The Opposition to Positivism

Late in the nineteenth century, many philosophers and social thinkers rejected the century-old belief that using scientific methods would uncover enduring social laws. This belief, called positivism, had emphasized the verifiable nature of fundamental laws and had motivated attempts to enact legislation based on studies of society. Challenging positivism, some critics declared that because human experience is ever changing, there are no constant social laws. German political theorist Max Weber (1864–1920) maintained that the sheer number of facts involved in policymaking could make decisive action by bureaucrats impossible. In times of crisis, a charismatic leader might usurp power because of his ability to act simply on intuition. These turn-of-the-century thinkers, called relativists and pragmatists, influenced thinking throughout the twentieth century.

The most radical among the scholars was the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), who asserted that “truth” is not certain but rather a human representation of reality. Neither scientists nor other careful observers, he said, can have knowledge of nature that is not filtered through human perception. Nietzsche was convinced that late-nineteenth-century Europe was witnessing the decline of absolute truths such as those found in religion. Thus, he announced, “God is dead, we have killed him.” Far from arousing dread, however, the death of God, according to Nietzsche, would give birth to a joyful quest for new “poetries of life” to replace worn-out religious and middle-class rules. Nietzsche believed that an uninhibited, dynamic “superman,” free from traditional religious and moral values, would replace the rule-bound middle-class person.

Nietzsche thought that each individual had a vital life energy that he called “the will to power.” The idea inspired many people, including his students. As a teacher, Nietzsche was so vibrant—like his superman—that his first students thought they were hearing another Socrates. However, Nietzsche contracted syphilis and was insane in the last eleven years of his life, cared for by his sister. She edited his attacks on middle-class values into attacks on Jews and revised his complicated concepts of the will to power and of superman to appeal to nationalists, anti-Semites, and militarists, all of whom he actually hated.