Nietzsche, or Culture Put to the Test at the Timescale of Heredity
(2019) Biological Time, Historical Time. Transfers and Transformations in 19th Century Literature — ISBN: [978-90-04-38516-0], published
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- The purpose of this article is to show that Nietzsche’s Lamarckism structures his philosophical reflection on culture. By “Lamarckism”, as has become customary since the second half of the 19th century, I mean a conception of heredity which allows for the possibility of hereditary transmission of acquired characteristics. I examine three crucial implications of this framework for Nietzsche’s cultural thought: first, he must consider the cultural history of mankind at an evolutionary timescale and include prehistory in his field of investigation; secondly, he has to develop a genealogical method for evaluating evolving values, since macro history reveals that everything is constantly in flux, including man himself; and thirdly, Nietzsche is led to conceive culture as an experiment of human breeding conducted over a very long time period.
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Emmanuel Salanskis. (2019). Nietzsche, or Culture Put to the Test at the Timescale of Heredity. In Niklas Bender, Gisèle Séginger (ed.), Biological Time, Historical Time. Transfers and Transformations in 19th Century Literature. Koninklijke Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004385160_009