Date: Wed, 20 Dec 1995 00:29:45 -0500 (EST)
From: Alex Trotter <uburoi-AT-panix.com>
Subject: N. & fascism



A subject already done to death, but a source of endless fascination and 
speculation.

How about Thomas Mann's assessment in "Nietzsche's Philosophy in the 
Light of Recent History" (1959): "Nietzsche's rhapsodies on the selective 
and culture-saving function of war strike us as the fantasies of an 
inexperienced child, offpsring of a long era of peace and blue-chip 
security which was beginning to bore." He concluded that N. did not 
actually help to create fascism, but sensed it on the horizon.

Although N. was resolutely against socialism, his attack on the decadence 
of late 19th-cent. Europe and call for renewal strikes me as similar to 
that of Georges Sorel, whose syndicalism was infused with a good dose of 
*Lebensphilosophie*. Sorel had an influence on early fascism (of the 
Latin variety), but it would be too simple to denounce him as a protofascist.

The emphasis on extreme voluntarism ("triumph of the will") can, it 
seems, be turned in either an anarchist or a fascist direction, and the 
boundary between them can be fluid!

Alas for N.'s reputation that he would have a man like Heidegger for an 
heir to his throne of German philosophy. I can't imagine N. having held a 
high university post under the Third Reich. He was the sort of man who 
would have either fled (but then, he hated Germany so much he would 
probably already have left long before the Nazis) or committed suicide 
rather than live the Heideggerian compromise.


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