Nietzsche’s Fourfold Critique of Modernity in Beyond Good and Evil

Abstract

Abstract Although Nietzsche writes that Beyond Good and Evil is “in all essentials a critique of modernity,” surprisingly, the secondary literature typically slips past giving a precise characterization of this central concept in that work. In this paper I show that tracking Nietzsche’s use of the term "modern" in the work shows that Nietzsche’s “modernity” is: (I) a structure of ideas or values, (II) a psychic structure, (III) a social structure or a politics, and (IV), at the highest level a world; and that uncovering the core or substance of the critique demands careful attention to each of these four themes in light of the multiple addressees to and for whom Nietzsche writes in Beyond Good and Evil, given that he describes the work as both a "Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future" and "a school for the gentilhomme."