The issue of Nietzsche's influence over eugenics has become contemporary once again. In Germany, the Karlsruhe philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has recently argued that, given the understanding that now exists in genetic science, the eugenic dream of ‘selection’ is now within reach. Sloterdijk's use of the word ‘selection’ horrified his colleague Ernst Tugendhat, who heard evoked in this word the ramp at Auschwitz; what really worried the critics, however, was Sloterdijk's argument that this capability should be exploited, to breed a new generation of human beings. This aim might be truer to Nietzsche's ideas, as expressed in The Will to Power, than those of the earlier twentieth-century race thinkers: ‘… to what end shall “man” as a whole – and no longer as a people, a race – be raised and trained?’ This is the dream of improving the species as a whole.

Sloterdijk deliberately provoked the debate that followed with his choice of language. But even what he was really proposing was unclear and worried many critics.