Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (review)

I10 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY non si tratta soltanto della scelta infelice di un termine, perch/; Vecchi attribuisce a Hegel una veduta, quella della "virtue as the principle of democracy" che il filosofo, invece, critica in Montesquieu, riconoscendo ad essa una parziale validit/l per il mondo antico, ma negandole ogni valore nel mondo moderno, nel quale "a form of rational law other than the form of sentiment (Gesinnung) is required" (w come dimenticare, del resto, la critica della "virth" che Hegel aveva gi/l svolto nella Phenomenology? Con queste critiche non si vogliono negate i meriti del libro del Vecchi che rimane, lo ripeto, un contributo importante, e comunque il miglior lavoro sull'argomento che sia apparso, a mia conoscenza, in una lingua neolatina. I suoi difetti sono quelli di molte interpretazioni contemporanee di Hegel, le quali, forse per "salvare" un filosofo tanto spesso denigrato come "reazionario," si sforzano di attribuirgli un volto pit) gradevole, e pifi presentabile. Ma non so quanto il vecchio Hegel sarebbe grato di ci6 ai suoi moderni interpreti. CLAUDIOCESA Universitti degli Studi di Firenze Tracy Strong. Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. Pp. xiii + 357. $15.75. At a time when the Western world is doubting its ability to maintain its economic prosperity and perhaps its liberal democratic form of life, it is appropriate that a good deal of scholarly activity should be devoted to Friedrich Nietzsche. More than any other philosopher he predicted and attempted to diagnose Western decadence and to overcome it through a comprehensive transvaluation of values. Though his project is open to the charge of "throwing out the baby with the bathwater," this would not have been cause for undue concern to him. As far as he was concerned , the "baby" itself was deformed, a fact he indicated when he claimed that philosophy since Plato was a "mistake," as was the Western civilization that it helped produce. It should be a source of discomfort and restiveness to us that Nietzsche's view has not been proved wrong. Any new analysis of Nietzsche should be considered in this political context. The fact that the various authors who have written books in the last twenty years attempting to explain Nietzsche have achieved only rare agreement complicates matters even further. In large measure this lack of agreement reflects the complexity and inaccessibility of Nietzsche's writings; it also reflects the inability and/or unwillingness of most of these authors to deal with precisely what he said, no matter how strident or outlandish it might seem. This is a mistake that Tracy Strong commendably wishes to avoid in his recent book. Strong's success in this endeavor is open to a good deal of question, but the attempt alone is cause for substantial praise. Such a methodology in the hands of an intelligent and articulate author cannot help but produce some intelligent commentary on Nietzsche's philosophy. Though I believe that Strong's argument is ultimately wrong and even misleading, the work is nevertheless filled with helpful insights and apt analogies. In the final analysis Strong's book fails when he stops practicing what he preaches. Besides an appropriate methodology, Strong offers the reader a reasonable and valuable project. It is his intention to present Nietzsche's thought as an accessible, if not completely understandable and coherent, body of work of substantial political impact. After establishing the dii~culties encountered in writing a book about Nietzsche, Strong attempts to present the building blocks of Nietzsche's system. This gives way to a tightly organized work that initially describes and analyzes Nietzsche's view of our human condition as it is characterized by the Death of God and consequently nihilism. This is followed by an explanation of what Nietzsche means by the term Dionysian and how this notion stands in counterpoint to the values of Socrates and Christ, respectively, the two most important standard-bearers of Western BOOK REVIEWS 111 civilization. Finally, Strong presents Nietzsche's notion of the "Superman" as a solution to modern problems, a solution that will contain within it a transvaluation of values. He hopes to accomplish this presentation through a consideration of "the Will...