Nietzsche's confusing, apparently contradictory attitude to the law is reconstructed in terms of a two-fold response to the problem of law. The rigidity, the universalism, and the ineradicable moral connotations of law conflict with the dynamic, pluralistic and a-moral character of life for Nietzsche. His project to translate morality back into nature leads him (1) to reject law within a strategy to expunge it from our language of life; but also (2) to re-interpret law in life-enhancing terms opposed to its traditional meanings. Evidence for the second strategy is located in the Zarathustra Nachlass, where Nietzsche re-thinks law in dynamic and pluralistic terms on the model of the agon.
agon; law; legislation; life; pluralism