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Reflections on the ‘good European’ in the Phase of Brexism

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Europe in Upheaval
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Abstract

What is ‘Europe’? A pragmatically minded community bound by fate that looks back on stunning cultural heights and hellish abysses, but has given itself a future-oriented, albeit not yet safeguarded, constitution in the shape of the European Union? Or is ‘Europe’ more than a mere political expedient, caught from one test of crisis to another, trying to position itself somewhere between refugee crisis, debt syndrome, integration woes, growth fantasies, Brexit and Corona constraints? This essay attempts to examine a particularly prominent example of a culturally determined conception of Europe as a problem of consciousness against this background: Friedrich Nietzsche’s word of the “good European”? What are his character traits? Who is ‘good’ as a European from the point of view of a thinker and cultural critic who had propagated a way of thinking beyond “good” and “evil”? (This chapter was also published under the title “Reflections on the ‘good European’ named Friedrich Nietzsche” (“Überlegungen zum ‘guten Europäer’ namens Friedrich Nietzsche”) in: Rüdiger Görner: Europa wagen! Notes, Interventions and Confessions. Baden-Baden: Tectum Verlag 2020, pp. 71–91).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Cf. Krastev, Ivan: After Europe, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2017, p. 43. Krastev speaks of a “clash of solidarities” in a variation of Samuel Huntingdon.

  2. 2.

    Sommer, Andreas Urs: Was bleibt von Nietzsches Philosophie? Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2018, pp. 67 and 69.

  3. 3.

    See, among others, Seeba, Hinrich C.: “Das moralische Gewissen Europas”. Stefan Zweig und Robert Menasse, in: Zeitschrift für interkulturelle Germanistik 9 (2018), H. 1, pp. 119–136.

  4. 4.

    In: Nietzsche, Friedrich: Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbände, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, vol. 3. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag 1988, pp. 628–631 (=KSA 3, 628–631). All subsequent Nietzsche text references refer to this edition.

  5. 5.

    Cf. App, Urs: Richard Wagner und der Buddhismus. Rorschach/Kyoto: UniversityMedia 2011, p. 229.

  6. 6.

    Wagner, Cosima: Die Tagebücher in drei Volumes, Vol. 1: 1869–1873, ed. by Karl-Maria Guth. Munich: Piper Verlag 2015, p. 163 (entry from 1 May 1870).

  7. 7.

    Simmel, Georg: Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen. Reden und Aufsätze. Munich/Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot 1917, p. 69.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., p. 71.

  9. 9.

    Ibid.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., p. 48.

  11. 11.

    Reprinted, inter alia, in the regular edition of the newspaper: Die Welt (09.07.2004), pp. 1–15. Cf. also the critical comments by Köppel, Roger: Entfesselte Bürokratie, in: Ibid., p. 1 and by Vaubel, Roland: Sieben Einwände. In central areas, the present constitutional text still needs to be improved, in: Ibid., p. 16.

  12. 12.

    See, among others, Knoll, Manuel: The Übermensch as Social and Political Task: A Study in the Continuity of Nietzsche’s Political Thought, in: Manuel Knoll, Barry Stocker (eds.): Nietzsche as Political Philosopher. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2014, pp. 239–266; Schmieder, Carsten: Contra culturam: Nietzsche und der Übermensch, in: Andreas Urs Sommer (ed.), Nietzsche – Philosopher of Culture(s)? Berlin/New York: De Gruyter 2008, pp. 97–102.

  13. 13.

    Menasse, Robert: Die Hauptstadt. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag 2017, p. 401.

  14. 14.

    Seeba 2018, p. 133.

References

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  • Krastev, Ivan: After Europe, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2017, S. 43.

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  • Menasse, Robert: Die Hauptstadt. Roman. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag 2017.

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  • Nietzsche, Friedrich: Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbänden, hg. von Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari, Bd. 3. München: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag 1988, S. 628–631.

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  • Simmel, Georg: Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen. Reden und Aufsätze. München/Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot 1917.

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  • Sommer, Andreas Urs: Was bleibt von Nietzsches Philosophie? Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2018.

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  • Wagner, Cosima: Die Tagebücher in drei Bänden, Bd. 1: 1869–1873, hg. von Karl-Maria Guth. München: Piper Verlag 2015, S. 163.

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Görner, R. (2022). Reflections on the ‘good European’ in the Phase of Brexism. In: Raß, M.N., Wolfinger, K. (eds) Europe in Upheaval. Palgrave Macmillan, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_7

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