ABSTRACT

I ANY reliable approach to Nietzsche confronts one, sooner or later, with his ideas about the European culture as a whole and with his ‘good Europeanism’. For in spite of all his vagaries and contradictions, Nietzsche remained a ‘good European’—one of the best after Goethe. Steeped in the cultural tradition of Europe, from ancient Greece onwards, he was profoundly aware of the organic character of that tradition, and felt in consequence all the more acutely the tragedy of its decline. His very inconsistencies were often due to the conflict between his ‘biological’ and his cultural preoccupations. On the biological plane, for example, Nietzsche the invalid demanded incessant strife and struggle in order to increase thereby one’s will to power. On the cultural plane, however, it was Nietzsche the man who longed for an integration of Europe-an integration which only could take place if the political and economic rivalries of the various European states were put aside in the name of a broad pan-European outlook.