CFP: Call for Abstracts: Conflict and Violence in Nietzsche

                                Call for Abstracts: Conflict and Violence in Nietzsche

"The purpose of science is to annihilate the world...

The task of art is to annihilate the state....

Wars must not be, so that the ever-rekindled sense of state may finally fall asleep."

- Nietzsche, unpublished notes, Winter 1869-Spring 1870.

The Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence is looking for contributions on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. Abstracts are due January 5, 2026. Final publication is planned for December 2026. This special issue will be guest-edited by M. Blake Wilson, California State University.

Nietzsche frequently wrote about war, barbarism, destruction, and cruelty in both their literal as well as their metaphorical senses. An individual can, for example, “make war” upon themselves. But in the passage quoted above, he clearly means war: the violent physical conflict between groups of people (usually, but not always, acting together as states). He also uses it normatively: for Nietzsche–– at least in the passage quoted above–– war is bad, and its elimination correspondingly leads to the annihilation of the state because war is the primary justification for the state. Or so Nietzsche claims in this early note. His thoughts, of course, will change over the next two decades.

For this special issue of The Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence, we are seeking contributions related to Nietzsche’s understanding of war, violence, conflict, crime, and justice, which broadly includes interpretations of Nietzschean thought on polemics, opposition, hatred, and distaste in their most literal meanings as well as what are almost certainly metaphors: here, we find Nietzsche’s troubling ruminations about cruelty, apocalypse, destruction, and illness, but also more (and perhaps even banal) observations concerning dyspepsia, change, love, and hate as a kind of “war” upon cultural practices ranging from Nietzsche’s embrace of the upending of one’s daily habits in food and drink and to the radical reshaping of one’s aesthetics (see, for example, Nietzsche’s pleasant surprise at his newfound love of Bizet and his corresponding revulsion to Wagner). Nietzschean perspectives on conflict and violence may include strong reactions to art, thought, and even other people. Specifically, Nietzsche often reacted “violently” to Jesus, Kant, and Wagner, and despite his earlier devotion to the composer the later Nietzsche hears a kind of violence in Wagner’s metric rhythms which injures him as much as any actual physical violence (See, e.g., The Gay Science 5, 368), suggesting that his understanding of violence was always metaphorical. Perhaps even “will,” that much discussed and purportedly foundational feature of his thought, is more of a metaphor than a so-called “natural kind.” But metaphor for what, exactly?

We invite expressions of interest and ask all prospective authors to send a short 500-word abstract to [email protected] and [email protected] by no later than January 5, 2026.

Authors will be informed of acceptance no later than February 5, 2026.

Full papers should be submitted by September 1, 2026, and should be written in the PJCV template and should not exceed 10,000 words (bibliography and footnotes aside).

The final publication is planned for December 2026.

For any queries, please contact Blake Wilson [email protected].  

Reviewing process 

PJCV double-blind peer reviews all material it receives. Once an article is submitted, it is initially received by the editor-in-chief. In order to make a decision, the editor-in-chief (together with the guest editor, in case of a special issue) will send the manuscript for parallel approval to two reviewers specialized in the subject of the manuscript. Reviewers are asked to declare any competing interests on any manuscripts we send to them. Reviewers then advise the editor, who makes the final decision on the acceptance of the article. After acceptance and the submission of the updated manuscript following the reviewers’ comments, the article is checked for review compliance, after which it goes into publication.