6
Herman W. Siemens
1 Introduction
Do we need to rethink conflict as an irreducible and essential part of vibrant democratic politics? If so, how should conflict be understood such that it is anchored in the deep structure of political life, while remaining within the bounds of democratic principles? These questions encapsulate what ‘agonistic’ or ‘radical democrats’ have in common, and what connects them to Nietzsche’s thought. Over the past 20 years or so a number of Anglo-American political theorists have appealed to Nietzsche in formulating their agonistic theories of democracy. His hostility to modern democracy is either ignored, played down or softened by agonistic theorists,2 who look instead for constructive resources in Nietzsche’s thought, and especially his concept of limited, agonistic conflict, for rethinking democratic politics today. This chapter aims to reassess the critical and constructive potential of Nietzsche’s thought for democratic politics by confronting agonistic theory with his concept of the agon and more broadly, his ontology of conflict (will to power). Do existing democratic appropriations release constructive potentials in his thought to which he was blinded by his aristocratic proclivities? Are they viable ways of thinking ‘with and against’ Nietzsche – or does his thought rather offer insights into democracy and antagonism that expose fatal weaknesses in these appropriations?
The first part of the chapter will consider agonistic democratic theory in the light of Nietzsche’s ontology of conflict/power and his concept of the agon. Agonistic theory, I will argue, is informed by an ontology of struggle and power that is post-structuralist in origin and quite distinct from Nietzsche’s. What is more, Nietzsche’s ontology of conflict opens up critical and corrective perspectives on contemporary conceptions of agonism and especially their reliance on the notion of ‘agonistic respect.’ The second part of the chapter turns to the question of the constructive resources in Nietzsche’s thought for democratic theory. These are located first in Nietzsche’s ‘philosophy of hatred’ with the thesis that for Nietzsche hatred, envy, pride and the like are the springs of agonal action, not respect. Nietzsche’s philosophy of hatred opens up a rich and ‘realist’ phenomenology of enmity unbound by the constraints of ‘respect,’ yet profoundly affirmative of the other. The last part of the paper concentrates on the link between pluralism and antagonism made by agonistic theorists. Focusing on the agonism of Chantal Mouffe, it argues that Nietzsche’s ontology of conflict overcomes the problems she inherits from Carl Schmitt’s ‘reactive’ theory of power and offers alternative ways to address one of the central tasks for political philosophy today: how to rethink pluralism in a way that addresses its contemporary forms and formations.
2 Agonistic democratic theory and Nietzsche’s ontology of conflict
Radical democratic theory emerged in the 1990s from a dissatisfaction with democratic politics and mainstream democratic theory. For the most part, agonistic democrats are left-leaning, Foucault-inspired theorists concerned with the deficits of contemporary democracies – with persistent inequalities and minority groups that remain marginalized and below the threshold of legitimate identity and political participation.3 Their interest in Nietzsche’s agon is, then, driven by questions quite alien to his thought: How to stay true to our democratic aspirations to liberty, equality and justice in face of actual democracy’s failures? How to empower those marginalized in their emancipatory struggle against inequality? If these questions are alien to Nietzsche’s thought, the connection becomes clearer in their response. What unites them is the claim that antagonism, division and struggle are inherent to democratic politics.4 Their project is to theorize a politics of resistance and struggle that allows for legitimate forms of opposition to existing power-regimes in contemporary democracies by recuperating the original sense of democracy as incessant contestation.5 In broad terms, their claim is (1) that antagonism, struggle, contestation, disagreement and dissensus are ineradicable, a daily and incessant part of democratic politics; but also (2) that they are desirable: a valuable (emancipatory, productive) feature of democracy, to be affirmed and celebrated, because they make genuine pluralism possible and are essential to questioning, resisting and transforming power-relations. Antagonism is both a descriptive principle and an axiological principle.
These claims encapsulate the key criticisms levelled by agonistic democrats against mainstream democratic theory. Their principle targets are the deliberative theories of democracy that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s with the work of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. The agonists’ criticisms focus on the key concept of Public Reason that can secure the legitimacy of democratic institutions by ensuring that all decisions are the result of an exchange of arguments among free and equal rational citizens; and the concept of an all-inclusive rational consensus that resolves disagreements, as the telos of deliberation.6 The criticisms can be summarized under three headings:
1. Antagonism or dissensus contra consensus: Against the deliberative ideal of an all-inclusive consensus, agonists emphasize the importance of dissensus, disagreement as a daily part of democratic life. They also emphasize the structural and conceptual impossibility of all-inclusive consensus, and the violence, the exclusionary effects and remainders that attend any attempt at closure.7
2. Pluralism is inherently antagonistic: Against the notion of public reason oriented towards consensus, agonists emphasize the antagonistic character of genuine pluralism. While the antagonistic potential of value-pluralism is acknowledged by liberalism, it is perceived as a threat and confined to the private sphere, effectively de-politicizing pluralism in favour of (overlapping) consensus in a value-neutral public sphere.
3. Power is inherently antagonistic: Against the deliberative ideal of a non-coercive consensus among rational agents, in which power-relations are absent, agonistic theorists hold that power is constitutive of all identities, subjectivities and sociopolitical relations, and that power is intrinsically antagonistic. This is the familiar anti-liberal Foucauldian claim that power-relations are constitutive in both negative and positive senses: constitutive of (macro- and micro-) relations of domination – subordination, subjection/subjectification and exclusion; but also emancipatory (at least potentially) – as processes of questioning, resisting and transforming power-relations.
All three claims are based on an affirmative notion of struggle or agon that is supposedly derived from Nietzsche, whether directly or indirectly, by way of post-structuralism and Foucault. In order to examine this connection, we can begin by asking what form political agonism is supposed to take. Agonistic theorists are divided over how exactly ‘to cash out the notion of politics as struggle,’8 and it is far from clear what constructive consequences this notion is supposed to have for institution-building and – reform in contemporary democracies. But several authors (Hatab, Owen) emphasize the deep compatibility of Nietzsche’s concept of the agon and his agonistic concept of power with liberal-democratic practices and procedures at all levels.9 Hatab emphasizes the contest of speeches, where policy is determined by winning; but also the temporary and contestable nature of any settlement. Most recently, he has highlighted the agonistic or adversarial style of democratic legal practice.10 Owen’s focus is on the agonistic, dissensual nature of democratic deliberation and reason-giving. ‘Agonistic deliberation’ is conceived as deliberative contestation within and over the terms of democratic citizenship. That is to say, deliberation involves not just participation in democratic-constitutional institutions, but also deliberation over those institutions themselves. In a recent volume of essays on the relation between political agonism and law,11 he argues against drawing too sharp a distinction between contestation within a legal-political order, and contestation over the terms of such an order: agonistic deliberation presupposes rule of law, civil liberties and public reason while also opening their implementation up to contestation.
These political agonisms exhibit two formal features that bear directly on Nietzsche’s concept of the agon in Homer’s Contest (Homer’s Wettkampf, HC):
1. The first is the open-ended, counter-final character of agonism: no results are permanent, all settlements remain open to contestation, so that contestation is incessant, continuous. In HC, this is implied by the exclusion of the ‘hervorragende Individuum’ from Nietzsche’s account of agon; that is, the conclusive victor who cannot be challenged. This implies that the agon can only work and thrive where a plurality of antagonistic ‘forces (Kräfte) or “geniuses”’ are engaged in an inconclusive, open-ended contestation of victory (HC, KSA 1, 789). The agon admits mastery between the contests – temporary, intermittent victors like the Olympic champion or the winner of the contest of tragedies this year. The emergence of an absolute victor kills the agon.
