Exploring and critically examining the new realities of artificial life that confront us,Viroid Lifebrings together the tradition of Nietszchean thought with ...

Exploring and critically examining the new realities of artificial life that confront us,Viroid Lifebrings together the tradition of Nietszchean thought with ...

This is a lively and engaging introduction to the contentious topic of Nietzsche's political thought. It traces the development of Nietzsche's thinking on politics from his earliest writings to the mature work in which he advocates aristocratic radicalism as opposed to 'petty' European nationalism. The key ideas of the will to power, eternal return and the overman are discussed and all Nietzsche's major works analysed in detail, such as Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals, within the context (...) of the concerns of modern political theory. The book concludes with an assessment of Nietzsche's enduring relevance and of the insights afforded by contemporary liberal and feminist readings. This textbook will be essential for all students of Nietzsche and of the history of political ideas. It includes a chronology of Nietzsche's life and works and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

Introduction Undoubtedly it would be useful to interpret the "new Nietzsche," as he is often called, within the larger contexts of "Nietzsche and the ...

Disputing the common misconception that nihilism is wholly negative and necessarily damaging to the human spirit, John Marmysz offers a clear and complete definition to argue that it is compatible, and indeed preferably responded to, with an attitude of good humor. He carefully scrutinizes the phenomenon of nihilism as it appears in the works, lives, and actions of key figures in the history of philosophy, literature, politics, and theology, including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Camus, and Mishima. While suggesting that there ultimately is (...) no solution to the problem of nihilism, Marmysz proposes a way of utilizing the anxiety and despair that is associated with the problem as a spur toward liveliness, activity, and the celebration of life. (shrink)

Upon its release in 1968, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead was attacked by many critics as an exploitative low budget film of questionable moral value. I argue in this paper that Night of the Living Dead is indeed nihilistic, but in a deeper philosophical sense than the critics had in mind.

In this paper I argue that Nietzsche should be understood as a “thorough-going nihilist”. Rather than broaching two general projects of destroying current values and constructing new ones, I argue that Nietzsche should be understood only as a destroyer of values. I do this by looking at Nietzsche’s views on nihilism and the role played by Nietzsche’s cyclical view of time, or his doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same. I provide a typology of nihilisms, as they are found (...) in Nietzsche—negative, reactive and radical—through a close reading of an unpublished fragment in his later notebooks, remnants of which are scattered throughout his published work. I show how the progression between the different stages of nihilism are a “necessary consequence of the ideals entertained hitherto” (WTP 28), with the eternal recurrence of the same playing a vital role in this progression. The last stage of nihilism—radical nihilism—is ambiguous between a life-denying, or passive, nihilism and a life-affirming, or active, one; but, I argue, both kinds of nihilism preclude a construction of new values. But there is an inherent tension within Nietzsche’s account of nihilism insofar as it relies on the eternal recurrence of the same. This tension is brought out nicely by Löwith and (I argue) partially resolved by Klossowski. There are at least two meanings of the eternal recurrence of the same. In one sense, the cosmological reading, it is intended to make sense of the idea that time is infinite and matter is finite by claiming that every possible combination of matter will recur infinite times. In the other sense, the anthropological reading, it is a kind of thought experiment, analogous to Kant’s categorical imperative: “live in every moment so that you could will that moment back again over and over” (Löwith). There is a tension between these readings insofar as one must will to live in such a way that they will do it again, over and over (the anthropological reading), but also that what they do will make no difference, for what one decides to do has been done (and will be done) innumerable times. I argue that this tension can only be resolved by considering Nietzsche as aiming at “goal-lessness as such” and placing him as an active nihilist. (shrink)

Despite the recent surge of interest in Nietzsche’s moral psychology and his conceptions of character and virtue in particular, little attention has been paid to his treatment of the relation between character traits and the terms that designate them. In this paper, I argue for an interpretation of this relation: Nietzsche thinks there is a looping effect between the psychological disposition named by a character trait-term and the practice of using that term.

