My topic is the disintegration of values, the idea that there are no first principles, that everything is relative -a topic as much an issue today as it was in Weimar and Nazi Germany. After spelling out Nietzsche's assertion of the relativism of all truth-claims, I suggest the self-refuting nature of Nietzsche's claims (section 1). I then sketch the position of Alfred Rosenberg, the foremost National Socialist philosopher (section 2); here I argue that the National Socialism of Rosenberg originates out of the Nietzschean affirmation of relativism and suspension of the law of non-contradiction, that is, Nietzsche's claim that an internal contradiction is no argument against a position. After refuting the relativistic claim philosophically and addressing its historical consequences, I turn to Hermann Broch, who offers in his trilogy The Sleepwalkers (1931)(1932) a penetrating study of the disintegration of cultural values at the turn of the last century (section 3). In this novel Broch casts an ironic glance toward those heroes who try to escape relativism by returning, blindly, to outdated and philosophically weakened institutions of order; those who assert the relativism of all values and are thus led to a nihilistic worldview; and-those who follow relativism with power positivism, that is, the claim that whoever establishes the most powerful position will (and should) determine justice. Finally, I suggest that transcendental arguments exist for ultimate moral principles, but that we, like our Weimar counterparts, have not fully grasped this important insight or worked hard enough at developing its implications (section 4).
. Whatever Nietzsche's assertive stances may have been, his most fundamental claim -in the sense that it undermines all others -is that our positions are ultimately illusory, untenable, and ungrounded. Nietzsche insists on the impossibility of a first principle. All truth is perspectival, all knowledge is