2. The other formal element concerns the scope of contestation. Contestation does not just take place within a specific political-legal-institutional order, but also over the very terms of that order; political agonism does not just follow a set of rules and procedures but is also contestation over those very rules, procedures and criteria. This formal characteristic coheres with the anomalous character of agon as game, as described by Nietzsche in HC and MA 170.12 The measure or standard of victory is not given or fixed independently of each contest; it is the actual issue of contestation, so that the agonal antagonist does not just want to win; his ambition is to determine what counts as winning, so that you have a contest of judgements of victory or a contestation of justice – of the very standard or measure of victory.
Despite these formal convergences, Nietzsche’s account of the agon in Homer’s Contest does not translate well into democratic practices. This is (1) because the text presents not a recipe for action or recommendation, but a highly stylized, not to say idealized model of the agon focused on martial, artistic, athletic and pedagogic practices, rather than politics. In other, more realist contexts Nietzsche can be highly critical of the Greek agon for its practical consequences, such as stifling lesser talents, and inhibiting the emergence of the individual.13 This suggests that, in taking inspiration from Nietzsche’s idealized model of the agon in Homer’s Contest, agonistic theorists offer highly idealized accounts of democratic practices which ignore the practical difficulties of real agonistic interaction. Furthermore (2), the relation between the agon and democracy is tenuous at best for Nietzsche. Like his colleague at Basel, Jacob Burckhardt, he was suspicious of modern mass democracies for promoting mediocrity. Both opposed the agon practised by Greek aristocrats not just to modern culture but also to later Greek democracy.14 By disrupting one-to-one relations and introducing the ‘masses’ into the equation, democracy actually ruined the agon for Burckhardt, who writes of fifth century Greece: ‘The entire praxis of democracy becomes with time an inauthentic agon in which despicable speech, sycophancy etc. come to the foreground.’15 To relate the agon to democratic practices in affirmative ways, as do political agonists like Hatab, Owen and Connolly, is therefore is to oppose, rather than succeed to Nietzsche. So how exactly do they situate the agon in democracy?
In Hatab’s case it begins with the claim that there are deep compatibilities between Nietzsche’s thought and democracy, or at least: democracy under a certain description. They concern not just (1) the notion of agon, but also (2) perspectivism and the open category of interpretation (in place of foundationalist claims to absolute, objective knowledge, and (3) the Nietzschean suspicion of the underlying power-claims at stake in moral and cognitive claims.16 In his 1995 book A Nietzschean Defense of Democracy, he argues that Nietzsche opens the possibility of redescribing democracy in non-metaphysical terms that incorporate critical insights of postmodernism and enable us to dispense with a positive concept of equality, with its irreducibly metaphysical/theological foundations. That is to say, Hatab takes one aspect of Nietzsche’s critique of democracy on board: the critique of equality, but argues that we can theorize democracy without a substantive concept of equality. In place of equality, he proposes an ethos of agonistic respect for opponents, grounded in Will to Power (I shall return to this below).
Connolly and Owen advance a perfectionist version of agonistic democratic theory. Their question is how to ‘ennoble’ democracy, and both argue against Nietzsche that the kinds of nobility of character and culture he advanced are better anchored and expressed in democratic practices than he imagined. Nietzschean nobility, glossed by Connolly in terms of self-experimentation, grace and plurality, exhibits traits that he contends are appropriate to our fast-paced world.17 Indeed, in Connolly’s view, Nietzsche offers unique constructive resources for rethinking key democratic ideas in a present that seems to be outpacing slow pace of democratic deliberation, as well as the ideals bequeathed by classical democrats such as Rousseau, Tocqueville, Mill, or even contemporaries like Rawls or Habermas.
In all three cases we are clearly dealing with appropriations, rather than interpretations of Nietzsche. Their concern is not to interpret his texts in a way that does justice to their specificity, but to take from them and adapt what is needed for their own ‘post-Nietzschean’ democratic projects.18 But the question of interpretation remains: whether what they take from Nietzsche – most notably the affirmative notion of antagonism – is adequate as an interpretation of his thought. In Section 1 of this Chapter I examine what divides Nietzsche’s conception of the agon from the notions of antagonism at work in agonistic theory, in order to highlight some of the weaknesses in the latter that emerge out of these differences. Section 2 will then turn to the question of what constructive alternatives, if any, his philosophy of conflict has to offer.
Against ‘respect’
In advancing a concept of democratic politics as antagonism, struggle and disagreement, any agonistic theory of democracy must in one way or other confront the problem of limits or measure: How to contain political struggle so that it remains this side of mutual annihilation? In HC this is the question of the relation between the Wett-kampf and the Vernichtungs-kampf, between the ‘good’ and the ‘evil Eris.’ As part of their response, almost all agonists (Hatab, Owen, Connolly, Mouffe) appeal to some form of respect – ‘agonistic respect’ – for the other as a legitimate opponent. That is to say, they appeal to self-restraint on the part of the agonist guided by a certain attitude, disposition or ethos. In what follows, two examples will be considered.
1. The first is Hatab. In dispensing with a substantive notion of equality, Hatab tries to replace it with an ethos of equal regard19 and agonistic respect.20 This ethos is supposedly derived from the antagonists’ insight into their agonistic interdependence, which in turn is presented by Hatab as a consequence of Nietzsche’s Will to Power:
[T]he will to power expresses an agonistic force-field, wherein any achievement or production of meaning is constituted by an overcoming of some opposing force. Consequently, my Other is always implicated in my nature; the annulment of my Other would be the annulment of myself. [. . .] This is why Nietzsche often speaks of the need to affirm our opponents as opponents, since they figure in our self-development.21
– and upon this Hatab builds his concept of agonistic respect. Agonistic respect is a consequence of my insight into the reciprocity and interdependence of antagonistic forces. Since ‘the annulment of my Other would be the annulment of myself’ (or again: ‘The elimination or degradation of the Other would be self-defeating’),22 I am bound to affirm my opponent as opponent.
Hatab’s analysis involves a curious, psychologistic translation of the Will to Power onto the plane of the subjective self-awareness. But I am not a Will to Power, and others are not opposing Wills to Power. We are all derivative, provisional unities resulting from the infinitely complex, pre-conscious, subject-less organizations of Wills to Power. Furthermore, Hatab’s is a ‘soft,’ altogether sanitized interpretation of the Will to Power that dissolves the dynamic of creation-destruction, the activity of expansion through incorporation or functionalization of opposing Will to Power complexes, and the logic of exploitation. In Nietzsche’s thought there is a tension between the agon and the Will to Power, one that can be traced to the moment of measure or limits in the agon: in precluding injury and exploitation it divides the agon against life as Will to Power, insofar as Will to Power includes injury and exploitation.23 This tension is overlooked by Hatab, who effectively reads agonal restraint back into the ‘logic’ of the Will to Power. Finally, one can question whether the Will to Power allows for the kind of recognition or acknowledgement of the Other that supposedly motivates agonistic self-restraint. Hegelian dialectics may allow for acknowledgement of the Other in its particular content, but it is unclear whether the logic of exploitation in power-relations implies any more than the instrumental valuation by one power-complex of the resistance offered by another as means for its own expansion.24
2. In the case of Connolly, one can see even more clearly than in Hatab that agonistic politics is based on an ontology of struggle and power that is quite alien to Nietzsche. Connolly’s point of departure is a theory of identity, supposedly informed by Nietzsche and Foucault. In a world of flux without design, he argues, any life-form or self, in order to subsist as a unity, needs an identity ‘to organise and resist the chaos of raw sensibility.’25 Yet life, understood as an excess of energy propelling possibilities into being, ‘exceeds any purpose or identity to which people already conform; for every way of life, settled practice or fixed identity produces difference in and around itself in the very process of specifying itself.’26 Life, therefore, ‘provides a precondition for identity while resisting [because exceeding – HS] the completion of any form of identity’ (ibid.).
