Nietzsche's political ideas were once during his lifetime interpreted by Georg Brandes as
aristocratic radicalism, a categorization which Nietzsche himself found best: [Of Brandes' description of his philosophy, Nietzsche himself remarked:] "The expression 'aristocratic radicalism', which you employ, is very good. It is, permit me to say, the cleverest thing that I have yet read about myself"." Otherwise, his ideas were also
variously interpreted as
Bonapartism,
individualist anarchism, and more controversially as
proto-fascism (see:
Nietzsche and fascism) with some authors describing him as apolitical, anti-political or political sceptic. Today two positions have dominated the literature: one attributes to Nietzsche a commitment to aristocratic forms of social ordering, while the other denies that Nietzsche has any political philosophy at all. and tried to revive the aristocratic spirit of
Roman Empire,
paganism and
Renaissance, and not as a progressive revolutionary leader like some of his contemporaries. Nietzsche did comment on contemporary political events in his letters and notes. He was deeply disturbed by the
Paris Commune, he initially supported
Bismarck but became disappointed by his later social policies and détente toward socialists and Catholics, he was worried about the rise of
Adolf Stoecker, and after death of Emperor
Friedrich III he became worried about the future of
free speech in Germany. He was against
equality of rights and defended
slavery, believing that it is a necessary condition for supporting an upper class which could devote itself to more sophisticated activities. In his letters and personal notes he ridiculed
American abolitionists such as
Harriet Beecher Stowe, and wrote disparagingly of German attempts, led by the Kaiser and Christian activists, to end slavery in colonial Africa (leading to
Brussels Conference Act of 1890). Nietzsche claimed that the
upper classes are overreacting and projecting their own sensitivity to the suffering of slaves and poor industrial workers who are supposedly toughened by hardship, less sensitive to pain and contended with their life. However, while he wrote positively about ancient and colonial slavery, he did not leave any clear comments suggesting that he actually advocated reintroduction of slavery in modern Europe. In fact, he proposed that the rebellious European workers could be pacified by shifting some of their burden to Asian and African populations. He saw the contemporary revolutionary and emancipatory movements as the most recent part of the long-term social and cultural decay as he noted: Continuation of Christianity by the French Revolution. Rousseau is the seducer: he again removes the chains of woman, who from then on is represented in an ever more interesting way, as suffering. Then the slaves and Mistress Beecher-Stowe. Then the poor and the workers. Then the vicious and the sick — all that is brought to the fore. Nietzsche extoled
aristocratic societies and military elites claiming that they create higher quality of culture. He often linked noble classes with ancient barbarian conquerors. His thoughts were usually oriented to the future aristocracy, not so much to the preservation of existing monarchical order, which he saw as exhausted and a thing of the past. He saw the last expression of noble values,
French seventeenth and eighteenth century, lost after the fall of Napoleon. Much of his thoughts on the subject are unsystematic and he did not leave specific instructions about how this new aristocratic class should be selected and elevated to the ruling positions in society. However, he was quite clear that he used the term "aristocracy" in the traditional sense, meaning noble birth and hereditary hierarchy; he ridiculed the idea of "aristocracy of the spirit" popular among intellectuals as a democratic subversion. In the context of his criticism of morality and Christianity, expressed, among others works, in
On the Genealogy of Morals and in
The Antichrist, Nietzsche often criticized humanitarian feelings, detesting how pity and
altruism were ways for the "weak" to take power over the "strong". To the "ethics of compassion" (
Mitleid, "shared suffering") exposed by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche opposed an "ethics of friendship" or of "shared joy" (
Mitfreude).
Individualism and liberalism Nietzsche often referred to the common people who participated in mass movements and shared a common
mass psychology as "the rabble", or "
the herd". Although he valued
individualism his general political views included many
hierarchical and
authoritarian ideas which are usually incompatible with modern individualistic ideologies. He often used the term "individualism" to describe a certain set of personality traits - such as originality, nonconformism and egoism - not to describe the political system based on institutions that guarantee wide individual
rights and
freedoms. According to Nietzsche, who often held pre-Socratic Greece and ancient Rome as the social model, individualism and freedom should be reserved only for the aristocratic minority, while discouraged among the subjugated masses who don't have the natural capacity for it. Such freedom is not given to all people as a natural right but is earned by the strong individual through struggle, and is closely connected to the power that he can exercise over others. Arguably, such elitist individualism can be interpreted as similar to early liberalism since many authors and politicians at the time supported stratified society with low
social mobility, racial exclusion, colonial conquests and even slavery. It is also comparable with conservative, aristocratic liberalism of
Alexis de Tocqueville,
Hippolyte Taine,
Jacob Burckhardt (Nietzsche corresponded with the latter two) although his overall philosophy is much more radical. In his opposition to Christian tradition and modern philosophy Nietzsche also criticized the concepts of
soul,
subject and
atomism (that is, the existence of an atomic subject at the foundation of everything, found for example in
social contract theories). He considered the individual subject as a complex of instincts and wills-to-power, just as any other organization. He claimed that idea of subject, whether in metaphysical or scientific sense, leads to the belief in essential equality of people and is politically used to justify notion of human rights, therefore calling
René Descartes the "grandfather of
French Revolution". Beginning in the 1890s some scholars have attempted to link his philosophy with
Max Stirner's radical individualism of
The Ego and Its Own (1844). The question remained pendent. Recently there was unearthed further, still circumstantial, evidence clarifying
his relationship with Stirner. In any case, few philosophers really consider Nietzsche an "individualist" thinker. Against the strictly "egoist" perspective adopted by Stirner, Nietzsche concerned himself with the "problem of the civilization" and the necessity to give humanity a goal and a direction to its history, making him, in this sense, a very political thinker. In
The Will to Power he described individualism as a part of the process that leads to the ultimate goal of establishing the order of rank: Individualism is a modest and still unconscious form of will to power; with it a single human unit seems to think it sufficient to free himself from the preponderating power of society (or of the State or Church). He does not set himself up in opposition as a personality, but merely as a unit; he represents the rights of all other individuals as against the whole. That is to say, he instinctively places himself on a level with every other unit: what he combats he does not combat as a person, but as a representative of units against a mass. (...) When one has reached a certain degree of independence, one always longs for more: separation in proportion to the degree of force; the individual is no longer content to regard himself as equal to everybody, he actually seeks for his peer—he makes himself stand out from others. Individualism is followed by a development in groups and organs; correlative tendencies join up together and become powerfully active: now there arise between these centres of power, friction, war, a reconnoitring of the forces on either side, reciprocity, understandings, and the regulation of mutual services. Finally, there appears an order of rank. While Nietzsche shared some of the liberal ideas and values such as individualism,
private property,
economic inequality, and dismissed political criticisms of
exploitation his philosophy does not have much in common with
classical liberalism and
capitalism. He wrote that liberalism is synonymous with mediocrity and believed also that it leads to cultural decay. He also decried "liberal optimism" of
political economy, the idea that economic development and technological innovation should solve social problems; even though it was more attainable and moderate than socialist utopianism, he still saw the goal of mass happiness and comfort as unworthy and philistine. He dismissed captains of the industry as vulgar and even blamed them for the rise of socialism, claiming that rise of the capitalist class disrupted the order of rank and that workers would not rebel if they were able to serve the true, natural aristocrats instead of capitalists whom they do not see as superiors but just as ordinary people who got lucky with money. He praised Napoleon for reviving the warlike, aristocratic spirit which triumphed over the "modern ideas", over "the businessman and the
