In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche takes up and expands on the ideas of his previous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In doing so he attacks past philosophers for their alleged lack of critical sense and their blind acceptance of Christian premises in their consideration of morality. The work moves into the realm "beyond good and evil" in the sense of leaving behind the...
19th Century Western Political Thought
The nineteenth century (1801-1900) began immediately after the upheaval of the American and French Revolutions. It started with the Napoleonic Wars, which were followed by the dramatic rise of the British Empire. Meanwhile, the United States was growing in power and size. In this context, political thought developed in multiple directions throughout the century. Tocqueville wrote his famous observations on American culture. John Stuart Mill, Lord Acton, and other British authors contributed to the development of political philosophy. Tolstoy and Thoreau advocated a political approach based on non-violence. Nietzsche and Hegel laid philosophic foundations for new views of politics, ethics, and history. The anarchist movement began, with works by Mikhail Bakunin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Peter Kropotkin.
During this period, too, the Industrial Revolution was rapidly changing the economic and social conditions of the Western world. The most important developments in political thought during this period were reactions to those changing conditions. Karl Marx and his companions proposed Communism as a comprehensive ideology, planting the seeds of numerous strands of political thought. Pope Leo XIII wrote on the questions of capital, labor, and liberty, setting the foundation for later Catholic social thought.
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