Nietzsche's strengths as a critic are widely acknowledged, but his peculiar style of critique is usually ignored as rhetoric, or dismissed as violent or simply incoherent. In this book, Nietzsche's concept of the agon or Wettkampf, a measured and productive form of conflict inspired by ancient Greek culture, is advanced as the dynamic and organising principle of his philosophical practice, enabling us to make sense of his critical confrontations and the much disputed concept of transvaluation or Umwertung. Agonal perspectives are (...) cast on a number of key problems in his thought across a broad range of texts. Topics and problems treated include: critical history and the need for a limit in the negation of the past; Nietzsche contra Socrates and the problem of closure; Nietzsche contra humanism and the problem of humanity; Nietzsche contra Kant on genius and legislation; the problem of self-legislation in relation to life and temporality; Nietzsche's sense of community in its articulation with law, and the normativity of taste; ressentiment and the question of therapy in Nietzsche and Freud; and the problem of total affirmation in relation to critique. (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)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Nietzsche's Socio‐Physiology and the Question of Sovereignty Nietzsche versus Liberalism on Freedom and Resistance Freedom and Resistance in Nietzsche's Later Thought On the Necessity of Conflict for Freedom: Nietzsche's Critique of the Subject.

Este artigo examina e compara Kant e Nietzsche enquanto pensadores do conflito. Argumenta-se no § 1 que, para ambos os filósofos, o conflito desempenha um papel essencial e construtivo em vários domínios de seu pensamento, e que ambos nos oferecem um rico conjunto de insights sobre as qualidades produtivas do conflito. Contudo, Kant não é capaz de formular um conceito genuinamente afirmativo do conflito que faça jus aos prodigiosos poderes produtivos por ele descritos. Em vez disso, ele promove uma guerra (...) de extermínio (Vernichtungskrieg) filosófica contra toda guerra, destinada a negá-la em favor de uma reivindicação absoluta pela paz ('paz perpétua'). Como nos mostra a análise de "Zum ewigen Frieden" no § 2, a possibilidade de ação construtiva requer a eliminação da guerra em favor da paz perpétua por meio do Estado de Direito, e o conflito é, na melhor das hipóteses, produtor de sua própria negação. A parte final do artigo se volta para Nietzsche em busca de um modelo conceitual que permita uma compreensão genuinamente afirmativa do conflito e seus potenciais produtivos. A filosofia da vida de Nietzsche é uma ontologia do conflito que culmina em um ideal de maximização da tensão baseado em um equilíbrio de poderes mais ou menos equânimes. Argumenta-se que a noção nietzschiana de afirmação da vida nos compromete com uma posição que se situa entre a guerra kantiana e o direito cosmopolita, focando a nossa atenção nas relações antagônicas que se estabelecem tanto no interior quanto entre uma pluralidade de ordenamentos jurídicos. This article examines and compares Kant and Nietzsche as thinkers of the conflict. It is argued in paragraph one that conflict plays a fundamental and constructive role for both philosophers in several domains of their thought, and that both of them offer us a rich set of insights on the productive qualities of conflict. However, Kant is unable to formulate a genuinely affirmative concept of conflict that does justice to the prodigious productive powers described by him. Instead, he promotes a termination philosophical war (Vernichtungskrieg) against all war intended to negate it in favor of an absolute vindication for peace ('perennial peace'). As evidenced by "Zum ewigen Frieden" analysis in paragraph two, the possibility of a constructive action requires the elimination of war for the perennial peace through the Rule of Law, and conflict is, at its best, producer of its own negation. The closing part of the article turns to Nietzsche in search of a conceptual model to genuinely understand conflict and its productive potential. Nietzsche's life philosophy is an ontology of conflict that culminates in an ideal of maximizing tension based on a balance of more or less equitable powers. It is argued that Nietzsche's notion of affirmation of life commits us to a position that is between Kantian war and the cosmopolitan law, bringing to our attention the antagonistic relations within and among a plurality of legal systems. (shrink)

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)

The concept of Umwertung, central to Ecce Homo, is marked by discrepancies and incongruities that seem to defy philosophical comprehension. This paper focuses on the problem of Yes-saying and No-saying at the core of Umwertung. How can total affirmation be combined with radical critique, as Nietzsche claims? Nietzsche's favoured idiom of warfare exhibits the incommensurability of these positions, but it also points to a deeper problem: in waging war against idealism, Nietzsche risks repeating idealism, conceived as a war to the (...) death against other forms of life and thought. In §2 idealist warfare is analysed more closely, and in §3 it is contrasted with Nietzschean warfare, cinceived as an agonal form of oppositional thinking that avoids repeating idealism. This model of warfare is, however, undermined by the affirmative and destructive excesses of Nietzsche's text, and §4 proposes a different approach to the problem of Yes- and No-saying. On this approach, the affirmation of reality as war or conflictual multiplicity demands 1. the adoption of antagonistic positions with destructive intent against life-negating positions , but also 2. the overcoming of every antagonistic position in favour of an 'impossible' or fictional standpoint in the relation between antagonists; this alone allows all antagonistic positions to be affirmed. This approach is proposed as a general way to make sense of the fictional qualities of Ecce homo, its excesses and incongruities, and in §5 it is applied as a corrective to the account of Umwertung as a comparative practice proposed by Gerd Schank. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 44 Heft: 1 Seiten: 446-461.

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)

Nietzsche says "good Europeans" must not only cultivate a "supra-national" view, but also "supra-European" perspective to transcend their European biases and see beyond the horizon of Western culture. The volume takes up such conceptual frontier crossings and syntheses. Emphasizing Nietzsche's genealogy of European culture and his reflections upon the constitution of Europe in the broadest sense, its essays examine peoples and nations, values and arts, knowledge and religion. Nietzsche's apprehensions about the crises of nihilism and decadence and their implications for (...) Europe's future are investigated in this context. Concerning the crossing of notional frontiers, contributors examine Nietzsche's hoped-for dismantling of Europe's state borders, the overcoming of national prejudices and rivalries, and the propagation of a revitalizing "supra-European" perspective on the continent, its culture and future. They also illuminate lines of syntheses, notably the syncretism of the ancient Greeks and its possible example for the European culture to-be. Finally certain of Europe's current problems are considered via the critical apparatus furnished by Nietzsche's philosophy and the diagnostic tools it provides. (shrink)

While Nietzsche's works and ideas are relevant across the many branches of philosophy, the themes of contest and conflict have been mostly overlooked. Conflict and Contest in Nietzsche's Philosophy redresses this situation, arguing for the importance of these issues throughout Nietzsche's work. The volume has three key lines of inquiry: Nietzsche's ontology of conflict; Nietzsche's conception of the agon; and Nietzsche's warrior-philosophy. Under these three umbrellas is a collection of insightful and provocative essays considering, among other topics, Nietzsche's understanding of (...) resistance; his engagement with classical thinkers alongside his contemporaries, including Jacob Burckhardt; his views on language, metaphor and aphorism; and war, revolt and terror. In bringing together such topics, Conflict and Contest in Nietzsche's Philosophy seeks to correct the one-sided tendencies within the existing literature to read simply 'hard' and 'soft' analyses of conflict. Written by scholars across the Anglophone and the European traditions, within and beyond philosophy, this collection emphasises the entire problematic of conflict in Nietzsche's thought and its relation to his philosophical and literary practice. (shrink)