philistine". and that economy should be regulated so that people cannot get rich quickly by means of financial speculation. However, he later significantly changed his attitude and noted that Jewish financiers should play a prominent role in the
new united Europe. In his later writings he even particularly praised Jewish capitalists as powerful, natural allies against Christianity, socialism and nationalism. In December 1888, his last month of sanity he wrote in a notebook: It will be a good idea to found societies everywhere so as to deliver into my hands at the right time a million disciples. It is particularly important to recruit first of all officers and Jewish bankers. Both together represent the will to power. If I ask who my natural allies are I see that above all they are officers. With military instincts in the body one cannot be a Christian... In the same way, Jewish bankers are my natural allies, as the only international power which, by origin and instinct, binds nations together after accursed interest-politics has made the arrogance and egoism of nations into a duty. According to
Domenico Losurdo, in his later works Nietzsche concluded that the
industrial society which he disliked is here to stay and the return to warlike, landed aristocracy is unrealistic. He also developed some sympathies to the diligent, competent bourgeoisie, seeing the wealthy capitalist class as necessary allies in the struggle against both
Adolf Stoecker's Christian movement and
social democracy which were gaining influence in Germany. To solve the conflict he hesitantly accepted the idea that aristocracy should absorb the emerging capitalist class while retaining the cultural supremacy. Even the vulgar commercial activities could be transformed by the aristocracy in a similar way that hunting was raised from practical subsistence into a ceremonial, luxurious activity. Don Dombowsky argues that Nietzsche's criticisms of capitalism are mostly cultural and moderate; compared with the usual ideological points of political economy and views on class conflict, he is still consistently aligned with the capital against the worker movement which he saw as a fundamental threat to his hierarchical vision of society. William Altman also interprets Nietzsche's criticism of capitalist class as the advice to cultivate better public image and thus legitimize the social hierarchy.
Criticism of socialism and labour movement Negative attitude towards
socialism and
proletarian movement was one of the most consistent themes in Nietzsche's philosophy. He wrote negatively of socialism as early as 1862 and his criticisms of socialism are often harsher than those of other doctrines. He was critical of
French Revolution and was deeply disturbed by the
Paris Commune which he saw as a destructive insurrection of the vulgar lower classes that made him feel "annihilated for several days". As opposed to the urban working class, Nietzsche praised the peasantry as an example of health and natural nobility. Beyond only abstract, cultural opposition, he regularly wrote against specific social policies of the German Empire that aimed to improve the
position and
welfare of the workers. He was particularly against democratic,
universal education, calling it "barbarism" and "a prelude to communism" because it pointlessly arouses the masses who are "born to serve and obey". He called socialism "the tyranny of the meanest and the dumbest" He described Rousseau as "moral tarantula", his ideas as "idiocies and half-truths" that were born out of self-contempt and inflamed vanity, claimed that he held a grudge against the ruling classes and by moralizing, he tried to blame them for his own misery. He named him together with
Savonarola,
Martin Luther,
Robespierre and
Henri de Saint-Simon as fanatics, "sick intellects" who influence masses and stand in opposition to strong spirits. He similarly called
Eugen Dühring an "apostle of revenge", "moral braggart" and his ideas "indecent and revolting moralistic gibberish". He saw egalitarian and peaceful socialist community as essentially antagonistic to life; in
On the Genealogy of Morality, he wrote: A legal system conceived of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle of power complexes, but as a means against all struggles in general, something along the lines of Dühring's communist cliché in which each will must be considered as equal to every will, that would be a principle hostile to life, a destroyer and dissolver of human beings, an assassination attempt on the future of human beings, a sign of exhaustion, a secret path to nothingness. Nietzsche believed that if socialist goals are achieved, society would be leveled down and conditions for superior individuals and higher culture would disappear. In
