The Southern Journal of Philosophy (1999) Vol.

XXXVII, Supplement

The Politics of Decadence

Daniel W. Conway
The Pennsylvania State University

I am, in questions of decadence,the highest authority

on earth.
-Letter to Malwida von Meysenbug on
18 October 1888.
Nothing has preoccupied me more profoundly than
the problem of decadence-Z had reasons. (CWP)
Whoever fights monsters should see to it t h a t i n
t h e process h e does not become a monster. And
when you look long into a n abyss, the abyss also
looks into you. (BGE 146)

I. INTRODUCTION
On the topic of Nietzsche and Politics, there seems to be
so much to say. Nietzsche is widely regarded as a trenchant
critic of democracy, liberalism, egalitarianism, abstract rights,
and various other hallmarks of modern political philosophy. He
is also a n expert debunker a n d a fearless iconoclast, who
continued, in his own perverse way, the de-mystifying project
of t h e Enlightenment. In t h e eyes of many readers, he is a
powerful ally in virtually any skirmish with established
authority. Even unsympathetic readers are often eager to harness
his explosive power to serve their own, anti-Nietzschean ends.2
Nietzsche is also the author of several beguiling teachings,
which h i s readers have deemed pregnant with political
promise. There is, for example, t h e teaching of t h e
Ubermensch, the superman whom Zarathustra heralds as the
meaning of the earth, who might yet lead humankind from
its protracted nonage to full maturity as a species. There is
also his enigmatic teaching of eternal recurrence, which some
r e a d e r s have appropriated as t h e impetus for secular
redemption, cultural reform, and even political revolution.
There is also t h e teaching of t h e will to power, which is
believed by some readers to secure the ontological ground from
which Realpolitik might finally proceed, unencumbered by the

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Daniel W. Conway

childish prejudices of folk psychology and humanistic morality.

Finally, there is Nietzsches intimation of a revaluation of all
values, which will break history in two and free humankind
at last from the antiaffective animus of Christian morality.
Why is it, then, that there often seems to be so little to say on
the topic of Nietzsche and Politics? Understandably wary of
philosophical system-building, he conveys his political insights
via lightning epigrams and apothegmatic proclamations,
generally ignoring the quaint Alexandrian custom of furnishing
evidence, arguments, and justifications. Unlike Plato, Aristotle,
Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, Wollstonecraft, Hegel,
Berlin, and Rawls, among others, Nietzsche never advanced a
fully-articulated political theory; nor did he deliver a single
comprehensive treatise t h a t he intended to convey and
disseminate his political teachings. This does not mean, of course,
that he has nothing to say about politics. What it does mean,
however, is that any attention to his political thinking involves
one in a complicated and delicate philological endeavor. Indeed,
any attempt to extract his political philosophy from assorted
passages mined from his various books and notes implicates his
readers in a speculative enterprise that could easily lead well
beyond anything he actually says.
But the problem of Nietzsche and the political can not be
traced solely to Nietzsches writerly idiosyncrasies. His
contributions to politics, a n d to political philosophy, a r e
notoriously difficult to reckon. He not only stands in defiant
opposition to the general political trends of modernity, but also
refuses the scientific methodologies preferred by his contemporaries. Foreseeing t h e cultural leveling t h a t a t t e n d s t h e
ascendancy of democratic reforms, liberal ideals, and abstract
rights, Nietzsche stumped for aristocracy, elitism, privilege,
a n d a general preservation of w h a t h e calls t h e order of
rank. Indeed, despite his unmistakably modern orientation
a n d concerns, h e often seems to belong to a n o t h e r e r a
altogether, a n era in which manly warriors would test themselves in mutually-elevating contests of will and strength, a n
e r a i n which t h e resources of a n e n t i r e culture could be
directed without apology t o the production of a n elite vanguard of exemplary human specimens.
T h e r e is also widespread consensus t h a t Nietzsches
contributions to political philosophy are exclusively negative:
He can destroy, but he cannot create. Apart from the probing
criticisms h e levels against t h e basic principles of modern
democracy and liberalism, a distinctly Nietzschean political
theory is difficult to specify. The clarity of his critique of
nineteenth-century politics quickly dissolves t o the cloudiness
of his vision for the future. When he does attempt t o articulate
something resembling a political vision for t h e f u t u r e of
humankind, he tends to favor lofty ideas that he never quite

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The Politics of Decadence

tethers to concrete anchorage. In fact, he never manages to

articulate in any detail the celebrated teachings with which he
is now most closely associated. The Ujberrnensch, e t e r n a l
recurrence, will to power, t h e revaluation of all values-all
more closely resemble political slogans than political theories.
Indeed, when one considers t h e myriad limitations of
Nietzsches political thinking, one is perhaps persuaded by
Alasdair MacIntyres decree that the oberrnensch ... belong[sl
in the pages of a philosophical bestiary rather than in serious
discu~sion.~
Onward, then, into the bestiary!

