Nietzsche Contra Lukàcs: Politics of History and Epic Conceptions

Contemporary Political Theory, 2021

Adorno and Horkheimer's legacy is incomplete without reference to their infamous political quietism. To thinkers such as Habermas, this was the unfortunate consequence of their alleged evacuation of reason. Attending to the treatment of Nietzsche in Dialectic of Enlightenment illuminates the distinct irony of such charges. Here, in their most popular book, Nietzsche is presented as precisely that which they praised him for warning against elsewhere: an advocate of cruelty animated by a reactionary morality. I contend that this exaggeration is not accidental, but rather illustrative; the authors present a consciously hyperbolized version of Nietzsche in order to articulate how he made possible his own misappropriation, and to distinguish themselves sharply from Nietzsche given their disagreements about the necessity of reason. Ultimately, however, even though Adorno and Horkheimer performatively differentiate themselves from the nihilism they saw in Nietzsche, their alternative would ironically be subject to precisely the same charges of irrationalism and political aporia that they sought so desperately to avoid.

Diacritics, 2004

Marx & Philosophy Review of Books, 2021

What is most remarkable about Nietzsche's postwar ascendancy in the philosophico-cultural field is that it emerges out of a prior history of his philosophy's use in legitimating the Nazi and fascist regimes of Europe in the 1930s. Unlike Heidegger, whose Nazism has certainly impacted his readership, Nietzsche's reputation was able to attain an efficacious divorce from his Nazi appropriation. This was due in part to Walter Kaufman's 'rehabilitation' of Nietzsche for Anglo-American readership after World War II, with his updated English translations and commentaries that cited Nietzsche's correspondences that contained critical attitudes to anti-Semitism. It has now become nearly almost commonplace that Nietzsche is innocent not only of any association with Nazism, but that any view of him as conservative, reactionary or proto-fascist, because those interpretations were always based on a selectively biased or distorted reading of his work. This legacy is an effect of what Domenico Losurdo calls the 'hermeneutics of innocence'-not simply propagated by theorists and commentators, but also editors and translators of the complete works and Nachlass. Losurdo's epic historiography of Nietzsche's philosophy extensively exposes the 'hermeneutics of innocence' for failing to attend to the historical-social origins and wider context of Nietzsche's thought. For this reason, Losurdo's book is long overdue in the English scholarship where 'innocent' or trusting readings of Nietzsche have arguably prevailed and become 'canonical' (734), and where there is a need for a more 'critical balance sheet', especially amidst the rise of the far-right in recent decades that continue to feed on Nietzsche's work. What emerges from Losurdo's reconstruction effort of 'unifying' Nietzsche's thought in its various stages (e.g. 'Young Nietzsche', 'Solitary Rebel', 'Enlightener', 'Mature Nietzsche') is a core central argument that there exists from beginning to end in Nietzsche's prolific output, a politics of 'aristocratic radicalism'. That is, the seeds of a political 'movement' or

Draft of translator's introduction to Nietzsche, Philosopher of Reaction: Towards a Political Biography, a translation of a short text by the late Italian scholar, historian of ideas and philosopher, Domenico Losurdo which will appear later this year or early 2023 with Historical Materialism. Losurdo's work originally appeared in Italian in 1997 bearing the title Nietzsche: Per una biografia politica (Roma: Manifesto Libri, Orme, 1997). Five years later, in 2002, Losurdo would publish his far longer study, Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico: Biografia intellettuale e bilancio critic (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002). Losurdo's great book on Nietzsche represents arguably the most significant challenge to regnant liberal, postmodernist, and feminist interpretations of the latter's work, by recourse to the methodologies of contextualising intellectual history and critical hermeneutics. Yet, despite the book's immense scholarship, weight of evidence, and intellectual significance, it would take nearly two decades for Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico to appear in English translation by Gregor Benton in the Historical Materialism series at Brill. Sadly, Losurdo himself would not live to see its appearance in print, passing away in June 2018. The reader of his shorter, earlier extended essay on the German philosopher of the Second Reich will however get a very clear picture of Losurdo’s larger interpretive orientation. The striking challenge his reading of Nietzsche represents to many better-known works published or translated in the Anglosphere over the last five decades is also trenchantly clear in the less than 100 pages of this work. The aim of making this work available to anglophones was to make Losurdo’s critical work, on this philosopher who continues to animate such different cohorts as academic left-liberals and far right activists, accessible to many more people, and facilitate more balanced debates surrounding everything Nietzsche thought, wrote, and has wrought. [Author's copy, do not cite]

