Abstract

Nietzsche and the Nihilist Structures of European CultureThe present analysis focuses on the way in which the Nietzschean genealogical strategy identifies and talks about the nihilism of European history. It seeks to identify the nihilist structures of this history, to find their origins and, last but not least, to think about the possibility of overcoming nihilism. Amongst the nihilist structures that Nietzsche had in mind, the one he considered to be at the root of all the others, and thus of the European man’s way of life, is metaphysics itself, understood as Platonism, otherwise explained as a separation between “the true world” and the “apparent world” . In this context, Nietzsche’s destruction of this metaphysical scheme becomes a decisive one. Its role is to show through which confusion of meaning, that is to say through which deception, reason set itself up as an absolute master, assuming metaphysical properties such as self-consciousness, logical clarity, value, morality, as well as happiness. After the genealogical destruction, senses and instincts, feelings and affections are rehabilitated, these being all the elements in man which the “Platonic” metaphysics expelled from the sphere of sense because of its preference for reason