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Introductory Study. Nietzsche on Culture and Subjectivity

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uaderns de filosofia vol. ii núm. 1 (2015): 11-23
issn: 2341-1414 doi: 10.7203/qfia.2.1.4984

Paolo Stellino & Pietro Gori

IFILNOVA–Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Introductory Study. Nietzsche on Culture

and Subjectivity

Abstract: Nietzsche’s timeliness is patent in the renewed enthusiasm with which

scholars in both the continental and analytic traditions have approached his works
in recent years. Along with other topics, attention has been particularly directed
towards two important issues: Nietzsche’s analysis, critique, and genealogy of cul-
ture, and his stance on subjectivity. In this introductory study we shall provide a
brief outline of both these topics. As will be shown, they play a pivotal role in
Nietzsche’s thought, and the link that connects them is stronger than one would
imagine.

Resumen: La tempestividad de Nietzsche es patente en el renovado entusiasmo

con el que filósofos de tradición continental y analítica se han acercado reciente-
mente a su obra. Entre otros temas, la atención se ha dirigido hacia dos aspectos
importantes del pensamiento nietzscheano: el análisis, la crítica y la genealogía de
la cultura, así como la posición de Nietzsche respecto de la subjetividad. En este
estudio introductorio, los autores realizarán un breve análisis de ambos aspectos.
Como se mostrará, estos aspectos juegan un papel de primera importancia en el
pensamiento nietzscheano, y la relación entre ellos es más fuerte de lo que se
podría pensar inicialmente.

Keywords: culture, subjectivity, morality, Europe.

Palabras clave: cultura, subjetividad, moral, Europa.

11
M ore than a hundred years after his death, Nietzsche’s philosophy is
as timely as ever. Or, to put it differently: Nietzsche, the philosopher
who was well aware of his untimeliness, has become for us a timely thinker in
several different respects. Among other things, Nietzsche’s timeliness is also
patent in the renewed enthusiasm with which scholars in both the continental
and analytic traditions have approached his works in recent years. Along with
other topics, attention has been particularly directed towards two important
issues: Nietzsche’s analysis, critique, and genealogy of culture, and his theory of
mind. As will be shown, both topics play a pivotal role in Nietzsche’s thought.
Moreover, in his way of dealing with them, Nietzsche foretold several relevant
questions which are debated today.
To understand how timely Nietzsche’s approach to culture is, we can
think of his genealogical method. In fact, Nietzsche’s strategy of calling into
question moral values through their genealogy can be regarded as, mutatis mu-
tandis, the very same strategy which Richard Joyce (2006)—and Michael Ruse
(1986) before him—recently deployed in order to defend an evolutionary anti-
realist account in metaethics.1 Another example of the timeliness of Nietzsche’s
approach to culture is represented by his preconisation of a community of “good
Europeans.” This is particularly relevant when we consider the peculiar political
and historical situation of the still-young European Union, a situation in which
different cultures are asked to coexist together and to define and determine com-
mon political and cultural strategies. It would be a gross mistake to think that
Nietzsche’s philosophy is out of place in this context. On the contrary, as will be
shown, far from being a nationalist or chauvinist, Nietzsche hoped for the crea-
tion of an ideal, supranational community of European intellectuals which was
supposed to direct and supervise not only European culture, but also the “total
culture of the earth” (WS 87).2 These are but two of the elements that have led
many Nietzsche-scholars to focus on the role that the notion of culture plays in
Nietzsche’s philosophy, and that have allowed them to see how the importance
of that notion has been wrongly downplayed in past years.