11. NIETZSCHE CONTRA ZARATHUSTRA:

THE SELF-REFERENTIAL TURNING
This is not to say, however, t h a t Nietzsche offers us no
assistance in our contemporary explorations of the political.
Such t h i n k e r s as Heidegger, Bataille, Foucault, Deleuze,
Blanchot, and Derrida all unfold the political articulations of
t h e i r thinking through a p e r t u r e s originally opened by
Nietzsche. The problem of Nietzsche and the political is rather
more complex, and difficult to address directly, for he often
closes the doors that he has so audaciously opened for us. That
is, we often have strong Nietzschean reasons for not pursuing
t h e various political alternatives t h a t a r e explored i n his
name. A tension within t h e economy of his own evolving
project places his political thinking on a collision course with
his emerging critique of modernity.
This endogenous tension is perhaps a t t r i b u t a b l e to a
number of causes, b u t it is most clearly t h e product of a
fundamental development within the historical development of
his thought. What I have in mind here is the unprecedented
event of his philosophy turning back upon itself, whereupon it
summons itself as the focal point of a n ongoing confrontation
with modernity. This self-referential turning intersects the
twin economies of Nietzsches life and thought i n the postZarathustran period of his career, comprising the period 18851888, and it governs the development of his political thinking
throughout this period. This turning is precipitated, or so I
claim, by Nietzsches growing a t t u n e m e n t to t h e selfreferential reverberations of his original confrontation with
modernity, which h e advanced i n such early works as The
Birth of Tragedy (1872). This original confrontation, he slowly
comes t o understand, was prosecuted under a number of
methodological assumptions t h a t h e now has good reason to
reject. To t a k e one example: The grand, integrated musicdrama of Richard Wagner is not likely to reanimate the tragic
muse, for Wagner himself is representative of t h e general

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Daniel W. Conway
cultural malaise that the young professor Nietzsche was eager
to treat. This of course means that Nietzsche, who originally
hoped to abet Wagner as a kind of sorcerers apprentice in the
rejuvenation of tragic culture, is also implicated i n the
mysterious sclerotic affliction that has crippled the sustaining
institutions of Western European culture. The turning in
Nietzsches thought thus leads him to intensify, rather than t o
abandon, his conviction t h a t modernity stands in crisis; if
anything, his original confrontation with modernity underestimated the scope and magnitude of this crisis.
In an operation constitutive of the self-referential turning
in his thought, Nietzsche calls himself to order. In his 1886
Attempt at a Self-criticism, which he appends as a Preface
t o the new edition of The Birth of Tragedy, he ruthlessly
exposes the complicity of The Birth of Tragedy in the romantic
pessimism it ostensibly sought to combat. In a passage that
his enemies might have envied for its biting sarcasm,
Nietzsche asks himself:
But, my dear sir, what in the world is romantic if your book is
not? Can deep hatred against the Now, against realityand
modern ideas be pushed further than you pushed it in your
artists metaphysics? believing sooner in the Nothing, sooner in
the devil than in the Now? ... Is your pessimists book not itself a piece of anti-Hellenism and romanticism? (BTP7)

As this interrogative passage perhaps suggests, Nietzsche now

realizes that his youthful desire t o orchestrate a rebirth of
tragic culture actually manifests the cultural crisis he had
naively presumed to diagnose. The guiding conviction that
modernity stands in need of redemption, that its goals and
accomplishments fall short of some shadowy trans-historical
standard of cultural health, is itself symptomatic of the facile
moralizing that he now associates with the crisis of modernity.
Nietzsche publicly announces this turning in 1886, in the
retrospective prefaces that he appends to his pre-Zarathustran
books.* But the turning seems t o have commenced a year or so
earlier. Having gained some welcome critical distance from his
beloved Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he resolved late in 1884 t o
add a fourth, self-parodic installment t o his masterpiece,
which he had proclaimed complete in tripartite form only one
year earlier. The period 1885-1888 thus falls in the shadow of
the failure of the tripartite Zarathustra and of Nietzsches
recognition of this failure. Indeed, his decision t o pen a fourth
installment to Zarathustra was prompted in part by his
realization that the failure of the tripartite Zaruthustra, like
the book itself, is strongly and inadvertently autobioit turns out, is not the only one who
g r a p h i ~ a l Zarathustra,
.~
has ugone under.
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The Politics of Decadence

