Nietzsche and the Political

Daniel Conway

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134855438
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

In this study Daniel Conway shows how Nietzsche's political thinking bears a closer resemblance to the conservative republicanism of his predecessors than to the progressive liberalism of his contemporaries.
The key contemporary figures such as Habermas, Foucault, McIntyre, Rorty and Rawls are also examined in the light of Nietzsche's political legacy. Nietzsche and the Political also draws out important implications for contemporary liberalism and feminist thought, above all showing Nietzsche's continuing relevance to the shape of political thinking today.

1
Political Perfectionism

I hear with pleasure that our sun is swiftly moving toward the constellation of Hercules—and I hope that man on this earth will in this respect follow the sun’s example? And we first of all, we good Europeans!

—Beyond Good and Evil, 243

Nietzsche’s attempt to retrieve the founding question of politics reflects his conviction that it is the business of politics to legislate the conditions of the permanent enhancement of humankind (BGE 257). Humankind is best enhanced, he believes, not through the Whiggish reforms and liberal ideals favored by modernity, but through the cultivation of those rare individuals who body forth an expanded complement of human powers and perfections. He consequently recommends that social resources should be reserved and mobilized for the production of great human beings.

As we have seen, Nietzsche treats the founding question of politics as a philosophical question of ultimate justification or legitimation. He thus asks: in what incarnation, if any, might humankind justify its continued existence and warrant its unsecured future? It is important here to bear in mind the historical context of Nietzsche’s critical enterprise. In a famous note from 1886, he confirms the advent of European nihilism. This means, he explains, that humankind itself lacks an aim or purpose that might redeem the suffering endemic to its very existence: “What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; ‘why?’ finds no answer” (WP 2). A justification of human existence is furnished by any aim (or goal or purpose), whose pursuit promises to enable human beings to endure the suffering of their meaningless existence. In lieu of some such aim, human beings might be forced to find meaning for themselves in their own self-annihilation, in the will never to will again.

Here we should note that Nietzsche does not automatically assume either that he will arrive at some such justification, or that human existence should necessarily continue. The “highest values” ever attained by Western civilization have now “devaluated themselves.” He must consequently begin anew, as it were, in the quest for a goal that might redeem humankind as a whole. Since he too is implicated in the besetting decadence of modernity, he is not optimally appointed to create new values and erect new ideals. For all of his celebrated love of life and amor fati, moreover, he is also deeply impressed by the thanatonic wisdom of Silenus, who counseled his captors to retreat immediately into the unquenchable an aim or goal that might actually warrant the future of humankind, stream of the Dionysian Ur-eine. Nietzsche consequently seeks to discover rather than merely prolong the miserable existence of a dying, misbegotten species. As he sees it, humankind needs an erotogenic goal to galvanize the will, a promise of the future that would renew our confidence in the continued development of the species.

Throughout his productive career, Nietzsche’s political thinking centers around a simple, yet powerful, thesis: human existence is justified only by the presence of those exemplary individuals who re-define the horizons of human perfectibility. In perhaps his most (in)famous articulation of this thesis, he explains that

We ought really to have no difficulty in seeing that, when a type [Art] has arrived at its limits and is about to go over to a higher type, the goal of its evolution lies not in the mass of its exemplars and their wellbeing, let alone in those exemplars who happen to come last in point of time, but rather in those apparently scattered and chance existences which favorable conditions have here and there produced… For the question is this: how can your life, the individual life, receive the highest value, the deepest significance? How can it be least squandered? Certainly only by living for the advantage of the rarest and most valuable exemplars [du zum Vortheile der seltensten und werthvollsten Exemplare lebst], and not for the advantage of the majority, that is to say those who, taken individually, are the least valuable exemplars. (SE 6)

While it might be tempting to dismiss this passage (written in 1874) as a youthful indiscretion, a perusal of Nietzsche’s later writings reveals a persistent fascination with the central political role played by superlative human beings. In one of his last books he proclaims that

