| Was Nietzsche a defender of democratic politics? In response to this question, which has animated recent work in political philosophy, I present a two-fold response: (1) In one sense, no, because he critiques the nihilism implicit in liberal thought, but (2) in another sense, yes, because he defends in its stead an agonistic conception of democracy. While Nietzsche did seem to have a strong disdain for the liberal democratic European state in the 19th century, I argue that the main target of his attack is on the liberal aspect of such states, not democracy as such. This is due to the nihilistic value-positing inherent in liberalism and Nietzsche's account of the self as decentered and performative, a self that evades the "spirit of gravity" and seeks to test his or her talents in public political contests in the spirit of "play." After detailing the fundamentals of liberalism both in theory and in practice, I employ this Nietzschean agonistic account of democracy as the political philosophy best served to overcome liberalism and its failings in contemporary American political culture. The final chapter extends this concept of agonism beyond Nietzsche (using Marcuse and Sartre and the notion of "play" as the means to overcome the spirit of seriousness with regard to value), thereby proposing a general vision of the questions future political philosophy needs to address. |
