Lemm - Nietzsches Animal Philosophy

Nietzsches Animal Philosophy

Series Board

James Bernauer

Drucilla Cornell

Thomas R. Flynn

Kevin Hart

Richard Kearney

Jean-Luc Marion

Adriaan Peperzak

Thomas Sheehan

Hent de Vries

Merold Westphal

Edith Wyschogrod

Michael Zimmerman

John D. Caputo, series editor

VANESSA LEMM

Culture, Politics, and the Animality of the Human Being

Copyright 2009 Fordham University Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lemm, Vanessa.
Nietzsches animal philosophy : culture, politics, and the animality of the human
being / Vanessa Lemm.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8232-3027-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8232-3028-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 18441900. 2. Philosophical anthropology.
3. Animals (Philosophy) I. Title.
B3317.L433 2009
128dc22

2008047375

Printed in the United States of America
11 10 09 5 4 3 2 1
First edition

To Lou, Esteban, Aliz, and Miguel

Before all and most of all I am greatly indebted to my husband, colleague, and friend, Miguel Vatter, for his careful and timely reading of the various versions of the book manuscript in its entirety and for challenging me with his criticisms throughout the writing process. My special gratitude to Wendy Brown, Robert Gooding-Williams, Christoph Menke, and Samuel Weber for engaging one or more chapters as well as for their encouragement at various stages of this project. Two anonymous reviewers read the entire manuscript in draft, and their comments and suggestions for improvement were most valuable in the final revision of the manuscript.

Earlier versions of several parts of this book were generously engaged by audiences in a number of seminars, conferences, and workshops. I am especially thankful to the participants of the following three venues: The Political Theory Colloquium in the Political Science Department of Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitt Frankfurt, directed by Rainer Forst, which critically engaged my approach to biopolitics through a treatment of the question of animal life in Nietzsche; the Nietzsche in New York Workshop in the Philosophy Department of Hunter College, City University of New York, held by Christa D. Acampora, which offered new perspectives on my reading of On the Genealogy of Morals; and the Nietzsche Research Center (Nietzsche Seminar Group) meeting in the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Leiden, directed by Paul von Tongeren .

I thank Helen Tartar, editorial director of Fordham University Press, for her advice and support during the publication of this book. I treasure having had the opportunity to work with her. Finally, I am grateful to my sweet children, Lou, Esteban, and Aliz, for their extraordinary patience and infinite generosity. I was most fortunate to have had their company while working on this project. This book is dedicated to them and to my husband.

Institutional support for this project came from the School of Political Science and the Institute of Humanities of the Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile. I was a recipient of a Fondecyt-Regular research project (Project No 1085238) that allowed me to finance the final stages of this project.

Permission to reprint material published elsewhere has been granted as follows: Justice and Gift-Giving in Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Before Sunrise: Essays on Thus Spoke Zarathustra, James Luchte, ed., London: Continuum International Publishers, 2008: 165181, revised for a small portion of .

References to Nietzsches unpublished writings are standardized, whenever possible, to refer to the most accessible edition of Nietzsches notebooks and publications, Kritische Studienausgabe (KSA), compiled under the general editorship of Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. References to the editions of letters, Smtliche Briefe: Kritische Studienausgabe, are cited as KSB. In the cases in which the KSA are cited, references provide the volume number followed by the relevant fragment number and any relevant aphorism (e.g., KSA 10:12[1].37 refers to volume 10 fragment 12[1] aphorism 37). The following abbreviations are used for citations of Nietzsches writings: