Abstract

After reviewing the historical fortune of Nietzsche as a political thinker, it is discussed what aspects of his philosophy can be most useful for the deployment of a pluralist democracy, in the sense of political agonism claimed today by some of his interpreters. But the reasons why an articulation of democracy and aristocratic culture is coagulated in his philosophy are also pointed out. For this, the question of the agon in Nietzsche is approached and its discrepancy with the Schmittian idea of the friend-enemy pair, as distinctive of the essence of the political, is pointed out, thus placing the Nietzschean critique of modernity in perspective.