ABSTRACT
Although The Birth of Tragedy presents us with a call to arms in the pursuit of a revitalised German culture, attainable by way of the music of Wagner, Nietzsche soon rejects this in favour of what he terms ‘good Europeanism’. A stark contrast exists between the youthful Nietzsche and the more mature writer of Human, All Too Human and after. The mature Nietzsche’s work bears witness to the demise of nationalistic sentiment in favour of the celebration of a unified European culture. Such unification is, for Nietzsche, the consequence of modernity, with its ever-faster exchanges of information, burgeoning commercial activity and means of travel. In the aftermath of such developments, traditional national barriers are threatened and, with them, the existence of the nation state (Human, All Too Human, §475). To be a good European means, for Nietzsche, to be someone who is part of this self-overcoming of European identity, which is nothing less than the self-overcoming of Christianity. One thereby embraces the notion of the free spirit (Beyond Good and Evil, Preface).
