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Perfecting Nature Perfecting Nature: Friedrich Nietzsche's Ideal and Politics of Cultivation by Dr Adriano Dino Cugola Deakin University 1990 Table of contents Synopsis ....................................................................................................................... 5 Foreword ..................................................................................................................... 6 1 - Elements of the Ideal of Cultivation .................................................................... 7 Rational Consciousness: the Idea of Physis ........................................................... 7 Perfecting Nature ................................................................................................... 8 Division of labour ................................................................................................ 10 Individuality in civilisation................................................................................... 10 The politics of cultivation ..................................................................................... 11 Secular and non-secular orientations .................................................................. 12 Posterity ............................................................................................................... 14 The Axial Age ....................................................................................................... 14 2 - Types of the Ideal of Cultivation ........................................................................ 16 The Warrior or Courtly Ideal of Cultivation: Paideia and Areté ......................... 16 Age of the Polis - The Republican Ideal of Cultivation ........................................ 18 Pan-Hellenism - the National Ideal of Cultivation ............................................... 20 Hellenism - the personal Ideal of Cultivation ...................................................... 21 The Ideal of Cultivation in Europe ....................................................................... 24 The German Ideal of Cultivation: Bildung ........................................................... 24 3 - Nietzsche and the decline of Bildung ................................................................. 26 Family and Schooling .......................................................................................... 26 The Decline of Bildung......................................................................................... 27 Nietzsche's Isolation ............................................................................................. 29 Activism ................................................................................................................ 31 The Political Project ............................................................................................ 32 4 - Nietzsche's World History .................................................................................. 36 Culture and Civilisation ....................................................................................... 36 Nietzsche's World-History .................................................................................... 38 Secularism and the modern crisis of values ......................................................... 42 5 - The Problem of Value ......................................................................................... 46 Value and Becoming ............................................................................................ 46 Value and wisdom ................................................................................................ 46 Nietzsche's experience of nihilism ........................................................................ 47 Toward the revaluation of values ......................................................................... 49 Stratagems for justifying value ............................................................................. 50 6 - The idea of physis and the younger Nietzsche ................................................... 52 The Idea of Physis ................................................................................................ 52 The German Idea of Physis .................................................................................. 53 The German Idea of Nature as Will ..................................................................... 54 Nature and Consciousness in the younger Nietzsche ........................................... 55 The problem of theory and practice ..................................................................... 56 Nietzsche's idea of Physis ..................................................................................... 57 7 - The Will to Power in Nature .............................................................................. 59 The intellectual need for the doctrine of Will to Power ........................................ 59 What Will to Power is .......................................................................................... 61 Will to Power as life ............................................................................................. 62 Will to Power and the evolution of species........................................................... 64 Species and individuals ........................................................................................ 67 8 - Will to power as value ......................................................................................... 69 Evolution of the idea of will to power as physis ................................................... 69 How an organism perceives ................................................................................. 70 How an organism knows ...................................................................................... 71 How organisms become conscious ....................................................................... 72 How organisms become moral ............................................................................. 73 The relation of types of morality to will to power ................................................ 74 Who is most valuable? ......................................................................................... 75 9 - What is a Genius? ............................................................................................... 77 Genius as an ethical concept ................................................................................ 77 2 Origins and elements of the idea of genius .......................................................... 77 Mimesis and genius .............................................................................................. 78 Style and genius ................................................................................................... 78 Poetic Furor and genius ....................................................................................... 78 The controversy over the three elements of genius ............................................... 79 Developments in the idea of genius ...................................................................... 79 The German idea of genius .................................................................................. 80 The elements of genius in Nietzsche's works ........................................................ 82 Integrity ................................................................................................................ 82 Integrity and the younger Nietzsche ..................................................................... 83 Integrity, freedom and necessity ........................................................................... 85 Style ...................................................................................................................... 87 Plenitude .............................................................................................................. 91 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 93 10 - Nietzsche's Politics of Cultivation .................................................................... 95 Nietzsche's concern with politics .......................................................................... 95 Eudemonic Versus Culture Politics ...................................................................... 96 Nietzsche's Political Extremism ........................................................................... 97 11 - The historical character of the German State ................................................. 98 The material character of the Prussian State ....................................................... 98 Spiritual character of the Prussian State ............................................................. 99 A reforming hierarchy ........................................................................................ 100 12 - Power-state and Culture-state in German thought ...................................... 102 Machtstaat and Kulturstaat ................................................................................ 102 The Cosmopolitan Kulturstaat ........................................................................... 103 The Organic Kulturstaat .................................................................................... 107 13 - Nietzsche's Culture State ................................................................................ 110 Nietzsche's Idea of the State
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