1
On this, see Stellino (forth.), particularly for what concerns the important differences
among the three accounts.
2
Nietzsche’s works are cited by abbreviation, chapter (when applicable) and section number.
The abbreviations used are the following: BT (The Birth of Tragedy), HL (On the Uses and Disad-
vantages of History for Life), HH (Human, All Too Human), WS (The Wanderer and His Shadow),
D (Daybreak), GS (The Gay Science), Za (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), GM (On the Genealogy of
Morality), BGE (Beyond Good and Evil), TI (Twilight of the Idols), AC (The Anti-Christ). The
translations used are from the Cambridge Edition of Nietzsche’s works. For the Nachlass, we
have used (when available) either the Cambridge Edition (Writings from the Late Notebooks) or
Kaufmann’s and Hollingdale’s translation of The Will to Power. Posthumous fragments (PF) are
however identified with reference to the Colli and Montinari standard edition.

12 Paolo Stellino & Pietro Gori

 A second issue that demonstrates the timeliness of Nietzsche’s philo-
sophy is that of the theory of mind. In recent years, Nietzsche scholars have
focused their attention on Nietzsche’s view of the self and subjectivity because
of its pioneering character. Particularly, Nietzsche’s critique of the subject as
a “regulative fiction” (which hides a multiplicity of instincts, affects, drives,
“wills to power”, and so on), and his consequent claims on the “superficiality”
of consciousness and its epiphenomenal character, have been widely debated
and compared with the outcomes of contemporary cognitive sciences. Scholars
who have been interested in these topics, have particularly stressed Nietzsche’s
timeliness, showing that in his philosophy we can find several intuitions that
can contribute to the contemporary debate.
In what follows, we will provide a brief outline of how Nietzsche appro-
ached both of these research fields. The attention will thus be directed first to
Nietzsche’s conception of culture and then to Nietzsche’s stance on subjecti-
vity. As will be shown, the link that connects both topics is stronger than one
would imagine.

1. Nietzsche on Culture

Although it is open to debate whether culture constitutes the central pro-

blematic of Nietzsche’s thought, as both Blondel and Wotling have claimed,3
less debatable is the fact that culture is one of the major issues in Nietzsche’s
philosophy, from the very beginning to the late writings of 1888. One of the
main worries of the early Nietzsche is the slow decline of present-day culture,
which he depicts as sterile, tired, and exhausted. Nietzsche is aware that this de-
cline needs to be counteracted and The Birth of Tragedy represents precisely his
first attempt at cultural renewal and regeneration. Indeed, the primary aim of
this work is not to solve the “difficult psychological question” (BT, An Attempt
at Self-Criticism, 4) about the birth of tragedy, but rather to show the way to its
rebirth in modern times, a rebirth that Nietzsche conceives of as a consequence
of the downfall of the Socratic and Alexandrian culture (mainly caused by the
works of Kant and Schopenhauer) and the beginning of the tragic culture.
Another clear proof of the extreme interest that the early Nietzsche takes
in culture can be found in the letter to Carl von Gersdorff and in that to Erwin
Rohde of March, 1873 where Nietzsche reveals to be planning to write an Un-
timely Meditation with the title of “The Philosopher as Physician of Culture.”4

