The Agonist

Nietzsche's Ever-Present Future

Frank Boardman — 2025-12-31

Nietzsche is unique among historically significant philosophers in his conception of and emphasis on the future. In many of his later works, Nietzsche suggests that his focus and purpose is directed at both describing and bringing about a particular future condition. I will attempt here to defend two separate, through related, claims: First, any plausible account of Nietzsche's philosophical project will have to accommodate a likewise plausible account of Nietzsche's particular emphasis on the future. Second, we can read Nietzsche's understanding of the future as the organizing principle through which we can best interpret his later work.

Transhumanist Nietzsche?

Ádám Lovász — 2025-12-31

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner has argued that Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy constitutes a type of transhumanism. While Sorgner’s interpretation is original, we deny that the transhumanist vision of the “posthuman” as a technologically enhanced human being accords with Nietzsche’s Overhuman. While the two share superficial similarities, they are nonetheless distinct, for Nietzsche did not believe in Enlightenment ideas such as liberalism, progress and scientism, all of which feature prominently within transhumanism. Furthermore, we shall argue that scientistic transhumanist ideas relating to human “enhancement” are too modern and progressive to be Nietzschean. More seriously, Nietzsche’s emphasis uponamor fati, a central feature of his thought, is all but ignored by transhumanists. According to the reading presented here, transhumanism constitutes an “all-too-human” position. While of interest as a system of thought, we reject Sorgner’s ahistorical claim that Nietzsche can be counted as a transhumanist. In our view, Nietzsche’s tragic hero is a singular individual who follows the call of Nature, but not a technologically enhanced posthuman.

God Is Dead, Long Live the Emperor!

Anthony Kosar — 2025-12-31

This critical essay proposes an interpretation of the nihilism at the heart of the titular story of the newly translated collection of writings by Yukio Mishima (1925–1970), Voices of the Fallen Heroes and Other Stories (Vintage International: New York, 2025). The proposed Nietzschean reading takes this nihilism to be at least one natural consequence of ‘the death of God,’ which finds an unexpected parallel in Mishima’s reframing of Emperor Hirohito’s renunciation of his own divinity following the defeat of the Japanese Imperial Army in WWII. The essay concludes with some reflections on the limits of Nietzsche’s non-metaphysical justification of ‘higher types’ in light of the Japanese loss of belief in their own higher man and god-in-human-form, the emperor himself.

Truthful Dying

Brian Lightbody — 2025-12-31

Nietzsche’s philosophy draws a sharp distinction between higher types and weaker individuals, the former defined by traits such as self-respect, resilience, and an affirmation of life—particularly through the acceptance of the Eternal Return. However, what it means for higher types to affirm life in all its tragic dimensions remains unclear. This paper argues that understanding their attitude toward death—what I term AD—is crucial for illuminating their life-affirming disposition. I challenge prevailing third-person, static interpretations (e.g., Leiter’s), proposing instead a dynamic, first-person approach informed by Foucault’s notion of technologies of the self and rapport à soi. I show that higher types affirm life precisely by confronting and integrating death—both literal and symbolic—into their self-conception. Through close readings of Twilight of the Idols and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I argue that higher types practice a “consummating death,” grounded in truthful self-reflection about their life’s goal and their diminishing capacity to pursue it. This technology of self—a practiced relationship to dying—reveals not only the psychological structure of Nietzschean strength but offers transposable strategies for those of us who are not higher types. Ultimately, affirming life may begin with learning how to die—truthfully, purposefully, and at the right time.

The Trouble with Creating Values after God’s Death

Erli Mertika — 2025-12-31

Nietzsche inscribes “God is dead” above the doorway to the modern world, and the weight of that loss varies across its grieving inhabitants. This essay focuses on the value creators—specifically philosophers—and the way in which their task is complicated by the impossibility of legitimating norms through appeals to Hinterwelten. Plato convinced himself that his creations were really “the eternal treasure that just happened to have been found on his path” (WTP §972). Homer and other poets called on the Muses. The new godless philosophers, I argue, must bear the full weight of authority, i.e., they must command. I thus interpret Nietzsche’s claim that philosophers are “commanders and legislators” (BGE §211) as describing, in part, the internal struggle of treating self-created values as binding despite knowing they are products of an all-too-human will: their own.

Review of Nietzsche: A New Musical

Yunus Tuncel — 2025-12-31

Philipp Felsch, How Nietzsche Came in From the Cold: Tale of a Redemption. Trans. Daniel Bowles. Polity Press: Cambridge, UK, 2024.

Daniel Blue — 2025-12-31

Book review of Philipp Felsch's "How Nietzsche Came in From the Cold: Tale of a Redemption" Translated by Daniel Bowles and published by Polity Press in Cambridge, UK in 2024.