“Nietzsche was 1970s post-structuralist, new lost letter to reviled sister reveals”

by Cassus Perierat, Le Monde Problematique

From time to time at Castalian, we like to invite foreign authors to contribute to the mix. This revolutionary article was one we felt under a civic obligation to share with the reading public. Evidently, the views of Cassus Perierat do not represent those of the editor[s].

In a document set to shake up Nietzsche scholarship perhaps forever, a new letter written by the philosopher to his reviled sister, Elizabeth, dated 1981 has this week surfaced for the first time.

Scholars have long worked with the tricky supposition that the philosopher to whom they attribute the exciting views of an avant garde artist-come-cultural studies professor from gauche Paris circa 1975 was in fact a subject of the German second Reich, entire swathes of whose texts address 19th century issues, and take sides in the debates of the 1870s and 1880s on socialism, liberalism, democracy, universal suffrage, the woman’s movement, and eugenics.

This new letter seems finally able to put recurrent doubts raised by Nietzsche’s late 19th century preoccupations to rest.

They also strike a final blow against scholars who insist on bringing up his troubling history of being cited as inspiration by every European far right thinker since 1900, including several extreme Right leaders including Benito Mussolini, Joseph Goebbels and Alfred…