Appel, Frederick. Nietzsche contra Democracy.

Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. 174 + xv. Price unavailable. Cloth.

The subject and thesis of this book are important and timely. Frederick Appel notes that there is a curious tendency on the part of postmodern theorists to enlist Nietzsche as an ally of their radically egalitarian political program. He proposes to argue that this, in terms of their own values and principles, is a serious mistake. Nietzsche is no friend of theirs. Nietzsche is at least as elitist as they are egalitarian, and this aspect of his thinking "pervades every aspect of his project" (p. 5).

Like much, though by no means all, of contemporary Nietzsche scholarship, this book is, methodologically, very unsophisticated. It proceeds, almost throughout, simply by accumulating quotations from Nietzsche and cementing them together with observations about the meaning that these individual quotations seem to have. The general effect of this method, used in so much of the secondary literature, is to create a mosaic-like picture of Nietzsche's thought. This approach has the virtue that it forces the scholar to stay fairly close to the textual evidence most of the time.

Insofar as the egalitarian Nietzscheans can be answered by means of the mosaic method, this book succeeds admirably. Many passages in Nietzsche's writings that indicate their author's anti-egalitarian stance are quoted and commented upon. Probably the greatest strength of this book lies in the fact that the author's acquaintance with the text is vast and detailed. Every passage that is relevant to his topic seems to be at his command.

However, though the mosaic method does have an obvious virtue, it also brings with it a potentially significant vice: when viewed through its constraints, the deeper logic of a text, the less-than-obvious connections between the author's ideas, becomes invisible. Yet it is this deeper logic that Appel's thesis requires him to investigate. His claim is, after all, that Nietzsche's anti-egalitarianism "pervades" all his thought. This, to be plausible, would have to be a claim about the logical implications of his ideas. Ideas about ontology or epistemology do not comment, in any direct or obvious way, on the question of which political arrangements ought to exist. His claim must be that, if I were to accept Nietzsche's ideas on these subjects, then I am, in some unforseen way, committed to rejecting political egalitarianism. This may be true - in fact, I think it is - but it can only be shown to be true by some sort of searching analysis of Nietzschean ideas that do not directly bear upon the political issue of equality. No such analysis is carried out, or in any way attempted, in this book.

As a matter of fact, Appel's main worry concerns the political implications of an idea that is actually directly political: he devotes the concluding chapter (p. 159-63) to warning egalitarian Nietzscheans that their alleged fondness for the Nietzsche's supposedly "agonistic" politics - by which Appel apparently means the idea that political struggle ought to be absolutely unconstrained - is incompatible with democratic institutions, and indeed with any institutions at all. Again, this may be true (and it certainly sounds plausible to me) but to show that it is indeed the case requires some sort of philosophical argumentation. The only sort of argument Appel gives is to attribute both agonistic and anti-democratic views to Nietzsche. This of course does not constitute evidence that there is any connection between them at all. As far as anything said in this book is concerned, egalitarian admirers of Nietzsche are still in a position to say "Yes, I find Nietzsche's anti-democratic remarks repugnant, but I choose to ignore them and pay attention to the ideas I find more congenial."

For all that I have said, it could still be true that this book tells us something interesting about the extent to which Nietzsche held such repugnant views. The author's thesis is certainly provocative enough: he holds that Nietzsche called for an authoritarian form of government, a "thousand year empire" (p. 124) in which the strong would arrogantly and mercilessly exploit the weak. However, I find the case that he makes for this startling thesis to be remarkably weak. For instance, his claim that, in the state that Nietzsche envisions, "the vast majority" of people are "regulated by stringent codes" (p. 139) is the conclusion of a lurching non sequitur. The passage on which it is based is one in which Nietzsche is describing the function that the criminal law already serves, and has always served: that of forcibly curbing the reactive sentiments (not a reactive class of people). He backs his claim that the Nietzschean elite will be "beyond the law" (p. 140) by citing a passage in which that phrase is applied, not to a group of people, but the virtue of mercy. But one must go to the cited passage in The Genealogy of Morals and read it to realize the extent to which this phrase has been wrenched out of context. The footnote that cites additional evidence for this claim (fn. 31) names three passages, two of which, the industrious reader will find, seem to constitute evidence against Appel's view that Nietzsche's heroes are to be completely unconstrained by law.

Though his general attitude toward the views he finds in Nietzsche's writings seems to be one of horror, he recommends that egalitarians ought to read them: the experience, distasteful though it may be, will force them to "account for and defend those convictions he holds in contempt" (p. 7, see also p. 167). Based only on Appel's account of those writings, however, there seems to be no reason why reading them should have this effect. Contrary views are only challenging if there is some reason to think they might be true. The challenge is to respond to an refute those reasons. Yet the reasons for Nietzsche's views are more or less omitted from this book. Faced with a array of views that are repulsive and, apparently, unsupported by evidence, the only sensible thing to do would be to ignore them and move on.
 

Lester H. Hunt

University of Wisconsin - Madison