Peace through Strength
Nietzsche's Perspective on Negotiated Power and Armed Peace
Peace from Strength
Nietzsche's Perspective on Negotiated Power and Armed Peace
War in Europe was considered unthinkable for a long time — until it became a reality. But how can peace be thought of when normative guarantees fail? What if there are a few powerful and many weak players? Friedrich Nietzsche devised a surprisingly timely answer in 1879: Peace is not a sign of weakness, but an actively negotiated balance of power. He showed how a stable peace obliges all actors to build up their own strength. Nietzsche's transformation from an advocate of war to a thinker of peace based on strength is an admonition — also and especially to the weaker.
Since the Ukraine war, Europe has been operationally involved in warfare and defense. While violent wars in Western Europe were considered unlikely until a few years ago, state actors are now forced to actively intervene in what is happening. While we were pulled out of a seemingly “natural” state of peace, the idea of lasting peace only emerged in the 18th century (with Rousseau and Kant, for example) and took on increasing political and institutional shape in the 19th century.
Against this background, I would like to explain how Nietzsche explained law and justice through balances of power and how in 1879 he moved from the need for war to a perspective of lasting peace based on strength. This is illustrated by Nietzsche's example of peace among three tribes. The distinction between armed and real peace is then presented. Finally, it is explained to what extent peace, as a negotiated balance of power, requires both strong and weak actors in view of the current situation in Europe. Nietzsche's point of view is obtrusively up-to-date.1
1. Law as a Negotiated Balance of Power
Nietzsche wrote the book in 1879 during his summer stay in St. Moritz The Wanderer and His Shadow (henceforth briefly: wanderers).2 There, he is of the opinion that justice can only be achieved among equals. In the aphorism with the title”Principle of balance” it states succinctly: “Balance is the basis of justice. ”3 And a few pages later: “Right to contracts between Gleichen is based, exists as long as the power of those who have come together is equal or similar.”4. Nietzsche does not normatively justify contract law. He makes it clear that there is no metaphysical reason for law. This in turn implies that the state of nature persists even in peace, but is suppressed through the active exercise of power. In the notebook N IV 1 from 1879, this is concisely noted: “Law as long as equality of power. The state of nature doesn't stop.” (Figure 1)5 It also belongs to the”cleverness“that similarly powerful people do not get involved in senseless feuds as, that the more powerful only subdue the weaker to the extent necessary in order to save strength in turn.6 In the book of aphorisms published a year earlier Human, All Too Human Is it said in 1878 with reference to Thucydides' famous Melier Dialogue about the”The origin of justice“: “[W] o there is no clearly discernible overpower and a struggle for unsuccessful, mutual damage would arise, the idea of coming to an agreement and negotiating mutual claims. ”7 Nietzsche is not interested in the moral and legal legitimation of law, but in its concrete practical implementation. In addition, law does not reflect the physical balance of power, but only its assessment: “The right Goes originally so far, as one valuable to another, essential, invincible, invincible and the like appears. ”8 It is therefore not about objectively measurable quantities, but about a process of mutual negotiation of power. Nietzsche therefore comes to the conclusion: “Unusquisque tantum juris habet, quantum potentia valet” (in English: Everyone has as much right as they are granted in power).9 Nietzsche thus manages to avoid the normative concept of justice through the principle of balance. The lack of norms therefore does not lead to crude power politics, but to a complex and interactive process of weighing up. Volker Gerhardt sums this up aptly for Nietzsche's so-called middle creative period: “It is the insightful Power, not pure force, which creates law here. Law is the product of reciprocal estimates of power projected onto future actions. ”10
Intuitively, when you think of balance, you think of a simple scale with two weights that are compared using a uniform measure. However, Nietzsche also draws on contemporary physics — in particular thermodynamics and the balance of forces — as well as on economic models.11 Equilibrium or balance describes a relationship of forces that stabilizes as long as neither side gains the upper hand. So it is dynamic, not static. As a result, the law only applies as long as the balance of powers persists. Gerhardt writes about this: “The balances are not only those authorized in each case sides, but also the one formed by them Ganze received. Individual and whole, element and Systems can also survive under equilibrium conditions. ”12 A balance of power therefore means neither suspension of power nor powerlessness, but an intelligent, dynamic and active interplay of forces.
2. The Reassessment of War and Peace
Before 1879, the persistence of a culture in Nietzsche's writings was always linked to war. Peace only served as a transitional phase for new wars — as is often the case in his early and late works.13 Still 1878 in Human, all-too-human The idea emerged that wars could either exhaust or revive a society. The “solution” was to wage even more terrible wars. That is what the aphorism says”War is essential“:
You will find many more such surrogates of war, but perhaps through them you will see more and more that such a highly cultivized and therefore necessarily dull humanity, like that of current Europeans, requires not only wars, but also the biggest and most terrible wars — i.e. temporary relapses into barbarism — in order not to lose its culture and existence itself through the means of culture.14
The ups and downs of peace and war should lead to the continuous renewal and regeneration of culture. Only in this way could Nietzsche imagine the emergence of a higher form of culture in 1878. And yet here, with the “surrogates of war,” Nietzsche is planting the seeds for his upcoming change of opinion. In fact, violent confrontation is just one of many forms of war. Societies that have become peaceful create “surrogates,” i.e. substitute forms of war: For example, the English embark on dangerous sea voyages and adventurous expeditions.15 It is precisely this possibility of substituting military functions that allows Nietzsche to distance himself from war a good year later.
Because 1879, in wanderers, Nietzsche has fundamentally changed his position. He distances himself from the abstract idea that war is a fair competition or a cleansing conflict between two isolated opponents. The new means of Europeanization is now a peaceful democracy. The war appears superfluous, destructive and backward: “The democratic institutions are quarantine facilities against the old plague of tyrannical cravings. ”16 Nietzsche accepts democratic change and its consequences — including security, peacetime, health, human rights, mental and physical freedom, and the possibility of long-term planning. The new temporal model provides for a long-term transition through democracy to higher forms of culture. Since war only brings short-term success as a remedy, but leaves behind great destruction, Nietzsche focuses on alternative forms of war — in particular diplomacy. The “indispensable war” became an “unnecessary war” within a year.17 The transition from Human, all-too-human for wanderers It therefore does not mean a devaluation of the meaning of war, but rather a transformation of its manifestations. In wanderers War is understood as a diverse and substitutable practice.
3. Peace as a Negotiated State of Equilibrium
This change in thinking can be seen in the aphorism”The praise of the unselfish and its origin“from wanderers Understand: In a detailed example, Nietzsche describes how two enemy tribes were forced to achieve peace through the strategic intervention of a third party: “There had been strife between two neighboring chiefs for years: they devastated each other's seeds, led away armies, burned down houses, with undecided success overall because their power was pretty much equal. ”18 Violent war among equals is not worthwhile, as it causes great damage to all opponents and the benefits remain uncertain. A third tribal group was in a protected position with their possessions and was not vulnerable to both parties to the conflict. However, she threatened to side with the victim in the event of a new attack. This threat led to peace being established. In their new state of peace, all three tribes benefited from growing prosperity. Even if the third tribal group could theoretically — due to their remote geographical location — stay out of the conflict, this would reduce the prosperity and welfare of all actors. Nietzsche describes this as follows:
Everyone saw with astonishment how suddenly their prosperity and comfort grew, how they now had a dealer ready to buy and sell at the neighbor instead of a treacherous or openly mocking offender, like themselves, in unforeseen emergencies, they could pull each other out of distress instead of exploiting this neighbor's distress and increasing it to the highest level, as has happened so far, As if the human attack in both areas had improved since then: because the eyes had brightened, the foreheads were frowning, Allen was Trust in the future has become one's own — and nothing is more beneficial to people's souls and bodies than this trust.19
The prosperity and flourishing of the human community in a relationship of trust with the environment not shaken by war became “a” desirable state of affairs for Nietzsche in 1879. In addition, the embellished stroke of people, the frowned foreheads and the comforting culture of trust evokes an aesthetic of peaceful coexistence — but also an ironic exaggeration of the contemporary democratic discourse.20
Nietzsche uses the example of the three tribes to describe peace as an actively and cleverly established balance of forces. This balance is not based on normative concepts of justice and peace. Instead, peace as a state of equilibrium is based on negotiated claims to power, specifically situated actors and rational usefulness. The diplomatic negotiation of the third tribe represents a substitute form of war. The diplomats represent positions of power with regard to the desired goals and must communicate these to the other negotiating partners as convincingly as possible. In this sense, diplomacy is a higher form of war than violent conflict. However, the third tribal group also brought about this peace through threat. In the form of the threat, the war formed a diplomatic negotiation as an option. Diplomacy takes place in wanderers As a result, an important role. That is what the aphorism says”The victory of democracy“We need diplomats of the future, “who must be cultural researchers, farmers, transport experts at the same time and not have armies behind them, but reasons and benefits. ”21 Compared to his earlier writings, Nietzsche designs a more complex model of power balance, which makes different power potentials visible, taking into account the respective situation of the participating tribes. Between early writings and wanderers Democracy has changed from a tyranny of the weak to a process of negotiation charged with power.
