Nietzsche on the Rise of Strong Political States and Their Cultivation of Higher Individuals

Dados Bibliográficos

ID10434014
AutoresSimon Townsend (0009-0005-5135-5957, autor correspondente)
Ano2019
Volume82
Fascículo1
Páginas73-95
Data de publicação2019-12-20
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670519000755
OpenAlexW2994861382
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas19

I argue that Nietzsche offers an account of how strong political states develop and how the highest forms of individuality emerge when the political will of these strong states weakens. Communities develop strength in proportion to the hostility of their environment. In order to flourish in a hostile environment, they must cultivate powerful and ambitious citizens by intensifying their most powerful drives, such as a lust for power. To control these citizens they must ruthlessly suppress individuality and allow these drives to be discharged in ways that do not threaten the community. This is achieved through an inflexible value system. When the political will of the state declines and this moral code weakens, the highest forms of individuality emerge. This account clarifies why Nietzsche tends to praise aristocratic states and brings into focus the obstacles to achieving the highest forms of human flourishing within a democratic state

Democracy · Economics · Environmental ethics · Flourishing · Hostility · Law and economics · Lust · Order (exchange · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Praise · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · State (computer science · Value (mathematics · Law · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory