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This article examines the agonistic elements of Nietzsche's thought in light of theorists who have sought to develop an agonistic democratic theory that would challenge democratic theory oriented by consensus. It argues that Nietzsche's praise for a spiritualization of enmity provides support for a politics that embraces contest rather than seeking the elimination of conflict through either consensus or domination. Yet, unlike contemporary democratic theorists, Nietzsche's view challenges egalitarian commitments by presenting the sources of such conflicts in noble faiths. Instead of following the practice of many scholars in identifying the agonistic with its utility for democratic politics, the paper examines Nietzsche's view of the underlying sources of contest, including important tensions between theory and practice. The paper presents contest among noble faiths as crucial to Nietzsche's political thought while highlighting a contest between politics and philosophy behind it. He thereby offers what he sees as an alternative to the philosophical politics of settled unified authority and reveals the deepest contest as one between politics and philosophy.

AbstractWhether in the service of aristocratic radicalism or radical democracy, Nietzsche's political thought has most often been associated with transformation rather than limitations. This paper argues that Nietzsche offers a realism that presents politics as driven by grand aspirations and bound by tragic limitations. Nietzsche draws on Thucydides as a source for a realism that is neither reductionist nor transformative, but rather looks to the grandest of human aspirations and the limits to those aspirations. The paper analyzes Nietzsche's treatment of the character of modern idealism, the source of conflicting values, the effects of liberalism, and the consequences of democratic modernity in order to flesh out his tragic realism. Rather than advocating the tyrannical decay he expects in the short term, Nietzsche points the way to a new politics shaped by grander goals and more moderate expectations than the idealistic leveling of modernity.

This article argues that Nietzsche uses a rhetorically modern appeal to enact the self-overcoming of modernity and the aim of enlightenment. It demonstrates how Nietzsche aims to move his readers from a prejudice in favor of truthfulness, by appearing to radicalize that aim, to a new measure of nobility. In contrast to some who present Nietzsche's styles as the means to convey a dispersion of meanings, this article argues that, designs his writing to move his age. He adopts the prejudices of his time inBeyond Good and Evil, his mature "critique of modernity" in order to demonstrate the self-overcoming of those prejudices. Beyond merely questioning the value of truth, Nietzsche evaluates by the measure of psychological strength, and describes the character of nobility beyond good and evil and beyond truth and falsity.

'Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same' by Karl Lowith and translated by J. Harvey Lomax is reviewed.