The End of The Nietzschean Intellect

His prophecies lay forlorn for eons insufferable to even his closest disciples. His reputation lay forsaken for decades at the behest of politically motivated mass-murderers. His intellect lay indiscernible for the commoners with whom he respired, and the usurpers who attempted to exploit it. And yet, come today, it appears as though he divined the most tragic truths of our time: a fall from the religiously transcendent, a degeneracy to collectivism, and an inability to individuate. The ideal of a messianic creature, responsible for generating meaning and a baseline of morals, designed to keep nihilism at arm's bay, has long dissipated in the psychical apparatuses of most.

When Hitler and Mussolini primed themselves as incarnations of what Nietzsche stood for, they committed an ineffaceable affliction onto his legacy. Be it the 'Ubermensch' who redefined the human aim, or the last men many claim we have become, Nietzsche's works were imaginary representations of what man could strive to be - not statuses to be seized upon. His anthropomorphisms of such ideals were, in my estimation, ways by which to bring transcendent values into a relatable threshold of human experience; literalizing them thus carries a danger more colossal than any other the world has ever known.

'Beyond Good and Evil', for instance, is dedicated to criticisms of all classes of scholars - philosophers for failing to acknowledge their own falsities, psychologists for reducing man's psyche to that of self-preservation and stoicists for being ignorant of their doctrinal hypocrisies. Above all, it must be asserted that Nietzsche was a critic of mankind, and its highest aspirations. It was perhaps this trait of this that birthed his apprehensions of today: a world characterized by political demagoguery and a complete absence of innate meaning; man's audacity to dream higher than himself has begun to wear away.

An irony of this death (metaphorically) is the resulting confluence between our most profound vices and fervors. Hundreds of millions of children starve in the midst of civil conflict; crimes of an unconscionable nature are committed as a consequence of sociopolitical upheaval; discussions of substance and meaning fade irrecoverably into the recesses of history.

It is time that one truly ask of oneself what Nietzsche did of his species: Are you the valorous and forthright individual you claim to be, or a coward who veils their inadequacies with superficial constructs of moral sanctimony?