Nietzsche and the Will to Politics
This article moves on two fronts. It continues the challenge to the belief that politics is not central to the concerns of Friedrich Nietzsche but questions attempts to transvalue Nietzsche into a democrat. With their illiberal and inegalitarian political views, Nietzsche's writings best serve democratic political theory in an antidotal way. The article discusses Nietzsche's aesthetic approach to political action and architectonic conception of politics. It also explores some of the qualities he believes future rulers would need and the mechanisms they could use to exercise and legitimate their power. Just as Nietzsche thinks of political action in aesthetic terms, so his own art has a political purpose for he envisages the formation of a social, cultural and political élite and hopes, through his writings, to galvanize this élite.