Nietzsche and Political Thought

257 Pages·2014·1.17 MB·English

by  Keith Ansell-Pearson

Nietzsche and Political Thought
Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy
Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy presents cutting-edge scholarship in
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and research findings in titles in this series make it an important and stimulating
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Some other titles in the series:
Adorno, Heidegger, Philosophy and Modernity, Nicholas Joll
Between the Canon and the Messiah, Colby Dickinson
Castoriadis, Foucault, and Autonomy, Marcela Tovar-Restrepo
Deconstruction without Derrida, Martin McQuillan
Deleuze and the Diagram, Jakub Zdebik
Deleuze and the History of Mathematics, Simon B. Duffy
Derrida and the Future of the Liberal Arts, edited by Mary Caputi and
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Derrida, Badiou and the Formal Imperative, Christopher Norris
Derrida: Ethics Under Erasure, Nicole Anderson
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From Ricoeur to Action, edited by Todd S. Mei and David Lewin
Gadamer and Ricoeur, edited by Francis J. Mootz III and George H. Taylor
Heidegger and Nietzsche, Louis P. Blond
Immanent Transcendence, Patrice Haynes
Jean-Luc Nancy and the Question of Community, Ignaas Devisch
Kant, Deleuze and Architectonics, Edward Willatt
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Lyotard and the ‘figural’ in Performance, Art and Writing, Kiff Bamford
Michel Henry, edited by Jeffrey Hanson and Michael R. Kelly
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Place, Commonality and Judgment, Andrew Benjamin
Post-Rationalism, Tom Eyers
Rethinking Philosophy and Theology with Deleuze, Brent Adkins and Paul R. Hinlicky
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The Movement of Nihilism, edited by Laurence Paul Hemming,
Kostas Amiridis and Bogdan Costea
The Time of Revolution, Felix Ó Murchadha
Nietzsche and Political Thought
Edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2013
© Keith Ansell-Pearson and Contributors, 2013
Keith Ansell-Pearson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
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be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-2933-8
ePDF: 978-1-4411-0095-5
ePub: 978-1-4411-7352-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nietzsche and political thought/edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson.
pages cm. – (Bloomsbury studies in Continental philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-2933-8 (hardcover) – ISBN 978-1-4411-0095-5 (ebook (pdf)) –
ISBN 978-1-4411-7352-2 (ebook (epub)) 1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
2. Political science–Philosophy. I. Ansell-Pearson, Keith, 1960- editor of compilation.
B3317.N449 2013
320.01–dc23
2013026669
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
Notes on Contributors vi
List of Abbreviations ix
Introduction Keith Ansell-Pearson 1
1 Nietzsche, Genealogy and Justice Paul Patton 7
2 Nietzsche on Truth, Honesty and Responsibility in Politics
Rosalyn Diprose 23
3 Nietzsche, Naturalism and Law Peter R. Sedgwick 3 7
4 Movements and Motivations: Nietzsche and the Invention
of Political Psychology Robert Guay 5 5
5 Nietzsche’s Freedom: The Art of Agonic Perfectionism David Owen 7 1
6 Reassessing Radical Democratic Theory in the Light of Nietzsche’s
Ontology of Conflict Herman W. Siemens 8 3
7 Spinoza vs. Kant: Have I Been Understood? Alan D. Schrift 107
8 Kairos and Chronos: Nietzsche and the Time of the Multitude
Gary Shapiro 123
9 Nietzsche and the Engine of Politics Nandita Biswas Mellamphy 141
10 Nietzsche’s Political Therapy Michael Ure 161
11 Nietzsche’s Great Politics of the Event Vanessa Lemm 179
12 Nietzsche’s Immoralism and the Advent of ‘Great Politics’
Daniel Conway 197
13 Nietzsche, Badiou, and Grand Politics: An Antiphilosophical
Reading Bruno Bosteels 219
Index 241
Notes on Contributors
Keith Ansell-Pearson holds a personal chair in Philosophy at the University of
Warwick. In 2013/14 he will be a visiting fellow in the Humanities at Rice University.