Nietzsches turning both authorizes and enacts the critical
project that informs the post-Zarathustran period of his career.
Rather than attempt t o distance himself from the crisis of
modernity, or to exempt himself from its totalizing sprawl, he
now attempts t o situate himself squarely within his revised
diagnosis of modernity. The trajectory of his post-Zarathustran
philosophizing thus describes a turning inward, as he attempts
to articulate an immanent critique of modernity, a critique that is
self-consciouslyself-referential in scope and application.
Nietzsches philosophy thus becomes overtly and directly
political only when he resolves t o read himself into his own
critique of modernity. It is precisely his complicated role in the
crisis of his age that eluded his original confrontation with
modernity. In order to take the full measure of modernity (and
thus bring to completion his revised critical project), he must
either assay his own share in modernity or prepare others to do
so for him. By dint of the self-referential immersion required by
his turning, he thus comes to assume a dual relationship to the
disintegrating epoch of late modernity: He is not only its faithful
chronicler, but its representative exemplar as well. Throughout
the post-Zarathustran period of his thought, he operates
simultaneously as subject and object, physician and patient,
inquisitor and defendant, analyst and analysand.
Nietzsches turning articulates itself along a number of
intersecting planes and vectors, but I will follow one in
particular-not only because of its importance for our topic today,
but also because it places his political thinking in such sharp
contrast to the inspirational, exhortatory teachings of that selfrighteous buffoon, Zarathustra. Indeed, one way of appreciating
the operation of this turning in Nietzsches thought is to regard
it as an enactment of his struggle to distance himself from the
naive voluntarism of his son,Zarathustra. Rather than vow to
kill the primal father, a gambit that backfired embarrassingly in
ZaffaireWagner, Nietzsche designs for his upstart son a final
Untergang. He thereby regains control of the direction of his
philosophical project, but only at the expense of the considerable
authority of his most famous spokesman and advocate. In Ecce
Homo he goes so far as to correct Zarathustras teaching of the
Ubermensch (EH Books 1;Destiny 5 ) , thereby implying the
inadequacy of Zarathustras orotund pedagogy.j In the period
marked by this turning, the period 1885-1888,we thus witness a
compelling, self-referential subtext: Nietzsche contra Zarathustra.

111. DECADENCE: THE DEFINING

CHARACTER OF LATE MODERNITY
Nietzsches immanent critique of modernity almost immediately pays handsome dividends. Now fully immersed in the

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epoch in which he labors, he discovers what he takes t o be its

defining character: Late modernity is marked as an epoch by its
besetting decadence. It is not simply the case, as Zarathustra
lamented, that decadent individuals and institutions are littered
across the landscape of late modernity. Decadence actually
suffuses the epoch itself, independent of the individuals and
institutions that Zarathustra so famously lampoons. We might
say, then, that decadence enframes late modernity, imbuing the
epoch with a n identity and character all its own, while
simultaneously circumscribing the domain of human praxis. This
means t h a t individuals who toil in the twilight of the idols
naturally inherit as their own the decadence that defines the
epoch they involuntarily represent. As such, the decadence of late
modernity is both inescapable and ineluctable. For this reason, in
fact, Nietzsche can no longer avail himself of his notorious
elitism. In matters of decadence, there is no us us. them, as
Zarathustra wishfully taught. There is only an us, and this us
is inexorably expending its residual stores of vitality.
What then does Nietzsche mean by decadence? He apparently
borrows the term from the French psychologist Paul Bourget,
whose writings he openly admired. Nietzsche typically uses the
French word itself, attempting neither a German translation nor
a philosophical redaction of it. The term enters his philosophical
vocabulary only very late in his career, appearing exclusively in
the writings from 1888.7While it is true that he employed
related terms-such as Entartung, Niedergang, and Verfallthroughout his career to describe the general cultural malaise
that gripped European culture, none of these other terms was
applied so forcefully and self-consciously to Nietzsche himself.
For this reason, in fact, the term decadence acquires a quasitechnical s t a t u s within t h e critical apparatus of his postZarathustran writings. Decadence thus serves as the central
category of Nietzsches confrontation with modernity in t h e
writings from 1888, and its centrality confirms the consolidation
of his post-Zarathustran critical method.
Nietzsche deploys the term decadence not merely as a
metaphor for degeneration and decline. He means to describe a
condition of systemic physiological disarray, which he apparently
believes is subject to empirical diagnosis and verification; indeed,
he occasionally refers to a mysterious dynamometer t h a t he
claims can be used to measure the native vitality of an organism
(TISkirmishes 20). This condition of physiological disarray is
itself described as a manifestation of a more basic disintegration
of a n organisms prevailing system of instincts, which, according
to Nietzsche, provide guidance and direction i n the form of
prereflective patterns of behavior. The instincts characteristic of
a particular people or epoch thus reflect a specific organization of
the primal drives and impulses, such t h a t these drives and
impulses discharge themselves in accordance with the dominant
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The Politics of Decadence