This account of identity-formation, conceived as a process of ‘constituting’ or ‘producing’ difference, rests on a post-structuralist logic of the ‘constitutive outside.’27 In Nietzsche’s ontology of life, by contrast, difference – like activity – is a precondition (or presupposition) for (thinking) identity as a life-process. It is only by virtue of differential relations with other forces, in the very process of confronting the resistance they offer, that any derivative identity is possible. Identity, understood as the process whereby a complex or organization of Wills to Power is formed, does not produce difference; rather it seeks out resistance and difference in order to expand by commanding and incorporating that which resists it.28 It is not therefore Nietzsche’s concept of diversity and difference to which Connolly’s agonistic politics of identity and difference is hospitable.
Connolly’s post-structuralist theory of identity is designed to address adequately and affirm the specific character of pluralism in late modern democracies; what he calls ‘the paradox of difference that haunts social life in late modern democracies.’29 Identity (personal, group, collective) ‘is defined and specified by the way it constitutes difference: identity needs difference to be, but difference threatens the security and certainty of self-identity.’30 Connolly’s question is, then: How best to respond to this paradox politically? The paradigmatic response, he maintains, is to deny the constitutive role of the other and to seek the self-certainty of identity through closure against the other; that is, by defining the other as evil or (in the case of deliberative theory) irrational, while making claims to absolute truth and value for oneself.31 Connolly’s agonistic alternative to this response turns on the need to acknowledge the contingency and incompleteness of identity, and its constitutive dependence on difference and opposition. What is needed instead, he argues, are identities that can affirm themselves without denying their constructed, relational, paradoxical character; only this will allow for a pluralization of identities appropriate to our contemporary world. The hope is that insight into our agonistic dependence on the other can act as an incentive towards ‘agonistic respect,’ which he characterizes as an ‘empathy for what we are not,’ a ‘care for difference.’32 For Connolly, agonistic respect is a ‘civic virtue,’ one that goes as far as ‘deep respect,’ by which he means that ‘those who bestow it acknowledge the dignity of those who embrace different sources of respect,’ that they ‘honor different final sources.’33 Yet Connolly insists that none of this excludes contesting other sources of respect, and he enlists Nietzsche’s ‘spiritualisation of enmity’ (Vergeistigung der Feindschaft) in order to explicate this peculiar agonistic empathy. He appeals in specific to Nietzsche’s ‘pathos of distance’ and refers to TI Antinature 3 as a key source:
The spiritualisation of sensuality is called love: it is a great triumph over Christianity. Another triumph is our spiritualisation of enmity. It consists in profoundly grasping the value of having enemies [. . .] The church has at all times wanted the destruction of its enemies: we, we immoralists and anti-Christians, see that it is to our advantage that the church exists. . . . In the domain of politics as well enmity has become more spiritual nowadays – much cleverer, much more thoughtful, much more considerate [schonender]. Almost every party grasps that its interest in self-preservation lies in the opposition party not losing its powers [. . .] (TI Antinature 3, KSA 6, 84)
According to Connolly, this passage illustrates how our insight into the reciprocity and interdependence of enmity leads to an agonistic respect for our enemies.
Despite significant differences in their approaches, Hatab and Connolly have two things in common.
1. Both approach the question of limits from the position of the subject and the kind of ethos or attitude that must be adopted for political antagonism to remain this side of mutual destruction.
2. Both theorists start from the subject’s insight into the reciprocity and interdependence implied by relations of antagonism or enmity, and derive from it an acknowledgement or respect for the antagonist or enemy; that is, the attitude or ethos that limits or contains the subject’s antagonism.
Both of these points are, I believe, deeply problematic and can be criticized from a Nietzschean perspective. To begin with the second point: In Nietzsche’s passage on the spiritualization of enmity, used by Connolly to support his notion of agonistic respect, there is no talk of ‘respect,’ let alone respect for one’s enemy, much less ‘empathy.’ Nietzsche writes of a deep understanding, i.e. acknowledgement of the ‘the value of having enemies’; but to value enmity is by no means the same as respecting one’s enemy à la Connolly. In Nietzsche’s formulation, what is valued (not respected) are relations of enmity (not the enemy), and to value relations of enmity implies only that one values the enemy for the resistance or opposition it offers one, not for the specificity of its content. The same difficulty afflicts Hatab’s account, as we have seen, since it is the opposition of the other, the resistance it offers, that is constitutive of my Will to Power or perspective, and not its specific content. Both accounts raise the same question: Does the interdependence of antagonistic relations imply any more than the instrumental value of the antagonistic other?34 This concern is completely missed if ‘the value of enmity’ is allowed to slide into ‘respect for the enemy.’
