Abstract

Although it is now generally acknowledged that Friedrich Nietzsche had a theory of politics, the character and content of that theory remain in dispute. This dissertation argues that Nietzsche had a vision of an aesthetic state as the best political regime, and that he developed a new kind of political education to serve as the pedagogical basis for such a regime. It examines Nietzsche's conception of politics from the point of view of his political education and its importance for his proposed cultural and political transformation of European civilization. ;Nietzsche's notions of an aesthetic politics were based on his interpretations of several basic human experiences and of the relationship between music or tragedy and the human beings who had these experiences. This complex was interpreted by Nietzsche in light of what he came to call the "death of God." A close examination of Nietzsche's published and unpublished writings, his notes, and his letters reveal the contours of this aesthetic political vision and its context. ;The dissertation focuses primarly on Nietzsche's early work, from The Birth of Tragedy to Human, All too Human. I consider the influence of several thinkers on Nietzsche's early notions of an aesthetic political education. I also examine the central components of this education, and the roles his unique ideas of history, philosophy and music played in his vision of a new pedagogy for a new aesthetic state. ;Although the major elements of Nietzsche's aesthetic politics remained largely constant, after 1876 they were refined, and his ideas about how to implement them changed fundamentally. Nietzsche abandoned his attempt to achieve an immediate radical change in national education policies as the basis for a new social order. Instead, he came increasingly to see himself as the teacher of mankind who aimed not at revolutionary change, but at a gradual evolution from the degenerate and essentially nihilistic culture of Europe, which he abhorred, to a new tragic political order. This change in Nietzsche's immediate intentions, I argue, is the most important factor in those substantive changes that do occur in his later theory of politics and political education. The dissertation concludes with a brief discussion of Nietzsche's later work and the important continuities as well as differences between his later political education and the earlier. Nietzsche's notion of an aesthetic state and an accompanying political education is shown to be an important avenue for interpreting his published writings from the first to the last