ABSTRACT
What is provoking in this depiction of the pre-Socratic Greek polis is Nietzsche’s insistence on cruelty, violence and destruction as the ‘fertile soil’ that made the Greeks’ accomplishments achievable. What lies behind the successes of the ancient city was its readiness to accept conflict as an ontological given, as part of life. ‘Life’ here, however, must not be understood merely as biological, bare life but as a struggle, a conflict between creation (Dionysus) and preservation (Apollo). Indeed, if life per
definition seeks out resistance, nihilism is an inability for enmity (see Nietzsche 1967: 704; Reginster 2006: 261). In other words, the ideal of a world without conflict is the problem of nihilism. Hence the question of how a non-nihilistic human association is possible is fundamentally linked with the question of conflict.