Nietzsche’s emphasis on relations of enmity is by no means confined to this text. The late Nietzsche writes of ‘the relational character of all occurrence’ (Relations-charakter alles Geschehens: KSA 11, 26[36], 157) and develops a relational ontology of tension, attraction-repulsion, action-resistance among forces without substance to describe it. This suggests that there is something amiss with the first point shared by Hatab and Connolly: their attempt to think agonistic interaction and the question of limits from the subject-position. This suspicion is confirmed when we consider that for the young Nietzsche who authored Homer’s Contest, it was clear that the agon became important and effective as an institution in a context where the Greeks could not rely on self-restraint. What drew Nietzsche to the Greek agon was the way it conjugated a heroic pathos, the temptation to hubris and excess (Übermass) on the part of the subjects, with measured, creative conflict in the relations between them:
Wonderful process, how the generalized struggle [Kampf] of all Greeks gradually comes to acknowledge one dίkh in all domains: where does this come from? The contest unleashes the individual: and at the same time, it restrains [or tames: bändigt] the individual according to eternal laws. (KSA 7, 16[22], 402)
If we ask with Nietzsche how this was possible, one clue lies in the social ontology of tension presupposed by the agon. In Homer’s Contest he describes the principle of Greek pedagogy as the view that: ‘Every gift [talent, capacity: Begabung] must unfold [or flourish: sich entfalten] through contestation, this is what Hellenic popular pedagogy dictates’ (HC, KSA 1, 789). This implies that each particular capacity, force or genius can only become what it is (‘sich entfalten’) through antagonistic striving [Gegenstreben] against others. This social ontology makes antagonistic relations essential to the forging of identities in agonal action. However, these relations also act as a medium of resistance that cuts subjective intentions off from resulting action or interaction, so that the identity – the ‘who’ – disclosed in agonal action is not the result of a wilful purpose, but the product of relations of tension that are dynamic and unpredictable in nature.35 At stake is a resolutely relational social ontology that is conditional upon an equilibrium of sorts among a plurality of forces or geniuses: the agonal play of forces (Wettspiel der Kräfte), Nietzsche writes, presupposes
that in a natural order of things, there are always several geniuses who stimulate each other reciprocally to deeds, as they also hold each other reciprocally within the limits of measure (HC, KSA 1, 789)36
These relations of mutual stimulation and mutual restraint are best understood with reference to the concept of equilibrium (ungefähres Gleichgewicht) among more-or-less equal powers, proposed in Human, All Too Human as the origin of justice and anticipated in the Nachlass note cited above (KSA 7, 16[22], 402) on the agonal origins of dίkh in Greece.37 By ‘equality of power,’ Nietzsche does not mean a quantitative measure of objective magnitudes, nor a judgement made from an external standpoint, but the expression of an estimated correspondence between powers, where each power judges itself (as equal) in relation to another power.38 Unlike the measure of equality, however, the concept of ‘equilibrium’ cannot be understood from the subject-position, the standpoint of the single antagonists or powers as their conscious goal. For the antagonists do not aim at equilibrium; rather, each strives for supremacy (Übermacht) – to be the best. Equilibrium is, then, an ‘intersubjective’ or relational phenomenon, a function of the relations between more-or-less equal forces, each striving for supremacy. So once again, the relational concept of equilibrium inserts a radical disjunction between the subject-position of the antagonists – their desires, intentions and claims – and the qualities of their resulting agonal interaction: each wants to be the best, yet an equilibrium is, or can be, achieved; each is tempted to excess and hubris, yet limits or measure can be achieved. The relational sense of the agon means that the measure or limit on action is determined not by the players’ goals, interests or disposition; rather it is the contingent result of dynamic relations that emerge between social forces competing for supremacy. Both the social ontology of tension and the relational concept of equilibrium point to the impossibility of realizing agonal interaction from the subject-position, by adopting a specific attitude or ethos.
3 Rethinking agonistic theory: Nietzsche’s constructive alternatives
Nietzsche’s relational concept of agonal interaction also has significant consequences for the phenomenology of agonal agency. By inserting a disjunction between the subjects’ dispositions (intentions, desires, claims, etc.) and the measured character of their agonal interaction, it frees up the phenomenology of agonal agency from the overriding need to locate sources of measure or self-restraint in an ethos of respect. One of the problems with ‘respect’ is that it cannot really be felt and, as such cannot be relied on to really motivate or limit agonal action. What can be felt, as Nietzsche points out repeatedly, are envy, jealousy, ambition, hatred: the passions that are the real springs of the agon. Nietzsche’s relational concept of agonal interaction opens the space for a much richer, realist account of the subject’s dispositions, a phenomenology of enmity that brings the antagonism back into agonism and corrects the emphasis on empathy and reciprocal constitution in agonistic respect. In the following section I argue that agonal interaction is motivated by hatred, rather than respect, and that Nietzsche’s concept of agonal hatred combines antagonism with an affirmation of the other that far exceeds ‘agonistic respect.’ This forms part of my broader claim that Nietzsche’s phenomenology of enmity houses invaluable constructive resources for agonistic democratic theory.
Agonal hatred
As the basis for this thesis I take two texts. The first is a posthumous note from 1881 (the period of GS), where Nietzsche attempts a physiological reduction of our moral categories by translating them from the language of ‘Reason’ into the language of Will to Power, modelled on the organism. As the primary drive in any living being, he takes nourishment (Nahrung), assimilation, appropriation (Aneignung) or incorporation (Einverleibung). In line with the expansionist dynamic of the Will to Power bent upon growth, nourishment or incorporation are understood not just as compensation for energetic losses, but as over-compensation:
Growth and generation follow the unlimited drive to appropriate.
— this drive brings it [the living being] to the exploitation of the
weaker, and to competition with those of similar strength, it
[the appropriative drive] struggles i.e. it hates, fears, disguises
itself. Even assimilation is: to make something alien like oneself,
to tyrannise — cruelty. [. . .] (KSA 9, 11[134], 490f.)39
Here hatred is referred to the process of ingestion, assimilation, incorporation needed for the organism to grow. But why should we hate what nourishes and enables us to grow, when we normally like what we eat!? Hatred needs to be understood with reference to antagonism, i.e. the dynamics action-and-resistance at the centre of Nietzsche’s underlying concept of power. To the extent that the other resists being assimilated by us, we must hate it in order to conquer and assimilate it for the sake of growth. But it is significant that in this note Nietzsche distinguishes agonal struggle among more-or-less equal forces (competition, contest or Wettstreit) from the struggle against weaker forces (exploitation, Ausnützung). We can, I think, suppose that hatred grows with the degree of resistance to be overcome, so that hatred really comes into its own as agonal hatred inter pares.
But assimilation or nourishment is not the only process needed for a living being to grow, and Nietzsche goes on to describe the necessary counter-process: secreting or excreting those parts of what has been assimilated that are no use in the dynamics of growth:
Every body continually excludes, separates that which is useless to it
In the beings it has assimilated: that which human beings despise,
that for which they have revulsion, what they call evil, are the
excrements. But his unknowing “reason” often designates for him
as evil what causes him trouble, what is uncomfortable, the other, the
enemy, he confuses that which is useless with that which is
difficult to acquire, to conquer to incorporate. (ibid.)40
If hatred is felt towards that which is to be assimilated, to be conquered through struggle for the sake of growth, revulsion (Ekel) is felt towards that which is to be excreted as useless, separated off and rejected; it is what we call ‘evil.’ Of interest is how the designation ‘evil’ is here attached to a completely distinct process of revulsion-excretion. The same goes for the pathos of contempt (Verachtung). The physiological distinction between the process of assimilation associated with hatred on one side, and the counter-process of excretion associated with revulsion on the other, has the effect of disconnecting hatred from contempt and the moral designation of ‘evil’ or ‘wicked’ in a quite radical way. Hatred is hereby freed up from the gestures of contempt, rejection and moral condemnation, and that means: freed up towards attitudes of affirmation and acceptance of the other. And in this context, Nietzsche warns against confusing the two processes, that is: what is hard to assimilate or conquer with what is useless, or what is hateworthy with what is revolting. To reject, despise or condemn as ‘evil’ the object of our hatred is to misunderstand our body. Presumably whatever is more equal to us in power will offer greater resistance to assimilation, demanding more hatred to be conquered. Yet: assimilated and accepted it must be, if we are to grow and extend ourselves, and none of this precludes affirming, valuing, even loving the other, as Nietzsche writes at the end of the note: ‘. . .“Love” is the feeling for property or for what we wish to make our property’(ibid.).
