Constructing the Agon

Nietzsche and contemporary political philosophy

In any ordinary sense, Nietzsches standing as a founder of modern
social and political thought is clear. His influence on social and
political movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century spanned feminism, anarchism, Zionism, socialism and the
radical right. In the context of social and political theory, his first
great inheritor was Max Weber but his mark can also be clearly
discerned on the first generation of the Frankfurt School, on Martin
Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Hans Morgenthau and Bernard Williams
as well as on the major trinity of post-structuralism - Deleuze,
Derrida and Foucault - among many others. However, considered in
the context of modern political philosophy, it is notable that
Nietzsche does not offer normative theories in the manner of
Rousseau or Rawls and the central political problems of political
obligation and the legitimacy of the state are secondary to his
interests. Rather Nietzsches guiding problem, as he puts it in The
Anti-Christ, is this:
The problem I am posing is not what should replace humanity
in the order of being (- the human is an endpoint -): but
instead what type of human should be bred, should be willed,
as having greater value, as being more deserving of life, as
being more certain of a future. (AC s3)
In more classical terms, Nietzsches question is What is Noble? and
in virtue of this question he belongs to a tradition of social and
political thought (encompassing Aristotle and Machiavelli) whose
focus is on government in its most general sense, that is, the
government of self and others as it manifests itself in the realms of
aesthetic, ethical and political value through the institutions,
practices and imaginaries that compose our relationships to
ourselves and others: this what Nietzsche will gather together under

the concept of culture and which Ill refer to as ethical culture.1

When Nietzsche examines social and political orders, his focus is on
the forms of self- and collective - government that they exhibit and
the types of human character that they cultivate. Rather than ask
whether these orders are just or legitimate by reference to an ideal
standard, Nietzsches general concern is with the extent to which
they are constitutive of the formation of valuable kinds of human
character and relationship.
It is central to the argument of this chapter that from his early essay
Homers Contest to his final writings, Nietzsches fundamental
model of both individual and collective modes of government is
provided by the model of Greek institution of the agon, classically
represented in the political contests conducted in the agora, in
dramatic competitions such as the Dionysia, and in the Olympic
games.2 What we may call Nietzsches agonism will thus be a
central focus of this chapter. However, as we will see in the first
section, Nietzsches agonism is bound up with his doctrine of will to
power, his understanding of freedom (autonomy) and his
perfectionism as well as his commitment to (psychological and
sociological) realism in ethics and political theory, to his
development of genealogy as an historical approach to philosophy,
and to his deployment of exemplars to articulate alternative ethical
ideals.
I

1 Like Andrew Huddleston, I take Nietzsches concern with culture

not to be simply or solely instrumental (which is, I think, Leiters
view in his 2002 book) with respect to great individuals but as
constitutive of both excellence and individuality. See Huddleston
2015 and forthcoming.
2 Two recent studies that also stress the significance of the agon for
Nietzsches thought are Davis Acampora (2013) and Tuncel (2013).
Important work over many years on Nietzsche and the agon has
been offered by Siemens (e.g., 2007 and 2015).

In his early essay Homers Contest, Nietzsche points to the

institutional model of the agon in (and, more generally, to the
agonal culture of) ancient Greece as a way of cultivating human
flourishing.3 We can think of the process instituted in the agon as
one in which participants stand as rivals seeking to outdo one
anothers achievements in the practice in which they are engaged
and, in so acting, develop and transform the standards of excellence
of the practice and hence the practice itself. As the practice acquires
a history through participation over time, participants come to stand
in agonic relations not only to other contemporary participants but
also to previous participants in the practice who provide the
exemplars of virtuoso performance that shape this history and our
inherited understanding of the practice. An agonal culture is a form
of ethical culture in which the dispositions cultivated in the
institution of the agon structure the mode of evaluation
characteristic of public life and do so independently of whether the
relationships between persons in the public realm are located in
formally agonic institutions. Why, though, do the institution of the
agon and the more general culture of competition and contestation
that it engendered matter to Nietzsche?
To address this question, we can begin by considering Nietzsches
doctrine of will to power which we can gloss as the claim that
human beings, considered individually, are characterized by a
fundamental (i.e., non-derivative) drive to express, and experience
the expression of, their powers in shaping themselves and their
environment. This thesis is central to the realistic approach to moral
and political psychology that Nietzsche develops across his work
and Nietzsche describes psychology as the 'morphology and the
3 Nietzsches erstwhile friend or mentor Jacob Burckhardt also
focused his attention on the institution of the agon and while there
is reason to think that Nietzsche independently arrived at this focus,
his relationship to Burckhardt can only have reinforced his
conviction of the importance of this institution. See Burckhardt
(1999)

