Nietzsche & the political

176 Pages·2012·10.875 MB·English

by  Thoreau, Henry David

Nietzsche & the Political
Nietzsche’s political thought has long been dismissed for its alleged naivete
and its antiliberal excesses. Yet, far from being of merely historical interest,
his critique of late modernity in fact suggests a compelling alternative to
the political models advanced by liberal, communitarian and postmodern
theorists.
In Nietzsche & the Political, Daniel W. Conway takes Nietzsche seriously
as a political thinker. Unlike other writers on the subject, Conway neither
idolizes not demonizes. He carefully explores the consequences of
Nietzsche’s critique of modernity for his political thought from his earliest
writings through to his mature work. Conway’s clear and even-handed
analysis is free from the obfuscatory jargon often associated with Nietzsche
scholarship.
Nietzsche & the Political is a comprehensive introduction to Nietzsche’s
political thought. It also offers a thorough survey of Nietzsche’s political
legacy, including his influence on such seminal thinkers as Foucault and
Habermas and his continuing importance to contemporary liberalism
and feminist theory. It will be required reading for students of Nietzsche in
philosophy, politics and sociology.
Daniel W. Conway is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the
Center for Ethics and Value Inquiry at Pennsylvania State University. He is
the co-editor of The Politics of Irony and Nietzsche und die antike
Philosophic.
Thinking the Political
General editors:
Keith Ansell-Pearson, University of Warwick
Simon Critchley, University of Essex
Recent decades have seen the emergence of a distinct and challenging body
of work by a number of Continental thinkers that has fundamentally
altered the way in which philosophical questions are conceived and
discussed. This work poses a major challenge to anyone wishing to define
the essentially contestable concept of ‘the political’ and to think anew the
political import and application of philosophy. How does recent thinking
on time, history, language, humanity, alterity, desire, sexuality, gender
and culture open up the possibility of thinking the political anew? What
are the implications of such thinking for our understanding of and rela-
tion to the leading ideologies of the modern world, such as liberalism,
socialism and Marxism? What are the political responsibilities of philos-
ophy in the face of the new world (dis)order?
This new series is designed to present the work of the major continental
thinkers of our time, and the political debates their work has generated, to
a wider audience in philosophy and in political, social and cultural theory.
The aim is neither to dissolve the specificity of the ‘philosophical’ into the
‘political’ nor evade the challenge that ‘the political’ poses the ‘philosoph-
ical’; rather, each volume in the series will try to show how it is only in the
relation between the two that new possibilities of thought and politics can
be activated.
Already published:
l Foucault and the Political by]072 Simons
l Derrida and the Political by Richard Beardsworth
Nietzsche & the Political
Daniel W. Conway
London and New York
First published 1997
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
20 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
0 1997 Daniel W. Conway
Typeset in Sabon by
Florencetype Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives PLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Conway, Daniel W.
Nietzsche and the politicaI/Daniel W. Conway.
p. cm.-(Thinking the political)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0415-10068-2. ISBN 0-415-10069-O (pbk.)
1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900-Contributions in
political science. I. Title. II. Series.
JC233.NS2C65 1996
320’.01-dc20 96-7867
CIP
ISBN 0415-10068-2 (hbk)
ISBN 0415-10069-O (pbk)
For Shannon

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
List of abbreviations xi
Introduction: voyage of the damned? 1
1 Political Perfectionism 6
The lawgiver 11 The indeterminate animal 13
l l
The use and abuse of Christian morality 18 The
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Ubermensch 20
2 The Uses and Disadvantages of Morality for Life 28
Nietzsche’s defense of moral pluralism 28 Nietzsche
l l
and Manu: moralities of breeding 34 The pathos of
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distance 39
3 Perfectionism in the Twilight of the Idols 43
Nietzsche’s critique of modernity 43 The political
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microsphere 47 Light amid the shadows: an attempt at
l
aesthetic education 50 Moral perfectionism 52 Moral
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perfectionism and/as ethical egoism 56
4 Regimens of Self-Overcoming: The Soul Turned Inside Out 61
“Thus it shaff be!” The philosopher as legislator 61
l
Self-overcoming 65 Self-creation vs. self-discovery 70
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Self-overcoming and self-experimentation 72 The case
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of Nietzsche 75
5 The Philosopher’s Versucherkunst 78
An attempt at an invitation to temptation 78 The
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. . .
Contents
Vlll
manifold genius: Philosopher, artist, and saint 81 An
l
unintended experiment: Resentment as expendable affect 94
6 Comedians of the Ascetic Ideal 100
The ascetic ideal 100 Harming the ascetic ideal 104
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Hijacking the ascetic ideal 107 Knowledge: a form
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of asceticism 111 Therapies of survival: educating the
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body 113
7 Nietzsche’s Political Legacy 119
The standard reading of Nietzsche 119 Nietzsche and
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contemporary liberalism 123 Nietzsche and feminism 130
l
Nietzsche and Foucault 138
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Notes 143
Index 161
Acknowledgements
This book developed as a product of my friendship with Keith Ansell
Pearson and David Owen, to whom I am deeply indebted for their encour-
agement and criticism. I am also grateful to Graham Parkes and Tracy
Strong, both of whom read the entire manuscript and judiciously sug-
gested salutary revisions. I am furthermore indebted to the many
friends and colleagues who have discussed Nietzsche’s political philosophy
with me over the years, including Panos Alexakos, Babette Babich, Debra
Bergoffen, Ann-Marie Bowery, Howard Caygill, William Connolly,
Claudia Crawford, Simon Critchley, Brian Domino, Shannon Duval,
Robert Gooding-Williams, Kathleen Higgins, Robert Irelan, Salim Kemal,
Laurence Lampert, Duncan Large, Bernd Magnus, Alexander Nehamas,
Kelly Oliver, Robert Pippin, Stanley Rosen, Richard Schacht, Alan Schrift,
Charles Scott, Gary Shapiro, David Stern, John Seery, Robert Solomon,
and Michael Zimmerman. The research for this book was made possible
by a generous grant from the Research and Graduate Studies Office of
the College of the Liberal Arts at The Pennsylvania State University; my
special thanks to Dean Susan Welch and Associate Dean Raymond
Lombra. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge permission to use portions of
the following publications:
“Das Weib an sich: The Slave Revolt in Epistemology,” in Nietzsche:
Feminism and Political Theory, ed. Paul Patton (London: Routledge,
1993), pp. 110-129.
“Love’s Labour’s Lost: The Philosopher’s Versucherkunst,” in Nietzsche,
Philosophy and the Arts, eds Daniel W. Conway and Salim Kemal
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
“Autonomy and Authenticity: How One Becomes What One Is,” St. John’s
Review, vol. XLII, no. 2, May 1994, pp. 27-39.
X Acknowledgements
“Comedians of the Ascetic Ideal: The Performance of Genealogy,” in The
Politics of Irony: Essays in Self-Betrayal, eds Daniel W. Conway and John
E. Seery (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), pp. 73-95.
“Foucault, Michel,” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Supplement, ed.
David M. Borchert (Macmillan and Co.), pp. 201-202.