Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-hgkh8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T05:35:10.275Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Nietzsche, Kant, the democratic state, and war

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2012

Abstract

This article offers a reconstruction of Nietzsche's critique of Kant's scheme for perpetual peace distilled from his life-long confrontation with Kant's critical philosophy. Through this reading strategy, it sheds light on Nietzsche's controversial and yet surprisingly under-researched reflections on the problem of conflict and war in human affairs. Although Nietzsche embraced many of the basic premises of Kant's critical philosophical project, he considered the ethico-political conclusions Kant drew from these to be both irrational and nihilistic. From Nietzsche's perspective, Kant's thoughts on politics and International Relations rest on a fundamental misunderstanding of the phenomena of agency, statehood, and war that elides both the tragic relationship between politics and culture, and the violence which Nietzsche believes to be latent in all attempts at reconciling individual with collective autonomy. According to Nietzsche, Kant's influential association between liberal republicanism, freedom, and peace contributed unwittingly in ushering in the cult of the nation-state, which Nietzsche warned would engulf Europe into a wholly new kind of organised violence in the coming decades. Although clearly not without their uncritical assumptions and hubristic tendencies, Nietzsche's reflections on war and peace draw attention to some of the more insidious risks and difficulties attending liberal attempts at accommodating cosmopolitan values and principles within the framework of the modern nation state.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden [KSA], (eds) Colli, G. and Montinari, M. (Berlin, New York, and Munich: Walter de Gruyter and Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1967–77 and 1988)Google Scholar, vol. 11 (Nachlass 1884–5), 34 [18], p. 427; The Will to Power [WP], trans. Kaufmann, Walter and Hollingdale, R. J. (New York: Vintage Books, 1968 [1906]), I, § 133, p. 81Google Scholar.

2 The one truly remarkable exception is Elbe, Stefan, Europe: A Nietzschean Perspective (London: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar.

3 For good overviews see Martin, Nicholas, ‘“Fighting a Philosophy”: The Figure of Nietzsche in British Propaganda of the First World War’, The Modern Language Review, 98:2 (2003), pp. 367–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Voegelin, Eric, ‘Nietzsche, the Crisis and the War’, The Journal of Politics, 6:2 (1944), pp. 177212CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Golomb, Jacob and Wistrich, Robert S. (eds), Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? On the Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

4 A major turning point in the Anglo-Saxon world in this respect was the publication of Kaufmann, Walter's Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950)Google Scholar.

5 Heidegger, Martin, Nietzsche, 2 vols (New York: Harper One, 1991 [orig. pub. 1961])Google Scholar; Deleuze, Gilles, Nietzsche et la Philosophie (Paris: PUF, 2010, [orig. pub. 1962])Google Scholar.

6 See, especially, Ansell-Pearson, Keith, ‘Nietzsche's Overcoming of Kant's Metaphysics: From Tragedy to Nihilism’, Nietzsche-Studien, 16 (1987), pp. 310–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hill, R. Kevin, Nietzsche's Critiques: The Kantian Foundation of his Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zimmerman, Robert, The Kantianism of Hegel and Nietzsche: Renovation in Nineteenth Century German Philosophy (Lewiston NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

7 Ansell-Pearson, Keith, An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Pangle, Thomas L., ‘The “Warrior Spirit” as an Inlet to the Political Philosophy of Nietzsche's Zarathustra’, Nietzsche-Studien, 15 (1986), pp. 140–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 For an overview see Siemens, Herman W. and Roodt, Vasti (eds), Nietzsche and Power Politics (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Deleuze, Nietzsche, p. 59. Author's translation.

10 Kant, Immanuel, ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’, in Kant: Political Writings, ed. Reiss, H. S. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 [orig. pub. 1795])Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 103.

12 Immanuel Kant, ‘Appendix from the Critique of Pure Reason’, in Ibid., p. 191.

13 For insightful discussions see Jaspers, Karl, Kant (London: Harcourt Brace & Co.: 1982 [orig. pub. 1957]), pp. 101–20Google Scholar; Williams, Michael C., ‘Reason and Realpolitik: Kant's “Critique of International Politics”, Canadian Journal of Political Science Association, 25:1 (1992), pp. 99119CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hutchings, Kimberly, Kant, Critique and Politics (London: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar.

