Nietzsche's Cosmopolitanism:

NIETZSCHE'S COSMOPOLITANISM: THE BIRTH OF A POLITICAL CONVALESCENT FROM THE SPIRIT OF EUROPEAN DECADENCE

Dale Allen Wilkerson’s study integrates Nietzsche’s writings on convalescence and cosmopolitanism, elaborating the philosopher’s late nineteenth-century European vision for a political future.

The study analyzes a variety of presumably incompatible claims, from Nietzsche’s earliest commentaries to his latest works. Chapter One, “On the Birth of Nietzsche’s Convalescent Cosmopolitanism” sketches the parameters of a political vision that attempts a reconciliation-averse convalescence in the early days of post-metaphysics. Chapter Two, “Nietzsche’s Encounter with Decadence: Health and Dignity as Measures in Political Spaces,” analyzes hermeneutic problems that arise when attempting such a complicated endeavor. For example, a case study is made of Nietzsche’s shifting positions regarding decadence, particularly as he conceived democracy to be the “decay of the state.” For the most part, Nietzsche seems hostile towards decadence and democracy, but his disposition is ambivalent. Wilkerson argues that any understanding of Nietzsche’s reflections on these matters should be considered as part of the historical question of how to sustain the overcoming of metaphysics without socio-political reconciliations (in nationalism, socialism, religiosity, militarism, racism and the like). Nietzsche’s philosophical answer to the problem of reconciliation as such is convalescence, while politically it is a practically-minded, non-universalizing cosmopolitanism. Chapters Three and Four concretize these insights and charts Nietzsche’s philosophical development in its political context. “Nietzsche as Countermovement to Spiritual Decadence” examines the political culture of Europe’s nineteenth century and Nietzsche’s self-identification as its nemesis, while “Nietzsche’s Spiritual Wars in German Politics and Culture” shows that the image of a “good German” was formed cynically as the Kaiserreich’s dominant political class, demonizing those peoples thought to be Germany’s “misfortune.” In this light, the study shows that events such as 1879’s “Anti-Semitism Dispute” inspired Nietzsche to reassess his fundamental political positions and to wage a spiritual war against contemporary political culture. While previous chapters analyze Nietzsche’s “no-saying” critique, Chapter Five, “Positive Alternatives in Nietzsche’s Cultural Imagery: Politics, Economics, History and Aesthetics,” brings a new focus to Nietzsche’s “Yes-saying” philosophy culminating in the image of Zarathustra as “legislator.” In this, Nietzsche’s positive philosophy is designed to be more inspirational than analytically sound. The study ends by recapping these insights and pointing the way towards new avenues for possible research, with a note of caution especially for anyone wishing to extrapolate a normative political theory from Nietzsche’s convalescent cosmopolitanism.

Insightful and timely, Wilkerson’s Nietzsche’s Cosmopolitanism: The Birth of a Political Convalescent from the Spirit of European Decadence offers an historically and rationally grounded analysis of Nietzsche’s philosophical and political thought.