Nikolai Fedorov as a Critic of Nietzsche’s Cultural Concept

The aim of the study is to elucidate the critical stance of Nikolai Fedorov, known as the “Moscow Socrates”, toward the cultural concepts of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The study examines Fedorov’s detailed analysis of the evolution of Nietzsche’s cultural concept, which he evaluates extremely negatively, characterizing Nietzsche himself as “the philosopher of an era of complete degeneration”. Particular attention is paid to Fedorov’s assessment of the inception of Nietzsche’s creative activity as the proclamation of a “culture of tragic worldview”, imbued with profound pessimism. He connects the subsequent development of Nietzschean ideas with the “socalled culture”, the result of which is “the development of a higher type”, i.e. the superman. The culture of the superman is the culture of a handful of masters who rule “over a herd of weak and weakwilled slaves”. Slavery, according to Fedorov, is a necessary condition of Nietzschean “culture”. The methodological basis for N. Fedorov’s criticism of the Nietzschean concept of culture is the Common Cause, a global cultural project involving the “resurrection of the fathers”. N. Fedorov contrasts this project with F. Nietzsche’s concept of “eternal return”. He reveals an acute contradiction between the cultural ideas of early Nietzsche and his subsequent concept of the superman: Nietzsche began by describing a dionistic, intoxicating admiration for the elemental forces of nature, and ended with the idea of amor fati – the love of unconscious Rock. For the “Moscow Socrates”, amor fati stands as the pinnacle of immorality.