Nietzsche’s Politics of the Event

Vanessa Lemm (University of New South Wales)

This paper offers an analysis of Nietzsche’s politics of the event (Ereignis). In Nietzsche’s published works as well as in the Nachlass, one can distinguish between several different uses of the term Ereignis (event). On my hypothesis, Nietzsche’s conception of the event is inseparable from his conception of the great human being. Therefore an analysis of the former must come hand in hand with an analysis of the latter. I argue that Nietzsche provides a politics of the event and that this politics denotes the task of cultivating great human beings. On my account, one can distinguish between two different politics of the event in Nietzsche. On the one hand, there is what Nietzsche refers to as small politics (“kleine Politik”) understood as a politics of the state or of moral and religious institutions which seek to produce conditions which favor the emergence of great human beings. At the heart of this politics stands the belief that the rise of great human beings is inherently contingent and hence requires the task of transforming contingency into necessity, of turning the occurrence of great human beings into a necessity. We are here dealing with an active politics of liberation which seeks to change the course of history giving it a new direction and a new aim. On the other hand, we can distinguish in Nietzsche a great politics (“grosse Politik”) of the event which is not inscribed into the program of a particular political or moral institution. Rather it is a politics beyond politics and morality where the aim is not to change the course of time but rather to affirm the eternity of the moment. At the center of this politics stands Nietzsche’s conception of amor fati. We are here dealing with a passive-receptive politics situated beyond the historical course of time. From its perspective, the great human being is a reflection of the eternal value and worth of the whole of life beyond human measure. From the perspective of this politics, the challenge is not to turn the contingent into the necessary but rather to attain knowledge of necessity for only the latter can truly free up in the human being life’s potential for culture. Small politics is a human, perhaps all too human practice which inscribes the event in the historical becoming of humanity, whereas great politics is a politics of life which inscribes the event in the eternal return of the same. In what follows, I wish to show the different elements and entanglements of these two politics of the event in three recurrent figures in Nietzsche’s philosophy: the historical agent, the genius and the philosopher in both his early and late work.

Professor Lemm is Head of the School of Humanities, UNSW. She is the author of Nietzsche’s Animal Philosophy: Culture, Politics and the Animality of the Human Being (Fordham, 2009), and has edited books on Foucault and Hegel. Her research focuses on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, contemporary political thought, biopolitics, the question of theanimal, philosophy of culture and cultures of memory, and theories of justice and the gift.