Democracy and the Nietzschean Pathos of Distance

The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 2002

South African journal of philosophy, 2007

Socialism, utilitarianism and democracy are, according to Nietzsche, secularised versions of Christianity. They have continued the monomaniac onesidedness of the Christian idea of what a human being is and should be, and they have even strengthened this monomania through its 'immanentisation'. The article shows that this 'immanentisation' is of crucial importance for Nietzsche's critique of democracy. This critique may suggest that Nietzsche's alternative for the disappeared Christian faith is not only a more radical rupture from the religious past, but also a re-interpretation or recreation of the notion of transcendence implied in that faith.

Will Dudley's review of my book, A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy: An Experiment in Postmodern Politics, in the journal Philosophy and Social Criticism, 1998.

This is a file of my 1995 book, A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy: An Experiment in Postmodern Politics

2019

Nietzsche’s entrenched yearning for higher man sets the tone of his overall take on democracy - a social and political order that in its essence disbelieves in big man authority and embraces the inherent rationality of the whole of humanity. This essay explores the relation between the spiritual movement of secularization and the political movement of democratization that coincided in Europe in the context of Nietzsche’s thought. It first examines the relation between religion and government, reaching the conclusion that the interest of religion and tutelary government goes hand in hand thus the decay of religion leads to the collapse of the foundation of the state. It then goes on to identify the heritage that two thousand years of Christianity bequeathed to Europe, which was inherited by modern democratic states. With the decay of the religion comes the onset of nihilism, and thus the collapse of traditional means of legitimating political authority – popular rule and equality is the only way out. The essay then continues to assess Nietzsche’s evaluation of democracy: in concluding that democracy does not suffice for Nietzsche, it shows that Nietzsche himself gives no indication of what actually would.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of values offers an important account of contemporary culture. In this essay I will examine Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil, drawing out Nietzsche’s revaluation of values. This essay is intended to demonstrate the ethical consequences that arise from his critique. For the person living along with the author of this paper, Nietzsche’s prophetic warnings still carry great weight in any effort to understand and relate to the personal and political world. Democracy has, by and large, become the new political hegemon, and with it the attending notions of community and equality are utilized in speech with little reflection as to what their meaning. After first laying out Nietzsche’s method and mode of critique, the essay will provide an analysis of the real, ethical complications summoned to mind by Nietzsche, concerns either forgotten or rendered un-important by their immediate assumption in the “post-modern” present.

Manuel Knoll and Barry Stocker eds Nietzsche as Political Philosopher, 93-111., 2014

Nietzsche is widely considered to be an aristocratic and anti-democratic thinker. However, his early ‘middle period’ work, offers a more nuanced view of democracy: critical of its existing forms in Europe at the time, yet surprisingly supportive of a certain ideal of ‘democracy to come.’ Against the received view of Nietzsche’s politics, this talk explores the possibility of a conception of democratic political society on Nietzschean foundations.

In this paper I would like to advance further, with the help of a musical analogy, some of the themes of my recent book, A Nietzschean De-/ense 0/ Democracy. I In that work I attempt a deconstruction of Nie-tzsche's critique of democracy by redescribing democratic politics in Nietzschean terms. Nietzsche's main objections to democracy stern from his presumption that de~ocracyrepresents the ascendancy of egalitarian mediocrity, normalizing conformity, and a generalized model of rational agency-all of which are taken to subvert the development of cultural excellence, particularly those rare creators who are essential to the furtherance of life. Accordingly, Nietzsche appears to advocate an aristocratic , authoritarian political order on behalf of fostering and ordaining the excellent few,whose value-creation can animate a kind of trickle-down cultural economy reminiscent of Plato's political hierarchy (A 57). My deconstruction of Nietzsche depends in part on refusing an overly broad conception of "the political" and sustaining a distinction between cultural and political production. In matters of cultural production pertaining to creativity and normalcy, excellence and mediocrity, I take Nietzsche's diagnosis of egalitarianism to be insightful and defensible. In matters of political production, however, pertaining to the formation and structure of political institutions, the concrete problems and practices of politicallife, the legitimacy of coercion, and the extent of sovereignty, I take Nietzsche's anti-democratic posture to be an impoverished and naive political program. At the same time, I do not want to let Nietzsche off the hook by separating the cultural and political spheres, as some have done. I argue, first of all, that the kind of nonfoundational openness marking Nietzsche's cultural and philosophical reflections (particularly agonistics, perspectivism, and suspicion) would seem to undermine the kind of closure intrinsic to his authoritarian politics. Secondly, I argue that there is significant overlap between Nietzschean predilections and life in a democratic society, especially the extent to which certain nonegalitarian arrangements can and do operate in democratic politics. My contention is that democracy, in both a cultural and political sense, is more amenable to Nietzsche's interests than he imagined, that democracy dictates neither the hegemony of a normalizing order nor the egalitarian denial of excellence or social stratification. Rather than depend on notions of substantive equality or rationalized constraint,

The Agonist, 2024

A critical assessment on the critique of democracy as presented by Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche saw struggles against oppression as ongoing conclusions and by-products of despotic ethical and political institutions treating people merely as instruments of utility for a dominant group to maintain social and political power. The exertion of power, for this paper, is analyzed through what I am calling the functionalist critique/interpretation of utility as expressed in democratic relations of power. Through a functionalist interpretation of selected works, I aim to demonstrate how both Nietzsche and Marx provide valuable insights into how certain vulnerabilities arise from the ethical framework of democratic societies. It is the purpose of this paper to present an argument, not attempting to defend democracy as a political system, but against the attempts of Nietzsche and Marx to provide a functionalist critique strong enough to warrant taking seriously an overall opposition to democracy through the exegesis of selected texts.