doctrine of the development of the will to power' (BGE s.23). A

distinctive feature of this account of human psychology is, as
Reginster (2006 & 2013) has acutely pointed out, that the
experience of (the feeling of) power is dependent on the experience
of (the feeling of) resistance and hence this doctrine is committed to
the apparently paradoxical claim that willing a goal means also
willing resistance to achieving this goal. The appearance of paradox
is easily dissolved however by considering the concept of a
challenge. It is of the nature of challenges that, first, they involve
overcoming resistances (no resistance, no challenge); second, they
must be attainable (if there is no practical possibility of you
achieving X, then X is not a challenge); third, that their value is at
least partially related to their difficulty (given two challenges
distinguished only by their degree of difficulty, the more challenging
option is the more valuable); fourth, once a challenge is met (if it is
the kind of challenge that can be met finally and does not simply reoccur in new forms), it is no longer valuable as a challenge. Will to
power can thus be characterized as the drive to express, and
experience the expression of, ones agency through taking up
challenges, that is, through challenging oneself.
The salience of the institution of the agon and of agonal culture in
this context is that it cultivates the disposition to challenge oneself
through a mode of evaluation that privileges the achievement of
virtuosity (more precisely, virt in Machiavellis sense, cf. AC s.2) in
both specific practices such as politics, dramatic composition, sport
and the general practice of living a life. The institution of the agon
and agonal culture more generally situates participants precisely in
this stance of relating to ones engagement in a practice as taking
up the challenges that mastery of the practice requires, where such
mastery is manifest in ones ability to develop or alter what can

count as an exemplary performance of the practice.4 (Thus, for

example, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides may each be seen as
altering our understanding of what can count as an exemplar of
tragic drama.)
It is important to note though that this agonic stance cannot be
adopted at will, rather it is only through the praxis of agonic practice
(in the dual sense of participation in an agonic practice and the
practising of this agonic relation to self) that agents become agents
with the capacity and disposition to stand in this relation to
themselves. It is through such practice that will to power as the
fundamental drive through which the ordering and expression of
other drives is articulated becomes also the pivotal drive such that
the feeling of power aligns with power. The thought here is that
although will to power always structures the relations between other
drives, the feeling of power is mediated by these other drives and
this can, as under the ascetic ideal on Nietzsches account (GM III),
lead the feeling of power to align with an outlook that undermines
the cultivation of actual powers of agency. Whereas, Nietzsche
argues, through the praxis of agonic practice, the relation between
drives organised by the will to power is one in which the feeling of
power tracks the development of agential powers. Given that drives,
on Nietzsches account, play a fundamental role in shaping the
agents evaluative orientations that is manifest in the structuring of
their perceptions, affects and reflective thought (Katsafanas, 2013:
752), the pivotal role of will to power among the drives manifests
itself through making perceptually salient features of our situation
that pose challenges for us.

4 The phrase develop or alter is meant here to register the point

that mastery can be exhibited both by taking an established way of
performing the practice to new heights (for example, Mozart) or in
transforming the way of performing the practice (for example,
Beethoven).

We can develop this argument further to encompass Nietzsches

conception of freedom by considering the difference that is
introduced in standing to the praxis of practice as the praxis of
agonic practice. The praxis of practice forms the agent through the
development of their powers to engage in, and realize the goods of,
the practice in question (to be able to overcome obstacles and
resistances to mastery of the practice that are internal to
participation in the practice, e.g., the cultivation of the skills
required) and, at the same time, the development of their power to
engage in the self-directed exercise of their powers (i.e., to be able
to overcome obstacles and resistances to mastery of the practice
that are internal to ones own current constitution as an agent, e.g.,
weakness of will). The praxis of agonic practice cultivates also the
disposition to develop ones powers to overcome the challenges
posed by mastering the practice, including those challenges to
achieving this mastery that are internal to ones current constitution
as an agent. Thus the praxis of agonic practice cultivates an agonic
relationship to oneself, a practical relationship to oneself
characterized by a disposition to self-overcoming understood as the
disposition to increase ones powers and especially ones ability to
self-direct the exercise of ones agency. This power of self-direction
refers to ones ability to set and bind the exercise of ones powers to
ones own ends and hence to take responsibility for oneself, for who
one is, for what ones projects are, for how one acts. To stand in this
practical relationship to self is, on Nietzsches account, to exhibit
the will to self-responsibility that distinguishes the autonomous
agent (TI Expeditions s.38) and he gives expression to this
understanding of freedom through the exemplary figure of the
sovereign individual: the human being with his own independent
long will, the human being who is permitted to promise [der
versprechen darf] (GM II s2). The sovereign individual is
autonomous precisely because he is able and disposed to set his
own ends as challenges to overcome and to bind his will to the task

