The Age of Experimentation: Modernity, Democracy, and the Philosophy of the Future

Nietzsche defines the “task of the philosopher” as fundamentally linked to the “problem of value” (GM I 17). This definition of the philosopher’s task contrasts with the generally accepted characterization of philosophy as the pursuit of truth. However, for Nietzsche, this classical definition is both problematic and insufficient. According to him, every human activity, be it practical or theoretical, depends upon a system of fundamental preferences, which Nietzsche designates by the term “values”. Hence, the problem of value appears as an “even more fundamental question” (BGE 1) than the question of truth and should be the guiding thread of the task of the philosopher. The problem of “the value of values”, as Nietzsche puts it, raises the question of the consequences of the conditioning of human beings by different systems of evaluations, constituting what Nietzsche calls a “culture”, for the flourishing of human life on earth. How should one live to thrive and ensure a future? How can the human type be made healthier and stronger? How should one think and act? How should one interpret the world, not only to establish the most “philological” reading of the “text” of reality, but to allow humanity to reach its “highest degree of power and splendour” (GM P 7). For Nietzsche, the philosopher’s mission is thus threefold: as a philologist, he must rigorously interpret the “text” of reality; as a physician, he must diagnose the “value of values” by the assessment of their favourable or unfavourable influence on cultures and human types; as a legislator, his task is to establish a new hierarchy of values with a view to the elevation of humanity. Such is the “future task of the philosopher” (GM I 17), in light of which “one can conceive of philosophers as beings who make the most extreme effort to experiment with how far humanity can ascend” (KSA 11:34[74]). Nietzsche’s philosophical experimentalism is thus not an aimless game of variation and change but is decisively oriented towards this task of elevating humanity.