The Journal of Nietzsche Studies

The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 27 (2004) 89-91

Domenico Losurdo, Nietzsche, il ribelle aristocratico: Biografia intellettuale e bilancio critico [ Nietzsche, the aristocratic rebel: Intellectual biography and critical assessment ], Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 2002, pages xv+1167.

In Towards a Philosophy of Real Mathematics, David Corfield writes: "Ian Hacking opens his book Representing and Intervening with a quotation from Nietzsche's The Twilight of the Idols: 'You ask me, which of the philosophers' traits are idiosyncrasies? For example: their lack of historical sense, their hatred of becoming, their Egypticism. They think that they show their respect for a subject when they dehistoricize it—when they turn it into a mummy'" (Cambridge, 2003, 6). My aim with this quotation is not so much to highlight the reference to Nietzsche in these contemporary scientific works, but rather to argue that the portrait of the German philosopher that emerges from the new book by Professor Domenico Losurdo—the author of Heidegger and the Ideology of War: Community, Death, and the West (Amherst, N.Y., 2001), and of many other books and essays in Italian and German—is very far from being similar to what Nietzsche himself would have defined as "a mummy."

In fact, in this book Nietzsche's nonsystematic thought is seen, and interpreted as a whole, as being deeply rooted in "the late 19th Century aristocratic reaction"—the ideological reaction to the French Revolution and to the postrevolutionary European movements that had caused the uprisings in 1848, the Paris Commune in 1871, and what was felt could happen after that. Nietzsche never actually wrote a work on political philosophy. Nevertheless, he was aware that the specter of communism was haunting Europe, and he was very concerned about this, particularly since, in his opinion, the forces of opposition were so weak.

Taking into account all of Nietzsche's published and unpublished works, and quoting significant passages from all of them, the author argues that the historical-political issue is indeed the key to interpreting Nietzsche's thought in its unity, and to revealing its cohesion. Here it is only possible to give the bare outlines of an argument that is developed in more than one thousand pages in the book—the summary alone being nine pages long, which is much more than any review editor would allow. The book, which presents a carefully analytic interpretation of Nietzsche's intellectual biography, is divided into thirty-three chapters, which are organized into seven parts (1. "Nietzsche in his times: The fight against Socratism and Judaism," 3-192; 2. "Nietzsche in his times: Four successive approaches in the critique of Revolution," 193-398; 3. "Nietzsche in his times: Theory and practice of "aristocratic radicalism,'" 399-648; 4. "Beyond 'metaphor' and 'anticipation': Nietzsche in a comparative perspective," 649-763; 5. "Nietzsche and the aristocratic reaction between two historic periods," 765-893; 6. "In Nietzsche's philosophical laboratory," 895-1004; 7. "Nietzsche and us: Radicalism and the demystifying power of the reactionary project," 1005-1076). It concludes with an appendix entitled "How to construct [End Page 89] Nietzsche's innocence. Editors, translators, and interpreters" (1077-1094), followed by 150 pages of bibliographical references and by an index, compiled by Dr. Emanuela Susca, which proves useful in such a monumental work.

As the author stresses, "Nietzsche lived in a period which, in the United States, saw the war of secession and the 'abolitionist revolution' (which sometimes took the shape of a crusade seeking to eliminate the sin of slavery and to construct a new world which would realise Christian ideals in concrete terms), in Europe the Paris Commune and the development of the Socialist movement, in Asia, or more precisely, in China, the revolution and the subsequent attempt to build 'the Heavenly Reign of Peace,' of which the Taiping movement—also deeply influenced by Christian Messianism—was the protagonist" (508-9). All these events contributed to persuading him that a criticism of the current ideology, with the consequent deconstruction of traditional values, was necessary: "If Marx sides with the 'defeated,' who are exhorted to look upon the...