mores of the people or epoch in question. As a regnant instinct

system disintegrates, thereby signaling the decadence of a people
or epoch, human beings begin to live quite badly, invariably
choosing to engage in behaviors that are contradictory, counterproductive, a n d self-destructive. Nietzsche t h u s defines
decadence as the instinctive preference for what disintegrates, what hastens the end (TZ Skirmishes 39).
Although his pronouncements on decadence often reflect
his passing acquaintance with the popular pseudo-sciences of
the day, he also offers descriptions of decadence that we may
appreciate independent of the suspect etiologies on which he
relies. For example, he regularly characterizes decadence as a
systemic exhaustion or weakness of will, which he traces to a n
inherited (and growing) disparity between the cognitive and
volitional resources at the disposal of representative agents.
Decadents typically know what is wrong with them, but a r e
unable to implement corrective measures. They become, as i t
were, mere spectators i n t h e i r own lives, mere actors i n a
d r a m a whose unknown a u t h o r h a s scripted for them a n
ignominious role that they are powerless to decline. As decadence runs its inexorable course, human beings experience the
need for ever more exotic and bizarre goals to stimulate their
weakened wills. Indeed, Nietzsche fears t h a t t h e will to
nothingness, the will never to will again, has recently darkened
the horizon of late modernity. The will to nothingness represents
t h e final will of a declining people o r epoch, as decadent
human beings embrace self-annihilation as the sole remaining
goal capable of stimulating their enfeebled wills.
This putative insight into t h e enframing character of
decadence has far-ranging implications for Nietzsches political
thinking. For example, he explains, we late moderns are not free
to defy the character of our epoch; the decadence that defines us
is both nonnegotiable and intractable. Even Nietzsche himself is
decadent, as he cheerfully announces in both Ecce Homo and The
Case of Wagner. It is consequently impossible in late modernity to
found or to resurrect political regimes that embody a genuine
alternative to decadence. Whatever political regimes emerge in
the twilight of the idols must reflect the diminished vitality that
is characteristic of the epoch. Nietzsche thus submits that the
crisis of modernity admits of no political solution:
All our political theories and constitutions-and the German
Reich is by no means an exception-are consequences, necessary consequences, of decline. (TI Skirmishes 37)

Although his contempt for Bismarcks Reich is indisputable,

h e nowhere indicates t h a t a viable alternative is e i t h e r
available o r attainable; indeed, a n y political reaction o r
response to t h e Reich would be equally expressive of t h e
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Daniel W. Conway

enframing decadence of modernity. We must consequently

abandon any hope t h a t we might somehow stem (much less
reverse) the rising tide of decadence:
I t is a self-deception on the part of philosophers and moralists
if they believe that they are extricating themselves from decadence when they merely wage war against it. Extrication lies
beyond their strength _..they change its expression, but they do
not get rid of decadence itself. (TI Socrates 11Y

Nietzsche criticizes the various political schemes of late

modernity not because h e is fundamentally apolitical, b u t
because they all trade on a common confusion of t h e causes
and effects of cultural reform. These bankrupt redemptive
schemes-including his own youthful call for a r e b i r t h of
tragic culture-all presuppose a vitality t h a t is simply
incompatible with the decadence of late modernity:
The whole of the West no longer possesses the instincts out of
which institutions grow, out of which a future grows: perhaps
nothing antagonizes its modern spirit so much. One lives for
the day, one lives very fast, one lives very irresponsibly: precisely this is called freedom. That which makes a n institution
a n institution is despised, hated, repudiated: one fears the danger of a new slavery the moment the word authority is even
spoken out loud. This is how far decadence has advanced in the
value-instincts of our politicians, of our political parties: i n stinctively they prefer what disintegrates, what hastens t h e
end. (TISkirmishes 39)

