An immediate question - which nonetheless defies an ultimate answer - is why only today does Nietzschean philosophy present itself as a significant paradigm of political theory? At first, it seems not impossible to give an answer by pointing to the politically-motivated expropriation which the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy repeatedly fell victim to. Tendentious interpretations have often amounted to straightforward falsification. (Paradoxically, what the authors of these insidious attempts have mostly been attracted by were not the specifically political components of Nietzsche's thought. Politically-motivated interest in such notions as 'The Will to Power' or the 'Eternal Return' has played a much more significant role than the Nietzschean critique of modern etatism, for instance.) I do not intend to develop or return to my previously expressed views on expropriations of Nietzsche's philosophy, though these expropriations are in many cases without doubt 'diabolically' sophisticated. In the following paper, I am going to focus exclusively on the hermeneutical problem of the currency of Nietzsche's political philosophy.
I have already touched upon a superficial aspect of this problem: the crude and totalitarian misinterpretations of Nietzsche's philosophy. Essentially, however, the problem is of a hermeneutical nature. This is because the actual consequences of the misinterpretations (in their given historical and systematic contexts) have placed Nietzsche's political philosophy in a specific hermeneutical space. That is to say, they have re-contextualized Nietzsche's explicitly articulated texts. Thus not independently from the falsifications, but also not purely as a result of them, a hermeneutical situation has been created in which Nietzschean ideas could no longer be apprehended as embodying a full-blown and legitimate paradigm of political philosophy The real hermeneutical phenomenon at issue here could therefore be defined as a thoroughgoing change in the conditions of theoretical perception making the correct apprehension of a paradigm hermeneutically impossible.
The decisive influence of Marxism on political philosophy has certainly played an important role in this peculiar modification of the conditions of theoretical apprehension. This is because the real Nietzschean paradigm has necessarily appeared as 'prior to Marx' and thus as a historical, if not even as an antiquated attempt. Since the Marxist paradigm itself has begun to fall into pieces, however, the Nietzschean paradigm of political philosophy could shake off both the fatal consequences of falsifications and the secondary role assigned to it due to the dominance of the Marxist paradigm. (In fact, this claim remains true irrespective of the actual theory one chooses to identify the Marxist paradigm with. Neither does it presuppose value-judgements with regard to the decline of the Marxist paradigm.)
The contribution of the collapse of the Marxist paradigm to revitalizing Nietzsche's political philosophy can also be grasped in more concrete terms. The Marxist paradigm can be basically seen as a holistic political (and sociological) agenda founded on the notion of class-struggle. This thesis can be formulated with a reasonable degree of certainty, although power-oriented Bonapartism-theory has offered an alternative within Marxism itself, or at least, it has made significant contributions towards a more refined political theory.
By contrast, Nietzsche's political philosophy, his theory of democracy in particular, rests on a notion of society located within the conceptual framework of the sociology of knowledge and culture (even if Nietzsche's political philosophy does not ignore the symptoms of crisis recognized by Marx's political philosophy of the class-struggle). Precisely this difference gave Nietzsche's political thought the semblance of being antiquated as long as the Marxist paradigm remained dominant (assuming, of course, that there has been any genuine interest in Nietzsche's political philosophy at all).

The influence of the most important falsifications has been so strong (exacerbated by the hermeneutical consequences resulting from hegemony of the Marxist paradigm in political philosophy) that researchers could afford to ignore even those Nietzsche texts in which he stated his theoretical and actual political views with unmistakable clarity. This shows quite clearly that under certain hermeneutical circumstances the author himself may be most vulnerable when his texts are to be interpreted.

The following can be regarded as Nietzsche's most important definition of his own political standpoint: "We do not 'conserve' anything, we do not intend to return to the past, but neither are we 'liberals' working for progress. We do not even need to fill our ears against the luring song of the sirens singing about the future of the market - their song about 'equal rights', 'free society', 'no masters and no servants' does not attract us. They want to win us over to 'the religion of sympathy' - oh, how well do we know those tiny gentlemen and ladies who advocate this religion nowadays as a veil and embellishment! We are not of a humanistic persuasion; we would never permit ourselves to talk about our 'love' for 'humankind' - the likes of us are not good enough actors for this! Or not good enough Saint-Simonians, not French enough[...] neither are we 'German' enough, on the other hand, in the sense of 'German' used by everybody nowadays, speaking the language of nationalism and racism, finding pleasure in national hearts carved in wood and in blood poisoning, for the sake of which one people separates and blocks itself from another with quarantines[...] We are outcasts, too diverse and mixed by race and descent as 'modern people', and consequently, we are hardly tempted to take part in the mendacious racial self-adulation and exuberance which in that Germany manifests itself as the expression of German feelings[...] We are in one word, good Europeans [...]"

