Review of Yunus Tuncel, Agon in NietzscheMilwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2013, pp. 293. ISBN: 978-0-87462-823-4

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Notes

1. Acampora’s book (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013) is structured around four major historical figures, Homer, Socrates, Paul and Richard Wagner, and engages in a historical reflection on them from the standpoint of Nietzsche’s agonistic philosophy. In contrast, Tuncel’s book focuses only or mostly on the agonal age of ancient Greece, its micro-dynamics, and how Nietzsche interprets it and how his inter-operation plays out in his more mature late writings. His reflection on history ends, to a large extent, with fifth-century ancient Greece (although there are some reflections about the later decline of the culture of agon).

2. See, for instance, his discussion in this chapter of an understanding of individuality that does not juxtapose freedom and causality: ‘the agonal individual sustains within himself both the mythic individual and the heroic individual; that is, he is both destiny and freedom at the same time. He has adjusted his individual freedom to the flow of eternal cycle instead of standing against it like a motionless soldier. Contrary to the common opinion that tragic man is all destiny, bound by destiny, he is, insofar as he is also an agonal individual, free to the extent that or because he knew and lived out his destiny and mortality. It was out of this freedom that many works of culture were created in the agonal age of ancient Greece from Homer to Socrates’ (p. 142).