Abstract

In the continental tradition, the work of Nietzsche is one of the main sources for any thought on a primordial form of plurality in human existence. This chapter explores how Nietzsche’s reflections on this plurality also give rise to a particular understanding of community. He does so by interrogating Nietzsche’s reflections on the process of democratization and how this both makes Europeans into serviceable herd animals and will bring about the breeding of tyrants. Subsequently, the author investigates how this sense of democracy and the type of community it produces is taken up in more contemporary strands of thought, such as Richard Rorty’s and Jacques Derrida’s. Especially in light of the latter’s analyses of Nietzsche, the author points out the fertility of Nietzsche’s ideas of a community of unequals, which not only goes at the heart of the aporetic nature of injustice and of a democracy to come, but also shows that the striving for democracy and justice always concern a community that is not one.