Becoming good Europeans? Globality, the EU and the potential to realize Nietzsche's idea of Europe

This dissertation takes up Friedrich Nietzsche's notion of 'good Europeanism' and his related idea of Europe to show how the former disposition may be cultivated to achieve the latter---a reinvigorated culture on the continent. It does so by applying his vitalist politics and power ontology (will to power hypothesis and theory of decadence) to critique European integration in the broader context of globalization. The analysis enables me to theorize how "healthy" individuals might exploit opportunities in the present to become 'good Europeans', with the aim of realizing Nietzsche's quasi-cosmopolitan idea of Europe. It is my primary contention that Nietzsche's diagnosis of Europe's ailment remains relevant, as does his strategy, via a radically Dionysian affirmation of life, for overcoming the international order it has spawned.;In doing so I utilize Nietzsche's related perspectivalist epistemological stance and hermeneutical framework to build on Nietzsche's genealogy of morality. This shows the West's present "slave moral" regime to be a further intensified development of secularized Christian--Platonic values. It arose through the fusing of liberal-optimism (belief in equality, emancipation, enfranchisement, etc.) with modernity's doctrines of universalism, humanism, secularism, progressivism and rationalism. It also coextends with the positivistic orientation of scientism to transmit a secular faith in truth, and un-paradoxically an injurious relativism and cynical worldview. It is through Nietzsche's vitalist perspectivalism that I understand the psychological-historical origins and current operation of the axiomatic narratives promulgated via the meta-discourse of ultra-liberal-modernity.;The same critical framework is applied to a doxagraphical survey of theories of European integration. These theories are understood as differing perspectives conceived within and informed by the same values matrix, and critiqued in chronological order of their appearance to reflect the evolution of the field. Problems of evaluation, indeterminacy and bias, and the form of reasoning privileged by the positivistic orientation conferred by scientism are examined in terms of how they inform the conduct of social science and conceptualizations and uses of fact. Acts of theorizing are understood as indicative of a will-to-truth which can positively augment life or negatively hamper it. I consider how the mainstream of the field has tended to reiterate the ideological presuppositions of ultra-liberal-modernity. Notable exceptions include recent constructivist approaches and discourse analysis critiques. These critical perspectives are productively broadening and potentially subverting the dominant conventions of the field. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...