The problem I thus pose is not what shall succeed mankind in the sequence of living beings (man is an end), but what type of man shall be bred, shall be willed, for being higher in value, worthier of life, more certain of a future. Even in the past this higher type has appeared often—but as a fortunate accident, as an exception, never as something willed. (AC 3)¹

At the center of Nietzsche’s political thinking thus stands his commitment to the position known as perfectionism, which constitutes his general answer to the founding question of politics.² He locates the sole justification of human existence in the continued perfectibility of the species as a whole, as evidenced by the pioneering accomplishments of its highest exemplars. In Schopenhauer as Educator, for example, he argues that it is the primary task of culture itself to oversee the production of great human beings:

It is the fundamental idea of culture, insofar as it sets for each one of us but one task: to promote the production of the philosopher, the artist, and the saint within us and without us and thereby to work at the perfecting of Nature. (SE 5)

Translating this “fundamental idea” into more familiar political terms, he insists that “humankind ought to seek out and create the favorable conditions under which those great redemptive men can come into existence” (SE 6). In order to correct for the profligacy of Nature, political legislation must ensure the conditions of the emergence of true genius. In this (relatively) early essay, Nietzsche advocates the precise social conditions—including hardship, neglect, material disadvantage and institutional indifference—under which both Schopenhauer and he emerged as philosophers.³

Since human existence derives enduring meaning only through the exploits of its rarest and most exotic specimens, the task of politics is to legislate the conditions under which such exemplars will most likely emerge. This task is by no means simple, for, as Nietzsche indicates in the passage cited above, exemplary human beings usually emerge only by accident, as “lucky strikes” on the part of careless peoples and cultures. The political lawgivers he envisions must consequently legislate against the indifference of Nature itself:

The accidental, the law of absurdity in the whole economy of humankind, manifests itself most horribly in its destructive effect on the higher men whose complicated conditions of life can only be calculated with great subtlety and difficulty. (BGE 62)

He thus describes the enormity of the task that awaits the “new philosophers,” to whom he entrusts the future of humankind:

To teach man the future of man as his will, as dependent on a human will, and to prepare great ventures and over-all attempts [Gesammt-Versuche] of discipline and cultivation by way of putting an end to that gruesome dominion of nonsense and accident that has so far been called “history.” (BGE 203)

With his “help,” Nietzsche believes, the successor epoch to modernity might suspend this cowardly reliance on chance and resolutely attend to the “breeding” of exemplary human beings.

Nietzsche’s childlike fascination with the heroic exploits of world-historical figures is attributable to their respective contributions to the enhancement of humankind as a whole. Thucydides, Caesar, Michel-angelo, Napoleon, Goethe, Bizet, and so on—all represent irreversible advancements on the part of humankind as a whole. In the prodigious shadow cast by this higher humanity, the meaning and value of human existence can never revert to the (anachronistic) standards revered in bygone ages. Like those intrepid wards of Prometheus, whose plucky accomplishments with the divine flame won from Zeus a stay of execution, this higher humanity confers a measure of dignity and grace onto an otherwise undistinguished species. The dice-throwing gods may continue to laugh at the folly of their puny human playthings, but they are sufficiently intrigued by these specimens of higher humanity to renew the spectacle. Even Christianity, that great leveler of humankind and enemy of perfectionism, recognizes the need to single out particular saints and martyrs as exemplary specimens of faith, piety, and suffering.

A significant disadvantage of the term “perfectionism” is its misleading connotation of a final perfection or completion of the species. While it is true that great human beings continually exceed the achievements of their predecessors, these transfigurative exploits are both chaotic and unpredicted; they expand the horizon of human perfectibility along any number of unanticipated planes and vectors. The enactment of previously unknown human perfections is furthermore not immediately visible in its full relief; centuries, even millennia, may pass before humankind as a whole acknowledges the unparalleled achievements of its highest exemplars. Any attempt to identify in advance the final perfection of the human soul thus amounts to nothing more than an exercise in idealism, which Nietzsche comes to view in his post-Zarathustran writings as the philosophical antipode to his own “realism” (EH 11: 10).

