Nietzsche, Marx, and the Concept of Man: Nihilism, Eternal Return, and Alienation
Nihilism
For Nietzsche, the Western cultural tradition is poisoned by a desire for death and nothingness. This nihilism is a fatal disease with symptoms like the devaluation of highest values and the death of God. Nietzsche uses the metaphor of a necessary fall to propel this inevitable fate. He identifies two forms of nihilism:
Passive Nihilism
This is the self-devaluation of Western religion, morality, philosophy, science, and art. It’s nihilism as something that happens to Western culture.
Active Nihilism
Nietzsche views the destruction of decadent Western values as a necessary step towards their transmutation into new values.
Nihilism is a transitional state leading to a new era with new values, much like the dictatorship of the proletariat in Marx’s theory serves as a stage before a classless society where the Übermensch (Superman) can be fully realized.
The Eternal Return and Amor Fati
Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal return is a fundamental intuition. Reality perpetually flows like a wheel, eternally recurring. This has several interpretations:
Cosmological Perspective
If the past is infinite, everything has already happened and will happen again infinitely in the future.
Philosophical Perspective
Philosophically, the eternal return represents a joyful affirmation of life (amor fati). Each moment, embraced fully, becomes eternal. This echoes Goethe’s famous “Stop, instant, you are so beautiful!”
The Concept of Man in Marx
Marx’s thought includes a specific anthropology emphasizing man’s practical and social essence. Man is a product of his society, shaped by its relations of production. Man is homo faber, a producer and creator.
Human history is a succession of production systems: feudal, capitalist, and communist. The economic infrastructure influences even our ideas and ethics. Man is alienated, performing work that doesn’t serve his interests, receiving only a paltry sum of money in return.
Liberation from Chains
Marx’s anthropology includes a liberation program. The capitalist system, through its internal contradictions, will eventually collapse. Man, aware of this and his own potential, must unite with others to accelerate this process.
Marxism as Humanism
Marxism is humanistic in its aim to create a new man. If human nature is social, changing society changes man. Marx envisions a classless society without private property where each individual can reach their full potential.
Alienation or Estrangement from Work
Alienated labor means feeling estranged from one’s work. The worker creates a product but receives less than its value. He finds himself only outside of work. The goal is to abolish alienated labor in a society where work becomes pleasure and creation, where work = create = leisure = play.