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Overview
Nietzsche's impact on the world of culture, philosophy, and the arts is uncontested, but his political thought remains mired in controversy. By placing Nietzsche back in his late-nineteenth-century German context, Nietzsche's Great Politics moves away from the disputes surrounding Nietzsche's appropriation by the Nazis and challenges the use of the philosopher in postmodern democratic thought. Rather than starting with contemporary democratic theory or continental philosophy, Hugo Drochon argues that Nietzsche's political ideas must first be understood in light of Bismarck's policies, in particular his "Great Politics," which transformed the international politics of the late nineteenth century.
Nietzsche's Great Politics shows how Nietzsche made Bismarck's notion his own, enabling him to offer a vision of a unified European political order that was to serve as a counterbalance to both Britain and Russia. This order was to be led by a "good European" cultural elite whose goal would be to encourage the rebirth of Greek high culture. In relocating Nietzsche's politics to their own time, the book offers not only a novel reading of the philosopher but also a more accurate picture of why his political thought remains so relevant today.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691166346 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 06/21/2016 |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Nietzsche's Great Politics
By Hugo Drochon
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-16634-6
CHAPTER 1
THE GREEKS
Looking back over his life in 1888 — "What I Owe to the Ancients" serves as the starting point for Nietzsche's "autobiography" Ecce Homo — Nietzsche declares that The Birth of Tragedy, first published in 1872, was his "first revaluation of all values' (TI Ancients 5). It is from this "soil" — that is, his study of the Greeks — that his "will," his "abilities grow." During this time Nietzsche had noted a series of reflections on The Birth in preparation for his "Revaluation of All Values," demonstrating that the book and its themes were on his mind, and a number of letters of December 1888 echo this sentiment. To his confidant Heinrich Köselitz, whom he had dubbed "Peter Gast," Nietzsche claims on December 22 that "since the last four weeks I understand my works," singling out The Birth as "something indescribable, profound, tender, happy" (KSB 8). But he does not only claim to fully understand his books for the first time; he adds that he now "values" them, concluding that he is "absolutely convinced that everything has been successful, since the beginning — that everything tends toward unity." "I have done everything very well, without realizing it," he opines, feeling "for the first time up to the task."
The purpose of this chapter is to take seriously Nietzsche's claim that The Birth was his first revaluation, less in terms of acquiring a better understanding of The Birth itself, than in view of gaining an insight into what the project for a revaluation of all values entails. I am less interested in following Heidegger in wanting to read into Nietzsche's early writings the embryonic forms of his main philosophical theories — the will to power, eternal return, and even perhaps overman, although I am sympathetic to certain aspects of that claim, as I will return to in chapter 4 — but rather I wish to posit a structural similarity — in terms of the respective parts and overall purpose, instead of the actual content, which importantly will change — between The Birth and the "Revaluation." What I mean to suggest is that Nietzsche's goal with his revaluation project will remain the same as that of The Birth: restoring a healthy culture as the ancient Greeks had from which true philosophy can grow. And while he will maintain that to do so a hierarchical society is indispensable, he will come to reject certain aspects he thought necessary for such a transformation to take place. This latter will arise mainly from his split with Wagner: Nietzsche will come to reject Wagner's anti-Semitism, pan-German nationalism, and return to the "true essence of Christianity," the latter of which he claimed not to have been particularly taken with in the first place (BT P 5).
The relationship that The Birth of Tragedy entertains with Wagner's total revolution will be the subject of the following chapter, especially how a disagreement over the role slavery played in the production of the Greek drama — the purest art form in history that Wagner's own Gesamtkunstwerk, his "total work of art," aimed to revive — obscured the political character of Nietzsche's first work. The focus of this chapter, instead, will be on the soil from which Nietzsche claims his "abilities grow": the Greeks. From his study of the Greeks, Nietzsche will garner a number of insights. First, as we have just seen, and again as will be examined more closely in the next chapter, a slave class is indispensable for culture. Nietzsche will remain faithful to this inference for the rest of his intellectual career, and we will have reason to return to it on numerous occasions throughout the book. Second, only from a healthy culture can genuine philosophers appear. One does not reestablish a healthy culture through decadent philosophy; rather, one must first restore the healthy instincts that are a prerequisite to a healthy culture. Finally, from his interpretation of Plato's legislative mission, Nietzsche will glean a political strategy comprised of two elements: legislating for a new state, and training the men who will found it with him.
