Friedrich Nietzsche and the History of Political Ideas: Values (original) (raw)

There is a widespread feeling that modernity has come to an end, which is often accompanied by a certain anxiety. The idea that history reached its zenith with a particular thinker, say Hegel or Marx, is no longer credible. In fact, despite recent books on the “End of History,” we see that history goes on. The angst is perhaps due to the ingrained conviction that there is no absolute moment, no possibility of discovering something true and unchangeable about politics, morality or society. There is no moment in the past when the truth about man, morality and the world was revealed. We take for granted that each individual may have his or her own ethical, political and social “values”. Values, such as goodness, justice, equality, erudition, even mental health or education, are not something “given” by reality; rather, they are a historical human creation (something that may seem paradoxical, since, if man is a historical being, then the very idea that man is historical is itself historical and contingent). This historicity of history can be better understood if we compare it with past ideas about history. In ancient times, history was conceived of as a set of inquiries about what happened or as a chronicle of journeys. Even thinkers like the Sophists or Plato, who recognized the importance of change, did not expressly reflect on the “historical process”. The Stoics and Medieval thinkers, on the contrary, believed in divine providence and reflected on history and eschatology, but for them time was only “the measure of change according to before and after,” and not the essence of things. Only with Hegel does history come to be seen as the innermost core of reality, something that determines all intellectual structures and all life. However, both Hegel and those who followed him (including Marx) still perceive history as a process moving towards an ending or a perfect state – be it the attainment of absolute knowledge and the realization of the spirit in history, or the classless society. Today, however, we consider that all understanding is itself historical and related to a given cultural context. The idea of an end to history and of a “teleology” inscribed in reality appears to us as dated or outdated. We see the ideas in history as historical, and the historical process itself no longer appears to us as something we can grasp in its meaning (as if we saw it from the outside and knew where it comes from and where it is going); instead, we see it as something in the middle of which we find ourselves and whose dynamics we cannot fully understand. In fact, it would not even make sense to try to understand it, since this is not a process that occurs independently of us, but rather a process that we experience from within and for whose development we are responsible. In a sense, it is we who make history and determine it, and this making is open-ended as to its direction and purpose. This change in perspective also applies to the motivations that underlie and determine the historical process. Such motivations are no longer seen as transcendent or latent, but rather as motivations that arise from life itself and that in many cases may not be entirely rational, or may even be constitutively irrational. In fact, the entire historical process is no longer seen as rational, so that the very idea of progress has become questionable. We no longer think that we are moving toward some perfect state and that each new stage brings us closer to that. We recognize that there may have been losses, and even significant losses. They are part of the process and may even become prevalent. This becomes particularly evident if we consider the fact that modern times are often experienced or seen as a period of decadence–an idea we find already in Romanticism and which has taken different forms throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The oft-repeated thesis that today we live in the post-truth era is only one of its latest manifestations. There is, then, no baseline from which we can understand history and obtain a secure orientation as to what we should do. As Jean-François Lyotard pointed out, it is no longer possible to think of any grand narrative or metanarrative, as was always the case up to this point. The future and future ways of understanding are therefore completely open and have to be constructed both individually and socially. Nietzsche is the first to develop this way of seeing the relationship between history and life, and takes it to its ultimate consequences. Indeed, when he criticizes philosophers for their lack of historical sense, he is not only criticizing the fact that philosophers have not realized that our way of seeing things changes over time. He is also criticizing the fact that philosophers have not understood that the historicity of ideas involves the very irrationality and incomprehensibility of the historical process.