Nietzsche's impact on the world of culture, philosophy, and the arts is uncontested, but his political thought remains mired in controversy. By placing Nietzsche back in his late-nineteenth-century German context, Nietzsche's Great Politics moves away from the disputes surrounding Nietzsche's appropriation by the Nazis and challenges the use of the philosopher in postmodern democratic thought. Rather than starting with contemporary democratic theory or continental philosophy, Hugo Drochon argues that Nietzsche's political ideas must first be understood in light of Bismarck's policies, (...) in particular his "Great Politics," which transformed the international politics of the late nineteenth century. Nietzsche's Great Politics shows how Nietzsche made Bismarck's notion his own, enabling him to offer a vision of a unified European political order that was to serve as a counterbalance to both Britain and Russia. This order was to be led by a "good European" cultural elite whose goal would be to encourage the rebirth of Greek high culture. In relocating Nietzsche's politics to their own time, the book offers not only a novel reading of the philosopher but also a more accurate picture of why his political thought remains so relevant today. -- from dust jacket. (shrink)

In Ecce Homo's "Why I am a Destiny," Nietzsche declares that "the concept of politics" will merge entirely into a "Mind-war" and that "the earth will know Great politics." Through analyzing these two concepts, the aim of this article is to counter Bernard Williams's claim that "Nietzsche did not move to any view that offered a coherent politics." Nietzsche does so in calling for the founding of a "Party of Life," whose "concept of politics" is to breed a new "master (...) race," to fight a Mind-war, ignited by the "act" of the "Revaluation," The Antichrist, against the "Party of Christianity.". (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Ecce Homo’s “Why I am a Destiny,” Nietzsche declares that “the concept of politics” will merge entirely into a “Mind-war” and that “the earth will know Great politics.” Through analyzing these two concepts, the aim of this article is to counter Bernard Williams’s claim that “Nietzsche did not move to any view that offered a coherent politics.” Nietzsche does so in calling for the founding of a “Party of Life,” whose “concept of politics” is to breed a new (...) “master race,” to fight a Mind-war, ignited by the “act” of the “Revaluation,” The Antichrist, against the “Party of Christianity.”. (shrink)

SUMMARYDebates about Nietzsche's political thought today revolve around his role in contemporary democratic theory: is he a thinker to be mined for stimulating resources in view of refounding democratic legitimacy on a radicalised, postmodern and agonistic footing, or is he the modern arch-critic of democracy budding democrats must hone their arguments against? Moving away from this dichotomy, this article asks first and foremost what democracy meant for Nietzsche in late nineteenth-century Germany, and on that basis what we might learn from (...) him now. To do so, it will pay particular attention to the political, intellectual and cultural contexts within which Nietzsche's thought evolved, namely Bismarck's relationship to the new German Reichstag, the philological discovery of an original Aryan race, and Nietzsche's encounter with Gobineau's racist thought through his frequentation of the Wagner circle. It argues that Nietzsche's most lasting contribution to democratic thinking is not to be found in the different ways he may or may not be used to buttress certain contemporary ideological positions, but rather how his notions of ‘herd morality’, ‘misarchism’ and the genealogical method still provides us with the conceptual tools to better understand the political world we inhabit. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Ecce Homo’s “Why I am a Destiny,” Nietzsche declares that “the concept of politics” will merge entirely into a “Mind-war” and that “the earth will know Great politics.” Through analyzing these two concepts, the aim of this article is to counter Bernard Williams’s claim that “Nietzsche did not move to any view that offered a coherent politics.” Nietzsche does so in calling for the founding of a “Party of Life,” whose “concept of politics” is to breed a new (...) “master race,” to fight a Mind-war, ignited by the “act” of the “Revaluation,” The Antichrist, against the “Party of Christianity.”. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Ecce Homo’s “Why I am a Destiny,” Nietzsche declares that “the concept of politics” will merge entirely into a “Mind-war” and that “the earth will know Great politics.” Through analyzing these two concepts, the aim of this article is to counter Bernard Williams’s claim that “Nietzsche did not move to any view that offered a coherent politics.” Nietzsche does so in calling for the founding of a “Party of Life,” whose “concept of politics” is to breed a new (...) “master race,” to fight a Mind-war, ignited by the “act” of the “Revaluation,” The Antichrist, against the “Party of Christianity.”. (shrink)

Nietzsche continues to be a source of inspiration for political thinking, as this diverse collection of articles makes clear. The aim of the volume—according to its commissioning editor Keith Ansell-Pearson, known for his seminal Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker and Nietzsche contra Rousseau —is not to determine, once and for all, what that contribution to political thought ought to be, but rather to show how Nietzsche continues to provide new and interesting ways of thinking about politics today. So Rosalyn (...) Diprose in “Nietzsche on Truth, Honesty and Responsibility in Politics,” for instance, criticizes Hannah Arendt’s view of the... (shrink)

Maudemarie Clark is a leading interpreter of Nietzsche’s theory of truth, and as such we are fortunate to have her papers on his ethics, politics and metaphysics collected in one volume. Opening her section on politics – the subject of this review – with a critique of Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, she condemns Bloom’s Straussian demand that philosophers lie about the fact that no truth exists to protect their way of life as a recurrence of the nihilist (...) ascetic ideal Nietzsche rejected at the end of the Genealogy. In doing so, she definitively frees Nietzsche from Strauss’ grip, and opens up the possibility of questioning anew Nietzsche’s relationship to feminism, queer theory, democracy and community. Her most striking claim is that Nietzsche’s aristocratic ethics can be reconciled with modern democratic politics. Whether that is the case or not is up for debate, but what clearly isn’t, as this collection reminds us, is that we cannot do our thinking about politics without him. (shrink)

‘One man, one vote’ is a longstanding democratic battle-cry, but it has come under increasing scrutiny of late, and not simply because of its gendered language. If gender equality, at least at the...

In the pantheon of liberal political thought, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, with its defence of freedom of thought, conscience, speech and private property, takes pride of place. So why did Mill c...

Can we meet intolerance with tolerance? Illiberalism with liberalism? Political ruthlessness with a certain temperament? This is the ‘liberal predicament’ that Joshua Cherniss, in his thought-provo...

From Brexit to Trump, Jan-Werner Müller’s 2016 essay What is Populism? has defined our historical moment.1 Famously identifying populism as both anti-elitism and anti-pluralism, Müller has provided...

In an increasingly crowded field, Nadia Urbinati’s study of populism stands out by being anchored in a profound theory of democracy, namely the notion of disfigured democracy she had elaborated in...