Since I have analyzed this key text by Nietzsche elsewhere, I only want to call attention here to the fact that it contains an exhaustive and probably the most authentic summary of Nietzsche's 'political' position. The views expressed in this text are 'positively' corroborated by all important stages of the oeuvre. In fact, it is impossible to find any 'negative' evidence of contradictory opinions in Nietzsche's works. Although the text cited is exceptionally concise, its short characterizations give a succinct description of the dominant, traditional and emergent political movements of the time while also representing Nietzsche's genuine political philosophy with utmost precision.

The damage caused by 'interpretations' such as those put forward by Georg Lukács and Alfred Baumler (not to mention other champions of illegitimate political expropriation) can hardly be justified. The historical repercussions of this damage are difficult to overestimate. Moreover, the misrepresentation of Nietzsche's 'metapolitical' account as a collection of extreme and actualized political views was not the sole negative philosophical consequence of these reinterpretations. Arguably, however, these falsifications caused the biggest damage both from a theoretical and a practical perspective by not making the pioneering aspects of Nietzsche's political philosophy available for the tradition and specific paradigms of political philosophy throughout practically the whole history of Nietzsche-interpretations.

It is to be noted in all fairness that not only the totalitarian misrepresentations have been responsible for the general ignorace concerning these pioneering aspects. Looking at the overall hermeneutical context it seems obvious that the predominance of the Marxist paradigm in political philosophy (also including the most important opponents of Marxism) has also contributed to the shadow cast over Nietzsche's true political philosophy. An analysis of the hermeneutical connections and rules determining the precise way in which these misconceptions have been projected onto Nietzsche's political work would take us to deeper levels of textual analysis. Therefore, I would only like to remark here that there exist paradigmatical constructions which enjoy a preeminent status and thus determine the interpretation of main categories and their interrelations. Such constructions literally make an identification of substantial aspects of a given text (thus, in our case, those of Nietzsche's text) impossible. This fact is all the more striking since these aspects can be easily circumscribed in periods not dominated by these theoretical constructions.
This specific hermeneutical problem can be said to be relatively independent from the actual 'misinterpretative' activity of Lukács or Baumler. How relative this independence is taken to be in reality, is demonstrated by the fact that both Lukács and Baumler have exerted a decisive influence on the official views of entire political movements, institutions and states. In short, the results of their work have necessarily added to the significance of general hermeneutical constraints resulting from the predominance of certain paradigms (in particular, resulting from the predominance of the paradigm constituted by Marxism and its critiques).

After having discussed the problem of historical falsifications and that of general hermeneutical constraints I now want to turn to the special methodological difficulties involved in the perspectivism and the resulting aphoristic style of Nietzsche's philosophy. One of the most important of these is that the problem of perspectivism still appears to many interpreters to be a matter of philosophical idiom and ultimately that of style. Trying to accommodate the individual perspectives is a particularly responsible and hazardous task for anybody attempting to reconstruct Nietzsche's political philosophy. This is mainly so because the contents of individual perspectives are substantially related to one another, but these relations themselves are subject to hierarchization and contextualisation in political thought. When reconstructing a large network of interrelations the freedom of the interpreter is, of course, considerable and involves all the interpretative risks which interpretative freedom may give rise to. These risks may well appear to be enormous when political philosophy and its specialized areas are conceived of as self-evidently systematic in structure. Even if we disregard Baeumler, Lukács and the predominant Marxist paradigm (and its traditional opponents), from the perspective of this system-oriented hermeneutical expectation the perspectivistic and aphoristic political thinking has given many readers the impression of chaos. And, as is usual in such cases, this way of thinking has also attracted various representatives of political amateurishness and chaotism. Nevertheless, given that perspectivism forms the legitimate and pioneering basis of Nietzsche's philosophical world-view, its characteristics are not specifically bound up with political philosophy itself.

An important typological classification of political philosophies divides theories into two groups of theories of democracy (contractual theories), on the one hand, and theories of power, on the other. This distinction does not exclude the possibility of there being various connections between these two groups (for instance, classical contractualist theory itself was a way of regulating the exercise of power). The significance of the distinction lies primarily, however, in the fact that the two different approaches have led to the emergence of two rather different paradigms. These paradigms in their advanced forms are situated quite far from each other and their central problems bear only distant resemblances to one another, even if there is no principal or categorical divide between theories of democracy and theories of power. The originality of Nietzsche's work can be attributed in this respect to the combination of several elements: (i) Nietzsche held the problem and phenomenon of political power to be at the centre of both political theory and practice. Thus he was able to breath new life into entire areas of political philosophy. (ii) Nietzsche is to be seen as a political theorist who although concentrating on the problem of power has elaborated his views of political power in independence from the Marxist paradigm (and its opponents). (iii) Finally, as it will be discussed later on, he unconditionally accepts the historical rise of the political system of democracy. Doing so he has contradicted many pre-democratic or even anti-democratic theorists of political power. Nietzsche's political theory focuses pre-eminently on the analysis of democratic political power.

