Nietzsche and Fritz K. Ringer: possible connections between the philistines of cultura and the German mandarins

Fritz K. Ringer, in “The Decline of the German Mandarins” (1969), carries out a study of academic community from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. For the historian, despite undeniable recognition of how much the academic elite of that time had a fruitful influence on Germany, there had to be the risk of certain pseudo-idealistic influences jeopardising strategic fields such as the country’s culture and politics. Apparently, similar to Ringer’s impression, Friedrich Nietzsche had, years earlier, written the “First Untimely Meditation: David Strauss, Confessor and Writer” (1873). In his analysis, Nietzsche points to the superficiality and poverty of spirit of some intellectuals, thus aggravating the problem of the cultural sickness and cultural depletion of the time. Against this backdrop, the lecture proposes to recognise the likely dialogue between Ringer’s German mandarins and the Philistines of culture, presented in Nietzschean philosophy. In this way, it is suggested that in this and other writings of the German philosopher, a way of thinking that is analogously similar to the work of a physician, therefore capable of diagnosing the ills of Germanic culture in rapid decay, strongly influenced by the shallow intellectuality of its philistines, would lead the state to the aggravation of anti-Semitism, crystallised a few decades later in the image of the Third Reich.

Event organised by Paulo Lima.