“A final thought concerns the relationship that philosophy entertains with politics, especially Nietzsche's idea that while philosophy might be helpful in identifying what is wrong with the world, it is not the right place to start to try to change it. We must first begin by reeducating ourselves before moving, as Nietzsche came to see, to politics. In many ways Williams reached a similar conclusion in what possibly remains his best work, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), although perhaps without the politics: philosophy can help in trying to resolve questions of theory, but it is incapable, as the title suggests, of telling us how to live. As he puts it in that wonderfully liberating phrase : 'The only serious enterprise is living.” LivingEnterprise Book:Nietzsche's Great Politics Source: Nietzsche's Great Politics
“Footnote 24 I can't help but hear an echo of Nietzsche's question of 'what type of man should be bred' in Weber's 1895 - the same year that The Antichrist was first published - inaugural lecture 'The Nation State and Economic Policy,' when he writes that 'the question which stirs us as we think beyond the grave of our own generation is not the well-being human beings will enjoy [that of the last man?] in the future but what kind of people they will be' (quoted in Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs, eds., Weber: Political Writings [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994], 15).” Well BeingBeingNietzscheWeber Book:Nietzsche's Great Politics Source: Nietzsche's Great Politics
“See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last man (London: Penguin, 1993). Note the often-overlooked second part where Fukuyama criticizes the end of history as leading to the last man.” NietzscheEnd Of HistoryLast ManFukayama Book:Nietzsche's Great Politics Source: Nietzsche's Great Politics
“Note 54. I have often pondered whether Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game painted, perhaps not fully consciously, a good picture of what this new world could look like: a small and poor cultural en intellectual elite living in a secluded 'Castalia,' but that performed the glass bead game - an abstract synthesis of the arts and science -to tie together and give meaning to existence as well as the world as a whole. Remember that Castalia has a diplomatic wing whose role is to negotiate with the outside world to keep its funding. Of course Knecht leaves in the end, but there is one way of reading his ultimate drowning as a sacrifice so that the overman - Tito - can live.” HesseOvermanGlass Bead Game Book:Nietzsche's Great Politics Source: Nietzsche's Great Politics
“There is no reason to believe that political agency must solely be located in the modern state, and Nietzsche does not hold such a view. He instead locates his political project in the transition away from the nation-state. Indeed, the decay of the state signals the superseding of the modern question of political philosophy as framed by Leiter: the theory of the state and its legitimacy. The new question for Nietzsche will revolve around determining which institutions can fullfill the Platonic mission of producing the new Platos that the culture-state failed to achieve.” PlatoStateNietzscheNation State Book:Nietzsche's Great Politics Source: Nietzsche's Great Politics