Nietzsche, the Aristocratic Rebel: Intellectual Biography and Critical Balance-Sheet

Historical Materialism #200

by Domenico Losurdo, Gregor Benton (Translator), Harrison Fluss (Introduction)

Perhaps no philosopher is more of a conundrum than Nietzsche, the solitary rebel, poet, wayfarer, anti-revolutionary Aufklärer and theorist of aristocratic radicalism. His accusers identify in his ‘superman’ the origins of Nazism, and thus issue an irrevocable condemnation; his defenders pursue a hermeneutics of innocence founded ultimately in allegory. In a work that constitutes the most important contribution to Nietzschean studies in recent decades, Domenico Losurdo instead pursues a less reductive strategy. Taking literally the ruthless implications of Nietzsche's anti-democratic thinking – his celebration of slavery, of war and colonial expansion, and eugenics – he nevertheless refuses to treat these from the perspective of the mid-twentieth century. In doing so, he restores Nietzsche’s works to their complex nineteenth-century context, and presents a more compelling account of the importance of Nietzsche as philosopher than can be expected from his many contemporary apologists.

Translated by Gregor Benton. With an Introduction by Harrison Fluss.

Originally published in Italian by Bollati Boringhieri Editore as Domenico Losurdo, Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico: Biografia intellettuale e bilancio critico, Turin, 2002.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, History, Biography, Nonfiction, Theory, 21st Century

1076 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Domenico Losurdo (14 November 1941 – 28 June 2018) was an Italian Marxist philosopher and historian better known for his critique of anti-communism, colonialism, imperialism, the European tradition of liberalism and the concept of totalitarianism.

He was director of the Institute of Philosophical and Pedagogical Sciences at the University of Urbino, where he taught history of philosophy as Dean at the Faculty of Educational Sciences. Since 1988, Losurdo was president of the Hegelian International Association Hegel-Marx for Dialectical Thought. He was also a member of the Leibniz Society of Sciences in Berlin (an association in the tradition of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Prussian Academy of Sciences) as well as director of the Marx XXI political-cultural association.

From communist militancy to the condemnation of American imperialism and the study of the African-American and Native American question, Losurdo was also a participant in national and international politics.

Reviews

[Tomislav · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a thousand-page intellectual biography of Nietzsche written by an Italian Marxist philosopher known for his apologia of Stalin. But unlike with poor, misunderstood Stalin he doesn’t try to defend Nietzsche. Losurdo sees him as an advocate of inequality, war, aristocracy, slavery, eugenics, racism, imperialism, colonialism, an irredeemable far-right figure. It is a truly refreshing approach since it is too common to downplay Nietzsche’s controversial ideas and present him as a misunderstood leftist or a libertarian. Losurdo takes him very seriously and presents background for his most controversial ideas. The book is focused on political themes and other parts of his philosophy are discussed mostly in relation to it. Large part is also devoted to Nietzsche’s influence and later interpretations of his philosophy.

Don’t be dissuaded by Losurdo’s political background, even if you completely disagree with Marxist framework and leftist politics this is an excellent overview of Nietzsche’s philosophy. There isn’t really much explicit Marxism in the analysis, it is mentioned now and then. Of course he is a bit obsessive about proving that in everything Nietzsche wrote, from the origins of tragedy to perspectivism and eternal return, the underlying idea is his upper-class chauvinism and a fear of the rising labor movement. It paints Nietzsche as a primarily political thinker, but overall does a good job of presenting his views without malicious distortions or unjustified criticisms (although there are a few instances where he interprets some ambiguous or ironic statements in an unfavorable manner). Nietzsche himself claimed that metaphysics and epistemology of an author can be better understood by looking at his ethics and politics as they are usually the first principles on which the rest of the system is built. Losurdo also makes a good point that only taking aristocratic politics as a central idea can explain unity of his late works and deeper continuity of all phases in his philosophy – which is impossible with themes proposed by other interpreters such as glorification of art, critique of asceticism, reason or nihilism.

