Nietzsche: National Socialism and Fascism

The species of vitalism discussed here, to immediately rule out two possible misconceptions, is neither the feverish cosa mentale found in ruminations on ‘biopolitics’ and fascism – where it alternates quickly between being a form of evil and a form of resistance, with hardly any textual or conceptual material to discuss – nor the opaque, and less-known form in which it exists in the worlds of ‘Theory’ in the humanities, perhaps closely related to the cognate, ‘materiality’. Rather, vitalism here is (...) a malleable construct, often with a poisonous reputation, hovering in the realms of the philosophy of biology, the history of medicine, and the scientific background of the Radical Enlightenment. This is a more vital vitalism, or at least a more ‘biologistic’, ‘embodied’, medicalized vitalism. I first distinguish between what I would call ‘substantival’ and ‘functional’ forms of vitalism, as applied to the eighteenth century. Substantival vitalism presupposes the existence of something like a vital force which either plays a causal role in the natural world as studied by scientific means, or remains a kind of hovering, extra-causal entity. Functional vitalism tends to operate ‘post facto’, from the existence of living bodies to the desire to find explanatory models that will do justice to their uniquely ‘vital’ properties in a way that fully mechanistic models cannot. I discuss some representative figures of the Montpellier school as being functional rather than substantival vitalists. A second point concerns the reprisal of vitalism in ‘late modernity’; from Hans Driesch to Georges Canguilhem. I suggest that in addition to the substantival and functional varieties, we then encounter a third, more existential form of vitalism, articulated by Canguilhem, in which vitalism is a kind of attitude towards Life. All of this, I hope, argues for a form of vitalism which is neither tedious scientism nor dangerous political rhetoric of health and sickness; instead, a vitalism with its own discreet charm. (shrink)

Nietzsche controversially valorizes struggle and war as necessary ingredients of human flourishing. In this book, James S. Pearson reconstructs Nietzsche's rationale for placing such high value on relations of conflict. In doing so, Pearson reveals how Nietzsche's celebration of social discord is interwoven with his understanding of nature as universal struggle. This study thus draws together Nietzsche's writings on politics, culture, metaphysics, biology and human psychology. It also overcomes an entrenched dispute in the critical literature. In the past, commentators have (...) tended to interpret Nietzsche either as an advocate of radical aristocratic violence or, by contrast, a defender of moderate democratic contest. This book navigates a path between these two opposed readings and shows how Nietzsche is able to endorse both violent strife and restrained competition without contradicting himself. (shrink)

"Lukács 1933-1942. Irrationalism in the Age of Fascism". This essay reconstructs the philosophical and historiographical premises to Georg Lukács’ research on irrationalism conducted during the period of Nazi rule in Germany. To this end, the Author focuses chiefly on two posthumous works: How Did Fascist Philosophy Arise in Germany? (1933) and How Did Germany Become the Centre of reactionary Ideology? (1941-1942). After a brief historical contextualization, the Author illustrates the main purpose of these texts: to free German philosophy and culture (...) between the XIX and XX century from those irrationalistic elements asserted and nourished by Fascist philosophy. He then analyzes Lukács’ concept of reason in its three fundamental aspects, namely the methodological link with Marx’s historical image of the political development of Europe during the XIX century, the theoretical debt to Hegel’s critique of immediacy and the connection with some ethical points already discussed during the Goethezeit. (shrink)