The question of antagonism, struggle and dissensus, and their place, limits and value for democracy, has divided deliberative from agonistic theories in recent years and remains the main source of the impasse between them. This open access book seeks to break this impasse by going back to their sources in Kant (for deliberative theories) and Nietzsche (for agonisms) and reframing them as philosophers of conflict. For both philosophers, conflict is part of the ‘deep structure’ of reality at all levels, and their reflections on its constitutive, constructive and destructive potentials raise fundamental questions that democratic theories can ill afford to ignore.
Through a series of text-based comparative studies of Kant’s and Nietzsche’s philosophies of conflict, Herman Siemens addresses the central question of the book: What does it take to think of conflict, real opposition or contradiction as an intrinsic dimension of reality? Drawing on Kant’s pre-critical writings and his historical-philosophical texts and Nietzsche’s philosophical physiology and the will to power, chapters examine topics such as logical opposition (contradiction) versus real opposition (Realrepugnanz); idealism as philosophical warfare; the relation between war and peace; destructive versus constructive forms of conflict; resistance as a stimulant; Kant’s ‘unsociable sociability’ and Nietzsche’s ‘fine, well-planned, thoughtful egoism’; hatred, revenge and the ‘slave revolt in morality’.
The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Dutch Research Council.
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Manner of citation
Translations
Introduction
1. The Problem of Contradiction and Real Opposition in Kant and Nietzsche
I. Introduction
i. A Short History Of ‘Opposition’ (Gegensatz) and ‘Contradiction’ (Widerspruch)
II. Kant’s Concept of Negative Magnitudes: Real vs. Logical Opposition
i. Kant’s Ontology of Conflict
ii. Further Applications of Real Opposition
iii. The Source or Ground of Change
iv. Kant’s Ontology of Mental Life
v. Real Opposition Between Different Bodies
vi. Critique of Logical Causation
vii. With or Without Substance?
III. The Problem of Opposition and Contradiction in Nietzsche’s Thought
i. Introduction
ii. Nietzsche’s Ontology of Conflict
iii. Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Logic
iv. Logical Contradiction
v. The Ontology of Mental Life
vi. From Mechanism To Physiology and Wills to Power
vii. Nietzsche’s Critique of Mechanism
viii. The Epistemology of Conflict
IV. Real Opposition in Nietzsche’s Thought
2. Waging War Against War: Nietzsche Contra Kant on Conflict and the Question of a Living Peace
I. Introduction
II. Eternal Peace and the Peace of the Graveyard
III. Conflict Unlimited and Limited: Nietzsche’s Vernichtungskampf and the Wettkampf
IV. Kant’s Philosophical War of Extermination Against War
V. Rethinking Conflict as Productive: Nietzsche’s Affirmative Ideal
VI. Nietzsche Contra Kant, Kant Contra Nietzsche
VII. Approaching a living peace: A Rapprochement?
3. Health, Sex and Sovereignty: Nietzsche Contra Kant on Productive Resistance
I. Introduction
II. Resistance in Nietzsche
III. Nietzsche Vs. Kant on Productive Resistance
IV. Freedom, respect for the law and the physiology of agency
4. Towards a New Agonism? Nietzsche’s ‘fine, well-planned, thoughtful egoism’ contra Kant’s ‘unsociable sociability’
I. Introduction
II. Kant: ungesellige Geselligkeit
III. Nietzsche on Fine, Well-Planned, Thoughtful Egoism
IV. Hostile Calm, Calm Hostility: Towards a New Agonism?
5. Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Hatred: Against and With Kant
I. Introduction
II. Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Hatred
III. Kant on Hatred
IV. The Hatred of Impotence and the Spirit of Revenge
V. Nietzsche’s Responses to the Problem of Hatred
VI. The Slave Revolt of Morality and the Problem of Emancipation
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Name Index
Subject Index
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