This essay examines Nietzsche’s thought on hatred in the light of the realist and perfectionist impulses of his philosophy. Drawing on remarks scattered across his writings, both unpublished and published, it seeks to reconstruct the “philosophy of hatred‘ that, as he himself observed, “has not yet been written‘. In S1 it is shown that hatred is a necessary ingredient in Nietzsche’s dynamic and pluralist ontology of conflict. Hatred plays an indispensable role in the drive to assimilate or incorporate other life-forms (...) into life’s struggle for expansion and self-overcoming. According to Nietzsche’s philosophical physiology, hatred is greatest where struggle and the resistance to assimilation are greatest; that is, among equal powers. It is also distinguished from revulsion and contempt, since these are attached to the process of excretion, not assimilation. What is more, since genuine hatred serves to assimilate what is more or less equal, it is bound up with love, understood as attraction and the desire to appropriate what we wish to make our own; this is one of several ways in which the opposition between love and hate is overcome. But for Nietzsche, hatred can take a variety of forms, and his distinctive claim is that it need not be a destructive force, but can take creative forms. Two different forms of creative hatred are then examined: an active agonal hatred inter pares that allows for an affirmative pride in one’s enemy ; and the reactive hatred of the “spirit of revenge‘ that gives birth to slave morality. Attending to Nietzsche’s argumentation on the etymological relations between “hatred‘ and “ugliness‘, one can distinguish genuine hatred inter pares, affirmative and creative, from contempt towards what is inferior from a position of strength, and from hatred-as-ressentiment towards what is superior from a position of weakness. Nietzsche’s analysis of the creative hatred that gave birth to slave morality reveals its destructive core in the “imaginary revenge‘ that degrades its noble opponent, raising the problem: How to respond constructively to the necessity of hatred and conflict implied by Nietzsche’s ontology? In the final section, two responses to this problem are considered: on the one hand to seek ways to “improve‘ hatred by drawing on its idealising powers for constructive ends; on the other hand, to use physiological self-knowledge to correct the errors intrinsic to hatred and cultivate an episteme beyond love and hate. These responses can pull in different directions, but they can also be co-ordinated in a way that addresses the realist and perfectionist impulses in Nietzsche’s philosophy. (shrink)

This essay investigates the thought of self-overcoming (Selbst-Überwindung, sich überwinden) in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and its relation to Nietzsche’s Emersonian perfectionism in Schopenhauer as Educator. It is a conceptual study focused on key passages on self-overcoming in Zarathustra and related problems – most notably how to combine the demand for boundless affirmation with the demand for total critique in Nietzsche’s project of critical transvaluation. The main thesis is that Zarathustra’s response depends on his addressees: with regard to the mob, the (...) rabble or Gesindel, he advocates a limit in negation under the sign of mildness (Milde); with regard to others engaged in self-overcoming, he advocates a limited negation in the form of love-hate. Connections with the perfectionism of Schopenhauer as Educator are made throughout the essay, which then draws them together in a comparative analysis of self-overcoming in Zarathustra and Nietzsche’s untimely perfectionism. The essay closes with some methodological reflections on the risks and benefits of its “prismatic” approach, focused on key passages in relation to other works in abstraction from the overall composition and narrative of the book. (shrink)

This paper examines the therapeutic implications of Nietzsche's critique of ressentiment and revenge as our signature malady. §I examines the obstacles to a therapeutic reading of Nietzsche's thought, including his anti-teleological tendencies and the value he places on sickness. Then there is the energetic problem of finding resources to tackle ressentiment, given the volitional exhaustion of modern nihilism. Finally, the self-referential implications of Nietzsche's critique of slave values threaten to trap his thought in a futile ressentiment against ressentiment. If the (...) impulse to cure or redeem us from revenge through critical destruction repeats the logic of revenge, then the challenge for a therapeutic reading is to think through the transformation of revenge on the basis of repetition.An agonal reading of Nietzsche's philosophical practice is proposed to tackle these problems in §II. (shrink)

Nietzsche's legacy for political thought is a highly contested area of research today. With papers representing a broad range of positions, this collection takes stock of the central controversies (Nietzsche as political / anti-political thinker? Nietzsche and / contra democracy? Arendt and / contra Nietzsche?), as well as new research on key concepts (power, the agon, aristocracy, friendship i.a.), on historical, contemporary and futural aspects of Nietzsche's political thought. International contributors include well-known names (Conway, Ansell-Pearson, Hatab, Taureck, Patton, Connolly, Villa, (...) van Tongeren) and young emerging scholars from various disciplines. (shrink)