Abstract

In this dissertation, I situate Nietzsche's appropriation of the seventeenth-century moralists La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, and Gracian within his critique of the morality and culture of late nineteenth-century Germany. I argue that his use of these texts is based upon the ideal of honnetete, and that the honnete homme as represented in these works forms a basis for Nietzsche's own ideals of nobility and integrity. ;In order to work out the meaning of Nietzsche's appropriation of these seventeenth-century works, I historicize Nietzsche, examining the relationship of his work to other intellectual debates of the nineteenth century, in particular his rejection of the forms of Enlightenment culture and morality coded by the names of "Rousseau" and "Kant." ;Nietzsche's critique of German culture is embedded within nineteenth-century German debates about the crisis of Bildung , Burgerlichkeit , and liberalism. Here I argue that Nietzsche is using the ideal of honnetete as a means to rethink Bildung by divesting it of its liberal political-social trajectory. For Nietzsche, the crisis of Bildung was not narrowly confined to the educational system, but mirrored the problem of modern Germany--that is, the problem was closely tied to that of "allgemeine Bildung" as the basis for a liberal political program. Reformulation of Bildung thus required a rejection of its existing social basis. ;I argue that it is Nietzsche's tangential relationship to German liberalism that has determined many of the disagreements and conflicting interpretations of his politics. Nietzsche can be appropriated on either the right or the left because his rejection of equality operates on both metaphysical and political levels