of realizing these ends as meeting these challenges. Notice that

once an agent has acquired the ability to stand in an agonic relation
to himself, he can adopt this stance in general to practices
generally, that is, he can engage in these practices in an agonistic
spirit.
To see the relationship of this view to the form of perfectionism that
Nietzsche advances, we need only notice that as ones powers
(including ones power to engage in the self-directed exercise of
ones powers) develop, so to do the demands of what can count as a
challenge and hence this activity of self-overcoming has no final
telos (if the challenge can be overcome, it is not a final telos; if it
cannot be overcome, it is not a challenge), rather it denotes a
continuing process of self-overcoming. This conception of freedom
thus discloses Nietzsches commitment to a form of perfectionism5
that is not pictured as directed at a final telos, but rather as a
process of moving from the attained self (ones current constitution
as an agent) to the attainable self (the constitution of ones agency
that one can achieve through taking up challenges, i.e., pursuing
valuable ends that one is or becomes capable of realizing). Whereas
in standard forms of perfectionism, the ethical horizon is fixed by
the final telos; in Nietzsches perfectionism, the ethical horizon
moves as we transform ourselves.
In concluding this sketch of Nietzsches agonism, it is important to
stress a point that has been implicit throughout but needs to be
foregrounded at this stage, namely, that it is a condition of
possibility of an agonic relationship in any practice that no standard
of evaluation (for example, no exemplary performance of tragic
drama) has acquired such a position of dominance that nothing that
5 Perfectionism is this context denotes a commitment to
becoming what one is in Nietzsches use of Pindars phrase, that is,
the fullest realization (through an ongoing process that is,
simultaneously, self-discovery and self-creation) of what one is.

could meaningfully be called a challenge can be offered to it. The

significance of this point is that, with the partial exception of the
Renaissance, Nietzsche takes the ethical outlook cultivated by
Christianity what he terms morality - to have occupied such a
position of dominance in Europe with respect to the practice of living
a good life for several hundred years both in terms of its picture of
the good life and the hinge propositions such as the value of
compassion and the disvalue of suffering on which this picture
swings. More broadly still, for Nietzsche, Christianity as an ethical
culture of morality has shaped the warp and woof of our
intellectual and practical vocabularies, the ways in which we
conceive of ourselves and relate to one another, such that even
criticisms of its authority are largely conducted in the terms that it
has set. In other words, this ethical outlook has shaped the best part
of the values and norms that compose our ethical culture, including
the reflective apparatus through which we raise questions about
particular features of this ethical culture (consider, for example, the
free will/determinism debate as a product of this ethical outlook).
This is particularly unfortunate (to put the point mildly) on
Nietzsches view because it is not simply that morality has
occupied this position of dominance but also that the form and
content of morality are directly opposed to the agonic stance that
cultivates autonomy (as the will to self-responsibility) and the form
of perfectionism that Nietzsche takes to characterize human
flourishing. Moralitys form is opposed to the agonic stance because
it conceives of ethics in terms of universal commands that must be
obeyed. For Nietzsche, Kant gave this outlook its purest
philosophical expression in the form of the categorical imperative.
Moralitys content is opposed to the agonic stance because, on
Nietzsches account, it privileges values such as humility, obedience
and pity that undermine the agents ability to take up an agonistic
stance over values such as boldness, courage and cheerfulness that

are constitutive of this stance. Nietzsches wager is that, with the

death of God, morality no longer stands in this position of
unchallengeable dominance and that it is possible, albeit difficult, to
cultivate an agonistic relationship to this ethical outlook. One way,
then, to read Nietzsches philosophical work is as the work on the
self through which he practises the agonistic orientation and
attempts to draw his readers into the agonic relationship to
morality that he constructs. The fact that morality as an ethical
outlook has become woven into the warp and woof of practices,
including our reflective intellectual practices, over the period of its
dominance entails that challenging it will make considerable
philosophical and rhetorical demands on Nietzsche (and Nietzsches
mature sense of the challenge he confronts in attempting to
construct an agonic relation to morality is dramatized in the
section 125 The madman in The Gay Science). In confronting these
demands, Nietzsche adopts a range of methodological commitments
and strategies of which two require particular mention given their
significance for contemporary ethics and political philosophy.
The first is Nietzsches commitment to naturalism (to translating
man back into nature) and, more specifically, to psychological
realism as an approach to the analysis of ethical culture. This
commitment is directed against (and concerned to disclose) what
Nietzsche takes to be approaches to human psychology that are, in
one respect or other, already moralized. It is also required if
Nietzsche is to be able, generally, to give an account of different
ethical outlooks in terms that dont presuppose or express
commitment to a particular ethical orientation. The second is
Nietzsches development of genealogy as a mode of historical
philosophy designed to provide an account of how how we come to
acquire particular outlooks (in the sense of how the disparate
features that compose them emerge and coalesce into an outlook
that gets a grip on us) such we can free ourselves from its grip and

take the outlook as an object of evaluation. It is these two features

in addition to agonism that we will focus on in taking up Nietzsches
significance for contemporary political philosophy.
Realism in Ethics and Political Philosophy
In the preceding remarks, I suggested that Nietzsches commitment
to agonism is both informed by his commitment to realism in that
his doctrine of will to power underwrites the value of agonism and
requires this realist stance in order to do the critical work of
constructing an agonic relationship to morality. The primary
significance of this Nietzschean realism in political philosophy has
been to offer resources for realist approaches to ethics and political
philosophy.
Realism as an orientation in thinking involves a philosophical
approach to human beings that is, as far as possible, non-moralised.
In recent philosophy, this orientation has been most fully elaborated
by Bernard Williams. It is, as we will see, central to Williams account
of naturalism in ethics and his interest in Nietzsches genealogical
mode of inquiry.(1995a) Williams appreciation of this outlook and its
wider significance is helpfully drawn out by Geuss (2005) in the
essay Thucydides, Nietzsche and Williams. Here Geuss notes that
Nietzsche raises the novel question of whether Plato or Thucydides
is the better guide to human life and offers two reasons in support
of the claims of the latter. The first is that Nietzsche held that
Thucydides had an unprejudiced theoretical sympathy for, and
hence understanding of, a much wider spectrum of possible human
motivations than Plato had. (Geuss, 2005:221) or, as Williams more
subtly reformulates the point in Shame and Necessity: Thucydides
conception of an intelligible and typically human motivation is
broader and less committed to a distinctively ethical outlook than
Platos; or rather the distinction is important it is broader than
the conception acknowledged in Platos psychological theories

