Did the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) invent the scenario method? That is an argument Philippe Granarolo, a philosophy professor and author of several works on Nietzsche, including Nietzsche: Cinq scénarios pour le futur, advances in this article. Laying out the successive scenarios conceived by Nietzsche during the period 1873-1881, it is unsettling on more than one count:
• The course run by Nietzsche’s foresight visions over seven years (from creative scenarios of a ‘New Age’ type to others of a techno-triumphalist, then an apocalyptic coloration) closely resembles the path followed by the world of foresight studies over the last 40 years, taking us from the enthusiastic visions of an Alvin Toffler to the doom-laden theories of today’s ‘collapsologists’.
• The question that troubled Nietzsche at the end of the 19th century, the future of Western civilization, resonates strongly with our contemporary concerns.
• At a methodological level, Nietzsche was already using concepts that appeared much later in foresight literature, such as ‘bifurcation’ (he speaks, for his part, of a ‘parting of the ways’).
This ‘Future of Yesteryear’ by Philippe Granarolo makes a detailed examination of this aspect of Nietzsche’s thinking.
