Nietzsche on Freedom, the Evolution of Language, and Social Epistemology (Mercer University Press, 2021) (original) (raw)

Nietzsche is a Political Thinker Revised

2023

This paper takes it starting point from the basic assertions of Martha Nussbaum’s 1997 paper “Is Nietzsche a political thinker?". In the paper she argues that seven criteria are necessary for a serious political philosophy: 1) understanding of material need; 2) procedural justification; 3) liberty and its worth; 4) racial, ethnic and religious difference; 5) gender and family; 6) justice between nations; and 7) moral psychology. She argues, that on the first six criteria, Nietzsche has nothing to offer but does make significant contributions on the seventh. In her estimation, then, we should forget about Nietzsche as a political thinker and instead focus on the enlightenment political philosophers he found to be so boring instead. Her basic conclusion is threefold: either Nietzsche is a racialist, inegalitarian, misogynistic, and elitist, he is puerile, or he is incoherent (Nussbaum 6-9). In opposition to Nussbaum's appraisal of Nietzsche's political thought, I argue that he is in fact a serious political thinker. To present the case I focus on the inclusion of Nussbaum's six criteria in Nietzsche's Zarathustra. My focus on this work is motivated by Nussbaum's own recognition that in this work Nietzsche makes numerous allusions to Plato's Republic, a seminal work of political thought in the tradition. Surprisingly, however, Nussbaum doesn't consider Zarathustra in her appraisal of the lack of political thought in Nietzsche.

Nietzsche’s Negative View of Freedom

2014

0. Recently, contemporary Nietzschean scholars have advanced Nietzsche’s so-called ‘positive view of freedom.’1 Some have pointed to the ‘sovereign individual,’ of section II, in the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, as an exemplar of this view.2 Another view,3 which has recently been revivified, has been used to claim that Nietzsche can be interpreted as a constitutivist, where power is constitutive of agency.4 The common element in these interpretations is their assumption of how Nietzsche is using the concepts of ‘agency’ and related terms, such as ‘responsibility,’ ‘free will,’ ‘agenthood’ and so on; for while these interpretations can accept that Nietzsche subverts these concepts’ ‘standard’ use, they are dependent on these concepts being understandable from within this ‘standard’ conceptual framework.

Reconsidering Nietzsche and Politics

Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 2020

Preprint version of a review essay of Hugo Drogon's Nietzsche's Great Politics and Gary Shapiro's Nietzsche and the Earth.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Friend or Foe to Democratic Liberalism

Undergraduate Journal of Humanistic Studies, 2020

Friedrich Nietzsche occupies a contested, yet essential place of privilege in modern political philosophy. His poetic exhortations to readers to take personal responsibility for their beliefs and actions reveals an unsurpassed appreciation for individual liberty, but many contemporary theorists understand Nietzsche as dangerously inegalitarian, on account of his view that not all individuals are fit to achieve the highest freedom of self-creation. Nietzsche’s tolerance of, and even preference for, hierarchies of power and human worth seem to put him at odds with modern liberalism: both see individual liberty as a central goal, but liberalism also strives uncompromisingly for the general reduction of suffering and equal political participation. Nietzsche’s apparent apathy towards these latter two goals makes him a problematic ally for modern theorists, many of whom write him off as apolitical, insufficiently liberal, or even inherently facist. This essay argues that such one-dimensional interpretations of Nietzsche overlook a fundamental affinity between Nietzsche and modern liberals such as Richard Rorty and threaten to obscure essential conceptual resources that contemporary political theorists would do well to avail themselves of.

A Truncated View: Nietzsche's Resistance to Neo-Liberal Democratizers

Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of values offers an important account of contemporary culture. In this essay I will examine Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil, drawing out Nietzsche’s revaluation of values. This essay is intended to demonstrate the ethical consequences that arise from his critique. For the person living along with the author of this paper, Nietzsche’s prophetic warnings still carry great weight in any effort to understand and relate to the personal and political world. Democracy has, by and large, become the new political hegemon, and with it the attending notions of community and equality are utilized in speech with little reflection as to what their meaning. After first laying out Nietzsche’s method and mode of critique, the essay will provide an analysis of the real, ethical complications summoned to mind by Nietzsche, concerns either forgotten or rendered un-important by their immediate assumption in the “post-modern” present.

Nietzsche and the Engine of Politics

In this essay I provide an interpretation of the Übermensch in light of the cardinal conceptual and methodological importance of physiology in Nietzsche's thinking-not as an ideal type but as the ongoing overhuman process of physiological overcoming in which even the 'human being' is to be taken beyond the framework and typological construct of 'the human'. I argue that Nietzschean physiology is not primarily concerned with the language of man and its paradigm of the speaking or thinking subject, but rather with an overhuman physis and physiology of forces that make use and abuse of the human-in addition to nonhuman formations-as its material and medium of inscription hence articulation (a type-writing rather than a type, in this sense). Nietzsche privileges physis (growth, will-to-power) over logos (speech, human reason) in his physiology, and hence a-signifying forces over forces of (human, all too human) signification. In posing the political question of rule in terms of the physiological question of the production and direction of will-to-power, the overhuman appears to be Nietzsche's strategy for radically rethinking the place and the fate of human life-forms in relation to wider non-signifiying, nonconscious, non-human, often inhuman as well as transhuman 'form-shaping forces'. In the present arguments, I draw largely from François Laruelle's little-known tour-de-force, Nietzsche

Nietzsche on Politics: The Cause of a Culture Driven Polity

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most important thinkers of modernity. His biting critique of culture and politics still resonates today. It is clear that throughout his life, Nietzsche believed that the goal of political life should be the production of high culture and great individuals, as Keith Ansell-Pearson writes in An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker “Nietzsche’s distinct political theory… [has an]… emphasis on political life as a means to the production of great human beings and culture”(63, Ansell-Pearson). His great question was, ‘what are we to become?’ However, there were different stages in Nietzsche’s thinking: his early period, heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, Wagner and his study of Ancient Greek culture; his middle period, in which he tries to commensurate the liberalization of the time with his cultural ideals; and his later years, which are marked by an extreme position which has been characterized as ‘Aristocratic Radicalism’, and his strongest criticism of western nationalism and liberalism. Because of this there is much disagreement about what kind of political programs would meet his goals, even within his own writing. Nietzsche set his goals for humanity and left it to us to figure out how to get there.

‘Nietzsche on Power and Democracy circa 1876-1881’

Manuel Knoll and Barry Stocker eds Nietzsche as Political Philosopher, 93-111., 2014

Nietzsche is widely considered to be an aristocratic and anti-democratic thinker. However, his early ‘middle period’ work, offers a more nuanced view of democracy: critical of its existing forms in Europe at the time, yet surprisingly supportive of a certain ideal of ‘democracy to come.’ Against the received view of Nietzsche’s politics, this talk explores the possibility of a conception of democratic political society on Nietzschean foundations.

The Politics of Reading Nietzsche

Political Studies, 1998

Over recent years, an extraordinary number of interpretations of Nietzsche's work has appeared. I ask why he has become such an important ®gure in contemporary political debate and whether any dominant concerns can be elicited from the diverse readings of his texts. My response to both questions is that because Nietzsche has been identi®ed, by Habermas among others, as the founding father of poststructuralism, this is where debate between postmodernists and their critics is being staged. I distinguish between recent philosophical and political interpretations but argue that in both cases, what is at stake are political questions regarding authority, legitimacy and consensus. In the latter part of the article I consider attempts at reconstructing a postmodern politics out of Nietzsche's philosophy, but express some doubts about such a project.