Political Theories of Nietzsche

Nietzsche's "volcano of ideas" (Collins, 1957, p. vii), is hardly systematic in presentation but nonetheless (or for that very reason) strongly in the same tradition of romanticism that is defined by what Kenneth Clark refers to as a "consciousness of the sublime" (Clark, 1969, p. 307). What must be recognized is a conscious (if unsystematic) revolt against Western rationalism, whether defined by Hegel or Aristotle. When he refers to earlier philosophers or their systems, Nietzsche is almost uniformly critical. Commenting on Hegel's view that the rational World Spirit had reached its zenith in Berlin in his era, Nietzsche writes, "I believe there has been no dangerous turning point in the progress of German culture in this century that has not been made more dangerous by the enormous and still livin

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rent interest in Nietzsche among feminist and postmodern political theorists, as well as among theorists of the postmodern condition, is perhaps no more than a new campaign in an already old war of conflicting interpretations. After all, Nietzsche was admired by anarchists, socialists and feminists during the 1890s, long before he was championed by the Nazis (Hinton Thomas 1983). A century later, however, we find ourselves in a vastly different historical situation, one much closer to the epoch for which Nietzsche considered he wrote. He regarded the collapse of faith in the Christian God as an event of such magnitude that it would take centuries for the consequences to become apparent (Patton, Introduction, 1993, p. xii). As the preceding statement suggests, there is also the more general problem of Nietzsche's affinity for authoritarian political theory. Barker refers to Nietzsche's writings as "a gift to the unscrupulous . . . deceptively quoted as urging ruthlessness, aggression, and German expansion; as preaching eugenics and being a violent Jew-hate; and his condemnation of Christianity and democracy also lent itself to Nazi policies" (Barker, 1982, p. 232). Citing the fact that Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Forster-Neitzsche
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Approximate Pages = 21 (250 words per page)

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