This chapter makes a comparison, which from a sociological perspective might appear a little surprising: it is between Pierre Bourdieu's and Friedrich Nietzsche's respective conceptions of ‘power’ and ‘taste’. The aim is to show that there is an interesting resemblance between the two with regard to these conceptions in general, and to ‘struggle for power’, ‘ressentiment’ and ‘will to power’ in particular, and thus to shed light on some key aspects of Bourdieu's thinking. The order of the dramatis personae in this analysis is no accident: Bourdieu and Nietzsche. This alludes to the fact that the discussion that follows is primarily about what lies behind Bourdieu's sociological, rather than Nietzsche's philosophical, conceptions of taste and power. Thus, Nietzsche is read, first and foremost, from a sociological perspective.

Pierre Bourdieu's Taste

There were no sociological disputes about the concept of taste before the publication of Pierre Bourdieu's studies on the subject.