This is an incredibly detailed book that does an excellent job of putting Nietzsche’s thought in the context of his time and presenting his intellectual evolution. Losurdo does such a good job in comparing him with his contemporaries that I actually ended up a bit of disappointed with Nietzsche – a lot of his ideas that seem very original and thought-provoking were actually common among tougher early liberals and radical right-wing thinkers. Many of his seemingly abstract aphorisms were actually aimed at very specific political events and trends of his era. Losurdo doesn’t devalue Nietzsche’s thinking; he often praises him for being much more honest, courageous and consistent that his contemporaries.

A thousand pages might seem much, but this is close to the definitive book on Nietzsche’s politics and it is worth reading more than a dozen others, especially considering how many books are sadly distorting Nietzsche’s philosophy to make him politically more acceptable. Like Nietzsche, Losurdo is much more honest and consistent than many of his contemporaries. The book is very well written and easy to read; sometimes it is even funny as he seems to find some dark humor in describing Nietzsche’s most brutal, radical ideas, or when ridiculing his leftist apologists. Since it is very detailed I guess that even people who don’t know much about Nietzsche could use this as a good introduction. In any case, if you are seriously interested in Nietzsche this is a must-read.

[Rory Mullan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Losurdo launches a relentless attack upon an interpretive procedure vis-à-vis Nietzsche that he designates the ‘hermeneutics of innocence’. Losurdo characterises this procedure as an indifference to Nietzsche’s historical context and the evacuation of Nietzsche’s thought of its violently anti-egalitarian character. For Losurdo, the hermeneutics of innocence has long dominated and indeed continues to dominate philosophical – as opposed to historical, political and sociological – reception of Nietzsche; Losurdo believes that this hermeneutics is exemplified by such major Nietzsche interpreters as Kaufmann, Deleuze, Foucault, Georges Bataille and Gianni Vattimo. Losurdo works to demonstrate the untenability of the hermeneutics of innocence by utilising the Marxist methodology of historical materialism and rigorously situating Nietzsche in the context of nineteenth century Europe and its social upheavals and imperial wars. From Losurdo’s titanic effort emerges a presentation of Nietzsche’s philosophy as fundamentally animated by opposition to the egalitarian politics of socialism, an opposition that arises from – on Losurdo’s reading – Nietzsche’s commitment that the production of true culture necessitates the establishment and maintenance of brutal systems of mass enslavement. While Losurdo does not affirm the existence of direct link between Nietzsche’s philosophy and the politics of Nazism, the power and merit of Losurdo’s book is that he forces sympathetic readers of Nietzsche to confront seriously his eminence as a philosopher of aristocratic reaction. Indeed, Losurdo forces a fundamental revaluation of the tenability of the political Nietzscheanisms of the left, from Adorno and Frankfurt critical theory to Foucault, Deleuze and French post-structuralism.

[Kyrill · Rating 5 out of 5]

RIP Nietzsche, you would have loved Groypers

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my life.

In my twenties, I had constructed for myself an identity as a reader, formed in large part with the time I spent reading Nietzsche. I imagined I read him carefully. I followed all the hermeneutical paths of the various Nietzsche's I was exposed to as an undergrad: deconstructionist Nietzsche, American pragmatist Nietzsche, feminist Nietzsche, anarchist Nietzsche, all supposedly valid and true in their own way, and still more faithful than his appropriation by the far right, or so I thought at the time.

This was seven years or so before Charlottesville. After Charlottesville, it became impossible to unsee Nietzsche's literary indulgence in conspiracy theories about Jews, not just as a youth but as an adult during his mature period. I'm thinking in particular of GM II, where Nietzsche accuses 'Israel' of staging a false flag event by crucifying Jesus. To say nothing of his comments about the necessity of slavery, mass liquidations, apartheid, or inequality.

