Freedom, Naming, Nobility: The Convergence of Rhetorical and Political Theory in Nietzsche's Philosophy

Abstract

Philosophers political scientists alike have habitually overlooked Friedrich Nietzsche's contributions to modern political theory, the sum of which constitutes a remarkably original alternative to the conventional precepts of both liberalism democracy. Few of the discussions of Nietzsche's politics are long, Bruce Detwiler writes, and those are (with some notable recent exceptions) tend to be of low quality, often inspired more by the political passions of the day than by any commitment to dispassionate analysis of the subject at hand (1990, 1). The Third Reich's enthusiastic appropriation of Nietzsche's philosophy, the pall it cast over his subsequent reputation, explains much about why scholars for decades shied away from validating his distinctive contributions to modern political philosophy. Even Nietzsche's intellectual redeemers, however, complicated matters in this regard. Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche's esteemed biographer translator, rescued his subject from historical political disrepute by maintaining, in Keith Ansell-Pearson's summation, that Nietzsche was not a political thinker at all, but someone who was mainly concerned with the fate of the solitary, isolated individual removed from the cares concerns of the social world (1994, l).1 During the 1970s 1980s, French poststructuralist philosophers challenged Kaufmann 's standard interpretation of Nietzsche by pursuing the broad implications of Nietzsche's insights on language. Such insights scandalized longstanding beliefs in the priority of truth reason over linguistic artifice thus amounted to a withering critique of the very foundations of Western metaphysics rational empiricism.2 The resultant Anglo-American reception of this so-called new Nietzsche, which lionized his contributions to modern views of language, truth, aesthetics, nonetheless replicated Kaufmann's tendency to underestimate Nietzsche's uniquely valuable political insights.3 Owing to these receptions of Nietzsche's thought, modern commentators have frequently dismissed his political philosophy for its alleged naivete