-
Chapter 7: Nietzsche on the Antipolitical Individual
- Penn State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
In the previous chapter, we saw that for Nietzsche human beings become individuals through ethical activity, through the redemption of community. The task of this chapter is to investigate the historical and political conditions for the right kinds of individuals and communities. Initially, the prospects of healthy individuality and community in the modern age seem dim. Nietzsche is an outspoken critic of modern liberal democracy, which, in Nietzsche’s mind, diminishes human ambition and freedom by “unbending the bow,” the tension constitutive of the human being that fuels our progress and creativity (BGE P). Diminishing the tension within the human heart means dissolving the relationships shared among us that aim to render this tension meaningful and salutary for some further communal purpose. Hence, for Nietzsche, “everything that once bound human beings together is becoming more abstract” (UUM 29.141). Nietzsche regards modernity as a moment of danger or crisis, in which social and political conditions are growing increasingly inhospitable to the production of individual geniuses. Yet in contrast to Hegel, for whom the hedonism of modern civil society is self-defeating, Nietzsche argues that the great danger of modern historical conditions is that we will lose our humanity and never get it back. At the same time, however, Nietzsche regards the modern world as a moment of stupendous opportunity for individual creativity, a point often overlooked in standard readings of Nietzsche as a critic of the modern world and a harbinger of “postmodernism” and a new revolutionary age. As we will see, according to Nietzsche, the very same conditions that render individuality difficult to achieve also afford the aspiring individual conditions for unprecedented greatness. Accordingly, my view 7 Nietzsche on the Antipolitical Individual Nietzsche on the Antipolitical Individual 171 challenges those readers of Nietzsche who see him as a radical critic of modern political order or as an “aristocratic” fanatic.1 For Nietzsche, it is only by adapting and transforming the institutions of the modern political order that we may hope to stave off the slide into the animalistic “last men” of the liberal democratic movement while avoiding the opposite extreme of a return to subhuman relationships of force and violence characteristic of a new “aristocratic age.” The modern state in particular plays an important role in maintaining the difficult balance between danger and opportunity. Yet at the same time, criticizing Hegel, Nietzsche rejects the view that the state is the “destiny” of human beings. Rather, “a state has no purpose [Zweck]: it is only we who attribute to it this or that purpose” (UUM 29.72). The state has a mere instrumental purpose for the maintenance of human culture, which is transpolitical. As I read Nietzsche, he is attempting to adopt a quite nuanced political view despite his piercingly loud denunciations of modern political orders. Nietzsche resists the “progressive” tendencies of modern politics because these indicate for him a decline, yet he seeks to retain existing institutions and the historical accumulation of meaning around them because these represent ripe conditions for the creation of individuality. Accordingly, this discussion aims to push the scholarly discussion beyond the debates between the “Right” and the “Left” Nietzscheans into discussion about Nietzsche’s ambivalence about modern politics. In so doing, then, we can compare Nietzsche’s ambivalence about modern life to Hegel’s own. In order to make this case, I will draw on Nietzsche’s view of history and community in the previous chapter and apply it to his historical reflections on the nature and development of the state in antiquity and modernity. 7.1 Historical Development of State and Culture in Modernity Nietzsche, like Hegel, claims that the ancient world was very different from the modern world. History effects a deep and profound transformation in the human soul. As Nietzsche says, “in comparison with the mode of life of whole millennia of mankind we present-day men live in a very immoral age” (D 9). Nietzsche regards these ancient communities as having a certain advantage and a disadvantage, very similar to that in Hegel’s view. Ancient communities are problematic because ancient “peoples” upheld their “table of goods,” their tradition, their community as authoritative and sovereign above individuality (Z:1 “On the [44.223.31.148] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:42 GMT) 172 Infinite Autonomy Thousand”). All human beings were educated to fulfill some role within this tradition and to understand themselves as part of the whole, and any attempt to think for oneself or act based on one...