BOOK REVIEWS 177

It might have been more efficient to concentrate on the context of Kant's critique of
knowledge instead of the historical surroundings. H e i d e m a n n ' s a r g u m e n t s do n o t
profit from the historical illustrations. The change that took place in Kant's thinking
after the 'G6ttingen Review' was evidenced by a shift of emphasis from the ' n o u m e n a l '
to the 'phenomenal.' It coincided with his intensified development of a pure moral
theory. This dynamic gave a new value to the theoretical problem of idealism. To
u n d e r s t a n d Kant's refutations of idealism would therefore require a discussion of the
development of Kant's entire philosophy after 178"~.
K O N S T A N T I N POLLOK
Philipps-Universitdt Marburg

Daniel W. Conway. Nietzsche and the Political L o n d o n : Routledge, 1997. Pp. xii + 163.
Cloth, $65 . Paper, $16.95.

This brief b u t stimulating work is a vigorous effort to defend the importance of Nietz-
sche as a "political" thinker. I n order to make this case, Conway has to fight on two
fronts: simultaneously rebutting the views of the m a n y c o n t e m p o r a r y interpreters who
argue that Nietzsche is either an anti-political philosopher or else a distinctively inferior
political thinker, while also reclaiming Nietzsche's political t h o u g h t from the race-
theorists a n d Nazis who so successfully appropriated it earlier in this century. Conway
is victorious on both fronts, a n d makes a compelling case for the contemporary rele-
vance of Nietzsche's thoughts on the broad topics of "culture" and "education." This, of
course, by no means exhausts the realm of the "political," and Conway has little or
nothing to say about Nietzsche's views on such topics as the state, justice, legality, etc.
Instead, he is concerned with what Nietzsche himself called "great politics." For this
reason, the book is concerned almost exclusively with Nietzsche's later writings, focus-
ing primarily u p o n the writings of 1886-88, while generally ignoring the Nachlass
altogether.
Chapter 1 ("Political Perfectionism") deals with Nietzsche's conception of the f u n d a -
mental task of politics: namely, to facilitate h u m a n k i n d ' s endless quest for "perfection,"
a quest that alone justifies h u m a n existence. Since Nietzsche associated the perfection
of the species with the appearance of the rarest a n d most exotic individual specimens, it
follows that the specific task of political activity is "to legislate the conditions u n d e r
which such exemplars will most likely emerge." It is within the context of this "political"
ideal that Conway offers his own, ingenious and controversial interpretation of
Zarathustra's teaching c o n c e r n i n g the Ubermensch.
The relationship between Nietzsche's perfectionism a n d his moral pluralism is the
subject of Chapter 2 ("On the Uses and Disadvantages of Morality for Life"). Here
Conway offers a thoughtful comparison between Nietzsche himself and some of his
"models," such as Caesar, Napoleon, and the Laws of Manu, a n d takes advantage of this
comparison in order to introduce Nietzsche's crucial--albeit extremely p r o b l e m a t i c - -
notions of the "order of rank" and "pathos of distance." Chapter 3 ("Perfectionism in the
178 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY o r PHILOSOPHY 3 7 : x JANUARY x 9 9 9

Twilight o f the Idols") is devoted to Nietzsche's "critique of modernity." H e r e Conway

offers his own "political" interpretation of Nietzsche's withdrawal from the "political
m a c r o s p h e r e " of his own age and retreat into the "political microsphere" of his personal
life and literary/cultural projects, including his various "educational" schemes. A certain
ambiguity in the overall conception of this book becomes a p p a r e n t at this point, how-
ever, inasmuch as Conway finds himself simultaneously distinguishing between Nietz-
sche's "moral" and "political" perfectionism, while continuing to insist u p o n the larger
"political" significance of the f o r m e r - - e v e n while conceding that, for Nietzsche himself,
political perfection was a mere meansfor moral perfection. Chapter 4 ("Regimens o f Self-
Overcoming") contains a detailed account o f the necessary antagonism between the
("untimely") Nietzschean p h il o s o p h e r and his own age and an insightful discussion of
what Conway calls "the aversive m e c h a n is m o f self-overcoming" (69). Conway's discus-
sion of the link between Nietzschean perfectionism and the adoption of multiple per-
spectives ("experimentalism") is one the clearest and best in the literature. Nietzsche's
own self-experiments and his u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f the same as "signs" for others are dis-
cussed in C h ap t e r 5 ("The Philosopher's Versucherkunst"). Like o t h er recent interpreters,
Conway calls attention to the essential role o f erotic love in Nietzsche's conception of the
process of experimental self-education and to the way in which eros links purely individ-
ual goals to larger cultural and educational ones. T h e chapter concludes with an admira-
ble account of how Nietzsche was able to harness and to employ his own r e s e n t m e n t as an
i n s t r u m e n t of self-overcoming. This theme is c on t i n u ed in C h a p t e r 6 ("Comedians of the
Ascetic Ideal"), which tries to show how Nietzsche sought to safeguard the crippled will
in an unpropitious era, not by rejecting the ascetic ideal, but by employing it in a new
way. This is perhaps Conway's most original and valuable insight: his clear recognition of
the essential ambiguity of Nietzsche's own attitude toward the ascetic ideal and his aware-
ness of his inability to free himself thereof. T h e concluding chapter ("Nietzsche's Politi-
cal Legacy") comes as something of an anticlimax. H e r e Conway discusses the rela-
tionship of Nietzsche's "political" project to contemporary thinkers and movements.
Unfortunately, his c o m m e n t s on many o f these figures all too often beg some of the
relevant questions.
This is an original and important book. T h o u g h deeply e m b e d d e d in the terminol-
ogy and tradition of postmodernist interpretation (while also owing a large debt to
Cavell's view of Nietzsche as an "adversive thinker"), it will nevertheless be of great
interest to all serious readers of Nietzsche. N o t only is it a pleasure to read, but it takes
Nietzsche seriously and in his own terms. Conway never shies away from posing and
from trying to answer the deepest and hardest questions raised by Nietzsche's life and
works: W h a t was he really trying to accomplish? What is the m ean i n g of his "im-
moralism"? H o w can anyone presume to "legislate values"? Did Nietzsche avoid the
very decadence for which he indicted his own era? Are his writings best viewed as a
symptom of or as an solution to the latter? In short, it is precisely the kind of "Nietzsche
book" that Nietzsche himself might have best appreciated.
DANIEL BREAZEALE
Universit~ of Kentucky