One aspect of Nietzsche’s political thought of note is the strong tendency to replace politics with culture as the source of value. Some sense of cultural value as the human goal, or at least a major aspect of flourishing humanity, or some flourishing group of humans, goes back to The Birth of Tragedy. However, at the time of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche still adhered to German nationalism with regard to the state, as well as culture, even if culture is the greater preoccupation.
The Birth of Tragedy suggests a rebirth of the greatness of tragedy in the operas of Wagner, an unmistakably nationalist project. At that time Nietzsche welcomed the revival of German Empire under Prussian leadership, if not stridently and had been proud to serve in the Prussian army. Ill health only allowed him to serve in the Franco-Prussian War, which led to proclamation the Second German Empire, as a medical orderly, but he would presumably have fought if allowed.
Nietzsche was perhaps already harbouring doubts about the value of German nationalism, and of any state centred political thinking. One possible indication is resistance to seeing a political aspect in Attic tragedy even if some of Nietzsche’s own comments might point in that direction. More firm evidence of a turn away from the Prussian-German state and nationalist politics can be seen in the first untimely meditation on David Strauss. There Nietzsche disdains the military and political architects of Prussian greatness, Helmuth von Moltke and Otto von Bismarck, both widely recognised as greatly distinguished, even ‘geniuses’ in their own sphere. The recent political and military triumphs, culminating in the defeat of France’s own Second Empire, are hollow now Nietzsche finds, since they do not end German cultural backwardness, particularly in comparison with defeated France.
The results can be seen in the concentration on history as a category in the second untimely meditation, though Nietzsche approaches topics of political significance in his thoughts on the uses and abuses of history for life. The superiority of culture to the state and the whole political sphere is clearly spelt out in Human, All To Human and though Nietzsche continues to have some interest in the idea of a state aristocracy that rises above ordinary politics that sets the tone for his later comments on politics and indeed the state aristocracy idea is a way of trying to displace politics in state activity. That is maybe not an entirely consistently held position, but one would not expect such systematic clarity from Nietzsche’s way of writing.
Nietzsche’s evolution on politics and culture is not offered as the one turning point in the history of thought about politics and culture, it is part of a gradual process. One way of looking at the beginning of that process is the anxiety that contract theory in politics displays regarding communication of right and law, so that an ideal moment has to be imagined to see how that would happen. That is law, the state, and politics, are seen as existing in a sphere lacking clear politically oriented communication, and the ‘noise’ can be seen as what is later labelled culture.
The transition may even start earlier than that when Grotius, preceded by Machiavelli, comments on how juristic and state thought is now concerned with looking back at, historicising and interpreting, what appeared in Roman law, and its late Medieval revival. Jumping to the latter part of the era of contract theory, Montesquieu’s more historicising (as in the work of gradual historical processes) view compared with the contract theorists in some degree goes back to Machiavelli and Grotius,even if there some elements of contract theory in Grotius, place honour at the centre of modern monarchy. That is the virtue and moderation of ancient republican politics is replaced by a socially diffused, not directly political process of competitive ambition and status seeking.
Rousseau recognises this in another way when he puts the arts below the sciences and examines the limits of virtue springing from the earl development of envy and a competitively driven ambition. The role of culture as an object of historical and social discussion emerges in the transition from thinking about culture as cultivation of the land in cooperation with nature to culture as the human capacity for self-creation and imagination invention, seen as a progressive historical and moral tendency.
The transition can be seen working in an uneven way through Kant, Hegel, and Humboldt. Particularly in Hegel an Humboldt that coincides with the idea that the Greek polis is lost as relevant realistic political form, for good and bad. Immediate personal participation in politics and lawmaking as the focus of an ideal human community is now on communication, art, civil society, commerce and other, at least partly, below the level of the state cooperative activities.
Tocqueville continues this line of thinking when he notes that newspaper and theatrical performances make up a sphere of public activity and communication, which fill the space that politics had in ancient republics. Later in the nineteenth century Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy confirms that the issue of social existence have become more focused on culture than politics, with regard to activities not dominated by economic necessity. The later development of thought about culture, communications, and media as politically significant, and the difficulties of having a public sphere of pure political engagement without the ambiguities of culture (as well as economic interests, and idea that itself develops in relation to that of culture).
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