Based on his careful observations of human “nature” and history, Nietzsche assumes that the species as a whole is both dynamic and evolving. As far as he knows, humankind neither progresses inexorably toward some preordained omega point, nor fulfills a cosmic destiny that consigns the weak and infirm to a premature extinction. Through the signal exploits of its highest representatives, humankind reaches ever beyond itself, but it reaches for no pre-established goal or telos. Each successive transfiguration further limns the unknown depths and reaches of the human soul. Indeed, Nietzsche’s perfectionism is at all intelligible only in the event that the human soul is in fact predicated of sufficient plasticity to accommodate the completion and perfection he envisions.

The emergence of great human beings contributes to the enhancement of humankind both directly, by advancing the frontier of human perfectibility, and indirectly, by encouraging (some) others to flourish as well. The ethical life of any thriving community draws its sustenance and vitality from such individuals, and it cannot survive without them. Far from the mere ornaments to which they have been reduced in late modernity, superlative human beings are in fact responsible for the catalysis of culture itself. Nietzsche adamantly maintains that “only he who has attached his heart to some great man is by that act consecrated to culture” (SE 6). He later maintains, apparently with no hyperbole intended, that

A people is a detour of Nature to get to six or seven great men.—Yes, and then to get around them. (BGE 126)

Superlative human beings contribute to an enhancement of the species as a whole, for they embody, and thus reveal, heretofore unknown perfections resident within the human soul. By continually expanding the complement of extant human perfections, these exemplars confer upon the species as a whole a quasi-divine status, an ephemeral intimation of immortality.

Great human beings accomplish the catalysis of culture not as a consciously articulated goal, but as an indirect and unintended by-product of their “private” pursuits of self-perfection. While they directly enhance the lives only of themselves and those select few who share their refined aesthetic sensibilities, they indirectly enhance the lives of all who are even minimally invested in the project of culture. Indeed, everyone who enters “the circle of culture” stands to benefit from the production of exemplary human types, for a justification of human existence would be impossible in their absence. Hence the central paradox of Nietzsche’s perfectionism: the enhancement of humanity and the enrichment of ethical life are dependent upon the exploits of “immoral” exemplars who hold no conscious or intentional stake in the lives of those whom they succor and renew. In fact, he insists, these exotic specimens must be allowed (and indeed encouraged) to free themselves from the chains of conventional morality if they are to contribute to the permanent enhancement of humankind.

An exemplary human being thus embodies a concrete way of life, a set of situated practices that not only demonstrate the perfectibility of the human soul, but also remind (some) others of the powers and perfections resident within themselves. One such exemplar, Nietzsche suggests, is the (pre-Pauline) Jesus, who bodied forth a “deep instinct for how one must live…a new way of life, not a new faith” (AC 33). The redemptive and justificatory powers of these exemplary human beings are aptly expressed in the dexter king’s unsolicited paeon to Zarathustra:

Nothing more delightful grows on earth, O Zarathustra, than a lofty, strong will: that is the earth’s most beautiful plant. A whole landscape is refreshed by one such tree… Your tree here, O Zarathustra, refreshes even the gloomy ones, the failures; your sight reassures and heals the heart even of the restless. (Z IV:11)

Even a decadent people or epoch stands to be renewed by the exploits of its representative exemplars. Reeling from the mediocrity and degeneration that make him “weary” of humankind as a whole, Nietzsche hopes to steal a tonic glimpse of “a man who justifies humankind, of a complementary and redeeming lucky strike on the part of humankind for the sake of which one may still believe in humankind!” (GM 1:12) While these decadent “heroes” are not likely to be confused with the commanders and conquerors who populate vital epochs, they nevertheless serve to excite confidence in the future of humanity. One such “hero” is Aristophanes, whom Nietzsche describes as

that transfiguring, complementary spirit for whose sake one forgives everything Hellenic for having existed, provided one has understood in its full profundity all that needs to be forgiven and transfigured here. (BGE 28)

