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Nietzsche’s Culture of Humanity

Nietzsche scholars have long been divided over whether Nietzsche is an

aristocratic or a democratic thinker.

Nietzche’s Culture of Humanity

overcomes this debate by proving both sides wrong. Jeffrey Church

argues that in his early period writings, Nietzsche envisioned a cultural

meritocracy that drew on the classical German tradition of Kant and

Herder. The young Nietzsche’s

“culture

of humanity” synthesized the

high and the low, the genius and the people, the nation and humanity.

Nietzsche’s early ideal of culture can shed light on his mature period

thought because, Church argues, Nietzsche does not abandon this

fundamental commitment to a cultural meritocracy.

Nietzche’s Culture

of Humanity

argues that Nietzsche’s novel defense of culture can over-

come persisting problems in contemporary liberal theories of culture. As

such, this book should interest Nietzsche scholars, political theorists,

and philosophers interested in modern thought, as well as contempor-

ary thinkers concerned with the politics of culture.

jeffrey church

is a political theorist whose research area is the

history of modern political thought, with particular interest in contin-

ental thought, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau through Friedrich

Nietzsche. His work examines the reﬂections of past philosophers on

freedom, individuality, education, and culture, and shows how these

reﬂections can inform contemporary liberal and democratic theory. He

is the author most recently of

Inﬁnite Autonomy: The Divided Individ-

ual in the Political Thought of G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche,

which won the Best First Book award given by the Foundations of

Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association.

Nietzsche’s Culture of Humanity

Beyond Aristocracy and Democracy in the

Early Period

JEFFREY CHURCH

University of Houston