(Williams, 1994:161-2 cited in Geuss, 2005: 221). The second is that

Nietzsche takes Thucydides, like Sophocles, to offer a pessimism of
strength (a phrase adopted by Williams in Ethics and the Limits of
Philosophy to characterise his own preferred outlook) as an
alternative to the optimism of the philosophical tradition. In this
alternative, as Williams notes in Shame and Necessity, we
acknowledge that we have no reason to think that the world is, even
in principle, fully intelligible to us, nor that it is receptive to our
ethical purposes and interests. Guess offers the following sketch of
the optimism to which the Thucydides-Nietzsche-Williams position is
opposed:
This optimism has several related aspects. First of all,
traditional philosophers assumed that the world could be
made cognitively accessible to us without remainder
Second, they assumed that when the world was correctly
understood, it would make moral sense to us. Third, the kind
of moral sense which the world made to us would be one
that would show it to have some orientation towards the
satisfaction of some basic, rational human desires or interests,
that is, the world was not sheerly indifferent to or perversely
frustrating of human happiness. Fourth, the world is set up so
that for us to accumulate knowledge and use reason as
vigorously as possible will be good for us and will contribute to
making us happy. Finally, it was assumed that there was a
natural fit between the exercise of reason, the conditions of
healthy human development, the demands of individuals for
satisfaction of their needs, interests and basic desires, and
human sociability. (Geuss, 2005: 223)
This optimism is, on Williams view, a product of the moralisation of
our picture of the human condition and one to which Nietzsches
realism offers a sobering counterpoint.

This Nietzschean realism finds expression in Williams explicit

appropriation from Nietzsche of a general attitude [] that can be a
great help to the project of naturalism in ethics and politcal
philosophy (Williams, 1995a:68, see also 2000). The attitude has
two relevant dimensions. The first calls on us to enquire whether
what seems to demand more moral material makes sense in terms
of what demands less (Williams, 1995a: 68). In response to the
question How much should our accounts of distinctively moral
activity add to our accounts of other human activity?, Williams
replies:
as little as possible [] the more that some moral
understanding of human beings seems to call on materials
that specially serve the purpose of morality certain
conceptions of the will, for instance the more reason we
have to ask whether there may not be a more illuminating
account that rests only on conceptions that we use anyway
elsewhere. (Williams, 1995a: 68)
If we can understand human capacities in terms of psychological
materials we use anyway elsewhere then we should. In contrast,
numerous moral theorists posit some additional faculty by which
specifically moral truths may be apprehended. Kant, for instance,
held that the demands of morality are revealed through, and
justified by, reasoning that is pure pure in that it need neither
start from, nor otherwise engage, ones subjective motivational
repertoire but nonetheless arrives at substantive moral truths which
any rational agent could recognise and be motivated by. To make
sense of this, and to thereby justify the demands of morality as both
motive-independent and universally applicable, Kant ended up
positing (or presupposing) a radical conception of freewill, one
common to all rational beings, that stands outside (but nonetheless
causes action in) the natural world a conception in tension with
even a very broad naturalism and about which, Williams therefore
supposes, one should be suspicious.

Grounds for suspicion are further amplified by the thought that such
conceptions of agency may be far from ideologically innocent. As
Williams puts it, a second helpful thought to be recovered from
Nietzsche is that such a peculiar account must have a purpose, and
that the purpose is a moral one (1995a: 72). The point of positing
some such conception is to guarantee that people are capable of
both recognising moral reasons and freely doing or freely violating
whatever morality demands. And the point of that is to vindicate
practices of moral blame. Furthermore, Williams (like Nietzsche)
thinks that moral blame may be objectionable because blame can
function as a mechanism of control or power. For given that being
blamed (by others or, as in the case of guilt, oneself) is typically
unpleasant, the desire to avoid blame may readily become
internalised. And since a necessary means for avoiding moral blame
is complying with morality, one way to ensure that one does avoid it
is to internalise moral values. Hence blame may be used as a tool
by which to recruit people into the morality system.
Williams Nietzschean realism is not limited to his critique of
morality but also informs an approach to political philosophy that
emerges from this critique. This approach is indebted not only to
Nietzsche but also to the influence of Nietzschean realism on Max
Weber and it will be helpful to briefly discuss this aspect of Webers
uptake of Nietzsche to situate Williams own political realism.
Although Max Webers commitment to Nietzschean realism is given
expression throughout his work (Owen, 1991, 1994 and 2000), the
salient aspect for our current concerns involves two points that
Weber develops from Nietzsche. The first is that the
disenchantment of the world undercuts the claim to authority of
morality and pushes us to acknowledge that different domains of
human activity (science, politics, art, religion, etc.) are characterised