14 Deleuze, Nietzsche, pp. 102–8.

15 Pippin, Robert, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem (2nd edn, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 50–2Google Scholar.

16 Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace’, p. 123. Emphasis in original.

17 Immanuel Kant, ‘Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History’, in Kant: Political Writings.

18 Kant, ‘Conjectures’, p. 227.

19 Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace’, pp. 108–9.

20 Jaspers, Kant, p. 103.

21 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Judgement, trans. Pluhar, W. S. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987 [orig. pub. 1790]), p. 14Google Scholar.

22 Cited in Cameron, Frank and Dombowsky, Don (eds), The Political Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche: An Edited Anthology (London: Palgrave, 2008), p. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Stack, George, Lange and Nietzsche (Berlin: Walter de Gruyer, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crawford, Claudia, The Beginnings of Nietzsche's Theory of Language (Berlin: Walter de Gruyer, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. Hill, Nietzsche's Critiques.

24 Benoit, Blaise, ‘Bellicisme, ou La Guerre Selon Nietzsche’, La Politique, 3 (2005), p. 7Google Scholar. Author's translation.

25 Nietzsche, KSA, 13 (Nachlass 1887–89), 14 [40], p. 238; trans. WP, I, § 53, p. 33.

26 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Untimely Meditations [UM], trans. Hollingdale, R. J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 [orig. pub. 1873]), I, § 7, p. 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Deleuze, Nietzsche, p. 104.

28 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality [D], trans. Hollingdale, R. J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 [orig. pub. 1881]), Preface, § 3, p. 3. CfGoogle Scholar. Beyond Good and Evil [BGE], trans. Norman, Judith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002 [orig. pub. 1886]), I, § 11, pp. 1213Google Scholar.

29 Nietzsche, KSA, 12 (Nachlass 1885–7), 7 [4], p. 265; trans. WP, III, § 530, pp. 286–8.

30 Nietzsche, D, Preface, § 3, p. 3.

31 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Twilight of the Idols [TI], in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, trans. Norman, Judith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 [orig. pub. 1888]), III, § 2, p. 168Google Scholar.

32 Nietzsche, KSA, 12:9 [106], pp. 395–6; trans. WP, III, § 569, pp. 306–7.

33 Ibid., [38], p. 352; trans. § 507, p. 493

34 Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Genealogy of Morality [GM], trans. Diethe, Carol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 [orig. pub. 1887]), Preface, § 6, pp. 78Google Scholar.

35 Ibid., I, § 13, p. 26. Cf. Human All Too Human [HAH], trans. Hollingdale, R. J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 [orig. pub. 1878–80]), § 57 pp. 41–2Google Scholar; BGE, § 19, p. 20–1 and § 117, p. 165. For good recent discussions of Nietzsche's naturalisation of the self see Leiter, Brian, Nietzsche on Morality (London: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar; Reginster, Bernard, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 54102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra [Z] trans. Del Caro, Adrian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1883), I, § 6, p. 23Google Scholar.

37 Nietzsche, GM, II, § 6, p. 41.

38 Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy [BT] trans. Speirs, Ronald (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 [orig. pub. 1871]), § 5, p. 9Google Scholar.

39 Nietzsche, KSA, 12:9 [60], p. 366; trans. WP, III, § 585, p. 318.

40 Ibid., 10 [42], p. 476; tr. I, § 28, p. 19.

41 Cited in Strong, Tracy B., Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000 [orig. pub. 1975]), p. 43Google Scholar.

