Prophet of Modernity

German,” Eric Heller once said, “is the mother tongue of modernity.” The statement was a kind of shorthand to indicate that every cultural and social formulation which has characterized the modern stance derives in some important measure from German thought and the work of German intellectuals. During the 1870s and 1880s when the new physics, the new symbolic art and literature, the new psychology, new social theories and the new philosophy were being formulated, the German-speaking lands were the cutting edge of revolutionary society and radical thought. Of those German thinkers none was more characteristic than the prophet of modernity, Friedrich Nietzsche. He was the great philosophical poet of the late nineteenth century. It will be, in the century ahead, Nietzsche who is recognized as giving his age its quintessential expression as Dante, his mirror image, expressed the thirteenth century. But, whereas Dante’s pilgrimage was an ascent to order, Nietzsche’s was a descent to chaos.

The Will to Power, by Friedrich Nietzsche; tr., Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale; ed., Walter Kaufmann. Random House, $10

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About the Author

Stephen J. Tonsor

German,” Eric Heller once said, “is the mother tongue of modernity.” The statement was a kind of shorthand to indicate that every cultural and social formulation which has characterized the modern stance derives in some important measure from German thought and the work of German intellectuals. During the 1870s and 1880s when the new physics, the new symbolic art and literature, the new psychology, new social theories and the new philosophy were being formulated, the German-speaking lands were the cutting edge of revolutionary society and radical thought. Of those German thinkers none was more characteristic than the prophet of modernity, Friedrich Nietzsche. He was the great philosophical poet of the late nineteenth century. It will be, in the century ahead, Nietzsche who is recognized as giving his age its quintessential expression as Dante, his mirror image, expressed the thirteenth century. But, whereas Dante’s pilgrimage was an ascent to order, Nietzsche’s was a descent to chaos.

The Will to Power, by Friedrich Nietzsche; tr., Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale; ed., Walter Kaufmann. Random House, $10