Nietzsche Power And Politics

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.

It is difficult to spell out the precise political implications of Nietzsche's critique of morality. He himself never did so in any systematic way. Tamsin Shaw argues there is a reason for this: that Nietzsche's insights entail a distinctive form of political skepticism.

"A superb case of deep intellectual renewal and the most important book to have been written about [Nietzsche] in the past few years."—Gavin Jacobson, New Statesman 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.

This collection establishes Nietzsche's importance as a political philosopher. It includes a substantial introduction and eighteen chapters by some of the most renowned Nietzsche scholars. The book examines Nietzsche's connections with political thought since Plato, major influences on him, his methodology, and his influence on subsequent thought. The book includes extensive coverage of the debate between radical aristocratic readings of Nietzsche, and more liberal or democratic readings. Close readings of Nietzsche's texts are combined with a contextualising approach to build up a complete picture of his place in political philosophy. Topics include the relevance of Bonapartism and classical liberalism, Nietzsche on Christianity, the cultural history of Germany, the Übermensch, ethics and politics in Nietzsche, and the controversial question of his political preferences and affinities. Nietzsche's political thought is compared with that of Humboldt, Weber and Foucault. The book is essential reading for anyone concerned with Nietzsche's thought, political philosophy, and the history of political ideas.

Nietzsche and Political Thought reclaims the political implications of Friedrich Nietzche's work.

The Art of Power is a challenge to traditional political theory. Diego A. von Vacano examines the work of Machiavelli, arguing that he establishes a new, aesthetic perspective on political life. He then proceeds to carry out the most extensive analysis to date of an important relationship in political theory: that between the thought of Machiavelli and Friedrich Nietzsche. Arguing that these two theorists have similar aims and perspectives, this work uncovers the implications of their common way of looking at the human condition and political practice to elucidate the phenomenon of the persistence of aesthetic, sensory cognition as fundamental to the human experience, particularly to the political life. By exploring this relationship, The Art of Power makes a significant contribution to the growing interest in the intersection of aesthetic theory and political philosophy as well as in interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives on political theory.

The question of Nietzsche’s use of political theory has a long and vexed history. The contributors of this book re-situate debates around the notion of difference, in relation to historical and scholarly concerns, but with a view to the current political context. Given that today we are faced with a host of political challenges of domination and resistance, the question raised in this volume is how Nietzsche helps us to think through and to address some of the problems. The authors also discuss how his writings complicate our desire for swift solutions to seemingly intractable problems: how to resist slavishness in thought and action, how to maintain hard-won civil liberties and rights in the face of encroaching hegemonic discourses, practices and forces, or how to counteract global environmental degradation, in short, how to oppose ‘totalitarian’ movements of homogenization, universalization, equalization, and instead to affirm, both politically and ontologically, a culture of difference.