Postmodernity as a farewell "gesture": the "self-referential critique of reason" in Nietzsche's esthetic thinking

Abstract

This paper is based on considerations by Gianni Vattimo and Jürgen Habermas on Nietzsche's institution of postmodernity as a "farewell" to Western Modernity and to the kind of rationality associated with it. Here we analyze how a "self-referential critique of reason" (Habermas) is actually engendered by Nietzschean aesthetic thought. We thus reconsider the terms in which the postmodern "farewell" itself should be conceived.