4. Armed and Real Peace
In a striking aphorism titled”The means to real peace“Nietzsche addresses the military armies of the individual states. Although the armies would be legitimized as a means of self-defense, they implicitly reflected distrust of the other actors: “This is how all states are now opposed to each other: they presuppose the bad will of the neighbour and the good will of themselves. However, this requirement is a inhumanity, as bad and worse than war. ”22 This statement is doubly irritating: On the one hand, because it criticizes the stated dynamic balance of power as “armed peace,” and on the other hand because, depending on the point of view, it appears idealistic or naive when Nietzsche argues that the belligerent attitude can only be broken if “the” most powerful man makes himself defenseless and smashes his army:”Make yourself defenseless while being the most defensive, from a height out of the sensation — that is the means of real Peace, which must always rest on a peace of mind. ”23 First of all, this aphorism addresses an unknown future and does not describe a current possibility for Nietzsche (“And there may be a big day coming”). I interpret the aphorism as a simple continuation of the idea of peace based on strength: The most defensive, i.e. the strongest, makes himself defenseless from the position of strength.24 For Nietzsche, this is the only conceivable option for maintaining real peace: because, as explained, Nietzsche (unlike Kant) does not believe in contractual peace guarantees that exist independently of dynamic balances of power. At the same time, for Nietzsche, eternal peace cannot be established by military means, because this is the “bad attitude of the neighbor.”25 Presuppose and provoke further wars. For this reason, there could be no gradual, gradual dismantling of weapons of war to establish lasting peace. Nietzsche's reference to an almost utopian future of a peace-making advanced empire (“highest training of military order and intelligence”) testifies in particular to how implausible this fiction is.26 Seen in this light, Nietzsche's thesis is not a pacifist plea, but even an admonition: For anyone who makes himself defenseless without Having supreme power and strength weakens the dynamic balance of power.
The future peace scenario with a single main actor appears sub-complex compared to the aphorism discussed above.”The praise of the unselfish and its origin”. Instead of the dynamic complex balance of three players, each in a different location, there is a simplified view of an agonal competition with a single, peace-loving winner. In the then and today imperial order of power with several major powers, it is difficult to imagine that there would once be a single “most defensive” or in the singular “a people” who could destroy their military means. In addition, this prospect of peace without alternative omits the manifold benefits of peaceful coexistence, as exemplified by the three tribes. The latter led to “trust in the future”27, which has great potential for peacemaking.
5. Conclusion: Peace through Strength Obliges All Actors
Although the 19th century in Europe was marked by wars, it was comparatively a “period of low violence. ”28 This left room for new ideas of peace. Nietzsche, who worked briefly as a medic during the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, seemed mentally distant enough in 1879 to attest to the violent wars had mostly destructive consequences. At the same time, his experiences of war made him firstly immune from falling into naive pacifism and secondly too familiar with realpolitik to believe in a universalist contract theory. Historiography thus left little hope for the enforceability of a philosophical legitimation of law. Nietzsche invites you to look at current challenges from a sober perspective of power politics and not to prematurely dismiss them as mere acts of violence. Because Nietzsche's reassessment of peace and democracy in wanderers is a plea for an intelligent, power-conscious peace order. Peace is not a sign of exhaustion, weakness or retreat, as in earlier works, but the conscious negotiation and balancing of a dynamic balance. Peace is an active state that binds and rearranges forces — not the absence of power. Peace is therefore also not a passive result of determined power relations. Peace as a dynamic balance of power is a cultural development effort: The notes from 1879 state: “The fact that there is an equilibrium is a big step” (Figure 2).29 As Henning Ottmann put it, this is a “philosophy of peace,” whose “condition [...] is strength.”30 In this view, there are no normative guarantees that stand the test of time far away from situateness, usefulness and claims to power.
