Friedrich Nietzsche and the Second Explosion of Individualism
Nietzsche wanted to tear down everything, literally everything, and start anew.
Nietzsche called for us to move beyond tradition and forge a new path. Whether we want to or not, Nietzsche says, we must forge that new path because the old ways are dead. He is infamous for declaring that “God is dead” in his book The Gay Science (1882). Often quoted, but almost never in context, this is not a declaration about the existence of God but about something he found much more relevant. Nietzsche understood that whatever truth Christianity may hold, its tradition was integral to European culture. What he was announcing as being dead was everything that was built on and sustained by this Christian tradition, including and especially the whole of European morality. This moral system was his real target, and this system, he was convinced, was destined for collapse. Worse, Nietzsche claimed, the Christian moral system that had evolved in Europe was harmful to human beings. Humanity must abandon the old foundation, leave the dead and crumbling structures built on it, and create a new morality that is beyond the old categories of good and evil.
