Chapter 1 - Reasons for War

Summary

This chapter examines Nietzsche’s thoughts regarding physically destructive struggle (Vernichtungskampf) and, more specifically, war. I contest the exclusively agonistic reading of his philosophy by showing that throughout his writings Nietzsche gives a wide variety of reasons as to why we ought to value mortal forms of combat. I further argue that many of these arguments are underpinned by a quasi-Schopenhauerian ontology of violent conflict. According to this ontology, the impetus to engage in physically destructive struggle is untransformable. Hence, war is ineluctable because humans are defined by an irresistible drive for violent conflict. The periodic release of this ever-accumulating urge is in Nietzsche’s view socially cathartic, and to this extent enables flourishing. This is problematic for his agonistic readers, however, since they take Nietzsche to be pursuing the transformation of destructive into constructive struggle. My solution to this apparent contradiction is to suggest that Nietzsche’s problematic conception of destructive conflict is for the most part confined to his early writings. As he moves away from Schopenhauer and toward the natural sciences, he reconceives destructive conflict as the contingent expression of a general impulse to overpower others – one that can obtain discharge in nonviolent modes of conflict.