by different values and ranking of values. Thus, for example,

Nietzsches view that engaging in the activity of science entails
prioritizing commitment to the value of truth is taken up in Webers
essay Science as a vocation in which Weber spells out what he
takes to the external and internal demands of committing oneself to
the profession of scholarship (Owen & Strong, 2004). The second,
and consequent point, is that politics as a domain of activity is
characterised by a distinctive ethic what Weber calls the ethic of
responsibility and one that Weber takes to be incompatible with
the demands of morality.
Williams broadly endorses both Webers disenchantment thesis and
his identification of the ethic of responsibility as a demand of
responsible political agency but develops this Nietzschean/Weberian
realism further in shifting its focus to address the appropriate form
of political philosophy. Here Williams takes up Nietzsches point that
morality has shaped our intellectual practices in order to argue
that the dominant strand in contemporary political philosophy is
characterized by political moralism. Williams distinguishes two
forms of such political moralism: the enactment model and the
structural model (2005: 1-3):
The former consists in deriving political prescriptions from prepolitical ethical ideals such as happiness, equality or
autonomy. The latter amounts to specifying the limits of
permissible political conduct through pre-political moral
commitments such as a Kantian notion of autonomy or some
conception of moral rights. Those ethical values are prepolitical in two senses: they are taken to float free from the
forces of politics, and they are assigned a foundational role
insofar as they have antecedent authority over the political
and determine or exhaust the appropriate ends and limits of
politics. (Rossi and Sleat, 2014: 689)

In rejecting political moralism in both its forms, Williams is

concerned to free political philosophy from the grip of morality and
to articulate an approach to political philosophy that is structured by
values and norms that are integral to the practice of politics as a
challenge to human agency. We can think of this in part by asking
what it about politics that makes Webers ethic of responsibility an
appropriate ethic for this activity. Williams response is predicated
on the claim that the first political question is the securing of order,
protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation (2005:
3). The reason that this is the first political question and that it
supports Webers ethic of responsibility is twofold. First because the
circumstances of politics include disagreement about what we, as a
collective agent, ought to do, the need for common decisions about
what to do, and that fact that our actions are taken under conditions
of uncertainty and give rise to unintended consequences. These
constitutive features of politics as a distinctive domain of human
agency entail that our first problem is creating and sustaining
conditions under which we can (a) co-operate, despite our
disagreement, in making common decisions and (b) be responsive
to the consequences of those decisions. Second, and as a
straightforward consequence of the first point, the problem of order
is never finally solved; rather it keeps recurring and offering new
challenges to the task of doing politics well.
On Williams view, once we acknowledge that the problem of order is
the first political question, then we must also acknowledge that if
the power of one lot of people over another is to represent a
solution to the first political question, and not itself be part of the
problem, something has to be said to explain ... what the difference
is between the solution and the problem, and that cannot simply be
an account of successful domination. It has to be a mode of
justifying explanation or legitimation (Williams, 2005a: 5). A
relationship between a group exercising coercion over another group

becomes a political relationship, a relationship of authority between

rulers and ruled only with the offering of a legitimation that makes
sense to its addressees (whether or not they accept it). As Sagar
rightly notes:
It is a serious mistake of Williamss critics to suppose he
implicitly relied upon some (unrealistic, fantastical) consensus
view of politics whereby states are only legitimate if all those
subject to its power accept it as such. His was a more basic
analytic contention that in order for there to be such a thing
as politics at all, something has to be said to those being
coerced. The BLD is a demand, and whether the answer given
to that demand is found acceptable is a further question.
(2014: 4, see also Hall 2014)
This is a non-moralised view of politics because it is worked up by
attending only to the constitutive conditions of politics as a human
practice and it is also a pluralist view that recognizes that, over
human history, there have been a wide variety of ways of satisfying
BLD that were not liberal and, importantly, were not dependent on
beliefs that were held as the product of the exercise of coercion.
It is notable that although Williams starts from the adoption of a
Nietzschean realism, the structure of the political realist position
that he develops in relation to political philosophy owes
considerably more to Hobbes than Nietzsche. The influence of
Nietzsches realism is on Williams general methodological approach
to ethics and politics, rather than on the conceptual structure of
political philosophy that Williams develops. To explore Nietzsches
influence on contemporary political philosophy in terms of its
conceptual structure, we need to turn to the topic of agonism.
Agonism, Plurality and Freedom
Perhaps the most distinctive dimension of Nietzsches influence of
contemporary social and political philosophy has been the