This affirmative moment in hatred, where hatred is the affective signature of agonal struggle inter pares, is described in more detail in a passage from Zarathustra, where Nietzsche writes:
You may only have enemies to hate, but not
Enemies to despise. You must be proud of your enemy: then
The successes of your enemy will be your successes too. (Z, War, KSA 4, 59)41
Here hatred takes the form of pride in one’s enemy and in the successes of one’s enemy. Far from seeking to degrade its object or reject it, hatred affirms, rejoices and shares in its object’s power, thereby enhancing both its object’s power and its own. To hate one’s enemy does not mean to distort and condemn him as evil or wicked, but to rejoice in his strength and achievements, to stimulate and enhance his power. But under what conditions does hatred occur? Zarathustra’s answer comes with the distinction between hatred and contempt, Hass and Verachtung, the same distinction we saw in his physiology of hatred: it can only occur under conditions of approximate equality of power among antagonists, it is an agonal hatred inter pares, not to be confused with contempt towards an unequal, inferior power (Verachtung). Under conditions of relative parity, Zarathustra says, hatred provokes a dynamic of reciprocal affirmation, stimulation and self-empowerment through the affirmative empowerment of the other. Agonal hatred inter pares acts not as a depressant that leads one to degrade, reject or distort the other as ‘wicked,’ but as a tonic or stimulant that unleashes a process of reciprocal affirmation and empowerment.
The notion of agonal hatred sketched above brings a welcome realism back into agonistic theory, where the antagonism is strangely absent or eclipsed by ‘respect.’ It opens the prospect of a nuanced phenomenology of agonism, where hatred is bound up with love and can include an affirmative pride and joy in the other, just as friend and enemy are entwined in Nietzsche’s thought.42 It is moreover an embodied phenomenology that directs our attention to the bodily processes and dispositions involved in our relations to others with important ethical implications: to accept what is hard to assimilate and not to confuse it with moralistic rejectionism. Nietzsche’s philosophy of hatred,43 of ugliness, of envy, of pride, in short, his entire philosophy of enmity with its substrate in the conflictual ontology of Will to Power, deserves further research; as I have tried to indicate here, it is one key area where Nietzsche can have a corrective and constructive influence on current agonistic theories.
Towards a political ontology of pluralism
Another key area in which agonistic theorists can benefit from Nietzsche’s thought concerns their central claim that genuine pluralism is inherently antagonistic and needs to be integrated as such into democratic politics (see claim 2, above, p. 85). The linkage between genuine or ‘deep’ pluralism and antagonism is, I believe, the central Nietzschean doctrine adopted by agonists such as Connolly, Hatab, Owen and Honig. Indeed, according to Connolly, democracy, conceived as an agonistic politics of identity and difference, is uniquely hospitable to the diversity and difference Nietzsche values. Yet Connolly’s theory of identity and difference is decidedly post-structuralist rather than Nietzschean, as we have seen, and Nietzsche’s relational concepts of power and agon expose a weakness shared by Connolly and other agonistic theorists: a subjectivist reliance on ‘respect’ that seems to dissolve any real antagonism.
What remains important, however, is the initiative to rethink pluralism in a way that addresses its contemporary forms and formations and does justice to antagonism as an intrinsic feature of vibrant democratic politics today. Perhaps the strongest formulation of this demand, as a central task for political philosophy today, comes from another agonistic democrat, Chantal Mouffe, and her call for a political ontology of pluralism. Like Connolly, she draws on post-structuralism – the deconstructive logic of différance and the ‘constitutive outside’ – which she considers a much better theoretical framework for grasping the ‘specificity of modern democracy’ than the deliberative ‘consensus’ model.44 As she puts it: ‘The notion of the “constitutive outside” forces us to come to terms with the idea that pluralism implies the permanence of conflict and antagonism.’45 To her credit, however, Mouffe acknowledges that the deconstructive logic of différance on its own will not generate the antagonism she equates with genuine pluralism, and she attempts to fuse or superlay it with a logic of democratic agonism adapted from Carl Schmitt’s political ontology of antagonism between collective identities. However, this attempt to fuse Derridean insights with her democratic and Schmittian commitments is theoretically incoherent, as several scholars have pointed out.46 In the last part of this Chapter I want to suggest that she should be a Nietzschean, not a Schmittian: as I will argue, Nietzsche’s ontology of the Will to Power overcomes many of the problems she inherits from Schmitt’s concept of power and houses far better resources for a political ontology that does justice to contemporary forms of pluralism, in which collective, political identities are often fugitive and short-lived and command an individual’s allegiance as but one among many, often conflicting identities.
Nietzsche’s ontology of power does not seem at all hospitable to a politics of equality. In later years, his critique of democracy is largely focused on the democratic principle of equality and equal rights, which is often opposed to real character of life or Will to Power as exploitation, tyranny, commanding, subordination, assimilation and expansion.47 What is more, his commitment to life, life-affirmation and – enhancement seems to issue in an affirmation of domination, tyranny and cruelty. But does it? After confronting Schmitt and Mouffe with Nietzsche’s concept of power, I will go on to argue that Nietzsche’s ontology of power culminates not in tyranny, but in affirmative ideals that exclude domination, subjection, incorporation in favour of an approximate equality/equilibrium of powers that is compatible with a democratic politics of identity.
Nietzsche contra Schmitt: Active vs. reactive concepts of power
According to Schmitt a properly political unity is a collective unity that can only be formed in the face of an existential threat of annihilation by another unity. The antagonistic relation of us against them, friends against enemies is therefore constitutive of the political. This ontology certainly generates the antagonism Mouffe is after. However, it generates too much antagonism, since Schmittian antagonism – the threat of annihilation as the condition for political unity – cannot be contained within the bounds of democratic principles. What is more, it has no relation to democratic pluralism, since Schmitt’s political unities are homogenous, not pluralistic. To deal with these problems, Mouffe makes two moves ‘with and against Schmitt.’ The first is to internalise the logic of antagonism between political unities within the democratic community,48 so as to displace his homogenous political unities with a demos pluralized into multiple us/them relations. Her second move is to place limits on Schmittian antagonism by appealing, once again, to an ethos of ‘agonistic respect’ that acknowledges the antagonist as a legitimate political opponent, not an enemy to be annihilated.49 There are however several problems with these moves that undermine Mouffe’s account of democratic agonism.50 In the present context I will concentrate on one that goes to the heart of her Schmittian political ontology.
If for Schmitt the existential threat of annihilation is the condition for political identity, it is because he works with Hobbes’s conception of power. Hobbesian power is oriented towards self-preservation in the face of an external threat; it is exercised from a position of weakness or lack (of security, of a future good) in relation or reaction to something external. In Nietzsche’s terms it is a ‘reactive’ concept of power, in contrast with his own ‘active’ conception of power, defined with reference to process (expending energy) or activity (extending power), rather than goals (self-preservation).51 Nietzschean power is an endogenous source of change, a conception that goes back to Leibniz’s dynamic concept of force, so that movement or change is understood, not in mechanistic terms as the (reactive) effect of an exogenous cause or force, but in Leibnizian terms, as the result of a ‘living’ force, that is, an endogenous source of activity.52
This active conception of power has two characteristics that are alien to Schmittian-Hobbesian power and essential for an antagonistic ontology of pluralism that is to offer more than the alternatives of annihilation or security. Since active power is not bound to a static telos of self-preservation, there are no pre-determined constraints on the forms that this activity can take. On the one hand, the exercise of power need not be limited to the hostile resisting or overpowering of other powers or power-complexes, but can take an indeterminate number of qualitatively diverse forms. On the other hand, it can also take self-destructive forms of activity and as such, opens the space for the qualitative transformation of existing power-complexes, forms of life or political identities into new forms, what Nietzsche calls ‘self-overcoming’ (Selbstüberwindung). Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals is replete with examples of both the qualitative transformation of life-forms and the diverse forms that the exercise of power can take.53 This touches on the second characteristic of Nietzsche’s active concept power, a dimension of power-relations that is completely absent from Schmitt’s theory of power. Because Schmittian power is bound to the telos of self-preservation, any opposing power can only signify an existential threat. Nietzsche’s active concept of power, by contrast, allows for reinterpretations of the opposition or resistance offered by an external power. Opposition or resistance need not be just a threat or an inhibitor to one’s power; under certain conditions, it can act as a stimulant (Reiz) that provokes or empowers each power-complex to new creative deeds or works: to ‘overcome’ its opponent through creative self-transformation or ‘self-overcoming.’ It is this reinterpretation of opposing forces from inhibitors into stimulants that lies at the heart of Nietzsche’s description of the Greek agon as a dynamic of reciprocal provocation and reciprocal limitation.
