For money / for food. Nietzsche and the waning of culture

Nietzsche was fascinated by the problem of culture since his youth, and to this day his thoughts on the subject are still surprisingly fresh and relevant. His polemics on culture are recorded especially in the Basel conferences, published under the title On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, and in the third part of his Untimely Meditations, entitled Schopenhauer as Educator. According to Nietzsche, the most serious problem afflicting modern culture is its loss of independence. People are dealing no longer with an independent culture that is practised for its own sake, but with a culture that is subordinate to a purpose, heteronomous and deprived of its freedom. A useful culture. Useful, perhaps, as the modern-day catchphrases tell us, for finding a job, for money, for food. Useful, that is, for something. In the end, Nietzsche’s diagnosis brings us to a single, inevitable conclusion: whenever it is considered as a means to something else, for whatever purpose, culture is tragically doomed to founder.