emergence of an agonistic approach to political theory and, most

notably, democratic theory. Apart from Nietzsches direct influence
on this development, the other two theorists Hannah Arendt and
Michel Foucault - who have been central to shaping its
contemporary form are both themselves significantly influenced by
Nietzsches thinking. At the heart of this contemporary approach to
political philosophy are the Nietzschean thoughts that freedom and
plurality are bound together and that freedom is an agonistic
relationship. For example, Foucault expresses the thought thus:
Rather than speaking of an essential freedom, it would be better to
speak of an agonism of a relationship which is at the same time
reciprocal incitation and struggle; less of a face-to-face
confrontation which paralyses both sides than a permanent
provocation (Foucault, 1982: 2223). As Tully points out:
Foucaults unique contribution to this reorientation in the
twentieth century is to link together the following elements:
the practice of freedom, the modification of the rules
governing the relationships among players in the course of a
game and agonistic activity. He sees the modification of the
rules of any game as itself an agonistic activity of freedom:
precisely the freedom of speaking and acting differently. He
asks us to regard human activities as games with rules and
techniques of governance to be sure, and these are often
agonistic games, but also, and more importantly, to look on
the ways the players modify the rules by what they say and do
as they carry on, and, in so doing, modify their identities as
players: that is, the games of freedom within and against the
rules of the games of governance. (2008: 143)
These commitments to plurality as a condition of freedom and
freedom as an agonistic relationship unsurprisingly orient agonistic
political theory towards a focus on conditions that obstruct or
undermine such activity. The normative orientation of this approach
can be articulated in terms in terms of an understanding of

domination as a relation of governance that those subject to it lack

the ability to challenge or contest effectively (i.e., to transform its
constitutive features) and a commitment to playing games of
government with the minimum of domination. This commitment is
clearly displayed by Foucaults declaration that
a system of constraint becomes truly intolerable when the
individuals who are affected by it don't have the means of
modifying it. This can happen when such a system becomes
intangible as a result of its being considered a moral or
religious imperative, or a necessary consequence of medical
science. (Foucault, 1988: 294)
It is important to notice how central Nietzsches rejection of forms of
philosophical reflection oriented to a universal ideal as a final telos
(e.g., Kants kingdom of ends or early Rawls just society) is to this
approach to political theory and how distinctive this stance is in the
field of contemporary social and political theory in which the
dominant philosophical orientation is towards the articulation of an
ideal pictured as a final telos. We can draw this out by referring to
two points that Nietzsche makes concerning this finalityorientation.
The first is that the finality-orientation leads to a teleological form
of historiography that mis-describes the plurality of activities that
resist or stand in tension with the picture constructed by the ideal in
virtue of interpreting their significance solely in terms of a history
seen as progress towards this ideal. It is, I think, for this reason that
Nietzsche stresses the point that philosophers who are focused on
the issue of the foundations of morality lack the sensitivity required
for the task of describing the plurality of ethical outlooks that
historical and comparative (non-European) enquiry discloses to us
(BGE s.186)

The second is that this kind of historiography is an ideological

expression of, and support for, the exercise of power over those who
do not endorse the posited ideal. Foucault captured this power
dynamic in a description of the figure of polemicist:
The polemicist proceeds encased in privileges that he
possesses in advance and will never agree to question. On
principle, he possesses rights authorising him to wage war
and making that struggle a just undertaking; the person he
confronts is not a partner in the search for truth, but an
adversary, an enemy who is wrong, who is harmful and whose
very existence constitutes a threat. For him, then, the game
does not consist of recognising this person as a subject having
the right to speak, but of abolishing him as an interlocutor,
from any possible dialogue; and his final objective will be, not
to come as close as possible to a difficult truth, but to bring
about the triumph of the just cause he has been manifestly
upholding from the beginning. The polemicist relies on a
legitimacy that his adversary is by definition denied. (1984a:
382)
We can put the point less dramatically by reference to Ladens
argument that the reasonableness of deliberation depends on the
relevance of uptake of proffered reasons and, more specifically, that
deliberation is unreasonable if uptake is rendered irrelevant (Laden
2001: 129). As Laden notes:
Two central ways in which uptake can be rendered irrelevant
are by ignoring it or assuming it. Ignoring uptake requires
having the power to render rejection of a reason irrelevant. In
such cases, we exclude others from our deliberations. Their
uptake of our reasons has no effect because their rejection
could have no effect. Assuming uptake requires being blind to
the fact of deep diversity and how it shapes the plurality of
political deliberation. In such cases, we assimilate others to

our own perspective. We take for granted that because we

find a reason authoritative, they will too. (2001: 129)
It is a central part of Nietzsches objection to morality that he takes
it to arrogate to itself the entitlement to assume uptake, to declare
that it is the rational form of ethics.
Contemporary agonistic political theory similarly focuses on how
constructive social power is exercised through the assumption of
uptake. Thus, for example, these features are clearly exemplified in
James Tullys Strange Multiplicity (1995) that addresses the way in
which the struggles of indigenous people are pictured through the
framework of modern constitutionalism6 and demonstrates how
6

ii.

iii.

iv.