This book has for me been extremely clarifying and restorative, if devastating. I am extremely suspicious now of a supposedly left leaning academic culture which can promote all of these politically abstracted versions of Nietzsche when he himself would've been the last person to entertain such delusions. All of them neuter, defang, and declaw Nietzsche, and cover the most problematic and disturbing elements of his thinking in metaphorical or artistic valence. Losurdo's book helped me realize the Nietzsche I had fallen in love with a decade ago was actually the construction of other philosophers who were unable to accurately assess and therefore engage with Nietzsche's disturbing politics. I can now appreciate Nietzsche's philosophical project in its proper context within the larger reactionary tradition, which Losurdo painstakingly reconstructs throughout the whole of this book. It was precisely from that tradition that the Nietzsche I was exposed to in college was abstracted. By destroying these delusions and making these abstractions concrete, Losurdo makes his reader a better reader of Nietzsche.

[Fadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu7_g...

[Jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a 1000-page book about Nietzsche. This might seem like a lot of pages to read about one single philosopher (and it is a long book!), but it’s also an in-depth journey into late 19th-century philosophy, battles that shaped the ideology behind World War I and then later World War II as well as (from an opposite perspective) the 1917 October Revolution and then later the mid-20th century wave of national liberation movements. You come away from the book with not only a close familiarity with the evolution of Nietzsche’s thought over his ~20-year career, but also an understanding of origin myths and national identity, nihilism and the critique of religion, metacritique and an outsider’s critique of status quo ideology, judeophobia and antisemitism, eugenics and imperialism, masses and elites.

Losurdo argues that the consistent project in Nietzsche’s otherwise contradictory body of work is one of anti-communism and counter-revolution. Nietzsche held the creation of art and culture to be of the highest value, and something that could be achieved only by individuals afforded complete leisure and spared from mind-numbing toil. The maintenance of this class necessitated the enslavement of the rest of humanity, enforced by violence and eugenics and ideology. Socialism — in its declaration that all humans are equal — was a threat to this world order.

Nietzsche’s philosophy is repugnant, and Losurdo does not shy away from calling it so. But this book is not a 1000-page screed against a terrible philosopher. Throughout the book, it is clear how much Losurdo respects Nietzsche for his intellectual rigour and his ability to find new ways of interrogating the ideology of his world. The target of this tome is not so much Nietzsche but left Nietzscheans, or those who would wish to use him to socialist (or even liberal) ends. Losurdo renders this position ridiculous; he shreds attempts to interpret Nietzsche metaphorically or as a dreamy innocent distorted by a conniving sister.

A common pattern in this book is to establish the contemporary discourse on a particular topic — education, the military, the poverty of the masses — and show Nietzsche’s continuities with conservative and liberal thinkers of his time, and then examine the ways Nietzsche was able to radicalize these critiques, to transcend the limitations of Christian or liberal thought, and recognize the full implications of their consistent application. I am left with more respect (as well as more repulsion) for him than I expected, and have a better sense for what it means to do “good philosophy”.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gargantuan work, Domenico Losurdo's Nietzsche, the Aristocratic Rebel is an excellent biography of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, a dual deconstruction-critique of his philosophical thought, and a firm intervention on behalf of the "aristocratic politics" (termed "aristocratic radicalism" by Losurdo) school of Nietzschean interpretation.

Losurdo meticulously analyzes the various works of Nietzsche and interprets them based upon the historical context of his day as well as the content of notes, letters, and fragments written by the philosopher that tend to be overlooked by sympathetic eyes—documenting Nietzsche's very real wish for a world run by "genius," a pseudo-economic class best represented by "Jewish" finance capital and Prussian military aristocratism, and supported by the slave labour of the vast majority of the world (with a focus particularly upon Chinese labour). Losurdo documents Nietzsche's critique of morality and identifies the long-running thread of his fear of Christ moralism as historically fueling the revolt of the slave classes and providing the basis for the modern revolutionary socialist movement which confronted him. Although Losurdo identifies somewhat "positive" aspects of Nietzschean thought, perhaps most notably in his critique of Kantianism and the categorical imperative as a moral war machine justifying imperialist universalism, Nietzsche is otherwise cast as the archreactionary that he truly was.

