Burckhardt, Hesse and Nietzsche: Which Pathway?

Abstract

This article will touch on the critique of the modern liberal project by Burckhardt, Nietzsche, and Hesse—such a critique of liberal modernity tends to be seen as a form of conservatism. But, Burckhardt, Nietzsche, and Hesse understood the meaning of conservatism (each and all drawing from the classical ethos and tradition) in different ways and for different reasons. Each of them, also, had a concern for what it meant to care for the human journey (philanthropos) in diverging ways and for different reasons. This essay will reflect on their shared questioning of the modern project and its notions of the self and society but their diverging answers and prognosis to doubts and diagnosis of the modern and, in our ethos, postmodern project.