As a fundamental principle of his political philosophy Nietzsche emphasizes that "the democratization of Europe is irresistible". In view of this principle, the unbiased reader not completely unacquainted with standard Nietzsche-interpretations may well reconsider the striking philological and conceptual inadequacy of the two influential political misinterpretations, or falsifications as they really deserve to be called. It would be tempting to link the exclamation 'God is dead' with the previously cited statement saying that "the democratization of Europe is irresistible" in a framework broader than the reconstruction of political philosophy and thus attempt to establish an independent and autonomous theme in the philosophy of history and culture. Given that this paper focuses on the reconstruction of Nietzsche's political philosophy here I can only indicate the possibility of such a theme.

Nietzsche's deep insight into the irresistible democratization of Europe provides a noteworthy starting point also because Nietzsche's age at the level of political events has never been regarded as one of the great and celebrated periods of political democracy (restricting ourselves here to the historical events of the 1870s). The revolutions of 1848 did not accomplish the goals they had officially proclaimed. In many ways, the actual development of large political systems seemed to point in the opposite direction at the time. The Bonapartism of Louis Bonaparte in France, the Bismarckian version of the Hohenzollern rule in the newly united Germany of 1871 contained new undemocratic elements both with regard to the theory and practice of political systems. These undemocratic elements which have hitherto remained almost unexplored could certainly have made it difficult for Nietzsche to identify "the irresistible progress of democracy" as the dominant tendency of his time.
In the 450th aphorism of his "Human, all too human" Nietzsche succeeds in uniting the approach of democracy (contractualist) theories and theories of power by identifying the characteristic features of democratic rule, which he regarded as a par excellence new and democratic phenomenon contrasting it with traditional and non-democratic forms of government. This exceptionally important text which bears the title "New and old conception of government" focuses on the transformation of "government" under the influence of the "prevailing constitutional rule": "To distinguish between government and people as though there were here two distinct spheres of power (!), a stronger and higher and a weaker and lower, which treated and came to an understanding with one another, is a piece of inherited political sensibility[...] On the other hand, one is now supposed to learn - in accordance with a principle that has emerged purely from the head and is supposed to make history - that government is nothing but an organ of the people and not a provident, venerable 'above' in relation to a diffident 'below' " Nietzsche describes here the essential characteristics of democratic government from two relevant but markedly divergent perspectives. He refers to the historical decline of the framework circumscribed by the structural and discursive duality of political 'above' and 'below'. Meanwhile, Nietzsche critically distances himself from this schematic and outdated formula of political analyses. He describes a fundamentally new phenomenon, a positive consequence of democratic government, namely that 'above' and 'below' become different perspectives within the same complex structure. The actual state of this complex structure is determined by the result of the real interaction of real forces whatever that result may turn out to be in a given situation. Nietzsche's dynamic resolution of this antagonism, reified by others and thus partly assumed to be absolute, also helps to dissolve the seemingly sharply-drawn and unsurpassable boundaries within the political sub-system. This move is justified by the finding that social and economic factors (to mention only two of relevance) have come to play a decisive role in the constant reshuffling of 'above' and 'below' in democratic politics.
The new perspective opened up by Nietzsche's political philosophy becomes all the more valuable in view of the fact that the notions of 'above' and 'below', the obsoleteness of which he has successfully shown, still dominate the way we tend to think about the nature of the political sub-system. The reason for this misperception may be found in the inertia and conservativism of everyday consciousness and political analysis. Nietzsche's insight does not only marginalize the outdate concept of 'above' and 'below', but it also offers a valid and positive fundamental definition instead. This definition lays a solid conceptual and logical groundwork for all further ideas added to, built upon or possibly formulated in opposition to this basis.

The new form of government is itself a part of a comprehensive system of relations. Nietzsche's investigation of the relationship of State and Church, which considers several political and intellectual stages of this relation, indicates how the consequences of the irresistible democratization may be given an exhaustive description. Although this investigation is worth a thorough assessment - if only on account of its breathtaking lucidity - such an assessment can only be given after the general survey and analysis has been completed. Already at this point, however, I want to call attention to the richness and complexity of Nietzsche's analytical potential. This potential is based on the methodology of Nietzsche's critical empiricism the scope of which is, of course, by no means limited to political philosophy.