42 Nietzsche, Antichrist [A], § 11, pp. 9–10.

43 Nietzsche, HAH, II, § 26, p. 314; D, § 112, pp. 66–7.

44 Nietzsche, KSA, 12, 7 [4], pp. 266–7.

45 Burckhardt exposed his views on the modern state in his influential The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: Penguin, 2004 [orig. pub. 1867]), pp. 1996Google Scholar, and in a lecture series that Nietzsche attended enthusiastically at the University of Basel in the early 1870s. See Burckhardt, Jacob, Force and Freedom: Reflections on History (Whitefish MT: Literary Licensing: 2011 [orig. pub. 1905])Google Scholar. On Nietzsche and Burckhardt see Gossman, Lionel's splendid Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

46 Nietzsche, GM, II, § 3, p. 58. For an excellent reading of Nietzsche's critique of social contract theory see Ansell-Pearson, Keith, Nietzsche Contra Rousseau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

47 Nietzsche, KSA, 11 (Nachlass 1880–2), 11 [182], pp. 509–11. Author's translation.

48 Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘The Greek State’ [GSt] (1871), reprinted in GM, pp. 164–73.

49 Ibid., p. 170.

50 Nietzsche, KSA, 12, 10 [10], p. 459; trans. WP, IV, § 889, pp. 474–5.

51 Ibid., 11, 11 [407], pp. 187–8; trans. III, § 717, pp. 382–3.

52 Ibid., 13, 14 [196], p. 381; trans. WP, § 716, p. 382.

53 Jaspers, Karl, Nietzsche: Introduction à sa Philosophie (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), p. 260Google Scholar. See also Shaw, Tasmin, Nietzsche's Political Skepticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 1235Google Scholar.

54 See, especially, Nietzsche, GSt, pp. 169–73.

55 See, for instance, Mencken, H. L., The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (Port Washington: Kenikat, 1964)Google Scholar; Schrift, Alan, ‘Questioning Authority: Nietzsche's Gift to Derrida’, Kritika & Kontext, 2 (2007), pp. 8899Google Scholar; Brobjer, Thomas H., ‘The Absence of Political Ideals in Nietzsche's Writings’, Nietzsche Studien, 27, pp. 300–19Google Scholar.

56 Nietzsche, HAH, I, § 472, pp. 170–3.

57 Ibid., § 473, p. 174; D, III, § 179, p. 107. Inter alia.

58 Nietzsche, Z, I, § 13, pp. 34–6; BGE, § 240–56, pp. 131–50; TI, VIII, § 4, p. 188.

59 Nietzsche, UM, II, § 9, p.111.

60 Nietzsche, BT, § 5, p. 33.

61 Conway, Daniel W., Nietzsche and the Political (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 9Google Scholar.

62 Nietzsche, BGE, § 257, p. 151.

63 Nietzsche, KSA, 13, 25 [1], p. 637. Author's translation.

64 Nietzsche, UM, III, § I, p. 127.

65 Kant, ‘Appendix from “The Critique of Pure Reason”’, p. 191; ‘On the Common Saying: “This may Be True in Theory But Does Not Apply to Practice”’, p. 74. Both texts reprinted in Political Writings.

66 Owen, David, Nietzsche, Politics and Modernity (London: Sage, 1995), pp. 132–8Google Scholar; Siemens, Herman, ‘Nietzsche contra Liberalism on Freedom’, in Ansell-Pearson, Keith (ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 437–53Google Scholar.

67 Nietzsche, Z, I, § 19, p. 46.

68 Nietzsche, BGE, § 225, p. 116. Cf. UM, III, § 8, p. 183.

69 Nietzsche, TI, IX, § 38, pp. 213–14.

70 Nietzsche, KSA, 13, 25 [19], p. 646. Author's translation.

71 Nietzsche, HAH, I, § 444, p. 163. Cf. HAH, I, § 477, p. 176; Z, I, § 12, p. 33.

72 Warren, Mark, Nietzsche and Political Thought (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1988), pp. 226–45Google Scholar.

73 See, for instance, Nietzsche, BT, § 23, p. 111; HAH, I, § 481, pp. 177–8; TI, VIII, § 4, p. 188.

74 Nietzsche, KSA, 10 (Nachlass 1882–4), 24 [25], p. 659; trans. WP, I, § 130, pp. 79–80.

75 Nietzsche, Ecce Homo [EH], XIV, § 1, p. 144.

76 Cited in Weller, Shane, Modernism and Nihilism (London: Palgrave, 2011), p. 36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 Nietzsche, UM, III, § 4, p. 149; BGE, § 240 to § 256, pp. 131–50.

78 Schmitt, Carl, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol, trans. Schwab, George and Hilfstein, Erna (Westport: Greenwood, 1996 [orig. pub. 1938])Google Scholar.

79 Nietzsche, D, § 112, pp. 66–7.

80 Nietzsche, HAH, I, § 453, p. 166.

81 Nietzsche, UM, III, § 4, p. 150.

82 Kant, ‘What is Enlightenment?’, in Political Writings.

83 Nietzsche, HAH, I, § 441, p. 162. See also Shaw, Nietzsche's, pp. 12–35.

84 Nietzsche, UM, II, § 4, p. 78.

85 Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Gay Science [GS], trans. Nauckhoff, Josephine and Del Caro, Adrian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001 [orig. pub. 1882]), I, § 2, p. 30Google Scholar.

86 Ibid., V, § 347, p. 205.

87 Nietzsche, KSA, 12, 9 [43], pp. 355–6; trans. WP, I, § 20, p. 17.

88 Nietzsche, HAH, I, § 472, pp. 170–3; Z, I, § 13, pp. 34–6.

89 For a more detailed discussion see Shaw, Nietzsche's, pp. 137–52.

90 Warren, Nietzsche, p. 220.

91 For a more detailed analysis of Nietzsche's critique of nationalism see Elbe, Europe, pp. 41–64.

92 Nietzsche, Z, I, § 13, pp. 34–5.

93 Nietzsche, KSA, vol. 12, 7 [26], p. 305. Author's translation.

94 Nietzsche, Z, I, § 13, p. 35. Cf. HAH, II, § 87, p. 332; EH, XIII, § 2, pp. 139–41.

95 Nietzsche, GST, p. 170.

96 Nietzsche, BGE, § 208, p. 102.

97 Mommsen, Wolfgang, Imperial Germany 1867–1918: Politics, Culture and Society in an Authoritarian State (London: Arnold, 1997), pp. 42–3, 63–4Google Scholar; Lerman, Katharine Anne, ‘Bismarckian Germany’, in Retallack, James (ed.), Imperial Germany 1871–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 338Google Scholar. See also Emden, Christian J., Nietzsche and the Politics of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), chap. 6Google Scholar.

98 Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace’, pp. 113–14.

99 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Fredrich, Elements of the Philosophy of Rights, trans. Nisbet, H. B., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 [orig. pub. 1821]), § 5, pp. 38–9Google Scholar. See also Fine, Robert's excellent Cosmopolitanism (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 2938Google Scholar.

100 On this particular issue, see Nieman, Susan, Evil in Modern Thought (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 57112Google Scholar.

101 Nietzsche, GM, I, § 10, p. 20.

102 Emden, Friedrich Nietzsche, pp. 241–2.

103 Nietzsche, HAH, II, § 284, p. 380.

104 Ibid., II, § 293, p. 384.

105 See Elbe, Europe, pp. 89–108; Martin, Nicholas, ‘“We Good Europeans”: Nietzsche's New Europe in Beyond Good and Evil, History of European Ideas, 20 (1995), pp. 141–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parkes, Graham, ‘Wanderers in the Shadow of Nihilism: Nietzsche's Good Europeans’, History of European Ideas, 16 (1993), pp. 585–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 For recent sophisticated variations on this argument see Tully, James, Public Philosophy in a New Key, Vol. II: Imperialism and Civic Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Fine, Cosmopolitanism.

107 Nietzsche, Z, II, § 7, p. 77.

108 Heidegger, Martin, What is Called Thinking? (New York: Harper Collins, 2004 [1954]), p. 88Google Scholar.

109 Assoun, Paul-Laurent, Freud and Nietzsche (London: Continuum, 2006)Google Scholar.

110 Nietzsche, HAH, II, § 284, p. 380.

111 Adorno, Theodor, Horkheimer, Max, and Gadamer, Hans Georg, ‘Nietzsche et Nous’, in Gadamer, , Nietzsche L'Antipode: Le Drame de Zarathoustra (Paris: Allia, 2007), p. 56. Author's translationGoogle Scholar.

112 Meyer, Arno, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (London: Verso, 2010 [1981]), pp. 292–3Google Scholar.