There is (unfortunately) a lot to learn from this today. Because especially in a time of strengthened (or made visible) power politics, eroding multilateral institutions and threatening nuclear scenes, Nietzsche's perspective is remarkable: In the spirit of Nietzsche, the question today is which diplomatic negotiations can lead to new, stabilizing balances of power by individual actors beyond normative values? What could a useful peace look like for all actors? When it comes to peace, how can all actors actively manage their power (as opposed to relinquishing power)? This is because weaker actors cannot evade responsibility by pointing out their weakness or pacifism, because stabilizing effects must be negotiated even in the modalities of subjugation. This awareness of power and vulnerability is important when negotiating with actors who threaten to resort to military means (and with those who do not follow the rules negotiated with substitute means). A balance in relation to all stabilizing forces obliges all actors to their own strength. In times of armed peace and increasing armament, this cannot only be achieved through diplomatic skill, but must also be supported by economic and military strength. In this systemic view, chaos breaks out not only because of the misconduct of individual actors, but because the state of equilibrium sustained by all became unstable from several sides. This is how we are dealing today with the opposite starting point of Nietzsche's fiction: The most defensive are making themselves even more defensive, which is why armed peace continues to represent the only balance that can be achieved. And this obliges all actors to active power politics and strength. This is in line with Europe's current situation at a time when rules only apply “as long as an authority is prepared to enforce them. ”31
Tobias Brücker has a doctorate in cultural studies and is head of HR personnel development at the Zurich University of the Arts. He has researched Nietzsche's working methods and published the monograph in 2019 On the road to philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche writes “The Wanderer and His Shadow” published. He is interested in all facets of diets, authorship, and creativity techniques in philosophy and the arts.
Article Image
L'Equilibre Européen (“The European Balance”) is a famous lithograph by French cartoonist Honoré Daumier (1808—1879). It was published in 1866 in the satirical magazine Le Charivari published — during a period of great European tensions, just before and around the Prussian-Austrian War (spring).
Literature
Brücker, Tobias: On the road to philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche writes “The Wanderer and His Shadow”. Paderborn 2019 (link).
Gerhardt, Volker: The “principle of balance.” On the relationship between law and power in Nietzsche. In: Nietzsche studies 12 (1983), PP. 111-133.
Kaufmann, Sebastian: Commentary on Nietzsche's “The Wanderer and His Shadow”. Berlin & Boston 2024.
Münkler, Herfried: The old world order is broken. In: NZZ, 2.7.2025, p. 32.
Osterhammel, Jürgen: The transformation of the world. A story of the 19th century. Munich 2009.
Ottmann, Henning: Philosophy and politics in Nietzsche. Berlin & New York 1999.
Footnotes
1: This article is based on a talk titled “La paix: un état de la puissance dans Le Voyageur et son ombre“, which I held at the following meeting: “Les figures de la puissance chez Nietzsche”, Journée d'études Nietzschéennes à l'Ens, École normale supérieure de Paris, 29.03.2018.
2: As an attachment to Human, all-too-human Considered, this work has so far received little importance. A detailed study of the history of editions and the topic of democracy can be found in: Tobias Brücker, On the road to philosophy, P. 197-239.
3: The Wanderer and His Shadow (in the following: WS), 22.
4: WS 26.
6: Cf. WS 26.
7: Human, all-too-human Vol. 1, 92.
8: Human, all-too-human Vol. 1, 93.
9: Ibid.
10: Cf. Volker Gerhardt, The “principle of balance”, P. 127.
11: Cf. Gerhardt, The “principle of balance”.
12: Ibid., p. 129.
13: See e.g. CV3, MAI I, 477, MA I, 444, JGB 210, JGB 238, NF 1888, 14 [192]. See also Brücker, On the way, P. 201-207.
14: Human, all-too-human Vol. 1, 477.
15: See ibid. 1
16: WS 289.
17: See in detail: Brücker, On the way, P. 197-239.
18: WS 190.
19: Ibid.
20: Cf. Brücker, On the way, p. 209 ff.
21: WS 292.
22: WS 284.
23: Ibid.
24: The commentary on WS includes various interpretations, see Sebastian Kaufmann, remark, P. 485-489.
25: WS 284.
26: See also here the remarks on the function of rhetoric and the undetermined future in Nietzsche's aphorisms of democracy in Brücker, On the way, p. 209 f.
27: WS 190.
28: Jürgen Osterhammel: The transformation of the world, P. 705.
29: Notebook N IV 1, p. 3. On pages 2 and 3, there are notes which serve as precursors to the quoted aphorism WS 22”Principle of balance“were processed.
30: Henning Ottmann, Philosophy and politics in Nietzsche, p. 127.m
31: Herfried Münkler, The old world order is broken.