As if this diagnosis were not sufficiently indicative of t h e

political impotence of the European cultures of late modernity,
Nietzsche elsewhere conveys h i s evaluation i n even more
candid terms:
To say i t briefly (for a long time people will still keep silent
about it): What will not be built any more henceforth, and cannot be built any more, is-a society [Gesellschaftl in the old
sense of t h a t word; to build that, everything is lacking, above
all the material. All of us are no longer material for a society.
(GS 356)

This account of the enframing character of decadence does

not e x h a u s t t h e insights t h a t Nietzsche gleans from h i s
immanent critique of modernity. The story gets much better, or
much worse, depending on your perspective. Nietzsches
immanent critique of modernity also reveals to him that every
historical epoch possesses its own defining character, which
vigilant critics can discern through careful empirical scrutiny

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The Politics of Decadence

of its organizing principles. This claim supports the common

interpretation of Nietzsche as a historicist, for he apparently
means to attribute to each age a unique character, validity, and
integrity all its own. Any age can therefore be described and
evaluated as a unitary phenomenon, independent of the individuals and events who come t o represent it. Indeed, only by
appealing t o the defining character of the age can Nietzsche
speak meaningfully of the ascendancy or descendancy, the
flourishing and the passing, of an historical epoch.
Even more controversially, however, Nietzsches immanent
critique of modernity reveals t o him that all historical epochs
are nested in a single continuum of unbroken fatality. S o
although each successive epoch boasts its own unique
character, the precise character that it possesses is not legislated by the individuals who labor within its environs. Indeed,
the precise character of any epoch is determined by the
character of the epochs t h a t preceded it. This is why a
decadent epoch must follow a healthy epoch, why a period
of contraction and dissolution must follow a period of
expansion and consolidation. Thus we see that decadence is
not only the defining character of late modernity, but its
enframing destiny as well, prefigured in the traditions and
cultures that lead into it. The decadence of late modernity is
therefore what Nietzsche calls a fatality: It is accidental
neither in its particular, totalizing character nor in its nested
placement within the larger totality of Western history. To live
within a particular historical epoch is therefore t o inherit its
defining character as the stamp of ones own soul, complete
with its attendant complement of freedoms and delimitations.
Indeed, t o live within a particular historical epoch is t o enact,
involuntarily, the fatality of the age itself.
This insight into the fatality of late modernity within the
continuum of Western history thus leads Nietzsche to sketch a
surprisingly robust critique of individual agency:
The single one, the individual, as hitherto understood by the
people and the philosophers alike, is an error after all: he is
nothing by himself, no atom, no link in the chain, nothing
merely inherited from former times; he is the whole single line
of humanity up to himself. (TISkirmishes 33)

In light of the critique of individual agency that emerges

from the writings of 1888, it is perhaps not surprising that
Nietzsche concludes his philosophical career as an unlikely
champion of fatalism. Now decamped 180 degrees from the
radical voluntarism of the downbound Zarathustra, he decrees:
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that
one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward,

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Daniel W. Conway
not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less
conceal it-all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is
necessary-but love it. (EH Clever 10)
Indeed, when Nietzsche identifies himself in Ecce Homo as a
destiny, he is not only congratulating himself for his singular
accomplishments; he is also conveying the scope of his newlyembraced fatalism.

IV.NIETZSCHE CONTRA NIETZSCHE:

COLLISION AND IMPLOSION
What then remains of the political? What is Nietzsches
response to decadence, understood now as the inescapable,
enframing character of the epoch within which he labors? We
now know that we late moderns are not free to defy the totality
that defines us. But what are we free to do and to become?
At this point Nietzsches continued influence reveals itself
as distinctly and undecidably ambiguous. Although he depicts
the enframed space of the political as no longer determined by
traditional philosophical categories, he also deems this space
of containment to be largely unworthy of extended exploration.
All t h a t we a r e free to do i n late modernity is to enact our
ineluctable historical destiny as decadent epigones. Any
attempt t o distinguish between various modes of enactment
(save Nietzsches own), would be idle a n d academic. We
therefore have no choice but to continue our headlong slide
into degeneration:
Nothing avails: one must go forward-step by step further into
decadence (that is my definition of modern progress).One can
check this development and thus dam up degeneration, gather
it and make it more vehement and sudden: one can do no more.

