The prohibited Nietzsche: anti-Nitzscheanism in Soviet Russia

In this paper, I argue that in Ukrainian reception of Nietzsche’s philosophy, he remains a most ambivalent thinker. Since Nietzsche himself often defined his philosophizing as unclear, in this article I have tried to explicate the different fluctuations in the reception of his thoughts. I develop this account through explanation of transformation and adaptation of certain Nietzsche’s thoughts. In Ukrainian context, some of his ideas get unexpected formulas and ideological connotations. Drawing on this, I argue that most significant elements in the Ukrainian reception are connected to the literary perusal of Nietzscheanism. Finally, the main topics of Ukrainian Nietzscheanism are related to ‘historical nihilism’ as a diagnosis of culture. The article traces how Nietzsche’s thoughts became a powerful tool in critical approach to naturalism, emotional writing and provincialism. The important characteristics that developed the ideas of Nietzscheanism in Ukraine include the following points. The desire to find a strong man (Kobylyanska, Vynnychenko, Semenko). The problem of individual freedom and its place in a society and criticism of obscurantism (Ukrainska Khata). Understanding of the critical moments in history and actualization of creativity (Khvyliovyj, Rylskyj). Openness to interpretation, discussion, and diagnosis of the cultural conditions (members of the Prague school). Re-evaluation of the role of morality and religion, awareness of the tragedy of being and finally, search for a balance between intelligence and voluntarism (Lypynsky, Dontsov).

Nietzsche and the German Tradition, 2003

This essay examines cultural attitudes to Nietzsche in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which appeared to be changing in the mid- to late 1980s, after almost forty years of deliberate, officially sanctioned neglect of the thinker. Nietzsche's voice had been effectively silenced in the GDR and his manuscripts carefully guarded. While it was not impossible to gain access to Nietzsche's manuscripts, scholars had to tackle a bureaucratic assault course in order to reach them. Reception of Nietzsche in the GDR tended to be limited and negative. There was nothing even resembling an open discussion in the GDR of Nietzsche and his legacies before 1986, and the first Nietzsche monograph to be published there did not appear until 1989. Discussions of Nietzsche in the GDR were rare, and they tended to focus only on his alleged role in paving the way for National Socialism and/or bourgeois imperialism. The depth and intensity of official hostility to Nietzsche in the GDR can be traced, in part, to the founding ideas and self-understanding of that state. Its claims to legitimacy were based on two closely related ideas. The first was a Marxist-Leninist interpretation of historical development, according to which the GDR was the culmination of progressive ('zukunftsweisend') developments in German history. The second was the antifascist struggle of 1933-1945, which provided the GDR with its immediate raison d’être. The presence of the victorious Red Army on German soil, the sacrifices of the Soviet people in repelling the fascist invader, and the martyrdom of German antifascists in the Third Reich appeared to provide compelling evidence for both these claims to legitimacy. There was no room for Nietzsche in the ‘first antifascist state on German soil’, as his writings were perceived (and not only by communists) to have been an important underpinning of National Socialism. A debate in 1986-87 in the GDR journal *Sinn und Form* on opening up Nietzsche's work to public debate seemed to be part of a cultural thaw in East Germany. This debate in the GDR was a curiously muted and oblique version of a process which, by 1987, was already well underway in Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union: glasnost. In the event, in the GDR context it was too little, too late.

*Germany and the Imagined East*, ed. by Lee M. Roberts. London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2004

Nowhere in his writings does Nietzsche discuss Russia or Russians systematically; his remarks on them are scattered and diffuse. As both geographical reality and cultural construct, Russia is not as central to Nietzsche’s outlook as ancient Greece, for example, or Rome, or Judaea. Russia nevertheless plays an important ancillary role in Nietzsche's diagnosis of contemporary Europe and its ills. Russia or, rather, what Nietzsche imagines Russia to be, offers important clues, he believes, to overcoming the malaise of nineteenth-century Europe. Nietzsche saw in Russia an antidote or alternative to what he perceived as the febrile decadence of Western Europe in general, and Germany in particular.

The Comparatist, 1999

Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities (ICCESSH 2018), 2018

The article considers the theme of God and the motive of the death of God in the reception of the four thinkers of the Russian religious philosophy in the turn of the 20th century Vladimir Solovyov, Andrei Bely, Lev Shestov and Aleksei Losev. Attention to these very thinkers is grounded by the scheme, observing their reading of Nietzsche's ideas about God: from the Dionysian point of view or the Apollonian one. On another scale, there is the idea of the degree of manifestation of this principle in Nietzsche's understanding of the theme of God-"maximum" and "minimum" (of the Dionysian or the Apollonian).

Nietzsche’s irrational doctrines have contributed to the emergence of self-destructive extremism on both the right and left ends of the political spectrum. The realization of his Übermensch ideal is not about achieving greatness as an individual but rather about greatness as a collective whole, specifically as a European empire. His philosophy stands in stark contrast to genuine conservatism, which is rooted in Christian principles. Keywords: conservatism, perspectivism, traditionalism, New Right, identitarian, postmodernism, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Heraclitus, extremism, antisemitism, will to power, logos, Christianity.

Studies in East European Thought, 2004

This volume contains the proceedings of the conference “Vladimir Solov'ëv und Friedrich Nietzsche: eine deutsch-russische kulturelle Jahrhundertbilanz”, held at Trier University (Germany) in March 2001, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of both Solov'ëv's ...

The agonist, 2023

This essay aims to provide another perspective on how the problem of nihilism operates within Nietzsche's works by reading him against the thought of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, one of the first philosophers to introduce the classical modern sense of nihilism. Since Nietzsche makes no mention of Jacobi, this essay reads Nietzsche's analysis of nihilism as a silent reply to the founding problem of nihilism as Jacobi conceived it, namely the crisis of piety, and against the historical backdrop from which Nietzsche first truly encountered nihilism as a phenomenon, namely the 1881 assassination of Russian Tsar Alexander II. This essay will, additionally, briefly outline the various sources (historical, literary) Nietzsche had access to and contributed to his knowledge of nihilism.

Historical Materialism Journal , 2020

Review essay of Domenico Losurdo’s groundbreaking biography and historical study of Nietzsche's life and times, The Aristocratic Rebel: Intellectual Biography and Critical Balance-Sheet. Originally published in Italian in 2002, this in-depth biographical portrait offers up an entirely new way of reading the legacy of Nietzsche’s impact on social and political thought. Losurdo presents an argument often neglected, if not outright ignored by philosophers, literary theorists and general readers of Nietzsche; namely that he is best read as a deeply political and reactionary thinker who, over the course of four key stages of his career, develops a reactionary political agenda that is inseparable from the development of his moral and metaphysical thought.

AGONAL PERSPECTIVES ON NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY O CRITICAL TRANSVALUATION, 2021

The chapters of this book draw in different ways on published and unpublished material, as indicated below.The author would like to thank the publishers for permitting the use of published material. Chapter 1i sb asedo narevised version of "Nietzsche'sH ammer: Philosophy,D estruction, or TheA rt of Limited Warfare",i n Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 60/2,1 998, pp. 321-347. Chapter 2i sb asedo nar evised and expanded version of the chapter "Nietzsche'sAgon",first published in TheNietzschean Mind,ed.