3
See Blondel (1986, 79), Wotling (1995, 31 and 2008, 16-9).
4
See also PF 23[15], winter 1872-73.

Nietzsche on Culture and Subjectivity 13

One year later, Nietzsche publishes the second Untimely Meditation (On the
Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life), where culture is again one of the
major focuses of attention. In the final section of this work, Nietzsche claims
that what characterizes the culture (Bildung) of genuinely cultured peoples
(Culturvölker) is the fact that “culture [Cultur] can grow and flourish only out
of life” (HL 10).5 The excess of history in German pseudo-culture “has attac-
ked life’s plastic powers” (ibid.) and the hierarchy between life and knowledge
has been reversed with disastrous consequences. According to Nietzsche, this
hierarchy needs to be restored and history must be employed to the ends of
life. Only then will the young generation be delivered by the malady of history,
and culture will resemble the Greek conception of culture “as a new and im-
proved physis (…) a unanimity of life, thought, appearance and will” (ibid.).
Nietzsche’s attention to culture does not decrease in the middle period.
On the contrary, as Nicola Nicodemo (2014) has shown, after his delusion
with Wagner, Nietzsche does not give up his hopes of regenerating and re-
newing culture; he simply shifts his attention from the artist’s metaphysics to
an enlightened critique of culture (a clear example of which is constituted by
the fifth section of Human, All Too Human, which bears the title “Tokens of
Higher and Lower Culture”).6 Moreover, in Human, All Too Human Nietzs-
che introduces the concept “good European” for the first time in the oeuvre.
Although often overlooked, this concept plays a pivotal role in Nietzsche’s con-
ception of culture and, during the 1880’s, gains a relevant philosophical value,
being strictly connected with the purposes of Nietzsche’s mature thought.7
In the first period, Nietzsche develops this notion in contraposition with the
nationalistic movements of his time, which he accuses of being not only arti-
ficial and selfish, but also dangerous, for they foment national hostilities and,
at the same time, prevent the constitution of a “mixed race, that of European
man” (HH I 475). The good Europeans thus become the centre of Nietzsche’s
project of cultural regeneration, being called to direct and supervise a global,
supranational culture (WS 87) and to become “the masters of the earth, the
legislators of the future” (PF 35[9], May-July 1885).8

5
Unfortunately, as one can see, the English translation does not distinguish between Cul-
tur and Bildung. On the most important terminological and conceptual distinction between
Kultur (Cultur), Zivilisation and Bildung, see Blondel (1986, 63-5). For an accurate analysis of
Nietzsche’s terminology, see also Joan B. Llinares’ paper published in this volume.
6
As Paul van Tongeren (2008, 12) points out, in a previous plan of the work from autumn
1877, the first section of Human, All Too Human bore the title “Philosophy of Culture.” In
the published work, the first section became the fifth and the title was replaced by “Tokens of
Higher and Lower Culture.”
7
This reading is defended in Gori and Stellino (2015).
8
The concept of “good European” undergoes a subterranean development during the period

14 Paolo Stellino & Pietro Gori

 Nietzsche’s approach to culture becomes even more intense and mul-
tifaceted in the late period. In his Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche not only
unveils the pudenda origo of morality, but also applies his genealogical method
to culture, revealing its meaning (“to breed a tame and civilized animal”, GM
I 2), its “instruments” (the reactive and vindictive instincts, ibid.), its achie-
vements (the sovereign individual, GM II 2), and its hidden sources (as, for
instance, cruelty, GM II 6).9 What worries the late Nietzsche the most is, abo-
ve all, the decadence of modern culture and the type “man”, decadence which
he not only diagnoses, but also seeks to counteract with his “revaluation of
all values.”10 Christianity is held responsible for this decadence, not only for
having cheated modern men out of the fruits of Greek, Roman, and Islamic
culture as well as of those of the culture of the Renaissance (AC 59-61), but
also for having fostered the spread of a decadent, domesticated, and weak type
of man. It is easy to understand, therefore, why one of the main concerns of
the late Nietzsche is precisely the establishment of a rank order among cultures
and values as a precondition of the promotion of a strong and healthy type of
man.
As Wotling (2008, 26) has pointed out, a typical feature of Nietzsche’s
approach to culture—especially, in the late period—is that he conceives of
culture as the product of the body and its physiological dimension.11 Instincts,
affects, drives (and so forth) play a pivotal role in the configuration of both
individual and collective interpretations, habits, values and value judgments,
that is, in the configuration of a specific culture. In other words, according to
Nietzsche, a healthy and flourishing physiological condition is the necessary
prerequisite of a healthy culture, whereas the expression of a sick and decadent
physiological condition will be a degenerate and decadent culture. This is pre-
cisely why the physiological and medical (pathological) approach to culture is
so important for Nietzsche. In order to make a reliable diagnosis of a culture,