Tully identifies seven conventions of modern

constitutionalism that serve to exclude or assimilate cultural
diversity. These are the following:Concepts of popular
sovereignty which eliminate cultural diversity as a
constitutive aspect of politics. The people are sovereign and
culturally homogeneous in the sense that culture is irrelevant,
capable of being transcended, or uniform. (1995: 63)
A stages view of history: an understanding of a modern
constitution as defined in contrast to an ancient or historically
earlier constitution. An ancient constitution refers to premodern European constitutions and, secondly, to the
customs on non-European societies at earlier and lower
stages of historical development. These two contrasts ground
the imperial character of modern constitutionalism. (1995:
64)
A commitment to uniformity: An ancient constitution is
multiform, an assemblage as Bolingbroke puts it, whereas a
modern constitution is uniform. Because it is the incorporation
of varied local customs, an ancient constitution is a motley of
overlapping legal and political jurisdictions, as in the Roman
republic or the common law of England. The sovereign
people in modern societies, in contrast, establish a
constitution that is legally and politically uniform: a
constitution of equal citizens who are treated identically rather
than equitably, of one national system of institutionalised
legal and political authority rather than many, and a
constitutional nation equal in status to all others. (1995: 66)
The recognition of custom in a theory of progress: the
unintended historical progress of economic and social
conditions gradually undermines the ancient constitution of
customs and ranks and creates a society of one estate or

this framework or picture misdescribes these struggles and what is

at stake in them, namely, the standing of the practice of modern
constitutionalism itself. Thus, Tully notes in relation to indigenous
peoples:
How can the proponents of recognition bring forth their claims
in a public forum in which their cultures have been excluded
or demeaned for centuries? They can accept the authoritative
language and institutions, in which case their claims are
rejected by conservatives or comprehended by progressives
within the very languages and institutions whose sovereignty
and impartiality they question. Or they can refuse to play the
game, in which case they become marginal and reluctant
conscripts or they take up arms. (1995: 56)
What is required to enable genuinely agonic relationships to be
possible is that we free ourselves from the grip of the picture of
modern constitutionalism as the rational form of constitutionalism
as such. It is to engage in this task that contemporary agonists
follow Nietzsche in turning to the practice of genealogy.

v.

vi.

vii.

state of equal and legally undifferentiated individuals with

similar manners. A modern constitution thus merely
recognises the transformed character of modern societies.
(1995: 67)
A modern constitution is identified with a specific set of
European institutions; what Kant calls a republican
constitution. These definitive constitutional institutions in
turn compose a modern sovereign state marking it off from
lower, stateless, irregular and ancient societies. (1995: 67-8)
A constitutional state is a nation: From Pudendorf onward, this
corporate identity of nation and nationals in a state is seen as
necessary to the unity of a modern constitutional association.
(1995: 68)
A modern constitution comes into being at some founding
moment and stands behind and provides the rules for
democratic politics (69). This feature is reinforced by the
popular images of the American and French revolutions as
great founding acts performed by founding fathers at the
threshold of modernity and by the assumption that a modern
constitution is universal (1995: 68).

Genealogy
There is considerable debate in both Nietzsche scholarship and in
relation to the work of contemporary agonists concerning the sense,
if any, that genealogy is a form of critique. Seeing Nietzsches
practice of genealogy against the background of his commitment to
agonism, however, helps us to understand that we can analytically
separate out two different objects of critical attention. Thus, in
Nietzsches own case, there is, on the one hand, the substance of
morality as a distinct kind of ethical outlook which pictures ethical
agency in a particular way and supports certain values rather than
others - and, on the other hand, the claim to authority of morality,
its claim to be the rational form of ethics as such. Although a
genealogy of morality may have implications for the former, it is
primarily directed at the latter. Nietzsches main target in his
genealogy is the default authority of the institution of morality
rather than the value of the values that it cultivates. By providing
an account of the formation of morality in which each of threads
that compose it is identified as expressing the interests of particular
social groups, namely, the slaves and, especially, the priests,
Nietzsche offers us an account of the formation and triumph of
morality as shaped by power struggles. Rather than expressing the
historical development (or cunning) of ethical reason and hence a
vindication of the authority of morality, Nietzsches genealogy of
morality is decidedly non-vindicatory: morality rules as the
contingent product of struggles for social and political power. This
account does not by itself undermine the values that morality
promotes (or support the values that morality devalues), but it does
undermine the default claim of morality to legitimate authority
over the ethical domain. It, thus, makes morality into an object
that can be legitimately subject to critical evaluation or, to put the
same point another way, it makes possible an agonic relationship to
morality. Note that it is an important part of this critical role of