Twilight of the Idols he wrote: "Equality", a certain definite process of making everybody uniform, which only finds its expression in the theory of equal rights, is essentially bound up with a declining culture: the chasm between man and man, class and class, the multiplicity of types, the will to be one's self and to distinguish one's selfthat, in fact, which I call the pathos of distance is proper to all strong ages. Unlike many conservative and liberal authors of the era, Nietzsche didn't justify the dismal conditions of the working class purely as an unfortunate price that had to be paid for the leisured, cultured lifestyle of the upper-class minority, but saw them as an expression of natural caste order which is necessary for both the rulers and the ruled. He believed the majority of people could find happiness and sense of purpose in submission to the most powerful, and that, even though they might desire freedom, they would not actually enjoy it. He claimed that even if reduction of work and granting more leisure to the masses were economically feasible, they would have a negative social, cultural effect because people of common nature are incapable of fully appreciate aristocratic idleness. The highest society imagined by socialists would be the lowest according to his order of rank. In
The Antichrist, he wrote: ...one reflects on how necessary it is to the great majority that there be regulations to restrain them from the outside, and to what extent control, or, in a higher sense,
slavery, is the one and only condition which makes for the well-being of the weak-willed man... Whom do I hate most heartily among the rabbles of today? The rabble of Socialists, the apostles to the
Chandala, who undermine the workingman's instincts, his pleasure, his feeling of contentment with his petty existence—who make him envious and teach him revenge... Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of "equal" rights... What is bad? But I have already answered: all that proceeds from weakness, from envy, from revenge. — The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry... In
The Will to Power, he further elaborated similarity between Christianity and socialism: The Gospel is the announcement that the road to happiness lies open for the lowly and the poor—that all one has to do is to emancipate one's self from all institutions, traditions, and the tutelage of the higher classes. Thus Christianity is no more than the typical teaching of Socialists. Property, acquisitions, mother-country, status and rank, tribunals, the police, the State, the Church, Education, Art, militarism: all these are so many obstacles in the way of happiness, so many mistakes, snares, and devil's artifices, on which the Gospel passes sentence—all this is typical of socialistic doctrines. Behind all this there is the outburst, the explosion, of a concentrated loathing of the "masters,"—the instinct which discerns the happiness of freedom after such long oppression... (Mostly a symptom of the fact that the inferior classes have been treated too humanely, that their tongues already taste a joy which is forbidden them... It is not hunger that provokes revolutions, but the fact that the mob have contracted an appetite en mangeant...) In Aphorism 763 of the same book, he claims workers should come to see their labor as a sacred duty (similarly to how soldiers see military service), as opposed to something done in exchange for money, and that each worker should be assigned tasks compatible with his own unique abilities: Workers should learn to feel like soldiers. An
honorarium, an income, but no
pay! No relation between payment and achievement! But the individual, each according to his kind, should be so placed that he can achieve the highest that lies in his power. While he was consistently opposed to granting the common, "lower" people any sort of political or decisional power, and overall saw them as mere tools of the aristocratic masters, he expresses confusing views on how they are to be treated: in some passages, as noted above, he seemingly advocated repression to avoid rebellions; elsewhere, however, he claims approvingly of aristocrats handling the commoners "in a far more delicate way than they approach themselves or their equals", and states that helping the unfortunate can be a characteristic of the noble man (provided that it is "an impulse caused by a superabundance on power" and not done out of pity or a sense of obligation). Nietzsche never mentioned
Karl Marx or
Friedrich Engels by name, and it is unclear whether he was acquainted with their ideas. However, they are more or less extensively quoted and discussed in eleven books that Nietzsche owned in his personal library and in one of them he underlined Marx's name. In socialist countries, Nietzsche was usually considered a disreputable reactionary, bourgeois, imperialist or fascist philosopher. His books were unavailable to the public in the
Soviet Union from 1923. They were placed on the list of
forbidden books and were kept in libraries only for restricted, authorized use. Until 1988, they were not translated or reprinted, and in the years between 1938 and 1988, only ten dissertations on Nietzsche were defended. Western leftist writers, led by French postwar intellectuals, largely rehabilitated Nietzsche on the left and have proposed ways of using Nietzschean theory in what has become known as the "politics of
difference"particularly in formulating theories of political resistance and sexual and moral difference.
