Beyond Tragedy and Eternal Peace
Politics and International Relations in the Thought of Friedrich Nietzsche
A lively analysis of Nietzsche's reflections on Western metaphysics and the political processes, institutions, and ideologies shaping public life in Europe during the late nineteenth century.
Description
As a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and scholar of Latin and Greek, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. Beyond Tragedy and Eternal Peace provides an overview of his legacy, highlighting the synergy between his critique of metaphysics and his reflections on the politics and international relations of the late nineteenth century.
Jean-François Drolet exposes and analyzes Nietzsche's account of the political processes, institutions, and dominant ideologies shaping public life in Germany and Europe during the 1870s and 1880s. Nietzsche anticipated a new kind of politics, borne out of such events as the Franco-Prussian War, the unification of Germany under Bismarck, the advent of mass democracy, and the rise and transformation of European nationalism. Focusing on conflict and political violence, Drolet expertly reconstructs Nietzsche's fierce and continued critique of the nationalist, liberal, and socialist ideologies of his age, which the philosopher believed failed to grapple with the death of God and the crisis of European nihilism it engendered.
As this reconstructive interpretation reveals, Nietzsche's philosophy offers a powerful and still greatly underappreciated reckoning with the changing political practices, norms, and agencies that led to the momentous collapse of the European society of states during the early twentieth century.
Reviews
"A remarkably erudite and incisive engagement with a philosophical oeuvre often thought to be fragmentary and contradictory. Drolet shows Nietzsche to be a uniquely acute observer of the political and cultural fault lines that would tear Europe apart in the twentieth century and that remain unresolved to this day. A veritable tour de force, Beyond Tragedy and Eternal Peace constitutes a major contribution destined to be read and referenced for a long time to come." Antoine Bousquet, Birkbeck University of London