The Journal of Nietzsche Studies

Nietzsche’s connection to the biological theorists of the fin de siècle was recognized from the very beginning, even though the precise nature of that relationship remained indeterminate. Despite his works’ congruence with the many biological theories abounding at this time, Nietzsche’s ideas continue to elude identification with any single theory or group of theories. Even his association with Darwin and his ideas is an open question, despite continued attempts to link the two thinkers (the most recent attempt: John Richardson, Nietzsche’s New Darwinism [Oxford, 2004]). Gregory Moore resists associating Nietzsche with a definitive biological theory or agenda, but he takes a clear position in this debate: Nietzsche was a nineteenth-century thinker whose thought reflected contemporary theories of evolution and degeneration.

Moore’s efforts to highlight Nietzsche’s affinities with these theorists reflect a trend within recent scholarship to acknowledge Nietzsche’s scientific sources and to locate him in very specific contemporary debates. Robin Small’s Nietzsche in Context (Aldershot, 2001), for example, uncovers Nietzsche’s indebtedness to lesser-known contemporaries such as Paul Rée, Eugen Dühring, and African Spir. And Moore points to other works on the fin de siècle and its preoccupations with hysteria, degeneration, and decline, which influenced his study. Here, he specifically mentions Sander Gilman, including Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress (with J. E. Chamberlin [New York, 1985]), David Pick’s Faces of Degeneration (New York, 1989), Elaine Showalter’s The Female Malady (New York, 1985), Janet Oppenheim’s Shattered Nerves (New York, 1991), and Mark Micale’s Approaching Hysteria (Princeton, 1995).

The question of Nietzsche’s “biologism” is an important though complex one. His works are replete with biological references, particularly in his later writings. His philosophy circles around “biological” notions such as weak and strong wills, sickness and health, upward-striving and degenerating life. Moore quite rightly takes issue with Heidegger, who argued that we remain in the “‘foreground’ of his thought” if we read Nietzsche biologically (6). Overall, I fully agree with Moore’s assessment of the significance of biologism for Nietzsche. But the question then becomes: How does one evaluate Nietzsche’s position? Is it affirmative? Is it antagonistic? Or is it somehow a combination of the two, essentially “reflective,” offering his readers a prism into the culture’s preoccupations and fears concerning race, hysteria, miscegenation, and degeneration? Moore argues for the latter view, but I will return to this question later.

Moore has a vast and detailed knowledge of the relevant texts from this period. His intimate familiarity with the arguments of the major players—such as Darwin and Wagner—but also many of the lesser-known theorists (e.g., Féré, Roux, Rolph, Lombroso) allows him to establish links with apparently similar strains of thought within Nietzsche’s texts. Whereas Moore focuses on Nietzsche, his work effectively summarizes writings by, among many others, Gobineau on the inequality of races, Nordau on degeneration, and Galton on heredity but also Goethe, Schiller, and Wagner on [End Page 170] aesthetics. This familiarity allows him to make a strong case that no demarcation existed between the disciplines but, instead, that major thinkers and forgotten theorists alike were drawing from the same reservoir of vaguely “evolutionary” thought, both before and after Darwin’s publication of the Origin of Species, in 1859.

Darwin and his theory of evolution, as well as other nineteenth-century interpretations of his theories, constitute the first part of Moore’s study. In these first three chapters, Moore argues that “though some biologists openly proclaimed to be ‘Darwinians,’ their thought often turns out to be little more than what Bowler calls ‘pseudo-Darwinian,’ a blend of Darwinian rhetoric—usually the evocation of the struggle for existence—with attitudes that are in reality a legacy of the pre-Darwinian view of nature” (26). Despite Nietzsche’s later claims to be “anti-Darwinian,” Moore believes that “far from advancing a radical, coherent and effective critique of Darwin, Nietzsche simply reiterates the many errors and misunderstandings perpetrated by his...