There are some interesting tidbits on the comparison of Nietzsche's reactionary critique of ideology to Marx's progressive-revolutionary critique of ideology. Perhaps most eye-opening for me was Losurdo's claim that it is mostly philosophers who interpret Nietzsche's work metaphorically and charitably in the "anti-Politics" School, while it is historians and sociologists from the left to the right who identify the reactionary content of Nietzsche's work in aristocratic radicalism. I also enjoyed Losurdo's discussion of Stirner as a proto-ideological forerunner of Nietzsche—a critique of the established order of things but one who was also a relentless critic of revolutionary ideology and effort; both men were ultimately defenders of the "status quo ante."

There are certain problems with Losurdo's work. I detest the way Nietzsche's work is cited, through Roman numerals and abbreviations which one must constantly consult the back of the book to identify. Losurdo compares Nietzsche's "Judeophobia," which rest upon a cultural critique of Judaism as inherently subversive, with his contemporaries racial "anti-Semitism" which relegated Jews as unassailably inferior. Losurdo identifies areas in which Nietzsche sympathized with upper-class Jews, and thus comes to the conclusion that he was not a proper anti-Semite. Perhaps he was not racially, but it is difficult for me to accept what seems a semantic difference. Finally, I would have liked more analysis and critique of the philosophical defenders of Nietzsche on the left. Although Losurdo identifies Deleuze and Foucault, he spends very little time subjecting their views to critique outside of quick dismissals or easy counterpoints. Although this was perhaps difficult for Foucault, who explicitly didn't care if he was interpreting Nietzsche counter to his real philosophy, I still would've liked more than was present.

Overall, I would recommend the book if one finds themselves curious about Nietzsche to read over a thousand pages.

[Kamiab Ghorbanpour · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was doing my bachelor's in Tehran, there was an older guy in his late 30s who was really into continental philosophy. We used to talk for hours about Schopenhauer, Hegel, and especially Nietzsche, probably as a way to escape the world of mathematics and hard science that made up the majority of our lives. He was more well-read than I was, and I learned a lot from him while he appreciated my silly inputs. His wife passed away while he was studying in hopes of getting a raise at his job. He quit school, and I never spoke to him again. We used to disagree on Nietzsche—especially on his politics, or lack thereof. Now, finding myself much closer to what he used to believe, I wish I could have shared this book with him. Alas, I don’t even remember his full name.

[The Lazy Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astounding. Absolutely astounding.

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a lot to get through in this enormous book and it is not primarily organised around any direct commentary on either Nietzsche’s books or his biography. Instead, it explores a succession of social and political issues, each of which has an important bearing on Nietzsche’s philosophy.

Nietzsche was a creature of his times. Many of the things he said were taken from his contemporaries and the problems he addressed were contemporary problems. He had a talent for critical thinking, calling into question assumptions and beliefs that had persisted without challenge for too long, sometimes for centuries. He achieved this by constructing a stable fulcrum from which he could examine current affairs with cool objectivity, as though he were outside and above the struggles of his contemporaries; claiming for himself that he was timeless. Unfortunately, the stable platform on which he built his Olympian perspective entailed an idealised [and questionable] notion of pre-Socratic Greece, in which the most exceptional and admirable cultural achievements were [in his narrative] founded on merciless warfare and the brutal enslavement of lesser people. Nietzsche preached the inspirational possibility of achieving greatness – or producing great individuals - but only for privileged members of an aristocratic, hereditary elite, supported by the drudgery of the masses in a grotesquely unequal and exploitative society.

It is useful to catalogue just some of the events taking place as Nietzsche was writing. The American civil war, the campaign against slavery (and more importantly, the campaigns to defend and retain slavery, including serfdom), the industrial revolution and the degrading conditions of wage slavery in an unregulated free market, the genocidal American Indian wars, the institutionalizing of the British Empire, the Opium Wars against China, the Scramble for Africa and its concomitant brutalities, the Franco-Prussian War, the unification of Germany and birth of the Second Reich, the revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871, the demise of the Bourbon dynasty in France and emergence of Napoleon III, the emergence of bourgeoise capitalism on the one hand, socialism and the workers movement on the other, the emergence of nationalism and ideas of democracy in contrast to the decline of aristocracy. Also notable influences were Darwin’s Origin of Species, Spencer’s Social Darwinism and Galton’s eugenics and scientific racism.