of Zarathustra (in the posthumous fragments of 1884-85, the good European is associated with
Zarathustra’s shadow) and finally emerges in the late period (Beyond Good and Evil, fifth book
of The Gay Science and On the Genealogy of Morality) as a key notion charged with philosophical
implication. Indeed, for the late Nietzsche the main task of the good Europeans is leading the
spiritual and cultural development that follows the death of God and the overcoming of Chris-
tian morality. On this topic, see Gori and Stellino (2015).
9
Already in BGE 229, Nietzsche claims that, “almost everything we call ‘higher culture’ is
based on the spiritualization and deepening of cruelty.”
10
The Problem of the decadence of European (particularly, French) culture was debated
at the time. Nietzsche’s analysis of decadence itself is strongly indebted to his reading of Paul
Bourget’s Essais de psychologie contemporaine in 1883.
11
At the same time, the body is conceived of by Nietzsche as the product of culture, that is,
a specific culture x will tend to reproduce a specific physiological condition x.

Nietzsche on Culture and Subjectivity 15

the physician of culture will have to focus his attention, first of all, on its
physiological precondition. Only then will he be able to establish an effective
therapy.
Nietzsche’s peculiar conception of culture as strictly related to the body
and its physiological condition poses several philosophical and anthropologi-
cal questions. To ask about the relation between culture and the body means,
for instance, to ask about the relation between culture and nature as well, or
to raise the question about the place of man within nature (as Llinares shows
in his essay published in this volume, these were the problems that interested
the early Nietzsche). We can also enquire into whether Nietzsche’s conception
of culture was appropriate or, to put it differently, whether we really have to
pay attention to the physiological dimension of a specific culture in order to
have a better understanding of that culture. And, must a genealogy of culture
include a genealogy of the body? In a time in which moral and cultural ge-
nealogies have become fashionable again, the question about the timeliness of
Nietzsche’s conception of culture (and, therefore, of Nietzsche’s understanding
of the body) cannot be more appropriate.

2. Nietzsche on Subjectivity

Nietzsche’s interest in the body leads us to another main topic of his

thought: subjectivity. This topic is important and has been widely debated in
recent times, but it also belonged to Nietzsche’s age and its culture. The pro-
blem of subjectivity is one of the most important topics of modern philosophy
(since Descartes), and during the 19th century it was discussed by neo-Kantian
thinkers and scientists interested in the development of a scientific (i.e. not-
metaphysical) psychology. The outcomes of their investigation deeply influen-
ced philosophy, literature, and other fields in the humanities. In dealing with
subjectivity, Nietzsche seems to be aware of these implications and stresses the
fundamental role of that problem for the development of European culture.
In the following pages we will show that subjectivity can be seen as a cultural
problem in three senses. First, as just mentioned, it is a problem discussed
during Nietzsche’s time and that especially belongs to 19th century psychology;
second, the existence of a subject as cause of our actions is the root of Christian
morals, and it thus plays an important role in Nietzsche’s attempt to overcome
European culture; finally, insofar as the subject is the primary reference of our
self-representation, its dissolution has relevant consequences for what concerns
the Delphic maxim “know thyself ” and, therefore, on both the philosophical
and cultural plane as well.

