1 - Nietzscheanism and existentialism

Summary

As we thus reject Christian interpretation and condemn its “meaning” as counterfeit, Schopenhauer's question immediately comes at us in a terrifying way: Does existence have any meaning at all? A few centuries will be needed before this question can ever be heard completely and in its full depth.

(GS 357)

Existentialism is one of the most widely known forms of philosophy outside the academic world. While now frequently considered passé, it enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Moreover, it remains one of the intellectual and cultural trends with which Nietzsche's name is often associated in the popular imagination. The accuracy and usefulness of characterizing Nietzsche as an existentialist is now a matter of debate, and some contemporary Nietzsche scholars would prefer this association to be forgotten (for further discussion of this point, see Ansell-Pearson [2011]). Nevertheless, there is no doubt that in an important chapter of Nietzsche's reception and influence, he was understood as an existentialist, or at least an important precursor to existentialism. In a work entitled Reason and Existence, for example, the German existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) identifies Nietzsche (alongside Kierkegaard) as one of the original existential thinkers:

The contemporary philosophical situation is determined by the fact that two philosophers, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, who did not count in their times and, for a long time, remained without influence in the history of philosophy, have continually grown in significance.

(Jaspers 1955: 23)