Nietzsche's Earth
Great Events, Great Politics
We have Nietzsche to thank for some of the most important accomplishments in intellectual history, but as Gary Shapiro shows in this unique look at Nietzsche's thought, the nineteenth-century philosopher actually anticipated some of the most pressing questions of our own era. Putting Nietzsche into conversation with contemporary philosophers such as Deleuze, Agamben, Foucault, Derrida, and others, Shapiro links Nietzsche's powerful ideas to topics that are very much on the contemporary agenda: globalization, the nature of the livable earth, and the geopolitical categories that characterize people and places. Shapiro explores Nietzsche's rejection of historical inevitability and its idea of the end of history. He highlights Nietzsche's prescient vision of today's massive human mobility and his criticism of the nation state's desperate efforts to sustain its exclusive rule by declaring emergencies and states of exception. Shapiro then explores Nietzsche's vision of a transformed garden earth and the ways it sketches an aesthetic of the Anthropocene. He concludes with an explanation of the deep political structure of Nietzsche's "philosophy of the Antichrist", by relating it to traditional political theology. By triangulating Nietzsche between his time and ours, between Bismarck's Germany and post-9/11 America, Nietzsche's Earth invites readers to rethink not just the philosopher himself but the very direction of human history.
About the Author
Gary Shapiro is the Tucker-Boatwright Professor Emeritus of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Richmond. He is the author of many books, including "Earthwards: Robert Smithson and Art after Babel" and "Archaeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying".
Reviews
"'Nietzsche's Earth' is an important and compelling book. It is a strikingly original and genuinely exciting contribution to the study and extension of Nietzsche's political thought that will appeal to a wide swath of scholars. Shapiro's scholarship is first rate, and his argument is brilliantly innovative. In the context of current political philosophical discussions of Nietzsche, his book comes as a breath of fresh air, for it opens up Nietzsche's texts in new ways that speak with powerful relevance to contemporary issues" – Robert Gooding-Williams, Columbia University
"Shapiro offers us something more interesting than an intellectual biography. What we have here is an incisive, innovative, provocative, and above all enlightening reading of Nietzsche's work in light of some contemporary challenges, including the Anthropocene, the war on terror, the clash of civilizations, the end of nature, and the sixth extinction. These readings, or what Shapiro calls 'philological investigations', reveal an impressive, extensive, and secure knowledge of the Nietzschean corpus as well as the secondary literature. Because of Shapiro's deep knowledge of Nietzsche's work, he is also able to correct many mistranslations and misunderstandings of his work. The result is a masterful reinterpretation of Nietzsche by a life-long Nietzsche scholar that reads like the manifesto of a scholar who is bestowing on us the gifts of exemplary creative appropriations and generative exegeses proving that Nietzsche can be a resource for an ethical and political engagement with the earth and other peoples" – Eduardo Mendieta, Pennsylvania State University