Dialectical Anthropology, 2001

2020

Literary works generally portray historical and social changes of their times besides of their aesthetical values. These writings also interpret the ideas which influenced the most. This makes them a form of contemporary documentation (Zeitdokument or Zeitroman), which helps to understand a specific era. In the 20th century, Georg Lukács, the Marxist theorist and philosopher, was a significant thinker, whose attitude, character, and ideas influenced many other philosophers and artists. The aim of this paper is to outline Lukács’s development of thinking from the point of view of his contemporaries. To this end, I discuss four literary writings in this paper: these four works represent an era from Lukács’s life and thinking. The almost unknown feuilleton of Béla Balázs published in 1911 idealizes the young Lukács and portrays him as a quixotic thinker, who belongs to another sphere, another “caste”. In the turn of 1921-1922, the novel of Emma Ritoók entitled Spiritual Adventurers was published, which represented the generation of pathfinders negatively and disillusioned, as they tried to calculate the redemption of the individuals with some mystical philosophical ideas. Anna Lesznai’s novel, In the Beginning was the Garden, is a significant opus with two volumes which outlines the troubled times of Hungarian history and recreates the historical events from the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 to the collapse of the Hungarian Soviet Republic and the first years of emigration. The two novels portray Lukács as a pathfinder who stands at a crossroads between theory and political praxis. Ritoók’s novel judges this struggle and interprets it in a caricatured way, while Anna Lesznai represents Lukács’s dilemma and decision as a sacrifice. The fourth work is The Interview by István Eörsi, which was published first in 1983 and is a very personal writing. Eörsi’s writing is a drama or rather an “absurd documentary play”, where Eörsi evokes his old Master, who is not the great thinker and philosopher, who he once was. The mind struggles as it still tries to create and work, but the body fails and Lukács got lost in the maze of his own thinking. The student wants to face his old Master, trying to get answers to his own dilemmas about Lukács, but his physical inability makes it almost impossible to communicate with him. All these four works represent Lukács in different phases and they take a very specific glance at a significant œuvre. However, these works deserve the consideration not just from the point of view of Lukács’s significance, but because of their literary value. The literary works mentioned here are on the periphery of the literary canon and the rediscovering of these writings could bring new aspects not just for literary studies, but for the history of philosophy and ideas as well. Galley proofs (please quite the final published version). Published in Mester, Béla; Smoczyński, Rafał (eds.). Lords and Boors – Westernisers and ‘Narodniks’ : Chapters from Polish and Hungarian Intellectual History. Budapest, Gondolat Publishers, Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of Philosophy (2020) 286 p. pp. 184-203. , 20 p. © Bettina Szabados (Institute of Philosophy of the Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest, Hungary) and/or the publisher (2020). Unauthorized reproduction or posting to other websites is not allowed. All Rights Reserved! Scientific use only!

Political Studies, 1998

Over recent years, an extraordinary number of interpretations of Nietzsche's work has appeared. I ask why he has become such an important ®gure in contemporary political debate and whether any dominant concerns can be elicited from the diverse readings of his texts. My response to both questions is that because Nietzsche has been identi®ed, by Habermas among others, as the founding father of poststructuralism, this is where debate between postmodernists and their critics is being staged. I distinguish between recent philosophical and political interpretations but argue that in both cases, what is at stake are political questions regarding authority, legitimacy and consensus. In the latter part of the article I consider attempts at reconstructing a postmodern politics out of Nietzsche's philosophy, but express some doubts about such a project.

Feminism and the Early Frankfurt School, 2024

Preprint of extended review essay* of Domenico Losurdo;'s Friedrich Nietzsche: Aristocratic Rebel, translated by Gregory Benton (2019/20). Part 1 examines Losurdo's interpretation of Nietzsche as "the greatest reactionary among philosophers, and the greatest philosopher among reactionaries." It details Losurdo's specific unifying and contextualising methodologies which re-place Nietzsche in his times and context, and read him as a coherent philosophical thinker, not inconsistent provocateur or conceptual artist, willing to think through to its roots what it would mean to overcome Judaeochristian morality. Part 2 looks at how Losurdo's reading of Nietzsche, and the distinctions he makes between Nietzsche' s different texts and developments, enables us to at once comprehend and challenge hegemonic liberal Nietzsche interpretations. By reading the whole of Nietzsche's corpus, and paying Socratic attention to the distinctions the German philosopher himself introduces, Losurdo shows the need to proceed carefully before asserting Nietzsche’s anti-Germanism (excluding Nietzsche 1 (of Birth of Tragedy), and in no way relevant to 20th century debates), his 'feminism' (contradicted by his hostility, especially in the later works, to women's movement, as well as his echoing standard misogynist tropes of the period) his anti-Statism (always qualified, never anti-military), his famous anti-Christianity (not in the early period, never politically unconditional), as well as his celebrated, putative, post-Kaufmanian “individualism” and an "aestheticism" tied to traditional understandings linking "otium et bellum" (leisure and war). Finally, Losurdo gives a discerning reading of Nietzsche's complex relationship with the people of the Torah who gave us both the masterly books of the Kings and the egalitarian "slave" morality of the prophets, presaging Jesus, Paul, and modern progressivist nihilism. Closing remarks show how, as well as reestablishing Nietzsche's continuing influence on the Far Right, reading Nietzsche with Losurdo can help students understand many of the core convictions of the latter: that the poor, unfortunate and weak, like violence and exploitation, will always be with us, so it is unnatural to support progressive political change (2.5-6, ch. 12); that herd animals profit from being ruled harshly, even by Napoleon-like Caesarist figures (BGE, 199; GS 40);; that educating the masses too much is unwise if one wants a well-ordered, hierarchical society (12.4); that concessions to welfare from below do not satisfy but will only stimulate further demands; that demands for [social] justice, rooted in pity or compassion, are fictions which always and only express envy and resentment against “the strong” (7.11; 8.1; 14.3; 21.1-4); that low voter turnout in representative elections should lead to the limiting of the franchise or suspension of the constitution (9.1); that social conflict and even war should sometimes be welcomed as a means to harden and make the way straight for the master[s] who can best advance society (later period, 11.5); and that rather than holding onto illusory “life-denying” ideals, one should have the honesty to confront these harder truths without apology or a guilt reflecting slavish values (10.5). [*preprint only-accepted for publication with Critical Horizons, 20/21]