Michael J. McNeal

Nietzsche says "good Europeans" must not only cultivate a "supra-national" view, but also "supra-European" perspective to transcend their European biases and see beyond the horizon of Western culture. The volume takes up such conceptual frontier crossings and syntheses. Emphasizing Nietzsche's genealogy of European culture and his reflections upon the constitution of Europe in the broadest sense, its essays examine peoples and nations, values and arts, knowledge and religion. Nietzsche's apprehensions about the crises of nihilism and decadence and their implications for Europe's future are investigated in this context. Concerning the crossing of notional frontiers, contributors examine Nietzsche's hoped-for dismantling of Europe's state borders, the overcoming of national prejudices and rivalries, and the propagation of a revitalizing "supra-European" perspective on the continent, its culture and future. They also illuminate lines of syntheses, notably the syncretism of the ancient Greeks and its possible example for the European culture to-be. Finally certain of Europe's current problems are considered via the critical apparatus furnished by Nietzsche's philosophy and the diagnostic tools it provides.

An important feature of Nietzsche’s thought, experimentation (experimentieren) bears on the roles he thought science and art should play in the future generation of knowledge and values. While the function of experimentation in his philosophy is not often examined, that is changing, yet in the specific context of this volume’s theme—experimentation via art and science—it has not been examined before. This is doubtless because, despite frequent mentions of it, he does not identify experimentation as a major concern. Yet insofar as it links his major concerns and would, as he repeatedly indicated, serve to realize his overarching philosophical objectives, Nietzsche’s advocacy of experimentation proves quite important to his thinking. This anthology therefore takes up that theme, examining the role that Nietzsche expected experiments to play in his philosophy, particularly in the form of artworks, broadly construed, and the various uses to which science could be put to advance his free spirit’s life-affirming aims, including the revaluation of all values and the overcoming and transfiguration of humankind.

This anthology broadly examines the interrelated roles of art, science, and experimentation in Nietzsche's philosophical project. It is divided into two parts, the first organized around the theme of experimentally reconceiving our world, the second investigating the aforementioned subjects in Nietzsche’s “free spirit” or “middle period” works. Together, the essays comprising the book underscore Nietzsche’s concern that experimentation with values ultimately provide humankind with a new “wherefore” or purpose. Wide-ranging in its scope, this volume brings together a diverse group of scholars working in both the analytic and continental traditions to provide original insights into Nietzsche’s thought. A unique contribution to the scholarship, it deepens understanding of the relationship between Nietzsche’s critiques of art and science, the role this relationship plays in his futural thought, and the experimental, life-affirming practices that his free spirit project may enable toward the transfiguration of humankind.

By re-examining Nietzsche's notion of the “eternal-feminine” and his views on women and feminism, this volume offers new perspectives on some of his key ideas. It brings together a diverse group of scholars to critically engage with Nietzsche's use of late-19th-century gender stereotypes and the ways in which they served his critique of values, including his use of “woman” as a trope for truth. Among other subjects, the contributors consider the role of psychology in Nietzsche's thought, his concern with style, self-creation, and advocacy of perfectionism, his views on romantic love and marriage, and his aim of revaluing all values to instigate a distant philosophy of the future. They investigate parallels between Nietzsche's thought and Shaktism, his relation to Goethe and Stendahl, and his influence on Beauvoir, Butler, and Dohm. With the inclusion of two seminal essays on Nietzsche and women by Lawrence J. Hatab and Kelly Oliver, the volume also illustrates some of the ways in which scholarship on these subjects has evolved over the last four decades. Providing fresh insights into these inter-related subjects, Nietzsche on Women and the Eternal-Feminine highlights the enduring relevance of his thought and its still-underappreciated potential for re-thinking both the bases for and aims of feminism and other emancipatory movements.

This chapter seeks to challenge the widely held view that Nietzsche advocated the primacy of the individual. Far from being an individualist, I argue, Nietzsche developed a new conception of community which played a vital role in his attempted transfiguration of humanity. The goal of creating re-naturalized foundations for community informs Nietzsche’s rejection of the dominant (‘herd’-like) forms of social organization in the Europe of his day. Striving for self-overcoming and perfection, the free-spirited members of these new communities would re-vitalize humanity and take it beyond good and evil. Insofar as Nietzsche refrained from prescribing specific reforms or institutional arrangements, questions remain about the viability of the agonistic form of sociality he advances.

Nietzsche’s analyses of culture and identity permit an incisive assessment of the décadence characteristic of neoliberal globalisation, the hegemonic ideology of our age. Nietzsche’s thinking about both the quandary of identity and the appearance of individuals was conditioned by his critique of décadence. He maintained that identity becomes problematic when degenerating values fail to affirm a society’s cultural norms and enforce its rank order of difference. Developing Nietzsche’s appraisal via the insights of Debord and Baudrillard, this chapter argues that a critical analysis of culture can illuminate how liberal modernity destabilises traditional values and subverts identities through alienating, media-driven spectacles of multiculturalism that banalise difference. However, a Nietzschean form of life-affirming, jovial ironism may sufficiently invigorate prospective free spirits to facilitate their self-overcoming.

According to Michael J. McNeal, Nietzsche’s ‘good Europeans’ embody the ethos of his “free-spiritedness,” instinctively enacting his cosmopolitan disposition and practicable agonic strategy for overcoming Europe’s dissipative nihilism. Nietzsche’s ‘good Europeanism’ commends life-affirmation to transform its practitioners physiologically and attitudinally, inuring them to the spiritual narcotization of romanticism, nationalism and xenophobia. ‘Good Europeans’ thereby counter myopic statism, create inclusive new values, and generate culturally invigorating forms of life. McNeal demonstrates the contemporary relevance of Nietzsche’s pluralistic value orientation - his ‘good Europeanism’ - via its potential for facilitating recuperation from the bad conscience impairing the modern European project and realizing Nietzsche’s idea of Europe.