Nietzsche took sides in all the above affairs. For him the French Revolution had been a catastrophe for European culture and he advocated a counter revolution to reverse its effects. He had a horror of progress, whether in the form of capitalist industrialisation and liberal democracy or socialist revolution and the emancipation of workers and slaves. He disapproved of nationalism, the inclusive and egalitarian concept of citizenship and the continuing antagonisms between the European states, but aspired to an imperialist Europe that would be united in its mission to colonize the planet and enslave or even annihilate lesser peoples on other continents. Instead of the prevailing theories of racial hierarchy, Nietzsche favoured a division of humanity into those who were well formed and those who were ill formed; those for whom life had turned out well and those whose lives had turned out badly. Losurdo called this transversal racism. For this reason, and to help reconstruct and breed a new aristocracy, he had no qualms about including wealthy and successful Jews among those whose lives had turned out well, while despising especially the East European Jews seeking admission to Germany in flight from their mistreatment in the Russian Empire. Similarly, he respected the Old Testament Jewish kings, and admired their ruthless extermination of the Canaanites to take possession of their land, while seeing the post exile prophets as a disastrous switch to slave morality, which in turn informed early Christianity. Even the Wagners found his antisemitism too vitriolic and his sister Elizabeth did not publish his most toxic antisemitic writing.

Within this dark framework, Nietzsche nevertheless delivered many brilliant insights into the nature of European culture and its moral values. His understanding of human psychology has been especially influential. His writing is certainly too rich and rewarding for it to be reduced to any narrow agenda. Unfortunately, his style also invites a kaleidoscope of competing interpretation, with the result of lending his name, by means of very selective quotations, to ideas that sometimes misrepresent him very badly. Indeed, many writers, notably including Foucault, regard him as fair game for such treatment. The objection to this attitude is that, in reality, despite a very evident evolution of his ideas with the passage of time, there is a unity and coherence to Nietzsche’s philosophy which demands recognition. Indeed, without this unity of purpose, it becomes hard to justify Nietzsche’s status as a philosopher on the basis of disjointed fragments and aphorisms.

Losurdo rejects what he calls “the hermeneutics of innocence.” He described the way Italian translators bowdlerized his text, so that an Italian reader would be unaware of his infamous antisemitic outbursts and unable to make head or tail of the debates they provoked. He is no less dismissive of the French writers starting with Foucault who sought to misrepresent him as an emancipatory figure and a suitable inspiration for their version of a post-Marxist, postmodern Left. He cites in some detail the extent to which leading fascists including Hitler regarded Nietzsche as a major source of their radical ideology, and refutes efforts – starting perhaps with Kaufman in the 1950s - to rehabilitate Nietzsche by sidestepping the political character of Nietzsche’s project. If anything, it is positively dangerous to ignore his politics, including the many ways he used irony and rhetorical twists to draw in and then confuse the democrats, socialists and progressives who were his targets. After all, the Nietzsche who was an inspiration to leaders of the revolution of the Right in Weimar Germany is far more likely to inspire the emerging neofascists and new Right of today than to serve the needs of those defending democracy or social egalitarianism.

Losurdo demonstrates that Nietzsche belongs to his own time, he drew from and contributed to the culture of his contemporaries, and he took a definite position on the major issues of his day: reactionary, elitist, antidemocratic and violent, a revolutionary of the Right. He belongs to his own century and nothing we say will dislodge him from there. With all of that he was also a perceptive critic of prevailing morals and values, had a profound insight into human psychology, made significant contributions to philosophical debate and was a consummate artist. It is precisely because he was such a creative philosopher that it is far more interesting to appreciate his work as it stands, rather than distort it into something more acceptable, but this must entail appreciating the philosophy as a coherent whole.

[Javier · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I very much disagree with Domenico Losurdo's take on Joseph Stalin, this extensive study is a much-needed corrective to all the bullshit rehabilitation of the proto-Nazi philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche promoted by academics and leftists (particularly anarchists).