Nietzsche’s active concept of power, then, has two features of value for a political ontology of pluralism appropriate to contemporary forms: (1) the capacity for qualitative self-transformation (or ‘self-overcoming’) in life-forms; and (2) the capacity to engage conflicting life-forms or values (not as a threat, but) as a stimulant to qualitative self-transformation. For Nietzsche, as we saw, it is clear that this can only occur under conditions of approximate equality among a plurality of powers or power-complexes. Indeed, as I will now argue, Nietzsche’s Will to Power issues in affirmative ideals that exclude domination and devastation in favour of relations that are compatible with a politics of equality.
Nietzsche’s ontology of power and democratic equality
Nietzsche’s philosophy of Will to Power is best understood as an ontology of Becoming; that is, an attempt to redeem the reality of Becoming or change from the substance ontology that has dominated metaphysics, as a metaphysics of Being:
[. . .] All occurrence, all movement, all Becoming as
a fixing [making fast] of relations of degree and power, as a
struggle [. . .] (KSA 12, 9[91], 385)54
This excerpt articulates in a condensed form the three key concepts or principles of Will to Power: dynamism (Geschehen, Bewegung, Werden, Prozeß), pluralism or relations of difference (Grad- und Kraftverhältnissen) and struggle (Kampf). Becoming, or the reality of ‘occurrence’ or ‘process’ is conceived in relational terms as an ‘in-one-another’ (Ineinander) of moments or forces without substance, rather than an ‘after-one-another’ (Nacheinander) of causes and effects, conceived as durable ‘substances, things, body, soul etc.’55 On Nietzsche’s view, durable things or unities of any kind are not originary, but derivative of an originary multiplicity, complexity, richness and non-identity56: they are the result of a fixing or making-fast (Feststellen, Fest-setzen) or positing (Setzen)57 within an unceasing struggle or conflict of forces. Nietzsche’s philosophy of originary multiplicity confronts him with the task of explaining unity out of diversity without smuggling in a unitary ground. So how are we to understand these processes of fixing that form unities or identities out of multiplicity?
His starting point is the concept of force. The idea of a single force that somehow generates relations from within is an absurdity, since force is intrinsically relative or relational. A force cannot be a force in isolation, but only in relation to other forces that limit and determine it, while being limited and determined by it.58 The only quality of force is activity, but a force can only act in relation to the resistance of (an)other force(s).59 These relations, then, are relations of struggle or tension (Kampf, Spannung), of reciprocal action or overpowering and resistance or opposition, and they form a whole when, through processes of subordination and integration (Unter- und Einordnung),60 they constitute a ‘complex of mastery’ (Herrschafts-Gebilde) that (is not one but) ‘signifies One’:
All unity is only as organisation and interplay unity: not
otherwise than how a human community is a unity: so,
opposite of atomistic anarchy; therewith a complex of rule, which
signifies One, but is not one. (KSA 12, 2[87], 104)61
Nietzsche’s concept of unity is equidistant from an originary unity on one side, and from atomistic chaos on the other. Here and elsewhere (see e.g. note 60) he argues against Hobbes that we need not presuppose a unitary ground or single unifying force (‘absolute monarch’ or ‘subject’) in order to understand the unity of the body (politic). Instead he appeals to processes of self-organization at play among constituents, all seeking out the resistance of antagonists in order to overpower (subordinate and integrate, or functionalize) them:
[. . .]—Whoever has the most force to degrade others into functions,
rules—but those subjected in turn have their subjects—their
continual struggles: whose maintenance at a certain level is the
condition of life for the whole. The whole in turn seeks its advantage
and finds enemies.—(KSA 9, 11[134], 491)62
For an originary multiplicity to ‘signify One’ or a living whole, then, a certain measure (Maaße) of antagonism must be maintained among its constituents all seeking to master one another. Antagonism is not, however, confined to the whole within a homeostatic model of unity, but is repeated at the level of the whole or complex of mastery (Herrschafts-Gebilde), which seeks out antagonistic complexes or wholes in order to master them as well.
In the logic of enmity governing the Will to Power, pluralism is linked with antagonism in a way that completely escapes post-structuralist accounts. Antagonistic pluralism operates on multiple levels in Nietzsche’s ontology of power, from the smallest to the largest scale, all of which are interconnected; the measure of (inner) antagonism needed for a living whole can only be maintained if that whole seeks (outer) antagonists against which to define and limit itself. Both of these features are invaluable for a political ontology that can address the labile character of political identities today, their tremendous range of scale from a person’s dietary regime to global protest movements, and the way collective identities can make claims on an individual that conflict with claims of other collective identities. On the other hand, the emphasis on subordination and integration, functionalization and expansion in Nietzsche’s logic of enmity raises the spectre of fascism and suggests a politics of domination and imperialism, completely intractable to democratic thought.
This objection is, however, simplistic in its understanding of Nietzschean power and misguided in the political implications it draws. It ignores the many different qualitative forms the exercise and expansion of the Will to Power can take apart from hostile takeovers, including ascetic self-denial and compassion, as noted above. It also ignores the anti-Hobbesian thesis in Nietzsche’s account of identity-formation, that the body (politic) does not presuppose a central power, a sovereign or unifying subject, and his challenge to substance ontology: to rethink unities as derivative of processes of self-organization among prior multiplicities. In the third place, it misunderstands Nietzsche’s language of commanding and obeying, which are not opposites, but relational concepts. There are base forms of obedience for Nietzsche, but also noble forms,63 and commanding always presupposes the capacity to obey. This is because obeying is not passive, as distinct from the activity of subordinating or commanding, much less a distinct quality or disposition of some, say ‘natural slaves,’ as distinct from those born to rule. All forms of life or wills to power share only the one quality of activity (subordination, integration, command); which ones rule or subordinate and which ones obey or are subordinated is not somehow given in advance; it is the contingent outcome of actual power-relations among complexes all bent on subordination or command. In the model for a living unity described above, it is clear that those subordinated must actively resist being subordinated, for the living whole is contingent on the maintenance of a measure of internal struggles.