SOCRATES AND GREEK CULTURE
Nietzsche concurred with Wagner that only the ancient Greeks had attained the highest form of culture. For Wagner they had achieved "drama," the highest form of art that combined all its expressions (dance, tone, and poetry), which his own "total artwork" aimed to reproduce. The Birth of Tragedy echoes the view that the Greeks had produced the highest art form, which Nietzsche would call tragedy, and the book concludes with a stirring defense of Wagner's project — something it has often been criticized for. But for Nietzsche the Greeks were also the first to produce something else — something they have so far remained unrivaled at producing: philosophers.
Nietzsche developed this thought in "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks," drafted in an incomplete form in 1873, itself drawn from a lecture series that Nietzsche had worked on and given in Basel throughout the 1870s, of which he wrote out a full manuscript version in 1872. Ironically, "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks" remained incomplete due to Wagner, who insisted Nietzsche turn his attention to writing a polemical tract, which was to become the first Untimely Meditation, against David Strauss. Nietzsche, however, thought his study indispensable, conceiving it as a "hook" to The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche had started to work on the theme at the same time as he was writing The Birth, as the passing remarks on Heraclitus, among others, hint at. In fact, through the notions of the "aesthetic man" and "child at play," Heraclitus, the hero of Nietzsche's study and the philosopher to whom he was to remain — by his own avowal — the closest to, already appears as the antithesis of the "Socratism in ethics" that caused the downfall of tragedy and consequently the Greeks. If the Greeks are therefore the soil from which Nietzsche's desires and abilities grow, his studies of the "Pre-Platonic Philosophers," as the lecture series are known, comprised his first harvest.
His second was in his preparation for the "Revaluation of All Values." In a letter to Carl von Gersdorff of April 5, 1873, anticipating his visit to Bayreuth where he would read sections of "Philosophy in the Tragic Age" to the Wagners, indicating that it is "still very far from a standard form of a book," Nietzsche explains that he has already made three attempts to synthesize the pre-Platonic philosophers. The first was his 1865 study of Democritus through Friedrich Lange's History of Materialism. The second was his lectures on the pre-Platonics, and his third was "Philosophy in the Tragic Age." He writes: "I have become increasingly harder toward myself and must still allow much time to pass in order to consider another treatment (the fourth on this same theme)." This fourth systematic treatment would only come when Nietzsche (re)turns to his revaluation project, having in the meantime developed his own philosophical position, finding its fullest expression in "The Problem of Socrates" and "What I Owe to the Ancients" in Twilight of the Idols. Indeed, it appears that Nietzsche reread his studies during that time — even annotating "Philosophy in the Tragic Age" — and consequently there are remarkable continuities, as we will see, between these earlier and later treatments.
The thesis of "Philosophy in the Tragic Age" is that the Greeks have "justified philosophy once and for all simply because they have philosophized" (PTAG 1). They justify philosophy because for them it sprung from a healthy culture, characterized — anticipating the first Untimely Meditation — as the "unity of style." Only from such a genuine culture can philosophy manifest itself as "helpful, redeeming, or prophylactic." As Nietzsche puts it, there is an "iron law" that binds a philosopher to a genuine culture. As such, the Greeks began philosophizing at the "right time," which is to say in the "midst of good fortune, at the peak of mature manhood, as a pursuit springing from the ardent joyousness of courageous and victorious maturity." When they engaged in philosophy, they did so as "civilized human beings," with "highly civilized aims." Their activity — though they were "quite unconscious of it," as Nietzsche observes — tended toward the "healing and purification of the whole" (PTAG 2).
While a healthy culture can exist without philosophy, or with a moderate exercise of it — the Romans lived, according to Nietzsche, their "best period" without it (PTAG 1) — when philosophy takes root in an unhealthy society it spells disaster for both itself and the society in question. "Where could we find an instance of cultural pathology that philosophy restored to health?" Nietzsche asks. If a culture is sick, then philosophy will make it even sicker. When a culture is disintegrating, philosophy is unable to reintegrate the individual back into the group. This is vital because a people is characterized not so much by its great men but instead by the way in which it "recognizes and honors" them. When the philosopher takes root in a healthy culture, he "shines like a stellar object of the first magnitude." In contrast, in a degenerate one, he appears as a "chance wanderer," "lonely in a totally hostile environment that he either creeps past or attacks with clenched fists"; or again, as a "comet, incalculable and therefore terror inspiring." The Greeks thus "justify" philosophy, according to Nietzsche, because only among them the philosopher is neither a chance wanderer nor a comet. In fact, they produced the "archetypes of philosophical thought," to which posterity, in Nietzsche's view, has not made an essential contribution to since. These archetypes constitute the republic of geniuses that stretches from Thales to Socrates. They are what Nietzsche variously calls either "monolithic" or "one-sided," settling on the term "pure types" of philosophers, as while they may influence one another — calling and bridging out to one another through the "desolate intervals of time" — they are all the "first-born sons of philosophy" because they all generated from within themselves their own personal, fundamental idea (e.g., for Thales everything is water, and for Heraclitus everything is fire) (PTAG 1–2).
