ABSTRACT
Friedrich Nietzsche has been denazified. If one considers the relationship between Nietzsche and Nazism, one is confronted with a situation similar to that confronted in considering the relationship between Nietzsche and twentieth century philosophical modernism such as existentialism or logical positivism and analytical philosophy. If one sees modernist culture as beginning with Nietzsche, then one is entitled to write — as R. J. Hollingdale did — that the twentieth century came to birth in the 1880’s. Nietzsche prepared a consciousness that excluded nothing that anyone might think, feel, or do, including unimaginable atrocities carried out on a gigantic order. That Nietzsche is a precursor of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, in the sense in which, for instance, he has been claimed as a precursor of logical positivism, suggests itself in various ways. The following familiar consideration is proposed: If God is dead, if there is nihilism, all possibilities are open and must be explored as a result of, as an antidote to, and as an attack on, nihilism.