(TISkirmishes43)
To be s u r e , t h i s i s not Nietzsche a t his best. Here h e
indulges in exactly the sort of facile moralizing for which he
ridicules other philosophers. In fact, the overripe conclusion of
his immanent critique is precisely what his general diagnosis
would predict of any decadent: His weakness for summary
moral evaluations compromises his insight into the nature of
the political in late modernity. In the very gesture of disclosing
to u s t h e undiscovered country of politics, h e also, a n d
involuntarily, presents this undiscovered country as already
charted and mapped-that is, as already discovered-by him.
He apparently cannot abide prospective explorers who dispute
t h e authority of his own cartography. I n Deleuzian terminology, Nietzsches welcome deterritorialization of the space of
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The Politics of Decadence

the political is compromised by a simultaneous reterritorialization of this space. In debunking the traditional concepts of
agency, will, subjectivity, causality, freedom, and responsibility, he
liberates the space of the political from the enduring thrall of its
enabling metaphysics of morals. However, he presents these
textbook debunkings within the context of a doomsday metanarrative that mitigates their liberatory promise.
This may not be Nietzsche at his best, but it is Nietzsche at
h i s most real, his most complex, a n d his most authentic.
Indeed, here we see t h a t Nietzsche fully reflects the defining
character of late modernity. In fact, the further he strays from
his historically specific analysis of late modernity, the more
dramatically he enacts the decadent character of the epoch as
a whole. J u s t as h e would predict of any decadent, h e is
ultimately not equal to his own greatest insights; he lacks the
strength of will to undertake a serious investigation of the
historically-specific political space t h a t h e h a s disclosed.
Instead, h e issues a meta-narrative jeremiad t h a t explains
why any such investigation is largely pointless. We might
therefore view Nietzsches involuntary manifestation of
decadence as the opportunity cost of his project of immanent
critique. He has stared long into the abyss of decadence, and
t h e abyss h a s r e t u r n e d his gaze. He now exemplifies t h e
decadence he diagnoses, and it now contaminates his political
thinking. Could we have realistically expected a n y other
conclusion to his reckless experiment in immanent critique?
If we are to make the most of Nietzsches genius, then we
would do well to acknowledge his immersion in the decadence
of his epoch a n d t h e effects of t h i s immersion on h i s
subsequent political thinking. As we have seen, he discloses
the space of the political as already enframed i n a way t h a t
allows us to re-think the basic concepts on which the political
h a s traditionally rested. I n t h e process of advancing t h i s
insight, however, h e embeds it within a n antecedently
moralized interpretation. He presents the frame of decadence
as a kind of suffocating cage, i n which a once noble beast
endures its final, wretched days. Although he invites u s to
explore the space of containment sheltered beneath the frame
of decadence in late modernity, h e also assures u s t h a t any
such exploration will reveal only a cramped stage, whereupon
we might dance i n our chains if we are so pathetic as t o
wish. At i t s best, t h a t is, l a t e modernity h a s come to
resemble a satyr-play.

V. RESISTANCE AND POLITICS

In the time remaining, I wish to suggest a partial recuperation of Nietzsches decadence. This interpretation turns on

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Daniel W. Conway
my attempt to interpret his greatest perceived success as a n
unappreciated failure, and his greatest perceived failure as an
unappreciated success. As we have seen, h i s Promethean
moment of insight, wherein he spies the undiscovered country
of politics, also marks a titanic performance of his decadence.
He cannot simply disclose the space of t h e political i n late
modernity. He must do so in such a way t h a t reflects his own
prereflective colonization of that space-hence his dismissive
claims about the promise of politics in late modernity. Under
the terms of his own diagnosis, however, this means t h a t we
must now distrust Nietzsche and treat his own philosophy as
symptomatic of decay. Before we read Nietzsche a g a i n s t
Nietzsche i n t h i s way, however, a caveat is i n order. My
attempt to articulate a partial recuperation of his decadence
presupposes my own placement within the ruined labyrinth of
his diagnosis of modernity. Any decadence-induced deformations t h a t are held to compromise his diagnosis must also be
presumed to vitiate my own critical standpoint.
Having placed Nietzsche under suspicion, we can still make
use of him-no longer as a guide, perhaps, but as a n example.
For although he manifests the decadence of the epoch that he
represents, h e has prepared u s for this eventuality. He not
only enables his readers to detect his expressions of decadence,
b u t also t r a i n s them i n t h e symptomatological method of
criticism that he practices. He thus furnishes the psychological
insights, rhetorical strategies, a n d historical case studies
needed for his readers to subject him to the categories of his
own critique. Within the context of his revised critical project,
his pronouncement of his own decadence thus functions as a
gesture of provocation, as a n invitation to read Nietzsche
against Nietzsche. Unlike other critics of modernity, that is, he
actually dares his readers to extract from him the personal
confession and unconscious memoir t h a t he involuntarily
essays. In so doing, his readers continue the self-referential
turning begun by Nietzsche, taking up his project of immanent
critique at the point where he himself can no longer bear its
self-referential scrutiny.
As a n example of t h i s sort of strategy, l e t us briefly
examine Nietzsches own account of his heroic struggle with
the decadence t h a t characterizes late modernity. As we have
already seen, he candidly owns his share in the decadence that
enframes late modernity. But this is not the end of the story.
The precise n a t u r e of his complicity i n fact illuminates t h e
dimension of p r a x i s t h a t remains available to him. He thus
explains,
I a m , no less than Wagner, a child of his time; that is, a
decadent. But I comprehended this, I resisted it. The philosopher in me resisted. (CW P)