Race, class and eugenics Nietzsche often made
racist,
classist remarks and used
racialist explanations of cultural and political phenomena. Some of his later admirers often tried to reinterpret, downplay or ignore this part of his thought, but because of preponderance of explicit comments in Nietzsche's work, such approaches remain controversial. There are also controversies about some newer translations of Nietzsche which seem to be misleadingly euphemistic when dealing with more loaded terms that Nietzsche used. in the sense that nations are composed of different races and that upper classes are usually of superior
nature to the lower. He was fascinated by the restrictive
caste system of India and
Laws of Manu which he saw as promoting
eugenics. Such ideas about aristocracy and race were especially popularized in the 19th century by
Arthur de Gobineau. It is unclear whether Nietzsche was directly influenced by Gobineau but he was probably aware of his work because of numerous similarities and because Richard Wagner was an admirer who wrote an introductory essay on his work. Excerpts from Gobineau were frequently published in the Wagnerian journal
Bayreuther Blätter which Nietzsche read. Despite his oppositions to
Darwinism, he was very interested in the works of
Francis Galton, although he had only partial knowledge of his works since they were not translated. Nietzsche admired the Megaran poet
Theognis who rallied against marriages between the aristocracy and common people. He proposed numerous eugenic policies such as medical examinations before marriage, discouragement of celibacy among successful and healthy individuals, tax breaks, and also
castration of criminals and mentally ill. Along with his opposition to Darwinism, he also disagreed with
Social Darwinism, especially
Herbert Spencer's ideas of progress, but Nietzsche's views on welfare policies, social conflict and inequality are not much different from the ones usually held by Social Darwinists. He didn't share the evolutionary optimism of the Darwinists, believing that current trends in European society point to degeneration of the species rather than to survival of the fittest. Some of his views were influenced by the works of
Charles Féré and
Théodule-Armand Ribot. One of the themes that Nietzsche often used to explain social phenomena was
mixing of the races. He believed that mixed race persons were usually inferior because of the conflicting, incompatible instincts that exist in them, and advocated
racial purification. He used
Socrates as a negative example of miscegenation, although he claimed that it can also occasionally create energetic individuals such as
Alcibiades and
Caesar. He also used the term race in the ethnic meaning and in this sense he supported the idea of mixing specific races which he considered to be of high quality (for example he proposed that Germans should mix with Slavs In
The Dawn of Day he also proposed mass immigration of
Chinese to Europe claiming that they would bring "modes of living and thinking, which would be found very suitable for industrious ants" and help "imbue this fretful and restless Europe with some of their Asiatic calmness and contemplation, and—what is perhaps most needful of all—their Asiatic stability." While Nietzsche's thoughts on the subject are often vague, he did occasionally use very harsh language, calling for "the annihilation of the decadent races" and "millions of deformed".
Jews, nationalism and European identity Nietzsche made numerous comments on
Jews and
Judaism, both positive and negative, and his attitudes changed significantly during his life, from fairly common criticism of Jews to more complex and specific perspective. There are also controversies about translations of his work which sometimes try to tone down his more inflammatory remarks or disguise some of the attitudes he expresses. He blamed Judaism for spreading the idea of
monotheism which puts a perfect
God so high above humans that they all seem small before him and essentially equal among themselves. But he also praised parts of the
Old Testament and early Jewish history. He claimed that Judaism went through a negative, moralistic-pessimistic transformation during the
Babylonian captivity. By losing their native aristocratic class, subjugated Jews, now composed only of the
priestly caste and the
Chandala, became resentful toward their foreign masters and generalized such feelings into a religious ressentiment towards any type of aristocracy, thus inventing the
Master–slave morality. Christianity was a further, even more radical development of the same idea that went on to undermine the aristocratic
Roman Empire, and was later followed by the Protestant Reformation and French Revolution. Although Nietzsche didn't put blame on cultural decay exclusively on Jews, like some biological anti-Semites, he did note their decisive historical influence. Nietzsche even claimed that anti-Semites are also the product of Jewish spirit, since with their Christian, populist and socialist ideas, they exhibit the same slave morality and ressentiment that were historically pioneered by the Jews. In that sense, his negative attitude towards the Jews goes even further than the usual anti-Semitism of his era. He also held many common stereotypes about Jews being shrewd, egotistical, exploitative, dishonest and manipulative, although he didn't necessarily consider all these characteristics negative. He also often praised Jewish intelligence and achievements. He had a very negative attitude toward contemporary
