Redentori e traditori. Essere giusti con Nietzsche nell’età dell’«amministrazione economica generale della terra»

This paper examines the concept of redemption in Nietzsche’s work. Nietzsche resolves, on the one hand, to adopt a genealogical approach to the concept; on the other hand, from a completely secular point of view, he wants to test it out in the field of contemporary cultural and ideological debate. While the first task involved reclaiming the idea of redemption by criticising the Christian power with which it had “cut a deal” in order to survive, in the second instance it was a question of freeing it from the political power – imperial Germanism – by which it had been subjugated. In view of the size of the political stakes at play, Nietzsche demands the philosophical liberation of the idea of Erlösung. He wants to redeem it from the classic dualistic – and manipulative – “shepherd/flock” paradigm embodied in the historico-political methods of the autocrat/mass dichotomy, and from what – in his eyes – emerged as a tacit understanding between liberal individualism and democratic or socialist egalitarianism.