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The Politics of Decadence

Nietzsche speaks here specifically of resisting the influence
of Wagner, b u t his general point obtains for all prevailing
expressions of decadence. Decadence can neither be reversed
nor arrested, b u t it can be resisted by those i n whom the
philosopher productively resides. He t h u s explains in Ecce
Homo that although he is a decadent, he is also the opposite
[Gegensatz]of a decadent, a n opposition to which h e a t t r i butes his a b u n d a n t wisdom ( E H Wise 2). Owing to his
opposition to decadence, h e is at the same time a decadent
a n d a beginning ( E H Wise 11, which suggests t h a t a
decadence t u r n e d a g a i n s t itself might yield productive
consequences. Indeed, he describes his decadence as something
he can use as an energetic stimulus for life, for living more
(EH Wise 2).
These a r e encouraging words, for they suggest that t h e
decadent frame of late modernity allows sufficient latitude to
enact a practical, political response. Indeed, despite t h e
withering critique of agency t h a t emerges from Nietzsches
confrontation with modernity, a critique which reduces all
other agents to a bundle of u n t r e a t a b l e symptoms a n d
incurable pathologies, h e reserves for himself a minimal
domain of praxis, wherein he might strategically manifest his
decadence for the benefit of those who will follow.
But these are also discouraging words, for they reflect the
delusions of grandeur t h a t now afflict Nietzsche, and which
are telltale symptoms of his decadence. In his writings from
1888, h e regularly exempts himself from his otherwise
prepotent critique of agency, arrogating to himself sufficient
agency and vitality to break history in two (EH Destiny 8).
He presents himself as inaugurating an era of great politics
(EH Destiny 11, even as his critique of modernity suggests
that politics may be a bankrupt enterprise. Indeed, even as he
exposes the fait accompli of the demise of Western civilization,
h e nevertheless aspires to choreograph the satyr-play t h a t
unfolds around him. We know about the decadent Nietzsche
t h a t he must remain the center of history, even in the event
that h e reduces history to a series of epochs whose sequential
procession rehearses a preestablished, descensional trajectory.
We need not conclude, however, that a politics of resistance
is therefore hopeless. Indeed, this branch of Nietzsches legacy
is productively explored i n their various ways by Heidegger,
Camus, Bataille, Foucault, Deleuze, Blanchot, Derrida, and a
number of other influential scholars. We learn from these
thinkers that a politics of resistance remains productive only
as a work in progress-only so long, that is, as we or others on
our behalf are able to resist the all-too-human impulse toward
simultaneous reterritorialization.
B u t a p a r t from t h e viability of pursuing a politics of
resistance along these more familiar lines, Nietzsche remains

