Nietzsche and Modernity

Nietzsche's views on modernity seem at first sight clearly negative, as he declared in multiple places his contempt of modern values – listing among them most frequently equality, democracy, emancipation, utilitarianism, socialism, and feminism. This list, however, is not complete in reference to modernity, and defines a particular outlook upon it, which might be questioned. Nietzsche's anthropology of the modern is disputable, as much as his evaluation thereof, which comes down to the notion, extreme enough, of “nihilism”. However, upon closer look we shall find a deeper and more complex, dialectical relationship between the philosopher and the modern era, which will show how modern in fact his thinking is – making him an early precursor of modernism. In this paper I will attempt to: 1. Discuss the meaning of modernity, 2. Refer briefly to previous interpretations of Nietzsche as both modern and anti-modern thinker, 3. Discuss Nietzsche's anti-modern position, 4. Discuss how Nietzsche emerges from within modernity with reference to the notion of secularism, 5. Discuss Nietzsche's modernist position, a form of being ultra-modern. 6. Go back to Nietzsche's deepest modern/ modernist motive: the notion of power and will-to-power, that was a unique invention of modernity as such, in my view, and not of Nietzsche alone. The argument relies on a dialectical turn from the simple anti-modern through radically modern to ultra-modern moment. Nietzsche, the paper will attempt to demonstrate, was anti-modern mainly in his interpretation of the actual facts, but radically modern in his assumptions leading to these interpretations and ultra-modern with his pursuits of making modern humanity really new through a radical reinvention of its moral values. Keywords: Nietzsche, modernity, modernism, romanticism