Friedrich Nietzsche
pp. 73-87
in: Terrell Carver, James Martin (eds), Palgrave advances in continental political thought, Berlin, Springer, 2006Abstract
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900) was an irreverent philosopher, one who openly disdained his intellectual inheritance, and gleefully promoted an interrogation of standards of value long-since entrenched in the West. His writings were regarded as controversial as soon as they appeared, and were gradually viewed as important because of his attention to topics such as Enlightenment reason, morality in the classical and Christian traditions, power, knowledge, and the nature of the good life. Nietzsche's views on those and other issues, and his exuberant rejection of all entrenched orthodoxies, have led some to regard him as the last modern thinker, or first postmodern thinker (Koelb, 1990; Robinson, 1999; Owen, 1994). Interestingly, Nietzsche has not been regarded as a political thinker, or his works as inherently political, until fairly recently (Warren, 1988; Ansell-Pearson, 1991, 1994; Hunt, 1991; Hatab, 1995; Owen, 1995). Earlier would-be political interpretations of Nietzsche were not so positive in their approach. Nietzsche, "in fact, did not hold any of the standard political ideologies … he was not interested in the same questions to which the standard ideologies are answers' (Hunt, 1991, p. 26). However, his thinking is regarded now as political because it focuses critical attention on issues such as how to organise society so as to make possible the best life for humankind, and how to fashion power relations that work best to that end. This chapter presents three politically relevant and interrelated aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy, all of which concern selfhood and how an individual might live and judge a joyful human life that is rational and free.