The example of Aristophanes is pertinent not only because Nietzsche too must negotiate the shades and shadows of a twilight epoch, but also because Aristophanes, the irreverent scourge of our beloved Socrates, does not resemble the familiar heroes of Greek antiquity. If Nietzsche is to introduce his readers to the representative exemplars of late modernity, then he must somehow divert our attention from traditional models of heroism, which are no longer applicable. In a preliminary education of his readers’ sensibilities, he thus prefers Aristophanes to a more commonly revered contemporary:

Nothing…has caused me to meditate more on Plato’s secrecy and sphinx nature than the happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his deathbed there was found no “Bible,” nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic—but a volume of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life—a Greek life he repudiated—without an Aristophanes? (BGE 28)

The Lawgiver

The term “perfectionism” carries an indelibly negative connotation, but it accurately focuses our attention on the vital core of Nietzsche’s political thinking. His commitment to perfectionism is perhaps best understood as the product of his attempt to accede to the perspective of the lawgiver, who aspires to attain (and perhaps to implement) a panoptic vision of the future of humankind.

The lawgiver plays a unique role within the economy of Nietzsche’s political thinking. Lawgivers are typically not rulers, and they only rarely gain influence over actual rulers. That the lawgiver is typically ignored by modern rulers constitutes Nietzsche’s general objection to modern politics, which succeeds largely in presenting the aimlessness and indolence of modernity as princely virtues. (Whether premodern rulers were more appreciative of the wisdom of the lawgiver, as Nietzsche occasionally suggests, remains to be demonstrated.) While actual rulers usually attend only to the local exigencies of personal or popular aggrandizement, the lawgiver attempts to legislate on behalf of humanity as a whole. Hence Nietzsche’s attempt to retrieve the founding question of politics: what ought humankind to become?

While most rulers formulate and justify their legislations by appealing to the prosperity of a particular people or polity over a specific, short-term duration, the lawgiver appeals exclusively to the permanent enhancement of humankind as a whole. Legislating from an “immoral” perspective beyond good and evil, the lawgiver cannot be concerned with (or even acknowledge) the “rights” and “freedoms” of individual tribes and peoples, much less those of individual human beings; nothing less than the future determination of the species is at stake. When appealing to the hyperopic perspective of the lawgiver, Nietzsche consequently sounds monstrously cold and cruel, especially to his liberal audiences of the twentieth century. Such is the nature not of the man himself, but of the “immoral” perspective he adopts as a political thinker. He too cares, in his own way, about distributive justice, social welfare, moral education, and other hallmarks of modern political life, though he neither ascribes to these goals the highest political priority, nor thinks them a worthy challenge for his prodigious intellectual gifts. Qua lawgiver, no one can be concerned with the particular lives of individual human beings.

Critics often respond that the “immoral” standpoint of the lawgiver is simply the wrong perspective for political thinkers to adopt. It is often remarked, in fact, that Nietzsche attempts thereby to usurp divine authority, daring to consider a question that mere mortals are neither meant nor fit to raise. The charge of impiety is essentially valid, but it is most helpful in framing the historical context of his political thinking. So long as superlative values and metaphysical systems perdure, there is no need, and no opportunity, to raise the founding question of politics. In the absence of any s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Voyage of the Damned?
• 1: Political Perfectionism
• 2: The Uses and Disadvantages of Morality for Life
• 3: Perfectionism in the Twilight of the Idols
• 4: Regimens of Self-Overcoming: The Soul Turned Inside Out
• 5: The Philosopher’s Versucherkunst
• 6: Comedians of the Ascetic Ideal
• 7: Nietzsche’s Political Legacy
• Notes