The perspicaciousness of this specific philosophical perspective merits a longer citation from the following aphorism: "As long as the state, or more clearly, the government knows itself appointed as guardian for the benefit of the masses not yet of age, and on their behalf considers the question whether religion is to be preserved or abolished, it is very highly probable that it will always decide for the preservation of religion. For religion quietens the heart of the individual in times of loss, deprivation fear, distrust, in those instances, that is to say, in which the government feels unable to do anything towards alleviating the psychical sufferings of the private person: even in the case of universal, unavoidable and in the immediate prospect inevitable evils[...] indeed, religion guarantees a calm, patient, trusting disposition among the masses. Wherever the chance or inevitable shortcomings of the state government or the perilous consequences of dynastic interests force themselves upon the attention of the knowledgeable man and put him in a refractory mood, the unknowledgeable will think they see the hand of God and patiently submit to instruction from above[...]: thus internal civil peace and continuity of development is ensured. The power that lies in unity of popular sentiment, in the fact that everyone holds the same opinions and has the same objectives, is sealed and protected by religion [...]" Nietzsche gives a precise summary of the leading ideas of the time that, although evidently trivial, have motivated the subjects of political events. It is an extraordinary, even if possibly unintended, achievement of Nietzsche's analysis that by penetrating gradually into a trivial and widely-shared conviction it manages to completely reshape a picture which at first sight might have seemed so absolutely self-evident to both the subjects and observers of political events. Although the perspectivistic-aphoristic manner of expression makes the reconstruction of the conceptual coherence of Nietzsche's views difficult, precisely such coherence is manifest in his deliberate confrontation of the customary picture with his basic insight into a new type of government: "But what if that quite different conception of government such as is taught in democratic states begins to prevail?" While confronting his own idea of a new government with a point of view apparently supported by most people of his time, he gives expression to a radical or even dramatic conflict. The above cited conception on the relationship of state and Church resorted to the traditional notion of government, to the conceptual figure on the separation of 'above' and 'below'. The state, the reaction of which we have pictured to ourselves, was the state of 'above'. It is not surprising that Nietzsche details in the following the thematic basis of the critical confrontation with nearly didactic patience: "[But what if] it is regarded as nothing but the instrument of the popular will, not as an Above in relation to a Below but merely as a function of the sole sovereign power, the people?" Contrary to all seeming explanations that come to mind (including the idea of religion as the "drug of the people" , Nietzsche points out the genuine motives of secularization with remarkable precision: "[...] an employment and exploitation [sic! - E. K.] of the religious drives and consolations for political ends will no longer be so easy[...] But if the state is no longer free to profit from the religion itself or the people come to hold far too diverse opinions on religious matters for the government to be permitted any single unified policy regarding religious measures - then the way out will necessarily be to treat religion as a private affair and to hand it over to the conscience and customs of every individual." Recalling the original formulation beginning with the words "at first sight" it can be seen that this formulation has been turned into its very opposite by now. While the form of government embodying the antagonism of 'above' and 'below' has positively relied on religion, the "new" form of government regards religion as a private affair. The main reason for this is not the often proclaimed principle of "tolerance", but that the new state can no longer turn religion or religions "to its own profit".
Nietzsche draws out further important consequences of his authoritative diagnosis. He succeeds in recognizing these consequences by pursuing the analysis of the new historical situation in subsequent logical steps. Thus, trivial or even blasphemic as it may sound, many of his findings result simply from his painstaking adherence to the virtue of logical consistency. A further logical step explores the consequences of the secularization for the Church itself (in Nietzsche unambiguous wording: "an abundance of dragon-teeth"). Religion and religiosity deprived of their social functions, some of which may not even have been openly acknowledged before, will necessarily show signs of disintegration (and forceful state intervention will not always be responsible for this disintegration). "Religious feeling", previously integrated into unified religious functional contexts or even suppressed, now "break forth" and "proceed to excesses and extremes", i.e. religion (the Church) may be dominated by the proliferation of sects. In these stages of disintegration and atomization, religion itself, barred from exercising its social functions, triggers new processes of differentiation ("every better and better gifted man will make irreligion his private affair [...]").
Even larger systems coexisting without common aims or functions start to confront each other. The activity of the state becomes "hostile to religion" and this in turn will also change the attitudes of religious citizens. These citizens who used to admire the state "as something half or wholly sacred" will now indulge in behaviour "hostile to the state". Given the "heat of their opposition", they will display "fanatical enthusiasm". As I have already emphasized, Nietzsche does no rest content with establishing the fact that "the state has made religion into a private affair" - a fact that has of course been decisive for the political and legal discourse - but aiming for an exhaustive account, he traces one-by-one all the cumulative consequences of this phenomenon.
Thus, if I were to fully reconstruct this account, I would have to discuss here Nietzsche's description of the new friend-enemy relations in the new situation. Less attentive readers may be tempted to believe that this description refers to the old and not the new friend-enemy relationship. "Politics becomes hostile to religion", while religious communities tend towards activities "hostile to the state". Nietzsche's extraordinarily insightful analysis merits attention not only on account of its relevance to the theory and practice of politics, but also because of broader theoretical considerations. Nietzsche uses this specific example to demonstrate a general point. He shows that in the absence of adequate communication and cooperation even values, groups and interests which otherwise do not essentially conflict with one another will predictably enter into a friend-enemy relationship. This will be so even if these values, groups and interests have as little reason and necessary motivation for conflict as the process of secularization itself gives little reason for the conflict between state and religious communities in Nietzsche's example. In general, Nietzsche takes up such examples partly in order to explore the socio-ontological foundations of politics, and partly, from the point of view of research on contemporary social developments, in order to emphasize the importance of socio-cultural distinctions in the formation of political and social groupings.