But the strongest response to imperialistic interpretations of Nietzschean power comes if we ask what measure of struggle is needed for the formation of living unities. In Nietzsche’s ontology of power, reality is conceived as concrete and situational: this concrete power-complex in antagonistic relations with its environment. His ‘ontology’ is not, in other words, a general theory of reality and so does not offer a general descriptive answer to this question. But a prescriptive answer can be offered if we ask what the best measure of antagonism is for living wholes, given Nietzsche’s commitment to affirm and enhance life as Will to Power. What does it take to enhance and affirm life or reality in its productive and pluralistic character as incessant and multiple Fest-setzen? If relations of struggle or tension are necessary for the creation of complex living wholes out of processes of self-organization, then life-enhancement would seem to require a maximisation of tension. This suggestion is confirmed at the level of individual lives in several texts, where Nietzsche advocates ‘the vehement struggle’ of ‘deep feelings with their opposites’64 as the sine qua non for creative power:
One is fruitful at the price of being rich in oppositions; one can only remain young on the assumption that the soul does not stretch out, does not long for peace . . . (TI Antinature 3, KSA 6, 84)
If we then ask how an individual or rather: a dividuum can become and remain ‘rich in oppositions,’ Nietzsche’s answer is one that excludes relations of domination, subjection, incorporation or destruction; for it takes a kind of equilibrium among a multiplicity of more-or-less equal forces, impulses or power-complexes, all bent on extending their power. Only if these impulses or feelings are of similar power can they resist succumbing to subjection, assimilation or domination by their antagonists and hold one another in a certain equilibrium, such that tension is maximised. But how then can this productive and dynamic equilibrium within individuals or dividua be sustained, without a complete loss of unity – the dis-integration of individuals under the pressure of an unmeasured conflict of more-or-less equal drives?
Individuals do not, of course, live in isolation. If the problem is how to avoid the dis-integration or explosion of individuals under the (outward) pressure of an unmeasured conflict of more-or-less equal drives, the solution would seem to involve the exercise of inward pressures from the outside: pressures that neither overpower and absorb the individual, nor are overpowered by it, but would be more-or-less equal to the outward expansionist pressure exerted by the individual. In other words, the measure or degree of tension that allows for a maximization of inner tension consistent with the unity of the individual is given by social, inter-subjective relations among approximately equal powers. In this light I would argue that Nietzsche’s commitment to life-affirmation or – enhancement implies a politics of equality, not in the sense of universal equal rights that protect us from conflict and incursion, but a politics of enmity among more-or-less equal powers that allows individuals to be productive multiplicities while maintaining their unity as individuals. This is opens an ontological-normative domain for agonistic conceptions of democracy that is more profoundly pluralistic and nuanced than anything Schmitt can offer. The question is what kinds of political institutions and settlements would make for such an equality of power among the diverse and shifting identities that characterize contemporary democracies. This, it seems to me, is the challenge posed by Nietzsche’s thought for the construction of a viable ontology of democratic pluralism today.
Notes
1 This essay is an attempt to bring together and synthesize a number of papers, published and unpublished, on agonistic political theory and its relation to Nietzsche. The published papers are: Siemens 2012a, 2012b. See also Siemens 2001. Translations from Nietzsche are my own.
2 Hatab (1995), who devotes a chapter to Nietzsche’s critique of democracy, is the exception. See also Schrift 2000.
3 Connolly 2007, p. 144; Mouffe 2005, pp. 6, 20; Honig 1993, p. 14; Villa 2000, p. 225.
4 Mouffe 2005, pp. 15f., 32f.; Fossen 2012.
5 Villa 2000, pp. 225, 242. Also: Owen 1995, pp. 16–19.
6 Mouffe 2005, pp. 45ff., 81ff.
7 Honig 1993, p. 129; Connolly 1991, p. 93; Mouffe 2005, p. 45.
8 Fossen 2012.
9 ‘Political judgments are not preordained or dictated; outcomes depend upon a contest of speeches where one view wins and other views lose in a tabulation of votes; since the results are binding and backed by the coercive power of the government, democratic elections and procedures establish temporary control and subordination – which, however, can always be altered or reversed because of the succession of periodic political contests [. . .] Democratic elections allow for, and depend upon, peaceful exchanges and transitions of power [. . .] [L]anguage is the weapon in democratic contests. The binding results, however, produce tangible effects of gain and loss that make political exchanges more than just talk or a game [. . .] The urgency of such political contests is that losers must yield to, and live under, the policies of the winner; we notice, therefore, specific configurations of power, of domination and submission in democratic politics.’ (Hatab 1995, p. 63).
10 Hatab 2008, p. 185f.
11 Schaap 2009.
12 See Siemens 1998.
13 In KSA 8, 5[146], 78 Nietzsche writes of the ‘[m]any powers in an embryonic state that were stifled’ by the great talents in the history of Greek literature, and goes on to write: ‘The agonal [das Agonale] is also the danger in all developments; it over-stimulates the creative drive. – The most fortunate case in developments when several geniuses hold one another in check.’ On the denial of individuality to the poets in agonal Greek culture, see KSA 7, 16[8], [9], 396.
14 See Janssen 1979, pp. 26ff.
15 Cited in Janssen 1979, p. 137.
16 Hatab 1995, pp. 55–77 (ch. 3).
17 Connolly 2008, pp. 128ff. See also Owen 2008, pp. 162ff.
18 As Connolly puts it, it is a matter of taking from Nietzsche’s texts what is needed in order to ‘construct a post-Nietzscheanism one is willing to endorse and enact’ (Connolly 1991, p. 197). While there is no ‘true interpretation, there are, however, false interpretations.
19 Hatab 1995, pp. 60, 97–9, 107.
20 Ibid., pp. 68–70, 189, 191, 220.
21 Ibid., p. 68.
22 Ibid., p. 69.
23 ‘Life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of that which is foreign and weaker, oppression, hardness, imposition of one‘s own forms, incorporation and at the very least, the very mildest, exploitation’ (BGE 259). In HC, this divide is articulated in the crucial difference between the Wett-kampf and the pervasive Vernichtungs-kampf, without however being problematized as life-negation.
24 The strongest challenge to Hatab’s ‘complicity’ comes from Müller-Lauter’s account of Nietzsche’s strong type: ‘To whatever extent the strong type [. . .] takes ideals opposed to his into account, even invoking their existence: they remain for him something from which he is divided by an unbridgeable gulf. To know them [erkennen] cannot mean for him to acknowledge them [anerkennen]. More precisely: only their counter-action [Gegenwirken] is acknowledged, because it is suited to maintain and intensify his own power, – not however the particularity of their contents’ (Müller-Lauter 1971, p. 122).
25 Possibly a reference to the Nachlass note 9[106] (KSA 12, 395): ‘the opposite of this phenomenal world is not “the true world”, but the formless-unformulable world of the chaos of sensations,—thus another kind of phenomenal world, one that is “unknowable” for us’
26 Connolly 1993, p. 194f.
27 See also Connolly 1991, p. 64. A similar logic can be seen in Mouffe 2005, pp. 12, 21, 32, 48, 135. The formulation ‘constitutive outside’ is from Staten 1984, p. 16.
28 See Aydin 2007.
29 Connolly 1993, p. 190f.
30 Ibid.
31 For a lucid account of this ‘politics of enmity’ and a Nietzschean critique based on the ‘spiritualisation of enmity’ in TI Antinature, see Bergoffen 2008.
32 See Connolly 1991, p. 10: ‘The primary question is not for a command that answers “why” or a ground that establishes “what” but for ways to cultivate care for identity and difference in a world already permeated by ethical proclivities and predispositions to identity.’ See also: Connolly 1991, pp. 159, 166, 178; 1997, p. 8; 2000, p. 313; 2007, p. 142.
