ABSTRACT
Friedrich Nietzsche criticized such notions of totality and the scientific pretensions that supported them. For Nietzsche, there was no value in ideas of totality. It is no coincidence that much of Friedrich Nietzsche's writing refers to society as composed of “populations,” and of those who are “fit” for this or “unfit” for that. The anonymity of the crowd, lack of distinction brought about by democratic conformity, and routinization of daily behavior at the expense of creative vitality were all functions of the late-nineteenth-century urban environment that Nietzsche found repulsive. Nietzsche, along with many artists of his period, felt that this overtly-rationalistic form of culture diluted something very special in the human spirit, and that the only way to respect the creative, self-forming drive in the individual was to live one’s life according to one’s own rules.
