don’t know enough to know what’s right or wrong.” (Adam, 2001, p.323) The big challenge now is the relativisation of values, for under Nietzschean system, basic moral values are seen to be under attack.
References
- Adam, A. K. (2001). What Nietzsche Really Said. Anglican Theological Review, 83(2), 323+.
- Caird, E. (1889). The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant(Vol. 2). Glasgow: James Maclehose & Sons.
- Dahlen, M. (2011, Summer). What’s So Great about Kant? A Critique of Dinesh D’Souza’s Attack on Reason. Skeptic (Altadena, CA), 16(4), 42+.
- Franke, M. F., & Franceschet, A. (2001). [Global Limits: Immanuel Kant, International Relations & Critique of World Politics]. International Journal, 56(4), 713.
- Gott, R. (1996, December 20). Reinventing Nietzsche. New Statesman (1996), 125(4315), 86+.
- Kiss, E. (2001). Friedrich Nietzsche-A Theoretician of Modern Democracy. East European Quarterly, 35(3), 373.
- Roberson, M. (2012). Nietzsche’s Poet-Philosopher: Toward a Poetics of Response-Ability, Possibility, and the Future. Mosaic (Winnipeg), 45(1), 187.
- Rossi, P. J. (2010). Reading Kant from a Catholic Horizon: Ethics and the Anthropology of Grace. Theological Studies, 71(1), 79+.