As with most of Nietzsche's works, the ‘medical’ procedure of diagnosis of disease followed by prescription of a cure provides the overall shape of Beyond Good and Evil (1886). Its motivating force, that is to say, is once again cultural criticism. Indeed Nietzsche now makes cultural criticism into something approaching a defining condition of authentic philosophy: the philosopher is, he says, the ‘bad conscience’ of his age (BGE 212).

Two themes dominate the critique of modernity: the ‘motley’ critique, once again, and the critique of Christianity together with its ‘shadows’.

CULTURAL CRITICISM: (1) THE ‘MOTLEY COW’

We denizens of modernity are, says Nietzsche, ‘hybrid’, mixed men. We need history as a storage closet of costumes, but nothing looks right on us. Thanks to our ‘historical sense’ (the critique from the second Meditation reappears) part of every past way of life radiates in us, making us a kind of chaos (BGE 223–4). Section 215 applies this to modern morality in particular. Our actions come under the aegis of a variety of moralities and so present themselves ambiguously. We attempt to negotiate between moralities but rarely succeed. The result is ethical confusion both between people and within the individual soul (BGE 260). In every aspect of cultural life modernity is ‘chaos’ (BGE 224).

But what is actually so wrong with this state of affairs? Nietzsche calls us ‘half-barbarian’.