anti-Semitic movements, which were usually based on
Christian,
nationalist and
economic animosity towards Jews. In Germany, the anti-Semitic movement at the time was closely connected to the
Christian socialism of
Adolf Stoecker. His biographers,
Domenico Losurdo and
Julian Young, describe Nietzsche as being primarily against such populist, economic antisemitism, seeing it as motivated purely by resentment of Jewish success and money. In a letter, he wrote that "anti-Semitism appears to be exactly like the struggle against the rich and the means previously employed to become rich". He praised
old, wealthy Jewish families as a sort of refined Jewish aristocracy, seeing them as allies in the fight against socialism, while remaining scornful towards the masses of Jewish workers, artisans and merchants, who were often poor immigrants from Eastern Europe, perceived as uncouth and politically subversive. His most negative comments are directed against Jewish prophets and priests due to their historical influence on the West; he saw the leftist intellectuals as their modern version. Regarding the wealthy Jewish financiers, he even proposed an
assimilationist policy of eugenic marriages with
Prussian nobility. Nietzsche broke with his publisher in 1886 in opposition to the latter's anti-Semitic stances; he was already dissatisfied because Schmeitzner's political engagement in
Anti-Jewish Alliance was the reason for delayed publication of
Zarathustra. His rupture with
Richard Wagner, expressed in
The Case of Wagner and
Nietzsche contra Wagner, both of which he wrote in 1888, had much to do with Wagner's endorsement of pan-Germanism and anti-Semitismand also of his rallying to Christianity. In a March 29, 1887 letter to
Theodor Fritsch, Nietzsche mocked anti-Semites, Fritsch,
Eugen Dühring, Wagner, Ebrard,
Adolf Wahrmund, and the leading advocate of pan-Germanism,
Paul de Lagarde, who would become, along with Wagner and
Houston Chamberlain, the main official influences of
Nazism. He admitted that his
Thus Spoke Zarathustra was read and positively reviewed almost only by Wagnerians and anti-Semites who also unsuccessfully tried to win him to their cause. However, his philosophy actually started to attract a significant number of Jewish admirers and he established correspondence with some of them. would "correct" Nietzsche's writings even after the philosopher's breakdown, and hence without his approval. Nietzsche heavily criticized his sister and her husband,
Bernhard Förster, speaking harshly against the "anti-Semitic canaille": I've seen proof, black on white, that Herr Dr.
Förster has not yet severed his connection with the anti-Semitic movement ... Since then I've had difficulty coming up with any of the tenderness and protectiveness I've so long felt toward you. The separation between us is thereby decided in really the most absurd way. Have you grasped nothing of the reason why I am in the world? ... Now it has gone so far that I have to defend myself hand and foot against people who confuse me with these anti-Semitic
canaille; after my own sister, my former sister, and after Widemann more recently have given the impetus to this most dire of all confusions. After I read the name Zarathustra in the anti-Semitic Correspondence my forbearance came to an end. I am now in a position of emergency defense against your spouse's Party. These accursed anti-Semite deformities shall not sully my ideal!! Draft for a letter to his sister
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (December 1887) Nietzsche became very critical of
pan-Germanism and
nationalism after
the Prussian victory over France. Although he participated in the war as a volunteer, he soon became disillusioned by the new
German Empire, seeing the subsequent development in
German culture as vulgar and triumphalist. Instead, he praised
European identity and
integration, He deeply disliked the
Hohenzollern dynasty, especially due to their social policies accommodating the working class. In
Ecce Homo (1888), Nietzsche criticized the "German nation" and its "will to power (to Empire, to Reich)", thus underscoring an easy misinterpretation of the
Wille zur Macht, the conception of Germans as a "race", and the "anti-Semitic way of writing history", or of making "history conform to the German Empire", and stigmatized "nationalism, this
national neurosis from which Europe is sick", this "small politics". Later in his life, he even started to identify as
Polish, believing that his ancestors were
Polish noblemen who migrated to Germany (both his Polish and aristocratic ancestry claims are usually rejected by biographers; see:
Citizenship, nationality and ethnicity). Nietzsche's cosmopolitan proclamations are not without its detractors who point out that he retained a lifelong focus on German society and culture, with his last writings before insanity being about German politics. His hostile and mocking attitude towards Germany is sometimes also traced to his personal frustrations, the break-up of his friendship with Wagner and the very poor reception of his work in Germany. In
Ecce Homo, he particularly praised
