Nietzsche and the rhetoric of dialectics

Abstract

Despite Nietzsche’s frequent disavowals of Hegelianism, scholars have repeatedly stressed Nietzsche’s affinities with Hegelian dialectics. Other scholars have responded by denying such affinities. Taking On the Genealogy of Morality as a case study and comparing it to the paradigmatically Hegelian A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right by Marx, this article argues that the question of whether or not Nietzsche is a dialectician unduly narrows the scope that Nietzsche envisioned for philosophy. For Nietzsche, a certain mode of philosophizing (dialectical or otherwise) becomes activated within a rhetorical matrix. Marx sees dialectics as the inexorable logic of history, but has to rely on the rhetorical persuasiveness of the chiasmus to make his claim plausible. Nietzsche, on the other hand, conceives of two incompatible logics: the nobles’ positive affirmation (non-dialectical) and the priests’ negative oppositionality (enabling dialectics). Instead of arguing for one logic over another, Nietzsche foregrounds their rhetoricity by performing the historically contingent invigoration and desiccation of each, leaving it to the reader to assimilate whichever mode of philosophizing they find most plausible.