democracy – Fractal Ontology

All posts filed under: democracy

Nietzsche and the Capture and Domestication of Peoples

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

“You shall obey—someone and for a long time: else you will perish and lose the last respect for yourself”—this appears to me to be the moral imperative of nature which, to be sure, is neither “categorical” as the old Kant would have it (hence the “else”) nor addressed to the individual (what do individuals matter to her?), but to peoples, races, ages, classes—but above all to the whole human animal, to man (Beyond Good […]

Nietzsche’s Glance at the State: Socialism, Nationalism, Universalism

Thursday, September 13, 2007

by Taylor Adkins

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democracy / justice / nationalism / Nietzsche / socialism / universal politics / utopia

In January of 1872, less than a year after Germany officially becomes a nation, Nietzsche gives a series of five lectures at the University of Basel on the future of our educational/cultural institutions. Six years later in section 8 of Human All Too Human we find Nietzsche discussing the future of political institutions and the fate of European nations. One of the questions that Nietzsche asks in his analysis of socialism, nationalism and democracy is […]

The Slave and the God of Death

Friday, April 13, 2007

by Joseph Weissman

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crisis / democracy / freedom / idealism / imperialism

It’s so easy to act like you forget and get out of answering a difficult question, isn’t it? Politics, of course, provides innumerable and colorful examples, because most of the lying in politics is lying by omission, intentional or not. Take, for instance, white house spokesperson Tony Donahue’s response today to a reporters question regarding whether the bombing of the Iraqi parliament which killed three Iraqi MPs represented a failure of current security operations: “The […]

The Peace of Belief

Friday, April 6, 2007

by Joseph Weissman

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belief / democracy / jouissance / pedagogy / truth / unfreedom

Freedom of belief is of central and obvious importance to a democratic community. Of course, beliefs are already quite problematic to the generation of a common public space. The twin “literal” issues surrounding the epistemological question, those of the expression and interpretation of beliefs, underscore the emergence of subjectivity in all political praxis, and in the broad sense, the critical self-questioning encountered in the everyday face-to-face encounter. As a brief example, what if the other’s […]