Beyond the State: The Early Nietzsche's Post-Political Rhetoric

Abstract

A small subsection of the literature on Nietzsche’s political philosophy focuses on a key passage that appears in the sixth section of “Schopenhauer as Educator.” In this passage, Nietzsche claims that the individual’s life attains its highest value by living for the benefit of humanity’s rarest and most valuable specimens. Some philosophers, like John Rawls and Thomas Hurka, take this passage to be sufficient evidence of a larger commitment on Nietzsche’s part to aristocracy. Others oppose Rawls’ and Hurka’s interpretations, claiming that this key passage is evidence of a commitment to democracy. However, both sides are incorrect. This particular section of “Schopenhauer as Educator” is actually evidence of Nietzsche’s commitment to divorcing cultural institutions from the influence of states in toto. I explain why Nietzsche is committed neither to aristocracy nor to democracy, and how the passage from “Schopenhauer as Educator” commits Nietzsche to a post-political position.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

  • Only published works are available at libraries.

Similar books and articles

Nietzsche's Imperatives.William Henry Winstead - 2001 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Nietzche-Beyond Feminism.Ping Liu - 2000 - Philosophy and Culture 27 (8):778-786.

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-05-27

Downloads
10 (#1,025,836)

6 months
2 (#668,348)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.Richard Rorty - 1989 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Perfectionism.Thomas Hurka - 1993 - New York, US: Oxford University Press. Edited by Thomas L. Carson & Paul K. Moser.
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.Richard Rorty - 1989 - The Personalist Forum 5 (2):149-152.
The gay science.Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - 1910 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Thomas Common, Paul V. Cohn & Maude Dominica Petre.

View all 21 references / Add more references