genealogy that Nietzsche also points to the existence of another

kind of ethical outlook, noble ethics, that, for all its own
imperfections (and Nietzsche hardly romanticizes this outlook),
stands as a rival to morality.
In contemporary agonistic political theory, this task of genealogy is
expressed in terms of the contesting of limits, where limits can
take two forms:
A 'limit' can mean either the characteristic forms of thought
and action which are taken for granted and not questioned or
contested by participants in a practice of subjectivity, thereby
functioning as the implicit background or horizon of their
questions and contests, or it can mean that a form of
subjectivity (its forms of reason, norms of conduct and so
forth) is explicitly claimed to be a limit that cannot be
otherwise because it is universal, necessary or obligatory (the
standard form of legitimation since the Enlightenment).(Tully,
2008: 81)
Limits of both kinds support the assumption of uptake but it is the
second kind that specifically require genealogical criticism and
Foucault formulates the point of his genealogical investigations
thus:
But if the Kantian question was that of knowing what limits
knowledge has to renounce transgressing, it seems to me that
the critical question today has to be turned back into a
positive one: in what is given to us as universal, necessary,
obligatory, what place is occupied by whatever is singular,
contingent, and the product of arbitrary constraints? The
point, in brief, is to transform the critique conducted in the
form of necessary limitation into a practical critique that takes
the form of a possible transgression. (Foucault, 1984b: 45)
If we return to Tullys Strange Multiplicity as our object of
comparison, we can note that his genealogy of modern

constitutionalism draws attention to how the formation and triumph

of modern constitutionalism was intimately bound up with the
justification of European imperialism and the establishment of
colonial rule over indigenous peoples.7 By giving us reasons to see
modern constitutionalism not as a neutral framework that stands
above the political fray and impartially structures the terms of
political struggle but, rather, as itself situated within, and partaking
7 Having delineated the conventions of modern
constitutionalism, Tully shows how they were forged and
established by way of a series of historical examples. These
range from Lockes provision of a justification for taking
[American] land and establishing European sovereignty
without requiring the consent to the native peoples (1995:
70-8) to Vattels and Kants related justifications for the denial
of the claim that aboriginal peoples satisfied the criteria of
sovereign nations under international law (1995: 79-82) and
from the justifications offered by Pudendorf and Sieyes for the
unity of a modern state and, thereby, for policies designed to
break down the anachronistic customs of backward citizens
and immigrants and reform them so that they acquired the
manners and policy of a civilised and enlightened age (1995:
82-91) to Paines arguments for the sovereignty of the
Continental Congress over the states as providing a
justification not only for policies designed to forge institutional
and customary uniformity but also for policies of empire
oriented to the removal, assimilation and extermination of
Aboriginal peoples (1995: 91-96). The point of these
examples is highlight different aspects of the hegemonic
picture of constitutions in order to show that the language of
modern constitutionalism that has been forged in
constitutional theory and practice over the last three hundred
years is a partial forgery:While masquerading as universal it
is imperial in three respects: in serving to justify European
imperialism, imperial rule of former colonies over indigenous
peoples, and cultural imperialism over the diverse citizens of
contemporary societies. When members of the authoritative
schools today write about constitutionalism, whether they
claim to be universal, historical or transcendental, they do so
with the conventions of universality, history and
transcendence of this captivating map of mankind. They
think that they are tracing the contours of humanitys
constitutions, yet they are merely tracing round the
splendorous frame through which they look at them. (1995:
96)

in, these struggles, Tully aims to undermine the default authority of

this outlook. Moreover, in attempting to free us from the grip of this
picture of constitutionalism as modern constitutionalism, Tully also
points to an alternative exemplar of constitutionalism - what he
calls common constitutionalism8 - that gave (imperfect) expression
to an anti-imperialist relationship between settlers and indigenous
peoples and can stand as a rival to modern constitutionalism. In this
way, Tully constructs the possibility of an agonic relationship to
modern constitutionalism.
On the account given thus far, the primary task of genealogy as a
practice of criticism is directed at freeing us from the grip of a
dominant outlook and, thereby, making its possible to stand in an
agonic relationship to that outlook. However, the phrase making it
possible seems too weak to fully capture what Nietzsche and
contemporary agonistic theorists such as Foucault and Tully are
doing; rather it would seem more apposite to say that they are
attempting to construct an agonic relationship to the dominant
outlook and to draw their readers into this agon. They are not just
concerned with undermining the default authority of the outlooks
with which they engage; they are also concerned to offer a prima
facie challenge to the value of the outlook. This is not to say that
genealogy offers a critique of the value of the outlook in question,
rather it is to say that it offers reasons to take up the task of
engaging in such a critique. The role of articulating an alternative
exemplar is not simply to help to undermine the view that the
dominant outlook is the sole legitimate outlook available to us but
also to set up and rhetorically heighten - a contrast between the
two outlooks that makes the question of the value of the dominant
outlook into a problem, a matter of genuine concern, for the

8 Common constitutionalism is distinguished by being genuinely

dialogical in character. See Owen (1999) for a full account of Tullys
argument.

audience and thereby draws them into the agonic encounter that
the author has constructed.
Conclusion
Nietzsches significance for contemporary political philosophy is
diverse, varied and, obviously enough, dependent on the different
readings of Nietzsche that contemporary theorists adopt. However,
it is not, I think, too controversial to say that it is through his
distinctive commitment to realism in ethics and politics, to agonism
as offering an account of freedom, and to genealogy as a form of
historical philosophy that constructs agonic encounters that his
influence is most vividly present in the field of contemporary
political philosophy.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Paul Katsafanas for incisive editorial comments and
to my colleague Tracy Strong for his wise advice.
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