The characterization of political structures from a socio-cultural perspective is bound up in Nietzsche with the identification of group-formation motives on the basis of the sociology of knowledge. When embarking on such analyses Nietzsche's skills as a theoretician, sociologist of knowledge and philosopher of values come into full view. Great political movements of Nietzsche's age are also evaluated in terms of the sociology of knowledge. Nietzsche's classification is particularly interesting and needs further investigation if it is to be made available for the purposes of political theory. By way of illustration, I would like to refer here to Nietzsche's characterization of the whole spectrum of political movements mentioned in the introduction. Nietzsche holds political conservativism to be inadequate from the standpoint of the sociology of knowledge. Roughly speaking, he argues that the basic conservative fixation conflicts irresolvably with the dictate that the processing of ever changing reality is to be continuously changing as well. The position of political romanticism is given an ideal-typical definition in Nietzsche's sociology of knowledge. Clinging to outdated values is identified as the distinctive feature of the romantic attitude. This attitude may in itself be not wholly unattractive - Nietzsche's wording is not completely unambiguous in this regard - but it is certainly not tolerable from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge.
These two positions, political conservativism and romanticism, are only to be judged inadequate in terms of the sociology of knowledge because they necessarily generate false consciousness. By contrast, sociology of knowledge has to characterize certain other political attitudes (for instance, the peculiar new blend of German nationalism of the Gründerzeit or political antisemitism) not simply as errors, but as aberrations. In other words, these latter attitudes are to be regarded as extreme manifestations of false consciousness, hence originally philosophical rather than political problems. I want to call attention here once more to the fact that an adequate reading of Nietzschean political philosophy was made possible by the liberation of the entire paradigm of political philosophy from the dominance of Marxist political philosophy. This claim is not to be understood as a criticism of the Marxist paradigm. All the less so, since this paradigm is not the subject-matter of this paper. Yet it is to be noted that the holistic preferences of Marxist political philosophy do no coincide with Nietzsche's socio-culturally-oriented approach (situated within the framework of the sociology of knowledge), but yield an increasingly one-dimensional sociological understanding of large classes. This understanding attempts to make up for the lack of positive socio-cultural analyses with a more and more categorical declaration of socio-cultural differences along class divisions.

"Irresistible" democracy is not a prolongation of the new "condition humaine" after the "death of God". On the contrary. In Nietzsche's eyes "God is dead" as well as "irresistible democratization" are great historical opportunities. They are not self-generating mechanical necessities, but real and emancipatory challenges involving humankind as such, challenges which may have a traumatic impact, but could also hold great promises in store: "There is a great deal of joy still reserved for mankind of which men of the present day have not had so much as a scent! And we may promise ourselves this joy[...] only provided that the evolution of human reason does not stand still!"

The great human opportunity is to be realized by "irresistible" democracy, especially because for Nietzsche there exists no other legitimate political system. It is no coincidence that, although presented in an intricately differentiated manner, the emancipatory human dimensions of democracy do appear in Nietzsche's politico-philosophical analysis. That these dimensions are also reflected upon is not surpising as far as Nietzsche's philosophy is considered since all aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy show a distinct awareness of emancipatory human concerns. At the same time, the interest in these universal dimensions contributes to a better understanding of the nature of democratic systems. The point is that political theories of democracy as well as practical democratic politics devote attention to universal concerns of humankind only in extraordinary and transitional situations. This fact is all the more striking since according to self-definitions of democratic conciousness, democracy is the political system best suited to the needs of humankind. It seems that its very triumph and general appeal, in other words, its political charisma can be attributed to it being universally optimal for humankind.

The emancipatory-universal analysis of "irresistible" democracy yields important consequences with regard to political theory. Democratic systems, irrespective of the actual length of electoral cycles, are peculiarly "short-term" or "short-winded" institutions. Precisely from the perspective of emancipatory human concerns will the lack of "long-term" political options be revealed with particular poignancy. Furthermore, the absence of "long-term" options will clearly influence the approach to all theoretical and practical problems of politics. These considerations prove to be crucial in the light of Nietzsche's universalistic way of thinking: "[...] men and parties alternate too quickly, hurl one another too fiercely down from the hill after barely having attained the top. None of the measures effected by a government will be guaranteed continuity; everyone will draw back from undertaking that require quiet tending for decades or centuries if their fruits are to mature. No will feel towards a law any greater obligation than that of bowing for the moment to the force which backs up the law: one will then at once set to work to subvert it with a new force, the creation of a new majority" The quick alteration of "men and parties" is bound to worry the theoretician who views democracy from the emancipatory-universal perspective not only because of the short-term set up and the general relaxation of social constraints and patterns. Even more important is the fact that under the circumstances of modern democracy the long-term "projects" of universal human creativity will always be pushed into the background. Such "projects", which can only be accomplished if each step builds on the previous one, will be marginalized not because of individual deficiencies or vices, but for structural and conceptual reasons. If Christianity needed many centuries to build its cathedrals, to humanize and civilize the barbaric conditions of the Middle Ages, then Nietzsche had reason enough to worry about the historical chances of the enlightenment process, even if in principle sociology of knowledge provided a solid basis for these processes. The long-term nature of these processes is by definiton incommensurable with the short-term set up which democratic systems freely opt for. It seems fair to say that the apparent devaluation or weakening of the political sub-system is not unrelated to the development of the economic sub-system. The reason being that phases of the economic sub-system and the activities of its centres are longer-term than the legislative and executive cycles of the democratic political sub-system. This fact devaluates the political sub-system. The above citation is not to be read, therefore, as an interpreation or even criticism of everyday political happenings, but rather as an argument revealing true philosophical insight (which, if true, will also be justified, of course, by analyses of particular events).