He is the author and editor of several books on Nietzsche, including Nietzsche contra
Rousseau, The Nietzsche Reader and A Companion to Nietzsche. He is currently
completing a book with Rebecca Bamford on Nietzsche’s text Dawn.
Nandita Biswas Mellamphy is associate professor of Political Theory at Western
University, and former Associate Director (2011–12) of the Center for the Study of
Theory and Criticism (Western). She is the author of The Three Stigmata of Friedrich
Nietzsche: Political Physiology in the Age of Nihilism (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), as
well as several other essays on Nietzsche’s and Nietzschean political thought. Her
topics of study include post-humanism, digital media culture, continental philosophy
(especially the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and the post-Nietzscheans) and the
political dimensions of contemporary science-fiction and current-day neuroscience. In
addition she is completing a series of articles devoted to the theorist François Laruelle’s
interpretation of Nietzsche’s political thought.
Bruno Bosteels is professor of Romance Studies and Comparative Literature at
Cornell University. He is the author, among others, of Badiou and Politics (Duke
University Press, 2011), The Actuality of Communism (Verso, 2011) and Marx and
Freud in Latin America (Verso, 2012). Between 2005 and 2011 he served as the
general editor of the journal diacritics. He is also the translator of numerous books
by Alain Badiou, including Theory of the Subject (Continuum, 2009), Wittgenstein’s
Antiphilosophy (Verso, 2011), Philosophy for Militants (Verso, 2012), and The
Adventure of French Philosophy (Verso, 2012).
Daniel Conway is professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Texas A&M
University. He is the author of Nietzsche’s Dangerous Game (Cambridge UP, 1997),
Nietzsche and the Political (Routledge, 1997), and Reader’s Guide to Nietzsche’s On
the Genealogy of Morals (Continuum, 2008). He is the editor of the four-volume
series Nietzsche: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers (Routledge, 1998)
and co-editor of Nietzsche und die antike Philosophie (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag,
1992), Nietzsche, Philosophy, and the Arts (Cambridge UP, 1998), and The History
of Continental Philosophy, Volume II (U Chicago, 2010). He is a member of the
Executive Committee of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society and a former Editor of the
Journal of Nietzsche Studies.
Rosalyn Diprose is professor of Philosophy (Emeritus) at the University of New
South Wales, Sydney. She is author of numerous articles and book chapters on
Notes on Contributors vii
Nietzsche’s philosophy, including in relation to other thinkers such as Hannah
Arendt. Recent books include Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche,
Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas (SUNY Press, 2002) and the co-edited anthology
Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts (Continuum, 2008). Her ongoing research draws on
existential phenomenology and biopolitical analysis to explore themes such as the
politics of dwelling, reconstruction and natality.
Robert Guay is associate professor of Philosophy at Binghamton University.
His work has appeared most recently in the Journal of Nietzsche Studies and The
Edinburgh Critical History of Philosophy, and the Oxford Handbook to Nietzsche.
He is currently completing a book on Nietzsche’s accounts of the conditions for
normative authority.
Vanessa Lemm received her PhD in Philosophy from the New School for Social
Research (2002). She is professor in Philosophy at the School of Humanities and
Languages of the University of New South Wales. She is the author of Nietzsche’s
Animal Philosophy: Culture, Politics and the Animality of the Human Being (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2009), Nietzsche y el pensamiento politico contemporáneo
(Santiago: Fondo de cultura económica, 2013), and several articles on contemporary
political theory. She has also edited volumes on Hegel and Foucault.
David Owen is professor of Social and Political Philosophy at the University of
Southampton. He has also held visiting positions in Frankfurt and Madrid. He has
published nine books, most recently, Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality (Acumen, 2007)
and published numerous journal articles. Among other things, he is currently working
on Nietzsche’s relationship to realism, agonism and perfectionism.
Paul Patton is Scientia Professor of Philosophy at The University of New South
Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Deleuze and the Political (Routledge,
2000) and Deleuzian Concepts: Philosophy, Colonization, Politics (Stanford, 2010).