With Plato, however, starts something new. If the republic of geniuses consists of pure philosopher types of the "one idea," Plato is the first great mixed type, both in his philosophy — his doctrine of Ideas combines Socratic, Pythagorean, and Heraclitean elements, and therefore should not be considered, according to Nietzsche, an entirely original conception — and personality, which mingles the features of a "regally proud Heraclitus with the melancholy, secretive and legislative Pythagoras and the reflective dialectician Socrates" (PTAG 2). All philosophers after Plato are such mixed types. Furthermore, instead of working for the "healing and purification of the whole," the mixed types are founders of sects, in opposition to the previous unity of style. If their philosophy also sought salvation, it is only for the individual or a small group of people — the sect. Rather than protect their native land, philosophers, with Plato, become exiles, "conspiring against their fatherland."
This is in effect one of the fundamental differences between Socrates and Plato, and it is a political difference: while Socrates is still a "good citizen" who tries to help his fellow countrymen, Plato desires, as I will explore further in the following section, to overthrow his contemporary polis to found a new state. We now also understand the meaning of the title of the lecture series "The Pre-Platonic Philosophers": the separation occurs between the pure types from Thales to Socrates and the mixed types starting with Plato. The existence of an "Athenian school," comprised of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle — and hence before them the more conventionally called pre-Socratics — is hereby challenged by Nietzsche: Plato is a mixed type consisting of non-Athenian elements such as Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans. But more fundamentally: Why this disjuncture? To answer that question we must turn to Nietzsche's understanding of Socrates and Plato, who stand on either side of the turning point, and thereby investigate his account of the decadence of the Greeks.
Nietzsche's relationship to Socrates has been the subject of an extensive and discordant debate, ranging from Socrates being depicted as Nietzsche's ultimate "villain" in the history of philosophy with Nietzsche himself as the final hero, to being presented by him as a "demigod," equal in stature to Apollo and Dionysus. In what follows I will side with those who see Nietzsche's view of Socrates as inherently ambivalent, understood as Nietzsche being of two minds about Socrates: while he is the last genius of the republic of philosophers, Socrates is also the first decadent philosopher whose moralism corrupted all those after him. So if Nietzsche takes on the Socratic role of being the "critic," "gadfly," or "bad conscience" of his time (PPP Socrates; HH 433; BGE 212; CW P), he rejects the moral method that Socrates employs. This position vis-à-vis Socrates is perhaps best summed up by an early note that Nietzsche pens, in which he remarks that "Socrates, to confess it frankly, is so close to me that I almost always fight with him" (KSA 8 6 [3]). Nietzsche feels close to Socrates in being the gadfly of his time, yet fights against the legacy of his moralism. Moreover, as throughout the book, I want to underline certain basic continuities between Nietzsche's early and later thinking — in this case, his thinking on Socrates. Concentrating on Nietzsche's two most sustained early and late treatments of Socrates, both in The Birth and the early lectures on him in the "Pre-Platonic Philosophers," along with the later "The Problem of Socrates" in Twilight of the Idols — thus matching the time periods of the "first" (The Birth of Tragedy) and second "Revaluation of All Values" — I argue that Nietzsche's portrayal of Socrates in the "Problem" is a more systematic and worked-out account of the views already present in embryonic form in his early writings. As the lectures were never published during his lifetime, Nietzsche interspersed his thoughts on Socrates throughout his work, and I will do my best to link them with both the early studies and the "Problem" to again highlight their continuity.