Nietzsche gives expression to another pioneering thought (remaining, of course, strictly within the well-defined framework of democratic theory already introduced) when discussing functional changes in the uses of the notions of 'private' and 'public' in the system of pure modern democracy. The history of these two notions goes back to the enlightenment, during the historical processes of which these notions can be said to have played a decisive structural role. It is important to remember that these notions were assigned a central status in Kant's political philosophy. And from our contemporary perspective it is important to remember the key function of the notions of 'private' and 'public' in the socialist system, human-rights oriented liberalism and monetaristic neo-liberalism. The full import of this insight may have been obscured from our view because democratic systems have existed in the shadow of dictatorships, or at least in the shadow of autocratic systems such as monarchies. Placed in this firmly established historical context, whether made explicit or not, any analysis in terms of the notions of 'private' and 'public' was bound to judge the democratic system to be optimal and adequate according to the requirements of 'publicity'.
Nietzsche's political philosophy - as already mentioned - could free itself from the influence of the Marxist paradigm and this is also true with regard to this particular issue. Similarly to other perspectives, in face of the competition of ideologies and the menace of dictatorships, the critical problem of "private" and "public" as defined by Nietzsche could not be restricted to democratic systems. This is the point where Nietzsche's contribution becomes especially relevant. The historical period which has now come to an end was forced to confront "public" with "totalitarian", at least from the standpoint of democratic theory. At the same time, it has neglected the inherent duality of 'public' and 'private' as it manifests itself in the absence of a totalitarian context within a democratic system. And in the few cases in which this historical approach did not neglect the duality mentioned, it made it part of the anti-capitalistic, anti-democratic rhetoric: "Private companies will step by step absorb the business of the state: even the most resistant remainder of what was formerly the work of government[...] will in the long run be taken care of by private contractors. Disregard for and the decline and death of the state, the liberation of the private person (I take care not to say the individual), is the consequence of the democratic conception of the state; it is in this that its mission lies." As already mentioned, this splendid prophecy was not the result of philosophical intuition or foresight, it is to be attributed rather to the application of an analytically consequent and coherent method. Nietzsche is capable of identifying the distinctive features of democratic systems reaching deeper and deeper levels, while remaining generally supportive of democracy and democratic theory. The above claim, for instance, is not to be seen as a "criticism" of democracy, but as its description. It is a description that is particularly relevant for today's democracies which sustain and legitimize neo-liberal economies. It is a telling aspect of this political philosophy that it regards the democratic system itself as something to be left behind "at a certain point", but not before it has fulfilled its historical task: "When it [the democratic conception of the state - E. K.] has performed its task - which like everything human bears much rationality and irrationality in its womb - when every relapse into the old sickness has been overcome, a new page will be turned in the storybook of humanity [...]"

We are now in a position to give an overview of a peculiar feature of Nietzsche's political philosophy which follows from its universal and emancipatory character (such a universal and emancipatory character is quite rare among political philosophies, even if other political philosophers also subscribe to certain humanistic aspects of Nietzsche's political philosophy). For Nietzsche the individual stages in the development of a state or a political system are not to be seen as mechanical determinations or similarly immutable circumstances to which only fatalistic reactions may be given. On the contrary, Nietzsche regards these stages as "opportunities" or "chances", or to use a more modern expression, "challenges" to which humankind as such may respond. This emancipatory response will primarily rely on the universal potential inherent in various forms of government and political systems. Considering the specific features of Nietzsche's political philosophy, it is not at all surprising that he has chosen to introduce this particular challenge-response model. In fact, this model was to become the historical explanatory model most popular among theoretically-oriented representatives of the scientific positivism of the late nineteenth century. For instance, Nietzsche explains the prospective decline of the state (as a result of the development explained above, namely that public interests are progressively expropriated by private interests) as follows: "The prospect presented by this certain decay is, however, not in every respect an unhappy one: [since] the prudence and self-interest of men are of all their qualities the best developed; if the state is no longer equal to the demands of these forces then the last thing that will ensue is chaos: an invention more suited to their purpose than the state was will gain victory over the state."

