Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky are thinkers of nihilism par excellence. But in contrast to Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky is an acute realist who knows that in real life “if there is no God, everything is permitted.” Nietzsche, on the other hand, left us with a piece of philosophical fiction known as the Übermensch, whose visage is so unclear that, more than a century later, we still cannot recognize him. According to Vattimo, “[H]e can escape from the permanent dominion of moral valuations.” This sounds convincing as a scholarly device, but as a social message it is an invitation to people of practically any political orientation to claim the title, which is why Nietzsche could attract thinkers on the extreme right and has been appropriated by the secular left.

(Zbigniew Janowski, “Human, All Too Human,” review of Dialogue with Nietzsche, by Gianni Vattimo, First Things [January 2007]: 54-6, at 56 [brackets in original])