Rethinking history: nietzschean motives for a civilizational approach
Abstract
This article analyzes the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche's teachings on the transformation of approaches to the philosophical understanding of history. Nietzschean motifs are explicated in the concepts of N.S. Trubetskoy, A. Toynbee, and L.N. Gumilyov. It is argued that Nietzsche's philosophical developments anticipated such fundamental tendencies of post-metaphysical philosophy of history as anti-Darwinism and anti-evolutionism, as well as the understanding of history as a nonlinear and discrete process. The heuristic potential of such Nietzschean concepts as the will to power and the superman is revealed. The final section of the study concludes that Nietzsche's philosophy can explicate a commitment to transcending the boundaries of a civilizational approach to understanding history.