French culture as superior to all others, especially German. However, his negative attitudes and national criticisms were not reserved only for Germany. In his last years, he made negative comments on cultural trends in French society and denounced many leading intellectuals of the era, such as
Victor Hugo,
George Sand,
Émile Zola, the
Goncourt brothers,
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve,
Charles Baudelaire,
Auguste Comte and
Ernest Renan. His most consistently negative attitudes were towards
England, which he described as nation of shopkeepers, philistines, moral hypocrites and puritanical Christians. Disregarding the British colonial preeminence and the ability to escape revolutionary upheavals of the Continent, which were often admired among reactionary aristocratic authors of the era, Nietzsche's ire was mostly driven by
British philosophical traditions, which he denounced as
utilitarian,
altruistic, and focused on lowly,
plebeian goals of comfort and happiness. He held the same negative attitude toward the
United States. Nietzsche was an advocate of European
colonialism, seeing it as a way to solve the overpopulation problem, pacify the rebellious working class, and rejuvenate the decadent European culture. European expansion and global domination were part of his "great politics". He noted that in colonies, Europeans often act as ruthless conquerors, unconstrained by Christian morality and democratic values, which he saw as a liberated, healthy instinct. He had even shown some initial interest in his brother-in-law's colonial project in Paraguay,
Nueva Germania, despite the huge political differences between them, and for a while in the mid-1880s also considered migrating to a Swiss colony in
Oaxaca, Mexico. He was especially interested in
climate differences, believing that Northern Europe is an unhealthy habitat which stunts cultural development; similar ideas, were also held by Wagner and many of his followers. Nietzsche titled aphorism 377 in the fifth book of
The Gay Science (published in 1887) "We who are homeless" (
Wir Heimatlosen), in which he criticized pan-Germanism and
patriotism and called himself a "good European". In the second part of this aphorism, which according to
Georges Bataille contained the most important parts of Nietzsche's political thought, the thinker of the Eternal Return stated: No, we do not love humanity; but on the other hand we are not nearly "German" enough, in the sense in which the word "German" is constantly being used nowadays, to advocate nationalism and race hatred and to be able to take pleasure in the national scabies of the heart and blood poisoning that now leads the nations of Europe to delimit and barricade themselves against each other as if it were a matter of quarantine. For that we are too open-minded, too malicious, too spoiled, also too well-informed, too "traveled": we far prefer to live on mountains, apart, "untimely", in past or future centuries, merely in order to keep ourselves from experiencing the silent rage to which we know we should be condemned as eyewitnesses of politics that are desolating the German spirit by making it vain and that is, moreover
, petty politics:—to keep its own creation from immediately falling apart again, is it not finding it necessary to plant it between two deadly hatreds?
must it not desire the eternalization of the European system of a lot of petty states? ... We who are homeless are too manifold and mixed racially and in our descent, being "modern men", and consequently do not feel tempted to participate in the mendacious racial self-admiration and racial indecency that parades in Germany today as a sign of a German way of thinking and that is doubly false and obscene among the people of the "historical sense". We are, in one word—and let this be our word of honor!—
good Europeans, the heirs of Europe, the rich, oversupplied, but also overly obligated heirs of thousands of years of European spirit: as such, we have also outgrown Christianity and are averse to it, and precisely because we have grown
out of it, because our ancestors were Christians who in their Christianity were uncompromisingly upright; for their faith they willingly sacrificed possessions and position, blood and fatherland. We—do the same. For what? For our unbelief? For every kind of unbelief? No, you know better than that, my friends! The hidden Yes in you is stronger than all Nos and Maybes that afflict you and your age like a disease; and when you have to embark on the sea, you emigrants, you, too, are compelled to this by—
a faith! ... Bataille was one of the first to denounce the deliberate misinterpretation of Nietzsche carried out by Nazis, among them
Alfred Baeumler. In January 1937, he dedicated an issue of
Acéphale, titled "Reparations to Nietzsche", to the theme "Nietzsche and the Fascists. Due to his complex views and occasionally contradictory comments on these matters, the idea of Nietzsche as a predecessor to
Nazism and
fascism remains controversial and debated among scholars (see:
Nietzsche and fascism). Owing largely to the writings of
Walter Kaufmann and French postwar philosophers, Nietzsche's reputation improved and today he usually is not linked to Nazism as he was in the past. Detractors note that authors such as
Houston Stewart Chamberlain and
Arthur de Gobineau also had complex views on matters of politics, nation and race that were incompatible with Nazi ideology on numerous points, but their influence on the Third Reich is still not dismissed as a misunderstanding.
