Infinite Autonomy: The Divided Individual in the Political Thought of G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche by Jeffrey Church (review)

I would venture that there are few greater opportunities for interesting comparative work in the history of philosophy than that granted by Hegel and Nietzsche. This is largely due to the fact that any careful consideration of the two will eventually lead to questions about the nature of comparative work itself. Both Hegel and Nietzsche were profoundly concerned with the role that the influence and legacy of thought could play in the identity of a thinker (her “world-historical significance”), and, perhaps more importantly, both were heavily preoccupied with understanding the nature of difference, identity, and how we understand ourselves in relation to others. If Deleuze, responsible for the best known comparison of the two, got anything right about Hegel and Nietzsche (and I think he did), it is that they were opposed on the issue of how to think of opposition itself. For Deleuze, Hegel was the proponent of a “slavish” identity that consists in opposition to others; I am who I am only insofar as I am not you. Deleuze’s Nietzsche, on the other hand, was the proponent of “noble” self-affirmative and unmediated identity; whether or not I am different from you is irrelevant to who I am. Though we might not agree with Deleuze’s characterization of their differences, both Nietzsche and Hegel are undoubtedly concerned with the notion that there is a better and a worse way of thinking about our difference to others. For those who have the courage to take on this difficult terrain, a Hegel-Nietzsche comparison has the potential not only to tell us something interesting about two proper names in the modern history of philosophy, but also to raise fundamental questions about identity, difference, and comparison as such.

Of course, not every interesting comparison of the two need tackle these difficulties, and not every Hegel-Nietzsche comparison will have such lofty ambitions. There are, at my count, three possible aims for a good Hegel-Nietzsche comparison: enhance our understanding of either Nietzsche, Hegel, or both, through a relevantly circumscribed comparison of their work; solve what Daniel Breazeale (following Karl Joël) dubbed the “Hegel-Nietzsche problem” (to what extent and in what way are Nietzsche’s thought and Hegel’s thought opposed or reconcilable?); or improve our thought on a philosophical issue with the help of a comparison of Nietzsche and Hegel’s approach to that issue. Rather ambitiously, Jeffrey Church’s Infinite Autonomy sets out to meet all three of these aims.

With a focus on how both Hegel and Nietzsche understand individuality, and how both of them show why individuality is good for us, Church seeks to enhance our understanding of Hegel and Nietzsche’s work (particularly their understanding of selfhood, their account of the need individuals have for communities, and their critique of late-modern politics), show us some of the significant ways in which the two agree and disagree, and advance a model of individuality that is preferable to other philosophies of self. These primary claims of the book are argued for most explicitly in the final chapter (chapter 7), while chapters 1 to 3 and 4 to 6 offer the supporting readings of Hegel and Nietzsche, respectively. Church attributes to both Hegel and Nietzsche an “historical individual” model of selfhood, which consists of three claims: individuality is not an innate property but is cultivated; it is a standard of the good life; and it is not possible without the right kind of community (3–4). It is this model of individuality that bears the weight of Infinite Autonomy’s ambitions: explaining Hegel and Nietzsche’s versions of this model will contribute exegetical insight (“In eliciting this shared notion of individuality, this book contributes also to the historical scholarship on Hegel and Nietzsche”; 4), showing the similarities of their historical individual theses will show a...