He is the editor of Nietzsche, Feminism and Political Theory (Routledge, 1993) and
Deleuze: A Critical Reader (Blackwell, 1996). He is co-editor (with Duncan Ivison and
Will Sanders) of Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Cambridge,
2000), (with John Protevi) of Between Deleuze and Derrida (Continuum, 2003) and
(with Simone Bignall) Deleuze and the Postcolonial (Edinburgh, 2010). His current
research deals with political normativity in French poststructuralist philosophy
(Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault) and in contemporary left-liberal political philo-
sophy, especially Rawls.
Alan D. Schrift is the F. Wendell Miller Professor of Philosophy at Grinnell College. In
addition to his many published articles or book chapters on Nietzsche and French and
German twentieth-century philosophy, he is the author of Twentieth-Century French
Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers (Blackwell, 2006), Nietzsche’s French Legacy: A
Genealogy of Poststructuralism (Routledge, 1995), and Nietzsche and the Question of
Interpretation: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction (Routledge, 1990). Most
recently, he was the general editor of the eight-volume History of Continental Philosophy
viii Notes on Contributors
(Acumen Publishing/University of Chicago Press, 2010) and continues as the general
editor of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, the Stanford University Press
translation of Nietzsche’s Kritische Studienausgabe.
Peter R. Sedgwick is reader in Philosophy at Cardiff University. He is the editor of
Nietzsche: A Critical Reader (1994). His authored books include Descartes to Derrida
(2001), Nietzsche’s Economy (2007) and Nietzsche’s Justice (2013).
Gary Shapiro is Tucker-Boatwright professor in the Humanities and Philosophy,
Emeritus at the University of Richmond. His books include Nietzschean Narratives
(1989), Alcyone: Nietzsche on Gifts, Noise, and Women (1991), Earthwards: Robert
Smithson and Art After Babel (1995), and Archaeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche
on Seeing and Saying (2003). He is completing a book on Nietzsche’s political thought
and has recently published articles on aesthetics, the philosophy of literature, and land
art. website: https://sites.google.com/site/garyshapirophilosophy/
Herman Siemens teaches modern philosophy at Leiden University in the Nether lands
and is president of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society of Great Britain. He is a chief editor
and contributor to the ongoing ‘Nietzsche Dictionary’ project, based at Radboud
University of Nijmegen and Leiden. He has published widely on Nietzsche, including
concept-studies and articles on his main areas of interest: art, law, the agon and its
political implications. He is co-editor of the 2008 volume Nietzsche, Power and Politics
(de Gruyter) and directs a research programme funded by the NWO (Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research): Between Deliberation and Agonism: Rethinking
Conflict and its Relation to Law in Political Philosophy. He is a Research Associate of
the Universidad Diego Portales (Chile), the University of Pretoria (South Africa) and
the Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal).
Michael Ure is based in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash
University and specializes in modern European philosophy and political theory. His
research focuses on ancient and modern philosophical therapies and the politics of the
emotions. He is currently writing Nietzsche’s The Gay Science (Cambridge University
Press) and completing an edited book collection, The Politics of Compassion (Routledge,
London).
List of Abbreviations
A The Anti-Christ
AOM Assorted Opinions and Maxims
BGE Beyond Good and Evil
BT The Birth of Tragedy
D Dawn: Thoughts on the Presumptions of Morality/Daybreak: Thoughts on the
Prejudices of Morality
EH Ecce Homo
GM On the Genealogy of Morality
GS The Gay Science
HH Human, all too Human
HL On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life
KGB Nietzsche Briefwechsel: Kritische Gesamtausabe
KSA Friedrich Nietzsche: Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe
MD ‘Mahnruf an die Deutschen’
OTL ‘On truth and lies in a nonmoral sense’
PTA Philosophy in the Tragic Age of Greeks
RWB Richard Wagner in Bayreuth
SE Schopenhauer as Educator
TI Twilight of the Idols
WP The Will to Power
WS The Wanderer and His Shadow
Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Note: References to Nietzsche’s texts are to sections and aphorisms, not page numbers,
unless stated otherwise.