Nietzsche: Democracy

La filosofía de Nietzsche anticipó notablemente el umbral de la modernidad biológica al conceptualizar el alcance fisiológico de la moral, la política y la religión, así como su instrumentalización con fines de control social. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el estímulo que ha representado la filosofía de Nietzsche para algunos de los principales pensadores de la cuestión biopolítica, en concreto, Michel Foucault, Roberto Esposito y Peter Sloterdijk, y desvelar en qué medida sus núcleos conceptuales convergen y divergen. La (...) aportación concreta reside en señalar algunos de los vínculos que articulan el tema de la disciplina y la cría con la configuración de la biopolítica como una de las principales corrientes filosóficas actuales, analizar las interpretaciones que dichos pensadores han formulado sobre la cuestión de la Züchtung y resaltar así la capacidad heurística de la filosofía nietzscheana para el diagnóstico de nuestro presente. -/- Nietzsche notably anticipated the threshold of biological modernity, when he conceptualized the physiological scope of morals, politics and religion, as well as their instrumentalization with the aim of social control. The aim of this paper is to analyze the stimulus that Nietzsche’s philosophy has represented for some of the main philosophers of biopolitics, namely Michel Foucault, Roberto Esposito and Peter Sloterdijk, and to reveal to what extent their core concepts converge and diverge. The specific contribution is to point out some of the links between the theme of discipline and breeding (Zucht und Züchtung) and the configuration of biopolitics as one of the main philosophical currents, to analyze whether and how those philosophers have interpreted the question of Züchtung in Nietzsche’s philosophy, and to stress the heuristic capacity of Nietzschean philosophy for the diagnosis of current social issues. Keywords: Nietzsche; breeding; discipline; Foucault; biopower; norm; Esposito; community; Sloterdijk; anthropotechnics. (shrink)

Nietzsche controversially valorizes struggle and war as necessary ingredients of human flourishing. In this book, James S. Pearson reconstructs Nietzsche's rationale for placing such high value on relations of conflict. In doing so, Pearson reveals how Nietzsche's celebration of social discord is interwoven with his understanding of nature as universal struggle. This study thus draws together Nietzsche's writings on politics, culture, metaphysics, biology and human psychology. It also overcomes an entrenched dispute in the critical literature. In the past, commentators have (...) tended to interpret Nietzsche either as an advocate of radical aristocratic violence or, by contrast, a defender of moderate democratic contest. This book navigates a path between these two opposed readings and shows how Nietzsche is able to endorse both violent strife and restrained competition without contradicting himself. (shrink)

Jeffrey Church's book Nietzsche's Culture of Humanity is a flawed but nonetheless significant contribution to the still fairly scant Anglophone literature on Nietzsche's early works. The book argues for two major intertwined theses and a third, less central one. The first thesis is that Nietzsche distinguishes between two types or layers of culture: national culture, which Nietzsche characterizes in §1 of the first essay of UM as "unity of artistic style in all the expressions of the life of a people," (...) and cosmopolitan culture, which consists in the "republic of genius" that stretches across nations and eras. Church's second thesis, advertised in the book's subtitle, is that the early Nietzsche is not as much of an... (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the Nietzschean notion of a pathos of distance, which some democratic theorists would like to recruit in the service of a democratic ethos. Recently their efforts have been criticized on the basis that the Nietzschean pathos of distance involves an aristocratic attitude of essentializing contempt towards the common man that is incompatible with the democratic demand to accord everyone equal respect and dignity. I argue that this criticism is misguided and that the pathos in question (...) involves encouraging the flourishing of higher types that give meaning and justification to the social order. For Nietzsche, the experience of living under a society that is thus organized leads to the psychological demand to search for spiritual states within a person that can make life worth living. I conclude by considering whether, so conceived, the pathos of distance is compatible with democracy. (shrink)

This article frames Trump's politics through a genealogy of propaganda, going back to P.T. Barnum in the 19th century and moving through the crowd psychologist Gustave Le Bon and the public relations counsel Edward Bernays in the 20th. This genealogy shows how propaganda was developed as a tool by eager professionals who would hire themselves to the elite to control the masses. Trump’s propaganda presents a break in that he has not only removed professionals from control over his propaganda, he (...) has mobilized it as a force against them. His lower and middle class supporters may not materially gain from Trump’s politics, but they get to vent their ressentiment on the professional class and see them too become the targets of propagandistic control. Ultimately, the conflict between working class whites, those without college degrees, and professionals earns little for its participants and occludes the role that elites play in class dynamics in the United States. This article adds substance and context to the claims that Trump’s appeal is anti-professional while showing that the claims that his supporters are ‘voting against their interests’ does not reflect the real psychological benefits many Trumpists get from supporting him. (shrink)

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.