On Some of Nietzsche’s Ideas That Inspired Postmodernist Educational Thinking

Synonyms

Nietzschean education; Nietzschean nihilism; Nietzschean perspectivism; Nietzschean responsibility

Introduction

It is fashionable these days in the wave of the criticism of poststructuralism and postmodernism to blame Nietzsche for nihilistic tendencies in educational theory and to reproach his nihilism for being subjectivistic and relativistic (see, e.g., Arcilla 1995, p. 45). Thus, Johnston (1998) too argues that a total break from education as it is currently practiced is what would be needed if one were to adopt a thoroughly Nietzschean stand on education. And he further holds that Nietzsche castigates the interpersonal values that education promotes in favor of an intrapersonal, intrasubjective, and individual emphasis: “For Nietzsche, though, there is no question of a reconciliation between the realms of the individual and social. One simply has to overcome the social if one desires in turn to self-overcome” (Johnston 1998, p. 81). Clearly, it is easy to show that...