16 Paolo Stellino & Pietro Gori

 The problem of subjectivity and its relation to the bodily dimension is
famously presented in Zarathustra’s speech, On the Despisers of the Body. In
that speech, Nietzsche makes an important distinction between Self and I or
ego—the latter being also popularly known as soul. According to Nietzsche,
soul, I, or ego are only mental constructs, imaginary entities. They are only the
superficial manifestation of our Self—which is in fact our body, an unceasing
struggle of wills to power (i.e. drives and instincts).12 “Body am I through
and through, and nothing besides;—famously declares Zarathustra—and soul
is just a word for something on the body.” And continues: “What you call
‘spirit’ is also a tool of your body, my brother, a small work- and plaything of
your great reason.” As for the I, it is but a word, which children (i.e. common
people) are “proud” of. “But what is greater is that in which you do not want to
believe—your body and its great reason. It does not say I, but does I.” By means
of Zarathustra, Nietzsche thus stresses the fundamental role of the body and,
by arguing that there is no substance-subject behind our thought and feelings,
contrasts the popular belief in an independent I, in an agent that “freely” cau-
ses our actions. On the contrary, observes Zarathustra, behind our thoughts
and feelings “stands a powerful commander, an unknown wise man—he is
called Self. He lives in your body, he is your body” (Za, On the Despisers of the
Body).13
The distinction between Self/body and I/soul follows from Nietzsche’s
early reflections on consciousness (see e.g. D 119 and GS 11), and particularly
corresponds to his late criticism towards common people’s speaking “about an
I, (…) about an I as cause, and, finally, about an I as the cause of thoughts”
(BGE 16). According to Nietzsche, the I is one of the “eternal idols” produced
by the “metaphysics of language” (TI, “Reason” 5), a mere “regulative fiction
with the help of which a kind of constancy and thus ‘knowability’ is inserted
into, invented into, a world of becoming” (PF 1885, 35[35]). In BGE 16,
Nietzsche famously calls into question the legitimacy of using the proposition
“I think” as an immediate certainty. In particular, he argues that in order to be

12
Whether Nietzsche defends a strong epiphenomenalism or not in claiming the “superfi-
cial” character of consciousness (see. e.g. GS 354), is an open debate nowadays. Such a view is
developed in Leiter (2002) and in Riccardi (forth.), while Katsafanas (2005) argues against the
strong epiphenomenalist reading. In his thorough study on Nietzsche’s dealing with conscious-
ness from 1880 to 1888, Lupo (2009) also argues that Nietzsche rejects a metaphysical view
of consciousness (as a faculty), but accepts an epiphenomenal view of it (even if not a strong
one).
13
Jesús Conill deals with this important speech in his contribution to this special issue. For a
discussion of Nietzsche’s view of the reduction of mental states to bodily states, see Lupo (2006,
133) and Gerhard (2006).

Nietzsche on Culture and Subjectivity 17

able to discuss this issue, one would have to answer “a set of bold claims that
are difficult to establish—for instance, that I am the one who is thinking, that
there must be something that is thinking in the first place, that thinking is an
activity and the effect of a being who is considered the cause, that there is an
‘I’ and finally, (…) that I know what thinking is.” As it has recently been de-
monstrated, this view, and Nietzsche’s consequent claim that “in place of that
‘immediate certainty’ (…) the philosopher gets handed a whole assortment of
metaphysical questions” (ibid.),—i.e. whether and on what basis is it possible
to speak of the I as the cause of thoughts—is grounded on a neo-Kantian
framework.14 This must not surprise, given that during the 19th century seve-
ral thinkers and scientists were interested in scientific aspects of Kant’s work,
particularly those relating to problems of psychology and anthropology. Mo-
reover, the impact of their investigation on modern and contemporary Euro-
pean culture has been as strong as widespread and involved different fields of
study (see e.g. Ryan 1980).
Thus, as we suggested, the problem of subjectivity that Nietzsche faces
belongs to his time, and in that sense we can see it as a cultural problem. This
will be clearer if we briefly outline the context of Nietzsche’s view of the sub-
ject. Nietzsche’s rejection of the “I think” can be particularly contextualized by
making reference to the contemporary debate on “scientific psychology” that
included Friedrich A. Lange as one of the contenders.15 The I of which Nietzs-
che speaks in BGE 16 does not differ from the soul discussed by Lange in
his History of Materialism, nor is it different from what the Austrian physicist
Ernst Mach called, in the same years, the “supposed psychic unity” that science
claimed to be able to locate within the brain.16 In particular, the main problem
that Mach addresses is the relation between body and I (matter and spirit),
an issue widely debated in the nineteenth century and which Mach intended
to develop into an anti-metaphysical solution (see Mach 1914). Both Mach
and Lange faced the limitations of the explanations of the body/soul relation
provided both by the materialism and the physiology of sense organs typical
of psychology, and raised the possibility of establishing a “psychology without
a soul.” In so doing, they became spokesmen for a goal of considerable philo-
sophical significance, that is, the fact that contemporary psychology no longer

