Journal of the History of Philosophy

47 ~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 Keith Ansell-Pearson. An Introduction to Nietzsche as a Political Thinker: The Perfect Nihil- /st. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xix + 243. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $14.95. Keith Ansell-Pearson is an exceedingly well-informed and sensitive reader of Nietzsche 9who aims to write a text that will introduce the reader both to Nietzsche's thought as a whole and to his overt political thinking. He succeeds admirably; his text is a fine "introduction to Nietzsche as a political thinker" that goes well beyond the level of the merely introductory. Thoughtfully organized and written in clear, engaging prose, Ansell-Pearson's text provides a thorough survey of Nietzsche's works. Ranging from his early unpublished essay "The Greek State" to his final thoughts on "great politics," Ansell-Pearson makes a strong case to support his central thesis, namely, that "from his early reflections on the Greek agon to his attempt to write a genealogy of morality and his diagnosis of nihilism .... Nietzsche is a thinker preoccupied with the fate of politics in the modern world" (2). The volume begins with some preliminary remarks on Nietzsche's objections to liberalism and on the "question of style" in Nietzsche's writing. Ansell-Pearson surveys the political context which prompted Nietzsche's political observations (Bismarck's Germany) and the impact of his political thinking on German politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Noteworthy here are the discussion of Nietzsche 's explicit criticisms of the German Reich, the connections drawn between Nietzsche 's "aristocratism" and Plato's, and the reactions to Nietzsche's "politics" by Bataille, Arendt, Mann, and Camus. Ansell-Pearson then reviews Nietzsche's overtly political responses to the Greeks and the moderns, focussing on his affinity for an agonal politics in which the political aim is linked to the advance of culture and the production of individual excellence rather than the overall improvement of the lives of a community's members. This brings to our attention much that is often overlooked in readings of Nietzsche, as Ansell-Pearson puts Nietzsche in contact with the political thinking of Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, and Marx, taking note both of Nietzsche's obvious links to Plato and Hobbes and his at times surprising proximity to the political thought of Hegel and Locke. Throughout, he shows that questions of political and national identity , the role of the state, the limits of political authority, i.e., classical questions of political philosophy, were never far from Nietzsche's mind. Ansell-Pearson's discussion of the middle period of Nietzsche's political thinking in his aphoristic works of 1878-82 is particularly interesting. Sandwiched between the better known early period in which Nietzsche affirms the Greek agon as a political ideal, and the later period of his call for "great politics" as the solution to the problem of nihilism that faced Europe in his day, Ansell-Pearson locates in Nietzsche an enlightenment moment that links the critique of traditional religious authority and beliefs to a critique of political authorities and beliefs. And Ansell-Pearson concludes that, like most modern political thinkers, Nietzsche's project also falters in not being able to BOOK REVIEWS 471 allow for autonomous individuality while remaining in a social environment in which one has to submit one's individual will to the dictates of the group. Finally, Ansell-Pearson discusses the contemporary relevance of Nietzsche's political ideas. Here he offers a helpful review of contemporary uses of Nietzsche in recent repackagings of liberalism (Rorty's "liberal ironism" and Connolly's "radical liberalism ") and recent feminism (Derrida, Kofman, Irigaray, and Cixous are discussed) before concluding with his own suggestion that we view Nietzsche as the "perfect nihilist." Ansell-Pearson suggests several reasons why Nietzsche has not been recognized heretofore as a "political" thinker. First, there is the legacy of Nietzsche's having been "dehistoricised and depoliticised" by Walter Kaufmann in his translations and his influential interpretation, both of which perpetrated the view that Nietzsche had little to say and less to offer as a political thinker. This view was furthered by the fact that Nietzsche's political...