The Nietzschean Subject: Toward a Praxis of Becoming

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Based upon an attentive reading of Nietzsches writings and situated within a framework derived largely from such post-Nietzschean thinkers as Deleuze, Guattari, Klossowski, Foucault, Derrida, Negri, and Sloterdijk, this study develops a treatment of Nietzsches philosophical enterprise as constituting a materialist metaphysics of pure becoming, of pure immanence and the power of the virtual. It thus seeks to challenge traditional characterizations of Nietzsche as laying claim either to the end of metaphysics or the circular repetition of the same. The study instead argues that Nietzsches great conceptual triumvirate of the eternal return, the will to power, and the transvaluation of values be recast as invoking the groundless ground of a subjectless subject and, indeed, the repetition of difference rather than sameness. Distinguishing itself from the representational schemes set forth by the Platonic idea, the Christian God, or Hegelian reason and world-spirit, Nietzsches undertaking is here characterized, rather, as inaugurating the age of energies and establishing a generative metaphysics no longer amenable to the inner essence of the concept or the inner soul of consciousness. While the first part of the study develops the philosophical background for this reappraisal of the Nietzschean enterprise, along with an accompanying treatment of the specific problems posed by Nietzsches style and discourse, the second part of the study is directed more particularly to the historico-critical relationships between Nietzsche and his various precursors and heirs. Despite his frequent and often exorbitant to originality, Nietzsches intellectual proximity to the culture of the sophists, the Renaissance world of Machiavelli, and the poet-philosopher Hlderlin demonstrates a long-standing tendency within Western thought towards what in Nietzsches hands would eventually culminate in a counter-philosophy of pure becoming, later to be more fully realized in the writings of Nietzsches greatest and most overlooked heir of the early-twentieth century, the Viennese novelist Robert Musil. The study thus spans a line extending from the Presocratics to postmodernity, with Nietzsches great philosophical project serving as its essential fulcrum.

Reviews

Much more than a contribution to the scholarship on new or French Nietzsche, Brook Blairs reading situates Nietzsche within a milieu of philosopher-nomads and poet-thinkers, a heteroclite and motley crew of thinkers and writers of the Outside who are all united by one desire: to transform our understanding of ourselves and the world in the light of the praxis of becomings. By reading the Nietzschean subject through the prism of these multiple voices Nietzsches central doctrines, and his singular modes of expressing them, are given renewed vitality. The Nietzschean Subject is a fresh and rewarding study of Nietzsches life and work. -- Keith Robinson, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Comprised of profound philosophical thinking and lyrical prose, Brook Blairs The Nietzschean Subject is a must read, not only for readers interested in a fresh angle of vision on Nietzsches contributions to political thinking but also for those interested in critical political thinking in general. It is a text full of intellectual contributions that will endure. -- Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawai'i, Manoa

Author Bio

Brook M. Blair is professor of political science and international affairs at the University of Northern Colorado.