War and military values In
Human, All Too Human, a work of his more moderate
middle period, Nietzsche wrote in a strongly pacifist vein: "The doctrine of the army as a means of self defence must be renounced just as completely as the thirst for conquest ... To disarm while being the best armed out of an elevation of sensibility - that is the means to real peace ... whereas the so-called armed peace such as now parades about in every country is a disposition to fractiousness which trusts neither itself nor its neighbour and fails to lay down its arms half out of hatred, half out of fear. Better to perish than to hate and fear, and twofold better to perish than to make oneself hated and feared - this must one day become the supreme maxim of every individual state!" And yet, Nietzsche also made numerous comments later in his career in which he renounces
pacifism, praises
war,
military values and conquests. Some of these can be read as metaphoric, but in others he refers to specific policies or military actions and commanders. Nietzsche volunteered for the
Franco-Prussian war as a medical orderly, but soon became critical of
Prussian militarism, mostly because of his disillusionment in German culture, nationalism and incipient antisemitism, thereby introducing many conflicts into his works when taken as a whole, which have thus confused those commentators who approach his works in the manner against which Nietzsche warned in 1879: "The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole" Despite his disillusionment with Prussian militarism and German nationalism Nietzsche did not renounce militarism in general. He admired Napoleon for reviving the
military spirit which he saw as defense against the decadent rule of "modern ideas", "businessmen and philistines". And in his notebooks, which were edited by his sister Elizabeth and published after his death under the title
The Will to Power, he wrote "When the instincts of a society ultimately make it give up war and renounce conquest, it is decadent: it is ripe for democracy and the rule of shopkeepers. In the majority of cases, it is true, assurances of peace are merely stupefying draughts. Thus while in private he entertained the idea of the military development of Europe contemplating
conscription, polytechnic
military education and the idea that all men of higher classes should be
reserve officers in addition to their civilian jobs., writing "The maintenance of the military State is the last means of adhering to the great tradition of the past; or, where it has been lost, to revive it. By means of it the superior or strong type of man is preserved, and all institutions and ideas which perpetuate enmity and order of rank in States, such as national feeling, protective tariffs, etc., may on that account seem justified., in those writings he chose to publish, he unambiguously denounced "The nationalistic fever ... among the Germans of today, including now the anti-French stupidity, now the anti-Jewish, now the anti-Polish...", describing war as "a comedy that conceals" via the "pathological estrangement which the insanity of nationalism has induced." He opposed the "rule of mandarins" solving conflicts through hidden machinations instead of open war, and praises aristocratic "warriors" over common "soldiers," expressing doubts about arming and training the conscripted proletarian masses, seeing them as a potential revolutionary threat. He advocated European unity over partisan nationalism, and worried that modern wars among European nations might have dysgenic effect by sacrificing too many strong, brave individuals. These many conflicting statements reflect Nietzsche's "war within" and demonstrate clearly what
Karl Jaspers called "The Vortex": Jasper's observation that in Nietzsche's works we can always find the contradiction of any given statement he makes, which shows that Nietzsche was not seeking followers to slavishly parrot his "doctrines," but rather seeking to challenge his readers to think for themselves and cultivate their own autonomy.
Views on women Nietzsche's views on women have served as a magnet for controversy, beginning during his life and continuing to the present. He frequently made remarks in his writing that some view as
misogynistic. He stated in
Twilight of the Idols (1888) "Women are considered profound. Why? Because we never fathom their depths. But women aren't even shallow." ==Relation to Schopenhauer==