Nietzsche's fundamental vision of modern democracy also includes an essential aspect which many tend to neglect given the indelible historical experience with totalitarian systems of the twentieth century. "Irresistible" democracy, precisely on account of its triumphant progress, also sets the course for, or to use another contemporary expression, instrumentalizes the activities of its very enemies. It is, to say the least, quite striking to read such a claim made by a philosopher whose work Alfred Baeumler and Georg Lukács have labelled as extreme political archaism while for a long time no serious objection was raised against this absurd verdict. The creative force of the analytical insight shows through despite the literary wording: "for whoever tries to halt it [democratization - E. K.] has to employ in that endeavour precisely the means which the democratic idea first placed in everyone's hands and makes these means themselves more wieldy and effective: and those who oppose democracy most on principle[...] appear to exist merely to impel the various parties ever faster forwards along the democratic path through the fear they inspire." Since this was written one has had ample opportunity to witness that democracy does indeed function in the way described by Nietzsche. It is, of course, also true that the marginalization and instrumentalization of adversaries could only take place in this way in historically strong periods of democratic systems.

We can see now that Nietzsche's universalistic approach assigns a definite place to democratic systems and also specifies why these systems are of special relevance for the universal-emancipatory development of humankind. Somewhat more surprising is the finding that Nietzsche does so without relinquishing the basic tenets of democratic theory or his sympathies for the democratic system. This "surprise" does not really flow from the nature of Nietzschean philosophy, but is primarily to be attributed to the negative "influence" of the interpretations delivered by Baeumler and Lukács. I would like to argue that the way to assess the validity of the universalistic approach of Nietzsche's political philosophy is to raise the question how adequate and fruitful the extension of this approach to political philosophy has turned out to be.
Nietzsche's universal approach can be shown to be a peculiarly indirect philosophy of history. It is an approach that has proven to be exceptionally productive for political philosophy (certainly not independently from the excellence of Nietzsche's philosophical analysis). This latent background provided by Nietzsche's philosophy of history is brought for a brief moment into full view in the following thought: "The democratization of Europe is, it seems, a link in the chain of those tremendous prophylactic measures which are the conception of modern times and through which we separate ourselves from the Middle Ages[...] We finally secure the foundations, so that the whole future can safely build upon them![...] We erect stone dams and protective walls against barbarians, against pestilences, against physical and spiritual enslavement! And all this coarsely and literaly at first, but gradually in a higher and more spiritual sense[...]"

By stating the prophylactic character of the democratic system in such a decisive fashion Nietzsche reaches the very core of his philosophy. By doing so he differs markedly and positively from several other political philosophers. The difference lies in the fact that for Nietzsche a given political system is not an ultimate value or objective, but, as already mentioned, an opportunity to realize universal human ambitions. This is why his political philosophy establishes a principled distinction between various political systems while also evaluating them according to their prophylactic potential to be utilized for the purposes of universal-emancipatory development.

How intimately Nietzsche's political philosophy is bound up with the democratic system is also evinced by his critique of socialism (of course, all what has been said here and elsewhere about the independence of Nietzsche's political philosophy from the predominant Marxist paradigm also applies to this particular issue). Clear democratic consciousness dictates the following interpretation of socialism: "[socialism is] not the problem of justice[...] but only a problem of power". By focusing his attention on the problem in this way and applying his analytical method consistently, Nietzsche reaches the conclusion that in many cases the problem of socialism will become relevant for the problem of the state (of "power"), and not conversely, as it may have been expected. It is difficult to say whether it was more Nietzsche's critical analysis or his philosophy of history underlying the idea of prophylaxis which made Nietzsche capable of canvassing the two basic problems of socialism in such a nonchalant fashion: "If there is a strong feeling that the possession of property is unjust - and the hand of the great clock has again come around to this point - two ways of remedying the situation are proposed: firstly an equal distribution, then the abolition of property and its reversion to the community." This diagnosis cannot be evaluated here in full detail. Yet the two crucial issues of socialism (which both look back on a history of several thousand years) are clear: the equal distribution of property and public ownership. Given the intellectual background of the 1870s Nietzsche would already merit praise for the very formulation of these two ideas (that of socialism being "a problem of power, not of justice", on the one hand, and that of the two crucial issues concerning property, on the other). It is even more striking, however, that Nietzsche does not respond to the two problems concerning property by referring to bourgeois values of private property (which from the standpoint of "irresistible democracy" would be the obvious solution). He chooses rather to demonstrate the profanely pragmatic consequences of the socialist agenda. With the hindsight provided by the historical experience of state socialism this demonstration appears to be astonishingly correct: " 'Equal allotment of land' is easily said, yet how much acrimony is produced by the divisions and separations this necessitates[...] One digs up morality when one digs up boundary-stondes. And [...] how much jealousy[...] among the new owners, since two allotments of land have never been truly equal" When discussing the issue of public ownership Nietzsche prophetically anticipates the group of phenomena later to be labelled as "collective irresponsibility": "For upon that which he possesses only in passing man bestows no care or self-sacrifice, he merely exploits it like a robber or a dissolute squanderer." Moreover, Nietzsche expressly warns us that the social divide generated by industrialization will become wider and wider and is thus bound to threaten the achievements of European civilization.
I believe that despite the limited extent of this paper I have succeeded in reconstructing the two most important constitutive themes of Nietzsche's genuine political philosophy. The first theme is that representative democracy as a form of society is, on the one hand, an ultimate objective, an immensely significant product of great historical ages. But it also a starting point, on the other, a new historical space which faces a wide range of problems inherited from the past and in all likelihood to be continuously reproduced in the future. The second theme of Nietzsche's political philosophy centers around the observation that no political doctrine will be optimal for European democracies which democracies are inherently pluralist in nature. It is a particularly important insight that a great part of competing political ideologies and agendas - including the conservative and nationalist doctrines - are to be judged inadequate from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge since they draw excessively on ideas derived from false consciousness. At the same time, other political ideologies and agendas are only capable of apprehending individual aspects of universal progress and emancipatory development. The agendas of socialistic movements are opposed to the very foundations of social practice in a non-trivial fashion, not to mention the original sin of the illegitimate seizure of political power (which Nietzsche did not envision). By contrast, liberal ideologies and agendas set social action free, but remain insensitive towards universal-emancipatory concerns. Modern democracy is, therefore, a pluralistic system in which incomplete ideologies and agendas compete with one another. The century which was to begin in the year of Nietzsche's death corroborated all important findings of this analysis.

