Nietzsche, Love and War

Plenary Speakers:
Christa Acampora (CUNY)
Herman Siemens (Leiden)
Duncan Large (Swansea)
Nicholas Martin (Birmingham)
Wilfried van der Will (Birmingham)

“My brothers in war! I love you thoroughly, I am and have always been of your kind.
And I am also your best enemy.”
“What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.”

Prompted in part by the centenary of the outbreak of World War One, during which Nietzsche was variously lionized and decried as a philosopher of war and aggressive nationalism, the 2014 Friedrich Nietzsche Society Conference seeks to re-examine Nietzsche’s attitudes to war and conflict, and the place of these tropes within his philosophical and critical outlook. Simultaneously, the Conference invites contributions that examine what appears to be the obverse of war and conflict in Nietzsche’s writings, namely, the hitherto often overlooked place and significance of love in his weltanschauung.

Nietzsche’s penchant for the language and imagery of war and struggle is undeniable, but we may wish to consider the extent to which this attachment to the language of war is incidental rhetoric and/or hyperbole, and to what extent it is inseparable from Nietzsche’s philosophical concerns and polemical methods.

Some of the many other questions that the Conference will seek to tackle include: the philosophical and cultural origins – and legacies – of Nietzsche’s combative, antithetical modes of thinking; the nature and justification of appropriations of Nietzsche’s reflections on conflict and struggle by advocates of actual war and violence in the twentieth century; the space occupied by, and the status of, Nietzsche’s extensive thoughts on gender, love and friendship within the discursive fields of conflict, contest and contention that appear to pervade his writing; and the nature of interpretative struggles over Nietzsche’s philosophical legacies.

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