Whither the “Good Europeans”?: Nietzsche’s New World Order

Call that in which the distinction of the European is sought civilization or humanization or progress, or call it simply—without praise or blame—using a political formula, Europe’s democratic movement: behind all the moral and political foregrounds to which such formulas point, a tremendous physiological process is taking place and gaining momentum. The Europeans are becoming more similar to each other [. . .] [T]he democratization of Europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the cultivation of tyrants—taking that word in every sense, including the most spiritual.

—Beyond Good and Evil, Section 242¹

Now that the so-called “Nietzschean century” has passed, superseded by an as-yet-unbranded century, I will take this opportunity to reconsider Friedrich Nietzsche’s prescient speculations on the future of Europe, European identity, and European culture. In particular, I wish to revisit three points that strike me as still relevant: 1) Nietzsche’s insistence on the irreducibly political role of European intellectuals; 2) his opposition to European nationalisms; and 3) his vision of a new world order with its center in a Europe reinvigorated by dint of a productive collaboration with its perceived Other.

Nietzsche was a keen, if curmudgeonly, observer of contemporary Europe, and he specialized in delivering contrarian evaluations of the leading trends and movements of the time. He was famously unimpressed by, and downright contemptuous of, the progressive reforms, democratic ideals, and liberal institutions that arose and prevailed in Europe toward the end of the nineteenth century. He treated these supposed indicators of progress as just so many symptoms of the cultural decay that threatened to extinguish, once and for all, the noble pathos of distance that formerly had informed and animated European culture. An inveterate traveler in his own right, he was deeply disturbed by what he took to be the social and political implications of the unprecedented mobility afforded Europeans in the latter half of the nineteenth century. These implications included an indiscriminate mixing of races and classes, which, he believed, would only exacerbate the democratization of Europe and thereby accelerate the production of the “mishmash,” mongrelized European.

Nietzsche’s contrarianism regularly placed him in diametric opposition to the received wisdom of his day. Appalled by the philistinism of Bismarck’s Reich, he awarded victory in the Franco-Prussian War to the vanquished French, who were enviably free to devote their resources to the development of a genuine culture. An unabashed Francophile,² he closely followed the daring research conducted by French psychologists toward the end of the nineteenth century. Embarrassed by the unseemly scramble for Africa, he chastised his contemporaries for abandoning the cultural riches of their home to expropriate natural resources from far-flung colonies. At the same time, he relished the prospect of a Europe purged of the foul-smelling adventurers, sham idealists, and self-appointed guardians of Aryan purity—including, no doubt, his despised brother-in-law—who were intoxicated by the siren song of imperial expansion. Distraught by the disintegration of Europe into petty, squabbling splinter states, this self-proclaimed “good European” anticipated the reintegration of a distinctly European culture, which would stem the rising tide of nationalism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and other manifestations of cultural decay. Attempting to pre-empt the Jewish Question, which, he rightly sensed, soon would become explosive, he argued for the assimilation of European Jews, even offering (in jest) to match Prussian officers with Jewish brides (BGE 251).³

As the sheer weight of these contrarian positions perhaps indicates, Nietzsche believed that he alone saw what was happening: Europe, his Europe, was disintegrating before his very eyes. Where others saw triumph, progress, advancement, and maturation, Nietzsche perceived loss, rupture, dislocation, and decay. He also realized, however, that this ongoing process of disintegration was only temporary, inasmuch as cultures and epochs naturally partake of cyclical patterns of growth and decay. Despite its current fascination with all things exotic and colonial, in fact, Europe wished to become one again, the mighty source of a noble, unifying culture (BGE 256). Before it could do so, however, Europe and its champions were obliged to...