14
On this point, see Loukidelis (2013) and Gori (forth.).
15
The strong influence of Lange’s History of Materialism on Nietzsche’s thought is stressed
e.g. in Stack (1983). In Lange’s work, in particular, Nietzsche found a detailed and updated
exposition of the latest publications in psychology.
16
Mach (1914, 26). The discussion concerning science research on the self as an indivisible
unit that forms the basis of mental processes is already present in Mach’s Beiträge zur Analyse der
Empfindungen, published in 1886 and purchased by Nietzsche probably in the same year.

18 Paolo Stellino & Pietro Gori

needed to refer to a substantial ground of psychic functions is what brought
about its liberation from the old scholastic metaphysics.
Scientific psychology’s demand to free itself from the remnants of an
age-old metaphysics that surreptitiously attempted to introduce something
that it could not specify or measure, corresponds to Nietzsche’s stressing the
pure fictional character of the I (see e.g., TI, Reason, 5). We can make better
sense of this correspondence if we insert scientific psychology into the general
anti-metaphysically oriented context of 19th century science that influenced
Nietzsche.17 At that time, science engaged in freeing itself from animistic con-
ceptions that had their origin in the worldview of common sense, and con-
sequently experienced the sense of a lack of metaphysical foundations. This
experience produced the disorientation that Nietzsche’s “death of God” expres-
sed.18 In fact, although Nietzsche focused on the religious and moral level, we
can see this formula as stressing the general lack of foundational principles of
modern European culture. One of those principles was of course the I, which
19th century scientific psychologists, as well as Nietzsche, considered “unsava-
ble” (Mach 1914, 24), but that they did not reject as a fundamental reference
for psychological investigation and for the self-understanding of the subject as
agent respectively—provided, however, that the I is conceived of in a different
way, that is, stripped from its metaphysical surface.19
As we see, the problem of subjectivity was widely debated during
Nietzsche’s time and it is thus a question that specifically belongs to modern
European culture. But that problem has at least two important implications
on the philosophical and cultural plane, both of which have been particularly
stressed by Nietzsche.
First, the problem of subjectivity hits the very ground of European mo-
rals, since the subject is the primary reference of human agency. As Nietzs-
che argues in BGE 54, by drawing the consequences of his criticism towards

17
See e.g. Heit and Heller (2014).
18
We can compare Nietzsche’s “death of God” with Emile Du Bois-Reymond’s “Ignora-
bimus!”. The two conferences that the latter presented, in 1872 and 1880 respectively (The
Boundaries of the Knowledge of Nature and The World’s Seven Puzzles), aroused great interest at
the time. Du Bois-Reymond was particularly sceptical about the possibility of surpassing certain
cognitive limits and solving certain problems posed by natural reality. One of these problems
concerns the discourse relative to knowledge of psychic phenomena, particularly regarding their
relation to the material dimension—what, in modern terms, we would label the mind-body
problem (Du Bois-Reymond 1886). It is worth noting that a copy of these conferences can be
found in Nietzsche’s library (cf. Campioni et alia 2003, 202), although there is no record that
he effectively read them.
19
See Gori (forth.), §§ 3 and 7.

