Friedrich Nietzsche's Political Philosophies

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Friedrich Nietzsche's Political Philosophies

"God is dead" (Kaufmann, 1974, p532), with these words, Friedrich Nietzsche ensured his place among the most memorable philosophers in history. This phrase ranks alongside Descartes "Cogito, ergo sum" or in English, "I think, therefore I am" (Descartes, 1850, p24) as one of the most important in western philosophy.

Among his critics, Irving Zeitlin writes, echoing Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), "...if God is dead, everything is permitted. The danger of this kind of moral nihilism Nietzsche nowhere takes into consideration" (2004, p57). Zeitlin, like many others, points out that clearly the "death" of God has had a disastrous effect on the twentieth century.

Nietzsche's most influential work was Thus Spake Zarathustra, published in four parts between 1883 and 1885. In this ambitious work, he depicted the fictitious Zarathustra as a charismatic teacher whose appearance heralds the redemption of the modern world. Zarathustra is best known for his controversial teaching of the Übermensch (or "overman"), whom he proposes as "the meaning of the earth." Were his auditors to embrace this untimely teaching, Zarathustra insists, they would be prepared finally to emerge from the shadow of the dead God and take their