This is a highly original study with fresh insights into many aspects of Nietzsche's corpus, ranging from the second untimely meditation on history and the unpublished "Truth and Lies" essay to On the Genealogy of Morality. The aim of the book is to provide the first systematic treatment of the animal in Nietzsche's philosophy. The author wants to show "that the animal is neither a random theme nor a metaphorical device, but rather that it stands at the center of Nietzsche's (...) renewal of the practice and meaning of philosophy itself" (1). This involves Lemm in a wide-ranging treatment of key motifs in Nietzsche's corpus, including illuminating his views on culture and civilization, morality and politics, history .. (shrink)

Using Alasdair MacIntyre as a foil, I defend what I take to be a viable Nietzschean genealogical account, showing that a proper perspectivism is neither perniciously subjectivist nor absolutist. I begin by arguing against MacIntyre’s assertion that genealogists are committed to the view that rationality requires neutrality and that as there is no neutrality, there is no rationality. I then continue by offering something of a reconstruction of Nietzsche’s view, designed partly to clarify the error pinpointed in MacIntyre’s arguments, but (...) primarily to amplify the Nietzschean solution. This reconstruction involves claiming that Nietzsche is committed to three different senses of “truth:” the “Truth” (with a capital “T”) of correspondence theories, “truth” which is really pragmatic knowledge that helps us survive, and, finally, “truth” that is nothing more that “metaphors and metonyms” which are falsely taken to be useful to survival. (shrink)

This paper draws on Friedrich Nietzsche’s work to defend the (admittedly non-Nietzschean) conclusion that a non-liberal egalitarian society is superior in two ways: first, as a moral ideal, it does not rest on questionable claims about essential human equality and, second, such a society would provide the optimal psychological and political conditions for individual wellbeing, social stability, and cultural achievement. I first explain Nietzsche’s distinction between forms of egalitarianism: noble and slavish. The slavish form promotes equality, defined negatively as the (...) elimination of privilege. It is non-liberal in its prioritization of equality over the interests of the advantaged. Nietzsche rejects both slavish egalitarianism and liberalism for the same reasons: they questionably assume the equal value of all persons, and they harm cultural achievement, sacrificing the potential of those who are most valuable to cultural development to the interests of the majority. Noble egalitarianism, in contrast, exemplifies Nietzsche’s conception of justice as ‘equality among equals’. It demands that individuals of equal worth or power (such as members of an artistic or political elite) treat each other as what they, in fact, are: equals. It avoids asserting essential equality, demanding instead—against both slavish and liberal forms—respect on the basis of shared superiority. And it escapes the charge of harm to cultural development, commanding respect only where equality already exists. Although Nietzsche quickly assumes that ‘noble egalitarianism’ requires the rejection of all forms of universal egalitarianism, concluding that we should ‘never make equal what is unequal’, in fact it only entails the rejection of slavish methods: equalization through harm to the advantaged. However, non-liberal forms of egalitarianism can be ‘noble’, promoting equality without harm to the advantaged—through, for example, unequal distribution of resources, the equalization of economic opportunities, and economic regulation to prevent the creation of substantial wealth disparities. If egalitarianism can ‘make equal’ without slavish methods, then Nietzsche’s demand for ‘equality for equals’ applies to the newly equal, too. More importantly, his moral psychology of power—the view that our source of happiness and incentive to self-development is the feeling of power in relation to equal resistance or ‘opponents who are our equals’ —supports the superiority of a nobly-achieved, non-liberal egalitarian society. For achieved, practical equality of wealth and opportunity would optimize conditions for the feeling of power: a balance of equal, oppositional powers serving as mutual limitation and resistance. Such a society is superior in three ways. First, it maximizes social happiness by promoting and maintaining the feeling of power in all. Liberal and aristocratic societies, in contrast, allow radical inequalities that not only diminish the power of the disadvantaged, but diminish the opportunities of the advantaged to encounter equal resistance, thus undermining the happiness of all. Second, it promotes social stability by preserving a balance of powers that prevents domination and exploitation, in contrast to the inevitable class conflicts of aristocratic and liberal societies. Finally, it promotes cultural achievement, since the feeling of power in relation to proportional resistance is the psychological incentive for self-development and cultural achievement. (shrink)