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Early Nietzsche's Political Philosophy

Posted on:2005-06-20Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:C H ZongFull Text:PDF
GTID:1116360125467271Subject:Foreign philosophy
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This thesis is to research into Niezsche's thinking on politics in his early stage.In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche regards Apollo as the real builder of political order and ethical rules, as the real builder of Homeric-Olympian culture of Greek. However, Dionysus ,who is the radical unpolitical god and who destroys all kinds of political rules, emerged afterwards at Greek earth as the antagonist of Apollo. Therefore, there came the extreme and sharp strife between Dionysus and Apollo. Nietzsche regards Dionysus as the god who has discovered the "truth" of the world as nihil, and who stands in the absolute opposite of the "lie" of a culture. According to Nietzsche, Dionysus expresses the true view of the world, and then Niezsche regards the philosophy in the tragic age of the Greeks has the same nature with Dionysus. Finally, Dionysus and Apollo reconciled each other in tragedy, and this reconciling means that Dionysus would re-recount the Homeric-Olympian myth, so that it can reserve and at the same time reform the Homeric-Olympian tradition. Nitzsche stands at the position of tragedy, which means that he prefers to keep and maintain the traditional political order on the one hand, and prefers to a critical maintaining of it on the other hand. Above is the brief content of the Chapter One.In the Chapter One the relations among politics, ethics and art have not yet been analyzed, which is retained for the Chapter Two. Chapter Two is in fact the complement and extension of the understanding of Nietzsche on the political phenomena in the preceding chapter. The fact that Apollo is at the same time the god who is ethical, who constructs the states and who is in charge of the art, complies the understanding of Nietzsche on the relations among politics, ethics and art. To say briefly, according to Niezsche, ethics and art are dominated by politics, and art can play the role of conveying the ethical rules. This united relation among politics, ethics and art is expressed by Niezsche as the conception of "culture unity" or the conception of "culture state". "Culture", which covers ethics and art, is the concept by which Nitzsche thinks over the phenomena of politics. Such understanding asregarding the unity of ethics, art with politics is in accordance with the classical understanding of political phenomena. Culture has two dimensions, one is the rank of order between geniuses and mass, which is transverse, and the other is the carrying on of the tradition between former generations and the latter ones, which is lengthways. The latter dimension is concerned with Nietzsche's history, that is, culture-history. According to Nietzsche's view of culture-history, history is the elements of the being of culture, and is necessary for culture. When Nietzsche's idea of politics is elaborated in the Chapter Two, modern political phenomena are also introducing for comparing.Chapter Three is Nietzsche's critique of Socrates' dialectics. Nietzsche regards Socrates as the third god following Apollo and Dionysus in the Greek history, and the third god went across the road of thousands of years, and determined the modern history. Socrates rejected the tradition as "lie", and would construct ethics and politics on the base of "truth". However, according to Nietzsche, the god Socrates had never found the truth. Dominated by the god Socrates, Platonic philosopheres found finally at the stage of Kant and Schoupenhuaer that the truth they had been searching for was only Nihil. Therefore, Socrates' dialectics had destroyed all ethics and orders, otherwise had not re-constructed ethics and orders on the base of truth. Dialectics had destroyed the culture, had caused the modern world without culture. Dialectics had also produced the modern lie of "freedom" and "equality", but the condition without culture had made modern politics based upon the "pure existence". Therefore, the modern politics turned to barbarian existence-struggle. Moreover, Socrates' dialectics had in addition produced modern science, which is only a kind of instrument.
Keywords/Search Tags:Nietzsche', s
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