The Agonist

Front Matter

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Editors’ Foreword: Nietzsche and Democracy

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Leveling vs. Levelness: On Nietzsche’s Teaching, Inclusive Excellence, and Democratic Outcomes

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In this essay, I follow the work of Jonas and Yacek in Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Education by contrasting a process of leveling in morality and education with an approach to levelness in teaching and learning as these relate to the educational philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. While Nietzsche would oppose the former due to its implied uniform standardization, I argue, with reference to the work of educational psychologist John B. Biggs, that his philosophy of education could sustain an outcomes-based approach to teaching and learning. While I hold that Nietzsche’s reflections on his own teaching practice evidence clear sympathy for such an approach, I consider two potential objections against its ascription to Nietzsche. In response to the deeper, second objection, which considers whether an outcomes-based approach to education entails some form of uniform standardization akin to that implied by the leveling process, I propose that a democratic reading of Nietzsche’s perfectionism together with the model of inclusive excellence proposed by Williams et al. may provide a more fitting standard. I conclude by reflecting on the potential democratic outcomes, as noted by Gurin et al., of developing a Nietzschean approach to teaching and learning based on such a standard of inclusive excellence.

Nietzsche’s Pale Criminal Identified

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As he does in most of his books, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche is unfolding his dedicated resistance to established social standards and moral tenets, though in some sections therein in somewhat less than a clearly developed thematic progression. Thus, early in Part I of Zarathustra, we come across a speech by the eponymous character, titled “On the Pale Criminal,” whose locus and relevance to the rest of the text seem to have perplexed every generation of students of Nietzsche’s oeuvre since its initial appearance in print (in 1883). A closer reading of the speech, however, should reveal that the speech’s main character, an (unidentified male) pale-complected criminal, who is about to be condemned to death for the capital crime of murder, is not as incongruous as he might seem at first blush — to the rest of the book or to the world of characters we meet later in Zarathustra or in any of Nietzsche’s other texts. Once we correctly identify the reason for his pale complexion, we might more easily determine his motives as well as the identity of his victim. Once, in turn, we grasp these elements, we notice that the criminal is really a personification of Nietzsche’s two other (self-declared) killers of God, namely, the madman, in the Gay Science, and the inexpressible one, the ugliest man, in Part IV of Zarathustra.

Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Political Authenticity as the Key to “Real” Democracy

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Despite several decades of attempts to interpret and articulate Nietzsche’s political thought, especially its relationship with democracy, there seems to be no convergence in sight. While this might be easily written off as a consequence of that thinker’s tendency for ambiguity and contradiction, I contend that there is in fact a central pillar of Nietzsche’s political philosophy, authenticity. I extract this central emphasis on authenticity by offering a fresh methodological approach. This approach draws our focus to Nietzsche’s technique of inversion as it applies to his critiques of democracy. Nietzsche’s criticism draws us to the core of the tension between his own philosophical project and the reality of democracy in his time. This subsequently reveals what would make for an authentic democracy faithful to Nietzsche’s core philosophical commitments. The gist of Nietzsche’s criticism of democracy is that it is not, in fact, democracy. Yet, as I show, this is not simply critical, as Nietzsche offers an alternative in the wake of this characteristic inversion. This inversion complicates our understanding of the democratic citizen, their needs, and capabilities. As such, I venture to trace the roots of his criticism, how the problem he raises affects contemporary politics, and what his proposed solution in the form of a commitment to authenticity would look like. In the end, I argue that this focus on authenticity as a central pillar of Nietzsche’s political thought will not only clarify his use for political philosophy but serve as a powerful resource for political theorists looking to use his work to think about democracy.

Daniel Conway, Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil

2024-11-09T22:36:42+00:00