Abstract
A dominant reading formation in contemporary Nietzsche studies and political theory is the radical democratic reading of Nietzsche. Since this reading locates not only democratic (egalitarian), but primarily liberal (individualistic, pluralistic) and libertarian conceptual resources in the Nietzschean corpus, it is more explicit to refer to it as a radical liberal democratic reading. The radical, or anticlassical liberal, aspect of its approach is constituted in the fact that it elicits from Nietzsche’s philosophy of the subject (as decentred, infinite process and selfovercoming) a libertarian challenge to any politics of identity (ethnic or cultural), which often harden into forms of ressentiment, and from Nietzsche’s philosophy of perspectivism (antidogmatism, contingency and the imperative to multiply perspectives) and agonism (the maintenance of tension and conflict, antagonism and competing views in the public space) a challenge to any form of totalitarianism. For the radical liberal democratic reader, Nietzschean agonism is grounded in the attunement to the differences of others and thus in respect and empathy (or tolerance) and in accordance with a democratic ethos.
Now a comic fact; which is coming more and more to my notice -1 have an ’influence’, very subterranean to be sure, I enjoy a strange and almost mysterious respect among all radical parties (Socialists, Nihilists, anti-Semites, Orthodox Christians, Wagnerians).
Letter to Franz Overbeck, 1887
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Notes
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© 2004 Don Dombowsky
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Dombowsky, D. (2004). The Radical Liberal Democratic Reading of Nietzsche. In: Nietzsche’s Machiavellian Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230000650_3
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