In his lectures on Socrates, Nietzsche presents him within the paradigm of a pure type of the one idea. Socrates has a "single interest": the question of "what-so'er is good or evil in a house" (PPP Socrates). Socrates is the first ethicist, and through this he becomes the first philosopher of life (Lebensphilosoph), because instead of life serving thought and knowledge, now knowledge is to serve life. Knowledge is the path to virtue, and knowledge is to be attained through dialectics, a radical new means. Socratic philosophy is thus entirely practical as its only concern is with its ethical implications. Consequently, Socrates has no time for art and belongs to the "despisers of tragedy." Here we reconnect with the Socrates of The Birth of Tragedy, the dialectician who is only interested in the Logos, and whose supreme moral law "virtue is knowledge; sin is only committed out of ignorance; the virtuous man is a happy man" led to the death of Greek tragedy (BT 14). But is this image of Socrates as the pure life-philosopher of the lectures compatible with the destroyer of Greek tragedy in The Birth?
The first clue we find in "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks," where if Nietzsche had claimed that the Greeks knew when to start philosophizing "at the right time," conversely they did not know when to stop at the right time, prolonging it into their "sterile old age" (PTAG 1). The Greeks persisted in philosophizing in a period of "affliction," thereby drawing it from a state of personal "moroseness." This would considerably diminish the Greeks' merit for "barbaric posterity," where philosophy would become but the "pious sophistries and sacrosanct hairsplittings of Christian dogmatics." Socrates, being the last in line in the republic of geniuses, is the target here. Though he is a pure philosopher of the one idea whose ethical reform aims for the "general salvation of the whole" — even appearing as a "breath of fresh air" for those of the earlier generation (PPP Socrates) — he is still philosophizing in a period of general affliction, in his own "sterile old age." Indeed, one of the strongest claims of The Birth was that the "phenomenon" of Socrates represented one of the characteristic signs of a "degenerate" culture (BT 17). As Nietzsche would underscore in both the "Self-Criticism" and review of the work in Ecce Homo, expressing it in his newfound later term, Socrates is a decadent.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Nietzsche's Great Politics by Hugo Drochon. Copyright © 2016 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS USED xiii
ABBREVIATIONS xv
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1. THE GREEKS 24
SOCRATES AND GREEK CULTURE 26
PLATO’S LEGISLATIVE MISSION 36
CONCLUSION 47
CHAPTER 2. THE STATE 49
WAGNER AND SLAVERY 52
“THE GREEK STATE” 55
THE DECAY OF THE MODERN STATE 60
BEYOND THE MODERN STATE 64
CONCLUSION 67
CHAPTER 3. DEMOCRACY 71
DEMOCRACY IN THE KAISERREICH 75
DEMOCRACY AND ARISTOCRACY 78
MISARCHISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND HERD MORALITY 80
DEGENERATION AND THE GOOD EUROPEAN 82
CASTE SOCIETY 88
SLAVERY 91
CONCLUSION 97
CHAPTER 4. PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS 105
THE WILL TO POWER 106
THE ETERNAL RETURN 110
THE OVERMAN 115
CONCLUSION: POLITICAL PERFECTIONISM 126
CHAPTER 5. REVALUATION 129
NIETZSCHE’S NACHLASS AND HIS LAST WORKS 135
THE PASSAGE À L’ACTE 144
CONCLUSION 151
CHAPTER 6. GREAT POLITICS 153
PETTY POLITICS 156
GREAT POLITICS 160
RELEARNING POLITICS 165
THE WAR OF SPIRITS 170
CONCLUSION 176
CONCLUSION: NIETZSCHE NOW 180
BIBLIOGRAPHY 185
INDEX 197
What People are Saying About This
“Appropriation by the Nazis and, more recently, the alt-right has overshadowed Nietzsche’s own political theory. He titled his final notebook ‘Great Politics’ and Drochon has done the philosopher a great service in stripping away historical accretions to restore his political philosophy to its own context. We see the highly important contribution he made to his own time, but we can also take lessons for ours, as he questions the nature of truth in a self-fashioning age. An important book, beautifully written.”—Sue Prideaux, author of I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche"This excellent, illuminating book deserves to become a standard work for all scholars and students of Nietzsche, and it will be indispensable to scholars of his political thought. Hugo Drochon provides a great deal of new insight into Nietzsche's work as well as its relevance in the contemporary world."—Tamsin Shaw, New York University"The crucial task of discerning a political philosophy in Nietzsche’s views on the misapplication of the will to power in an exercise of domination over others eluded scholars until Hugo Drochon. His book Nietzsche's Great Politics brings the necessary empirical detail to this task, which it accomplishes splendidly. The book is crystal clear, original, and persuasive."—Stanley Corngold, professor emeritus, Princeton University