Abstract

This thesis is about Nietzsche's political philosophy. I argue that three distinct versions of eternal recurrence emerge in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and that each form of recurrence corresponds to a specific political formation. From the perspective of the third version of recurrence, Nietzsche criticizes romanticism in public life and the repressive character of the modern state. My analysis of this criticism concentrates on Nietzsche's Kantianism and his parody of Plato's Symposium. I conclude by showing that Nietzsche's political philosophy prefigures and illuminates criticisms of modernity recently developed by Heidegger and Adorno and that Nietzsche's political philosophy fails because of self-contradiction