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Daniel W. Conway

a valuable resource, even-or especially-in the abject throes

of his decadence. Indeed, his involuntary expressions of
decadence continue the ongoing process of exploring the space
of t h e political i n l a t e modernity. By d i n t of his unwitting
performances, he helps us to understand in ever greater detail
t h e n a t u r e a n d limits of t h e decadence t h a t enframes t h e
epoch. He does not t a k e t h e full diagnostic measure of his
epoch, but his performance of the signature contradictions of
t h e epoch-its weakness of will, its tenacious allegiance to
bankrupt metaphysical principles, its residual faith in a God it
knows to be dead-does provide u s with a more complete
picture of modernity itself.
Here we encounter a more human Nietzsche-neither the
avenging Antichrist, nor the millennia1 Uberrnensch, nor the
multiplex soul t h a t dissociatively answers to all names i n
history, nor the Dionysus who must return to wed his beloved
Ariadne, nor the pagan martyr whose demise absolves posterity of the sins of Western Christianity. He may not succeed
in stretching his wearied soul to encompass all the names in
history, but he does succeed in showing us what happens when
a representative exemplar of late modernity attempts in this
way to t a k e t h e measure of h i s age. Nothing is more
characteristically modern t h a n his attempt to represent, to
speak for, t o embody the age as a whole-nothing, that is, save
his failure t o do so. Or, which may amount to the same thingnothing except the madness t o which h e was delivered upon
undertaking this risky project.
Nietzsche may fail i n h i s avowed intention to t a k e t h e
measure of his age, but he unwittingly succeeds in embodying
t h e fragmentary ethos of l a t e modernity. When forcibly
subsumed under his own diagnostic categories, h e literally
becomes a sign of h i s times, onto whom modernity h a s
inscribed its distinctive, indelible scrawl. His more promising
critique of modernity is etched not on the pages of his postZarathustran writings, but on the swollen, scarred surface of
his tormented soul, as enacted i n t h e contradictions a n d
prejudices that define (and limit) him as a thinker. His failure
t o divine t h e logos of his age actually contributes to o u r
greater appreciation of the disintegrating ethos of modernity.
From his philosophical successes and failures, that is, we may
acquire a n enhanced sense of what it is like to be ineluctably
m~dern.~

NOTES
Friedrich Nietzsche: Samtliche Briefe, Kritische Studienausgabe
in 8 Bunden, ed. G . Colli and M. Montinari, vol. 8, no. 1131 (Berlin:
deGruyter/Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986), 452. Hereafter,
abbreviated SAB.
See, for example, Alasdair MacIntyres engagement with

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he Politics of Decadence
Nietzsche in After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University
Press, 19841, especially chapter 9. MacIntyre is happy to allow
Nietzsche to discredit the Enlightenment thinkers who stand in the
way of an Aristotelian renascence, but he insists that this destructive
power is ineffectual against t h e Aristotelian alternative t h a t he
recommends.
After Virtue, 22.
My attention to the retrospective prefaces of 1886 is indebted to
Claus-Artur Scheiers Friedrich Nietzsche. Ecce Auctor: Die Vorreden
von 1886, collected and introduced by Claus-Artur Scheier (Hamburg:
Felix Meiner Verlag, 1990). In his commentary on t h e prefaces of
1886,Scheier persuasively argues t h a t t h e prefaces collectively
constitute a n event of self-presentation and self-annunciation on
Nietzsches part (vii-xxxii). On the pivotal importance of Nietzsches
retrospective prefaces, see also Keith Ansell-Pearson, Toward the
Ubermensch: Reflections on t h e Year of Nietzsches Daybreak,
Nietzsche-Studien 23 (1994):124-145;and my own essay, Nietzsches
Art of This-Worldly Comfort: Self-Reference a n d Strategic SelfParody, History of Philosophy Quarterly 9,no. 3 (July 1992):343357.
Several commentators have speculated t h a t Nietzsche limited
t h e publication a n d distribution of P a r t IV of his Zarathustra in
order to avoid offending those friends and acquaintances who a r e
lampooned in his sketches of the buffoonish higher men. In light of
the strongly autobiographical character of Part IV, however, he may
have been more concerned to avoid embarrassing himself. As he
explains to Franz Overbeck in a letter of 31 March 1885,Part IV of
Zarathustra comprises his attempt to reckon the sum of a deep and
hidden life (SAB,vol. 7,no. 589,34).
I develop this point a t greater length,in my essay The Genius
a s Squanderer: Some Remarks on t h e Ubermensch a n d Higher
Humanity, International Studies in Philosophy 30:3 (August 1998):
81-95.
My understanding of t h e importance of decadence t o t h e
development of Nietzsches post-Zarathustran project is indebted to
Brian G. Domino, Nietzsches Republicanism, Doctoral Thesis,
Pennsylvania State University, 1993.
A persistent theme of Nietzsches notes from 1888 is the belief
t h a t philosophers, moralists, and statesmen regularly mistake the
consequences of decadence for its causes (cf. WP 38-48). Hence the
failure of all prescriptive measures for treating decadence: But the
supposed remedies of degeneration are also mere palliatives against
some of its effects: the cured are merely one type of the degenerates
(WP 42).
This essay draws on some materials t h a t were originally
published in my book, Nietzsches Dangerous Game: Philosophy in the
Twilight of the Idols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
I would like to thank Cambridge University Press for its generous
permission to reprint these materials.

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