POSTCRITICAL NIETZSCHE: OR WHY HE IS STILL SO INTELLIGENT

Abstract

Starting from the diagnostic of our present as a deepening of nihilism and its morbid complicity with idealism -which gave rise to modern impotence-, and in conjunction with the power that Nietzschean thought still has to think about the present, we propose to inquire into the efficacy of critical thought in the present. We approach this question by focusing on the chapter of Ecce Homo, ‘Why I am so intelligent’, insofar as we consider that there Nietzsche expressly manifests the need for attention to ‘small things’ as a method of counteracting idealism. We hypothesise that in this attention to small things -in which thought and life do not go their separate ways- it is possible to find Nietzsche’s postcritical gesture, which for us constitutes a work.

Keywords: Nihilism. Post-criticism. Diagnostic of the present.