Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of History [Hardcover]

This book explores Nietzsche's understanding of modern political culture and his position in the history of modern political thought.Christian Emden explores Nietzsche's understanding of modern political culture and his position in the history of modern political thought. Challenging exclusively philosophical readings, this pioneering study sheds new light on political culture in Germany as the ideals of the Enlightenment gave way to the demands of the modern nation state.Christian Emden explores Nietzsche's understanding of modern political culture and his position in the history of modern political thought. Challenging exclusively philosophical readings, this pioneering study sheds new light on political culture in Germany as the ideals of the Enlightenment gave way to the demands of the modern nation state.This book explores Friedrich Nietzsche's understanding of modern political culture and his position in the history of modern political thought. Surveying Nietzsche's entire intellectual career from his years as a student in Bonn and Leipzig during the 1860s to his genealogical project of the 1880s, Christian Emden contributes to a historically informed discussion of Nietzsche's response to the political predicaments of modernity, and sheds new light on the intellectual and political culture in Germany as the ideals of the Enlightenment gave way to the demands of the modern nation state. This is a distinguished addition to the series of Ideas in Context, and a major reassessment of a philosopher and aphorist whose stature among post-enlightenment European thinkers is now almost unrivalled.Acknowledgements; Abbreviations and translations; Introduction; Part I. The Failure of Neohumanism: 1. Philologists, liberals, and the nation; 2. The Austro-Prussian War in Leipzig; 3. The demands of history; 4. Toward a cautious materialism; 5. Teleology and the laws of history; Part II. The Formation of Imperial Germany, Seen from Basel: 1. Intellectual culture in Basel; 2. TlcÁ