(a passau-i kiegészitések)

a N-kép tetszolegessége elvileg ma már a multé, ma az a vita, mi is valójában, nem lehet mát mindent kiolvasni belole

az utolsó ember és más hasonló szuggesztiv viziók - a maguk helyén kell kezelni oket, errol Nietzsche a diskurzuiv részekben egyáltalán nem beszél, csak a Zarathusttrában

Sokratész - változik, de fiatal korában igen megalapozatlan a kritika

"érdekesség" és "érdektelenség" között, azzal együtt, hogy ez természetesen évtizedrol évtizedre változik

a liberalizmus-kritika valójában megfoghatatlan, mert olyan elofeltételekre utal rá, amelyek általában nincsenek kifejtve és diskurzuvan összerendezve - kicsit ellentétes a helyzet a szocializmus-kritikával, ami meghökkentoen elegáns és a legnagyobb mértékben összevetheto a VALÓSÁGOS stocializmus viszonyaival

amiben N-nek igaza van Marx-szal és a Marx által diktált diskurzussal szemben - egyenként is ki kell emelni, de a legfontosabb: mi a szóbanforgó árnyék, amit Marx vetett az egész diszkusszióra, miközben el kell fogadni, hogy ez nem Marx-kérdés közevtlenül, nem Marx-értékelés kérdése

a három irányzaton keresztül Nietzsche eljut a demokrácia Sinn-Fragéjához, amely mindig ujra meg ujra aktualizálódik, mert lerombolja a demokráciát, ami a nála gyengélbb rendszerekkel szemben ujra diadalmaskodik, hogy ne tanuljon semmit az elozményekbol


igy talán világosabb, m iért lehet a maqi problémák Bewaeltigungjára is felhasználni

Die neue Zeit für Nietzsche, aber auch für seine politische Philosophie

Scxhatteneffekt des Marxismus

egy klasszikus uj példa: Zusammensetzung des Kapitals, pontosan saját kora termeléséhez kötve igy lett "Marxista"- de ha valaki ma akarná meghatározni a tokét és annak összetevoit, természetesen egészen másképp kellene meghatároznia oket és az az illuziója támadna, hogy szembekerül a marxizmussal és meg kell haladnia azt

egy még klaszikusabb példa a marxizmus ezen árnyékhatására:

az antagonizmus - amelyik politikai elmélet nem indult ki a társadalom rejtett de meghatározóan antagonisztikus szerkezetébol, amelyik az elorehaladott individuációt például már lényegesebbnek tekintette, perifériára szorult


Friedrich Nietzsche and the theory of modern democracy
(Abstract)
ENDRE KISS

Nietzsche's fundamental vision of modern democracy includes an essential aspect which many tend to neglect given the indelible historical experience with totalitarian systems of the twentieth century. "Irresistible" democracy, precisely on account of its triumphant progress, also sets the course for, or to use another contemporary expression, instrumentalizes the activities of its very enemies. It is, to say the least, quite striking to read such a claim made by a philosopher whose work Alfred Baeumler and Georg Lukács have labelled as extreme political archaism while for a long time no serious objection was raised against this absurd verdict. We can see that Nietzsche's universalistic approach assigns a definite place to democratic systems and also specifies why these systems are of special relevance for the universal-emancipatory development of humankind. By stating the prophylactic character of the democratic system in such a decisive fashion Nietzsche reaches the very core of his philosophy. By doing so he differs markedly and positively from several other political philosophers. The difference lies in the fact that for Nietzsche a given political system is not an ultimate value or objective, but, as already mentioned, an opportunity to realize universal human ambitions. This is why his political philosophy establishes a principled distinction between various political systems while also evaluating them according to their prophylactic potential to be utilized for the purposes of universal-emancipatory development.