33 Connolly 2007, p. 142f.
34 See Müller-Lauter 1971, p. 122 (cited above, note 24).
35 This brings Nietzsche close to Arendt’s concept of public, political action or praxis, as I have argued elsewhere (Siemens 2005).
36 ‘daß, in einer natürlichen Ordnung der Dinge, es immer mehrere Genies giebt, die sich gegenseitig zur That reizen, wie sie sich auch gegenseitig in der Grenze des Maaßes halten’.
37 For more detailed accounts see: Siemens 2001; 2005.
38 Gerhardt 1983, pp. 116–17.
39 Dem unbegrenzten Aneignungstriebe folgt Wachsthum und Generation. – Dieser Trieb bringt es in die Ausnützung des Schwächeren, und in Wettstreit mit ähnlich Starken, er kämpft d.h. er haßt, fürchtet, verstellt sich. Schon das Assimiliren ist: etwas Fremdes sich gleich machen, tyrannisiren – Grausamkeit.
40 Fortwährend scheidet jeder Körper aus, er secernirt das ihm nicht Brauchbare an den assimilirten Wesen: das was der Mensch verachtet, wovor er Ekel hat, was er böse nennt, sind die Excremente. Aber seine unwissende “Vernunft” bezeichnet ihm oft als böse, was ihm Noth macht, unbequem ist, den Anderen, den Feind, er verwechselt das Unbrauchbare und das Schwerzuerwerbende Schwerzubesiegende Schwer-Einzuverleibende.
41 Ihr dürft nur Feinde haben, die zu hassen sind, aber nicht Feinde zum Verachten. Ihr müsst stolz auf euern Feind sein: dann sind die Erfolge eures Feindes auch eure Erfolge.
42 See Bergoffen 1998, and several texts by van Tongeren: van Tongeren/Schank 1999; van Tongeren 2000; 2003/2004.
43 In a note from 1875 Nietzsche writes of the ‘sombre philosophy of hatred, which has not yet been written, because everywhere it is the pudendum that everyone feels’ (KSA 8, 5[117], 71).
44 Mouffe 2005, pp. 17, 32.
45 Mouffe 2005, p. 32f.
46 See Fritsch 2008; Rummens 2009; Siemens 2012a.
47 See BGE 44 (cf. KSA 11, 37[8], 58); BGE 259; AC 17 (KSA 6, 184); KSA 13, 14[97], 273; KSA 13, 14[192], 378; KSA 12, 2[179], 155.
48 Rummens 2009, p. 3.
49 Mouffe 2005, pp. 14, 102.
50 See articles in note 46.
51 See Patton 2001, p. 153.
52 Abel 1984, pp. 16ff.
53 See Patton 2001; Saar 2008. Saar shows how the three essays of the Genealogy exhibit three distinct kinds of power.
54 ‘[. . .] Alles Geschehen, alle Bewegung, alles Werden als ein Feststellen von Grad- und Kraftverhältnissen, als ein Kampf. [. . .]’
55 ‘The unchanging sequence of certain appearances does not demonstrate a “law”, but rather a power-relation between 2 or more forces. [. . .] — It is not about a sequence [lit. after-one-another: Nacheinander], — but rather an interconnectedness [lit. in-one-another: Ineinander], a process, in which the single moments that follow one another condition one another not as causes and effects. . .
The separation of the “doing” from the “doer”, of the occurrence from one (something) that makes [it] occur, of the process from one (something) that is not process, but is enduring, substance, thing, body, soul etc., – the attempt to understand occurrence as a kind of displacement and position-change of that which “is”, of that which remains: this ancient mythology has made fast the belief in “cause and effect”, after it had found a fixed form in the grammatical functions of language. –’ (KSA 12, 2[139], 136).
56 ‘Everything that enters consciousness as a “unity” is already incredibly complex: we never have more than an semblance of unity.
The phenomenon of the body is the richer, clearer, more tangible phenomenon: to be given methodological priority, without making any claims concerning its ultimate meaning’ (KSA 12, 5[56], 205).
57 See also: KSA 11, 34[88][89], 449; 26[359], 244; 39[13], 623; KSA 12, 2[139], 135f.; UM III 3, KSA 1, 360; GS 370, KSA 3, 622; AC 58, KSA 6, 245.
58 ‘[. . .] a force without limits, and at the same time with all the limits, [a force] that engenders all relations—that would be a force without specific force, a nonsense. —Thus the limitedness of force, and the placing itself of this force in relation to others is “knowledge”. Not subject [in relation] to object: rather, something different [. . .]’ (KSA 9, 6[441], 312).
59 On Nietzsche’s dynamic, relational concept of force (Kraft) and its sources, see Abel 1984, pp. 6–27; Mittasch 1952, pp. 102–13. On Nietzsche’s concept of power (Macht), see Gerhardt 1996, pp. 155–61, 203–45, 285–309.
60 ‘The human being as multiplicity: physiology gives only an intimation of an astounding intercourse among this multiplicity and [relations of] subordination and integration of the parts into a whole. But it would be false to conclude from a state the necessity of an absolute monarch (the unity of the subject)’ (KSA 11, 27[8], 276).
[Der Mensch als Vielheit: die Physiologie giebt nur die Andeutung eines wunderbaren Verkehrs zwischen dieser Vielheit und Unter- und Einordnung der Theile zu einem Ganzen. Aber es wäre falsch, aus einem Staate nothwendig auf einen absoluten Monarchen zu schließen (die Einheit des Subjekts)]
61 Alle Einheit ist nur als Organisation und Zusammenspiel Einheit: nicht anders als wie ein menschliches Gemeinwesen eine Einheit ist: also Gegensatz der atomistischen Anarchie; somit ein Herrschafts-Gebilde, das Eins bedeutet, aber nicht eins ist.
62 – Wer am meisten Kraft hat, andere zur Funktion zu erniedrigen, herrscht – die Unterworfenen aber haben wieder ihre Unterworfenen – ihre fortwährenden Kämpfe: deren Unterhaltung bis zu einem gewissen Maaße ist Bedingung des Lebens für das Ganze. Das Ganze wiederum sucht seinen Vortheil und findet Gegner.—
63 Commanding and obeying are intrinsically related to one another (see Gerhardt 1996, pp. 231ff. on their sociological meaning). Hence Nietzsche’s s critique of obedience where it precludes commanding: as a passive self-subjection, slave attitude or fear of commanding (D 108, KSA 3, 96; KSA 12, 7[6], 275; KSA 10, 16[86], 530). Instead he pleads for an activistic ‘nobility in obeying’ as freedom under the law (KSA 10, 3[1]/358, 97); for a self-commanding out of strength, presupposing obedience (KSA 9, 14[20], 629; Z Self-Overcoming 12, KSA 4, 147); for co-commanding (Mit-Befehlen), that is, to interpret duties as self-imposed laws: “ich soll, was ich will”: KSA 9, 4[111], 128); but also for an overcoming of obedience and constraint through love (KSA 10, 5[1].124, 201).
64 ‘Whoever has the capacity for deep feelings must also suffer the vehement struggle between them and their opposites. One can, in order to be perfectly calm and without inner suffering, just wean oneself from deep feelings, so that in their weakness they arouse only weak counter-forces: they can then, in their sublimated rarity, be overheard and give human beings the impression that they are quite in harmony with themselves . . . — [. . .]’ (KSA 9, 6[58], 207f.).
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