Nietzsche on Culture and Subjectivity 19

Decartes’s “I think”, “modern philosophy is, covertly or overtly, anti-Chris-
tian”, since “the philosophers have been out to assassinate the old concept of
the soul, under the guise of critiquing the concepts of subject and predicate.”
To state that “‘I’ [is] a condition and ‘think’ [is] a predicate and conditioned”
(ibid.) means in fact to believe in a “soul”—the latter being the independent
cause of thinking, a doer that we invent and pretend to be separated from its
activity (GM I 13). But “now (...) people are wondering whether they can get
out of this net—wondering whether the reverse might be true: that ‘think’ is
the condition and ‘I’ is conditioned, in which case ‘I’ would be a synthesis
that only gets produced through thought itself ” (BGE 54). Thus—continues
Nietzsche—maybe the times are ready to face “the possibility that the subject
(and therefore ‘the soul’) has a merely apparent existence.” The dissolution of
the subject would clearly have many consequences on a morality grounded on
such notions as “freedom of the will” and “responsibility” (BGE 21). To put it
roughly, without a soul to be seen as cause of our actions, these “could hardly
be considered free, and nobody could really be held responsible for it” (TI,
Four Great Errors, 3).
A second implication of the problem of subjectivity follows from the
philosophical questions that the dissolution of the traditional concept of the
subject raises. The subject, the I, is in fact the primary reference of our self-
representation. It is what, according to Kant, actually defines us as “persons”
(see Kant 1798, 127). But, what happens when the I loses its consistency and
permanence and we can no longer conceive of it as a substance? This is the
problem that modern psychologists faced during the 19th century and which
has strongly influenced the history of philosophy since the problem was po-
sited.20 In particular, the dissolution of the subject has relevant consequences
for what concerns the Delphic maxim “know thyself ”, which is at the root of
Western European culture and philosophy. For if we discover that our ego is a
“regulative fiction” that we posit for practical purposes, as “the bond that holds
all my experiences together” (Mach 1914, 357), then we necessarily have not
only to reconfigure our notion of both the subject (the agent) and the object
(the self to be known) of self-knowledge, but also to rethink our methodologies
and strategies to achieve it or even to call into question its very possibility.21

20
See, for instance, Diego Sánchez Meca’s paper, published in this volume, which focuses,
among other things, on Deleuze’s dealing with the crisis of the traditional view of the subject in
his Difference and Repetition.
21
As Cristina Fornari points out in her contribution to this volume, Nietzsche was aware
of this problem, and his “become what you are” can be interpreted as an attempt to provide us
with an alternative to the Delphic exhortation. Moreover, Fornari argues that Nietzsche’s late

20 Paolo Stellino & Pietro Gori

 All the elements we briefly dealt with show how important the topic
of subjectivity is for Nietzsche’s philosophy, whose main aim was to revaluate
the values of European culture. These values are particularly a product of the
Platonic and Christian “will to truth” (GM III 27), that is, the culture that
created the “eternal idols” that Nietzsche “sounds out” with his “hammer”,
thus revealing their hollowness (TI, Preface). The I, the subject, is one of these
idols which, according to Nietzsche, modern man does not believe in anymore
(TI, Four Errors 3). But the disorientation that follows from this disbelief—the
“death of God”—is only the first phase of a process of overcoming Western
metaphysics, a process that Nietzsche sees as the necessary development of “a
two-thousand-year discipline in truth-telling”, of “Christian morality itself,
the concept of truthfulness which was taken more and more seriously” (GM
III 27 and GS 357). That is why Nietzsche talks of “Europe’s most protracted
and bravest self-overcoming” (ibid.), whose heirs are precisely the good Euro-
peans. The ideal community of the good Europeans that, as shown above, is
related to Nietzsche’s early attention to culture, also plays an important role in
his late thought. Here again, the good Europeans are called to promote a new
“supra-European” culture (BGE 255).22 Insofar as they “have outgrown Chris-
tianity and are averse to it—precisely because [they] have grown out of it” (GS
377), the good Europeans can make the final step and overcome Europe itself.
That means, of course, to get rid of the principles of Western metaphysics and
her morality, whose fundamental reference is the substance-concept “subject.”

autobiography, Ecce homo, is an experimental way of self-narration, whose object is no substance

entity, but on the contrary, a “mobile creation”. For an analysis of Nietzsche’s attitude towards
self-knowledge, see Katsafanas (forth.) and Stellino (forth.).
22
See on this Gori and Stellino (2015), § 2.2 and 3.

Nietzsche on Culture and Subjectivity 21

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France.
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