The Dawn of Political Nihilism: Volume I of The Nihilist Order 9781845192891, 1845192893, 9781845195663, 2008031387

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VOLUME I Of Tfit NIHILIST ORDfR

DAVI D OHANA

THE DAWN OF POLITICAL NIHILISM

To my son Amir the answer to the nihilist temptation

THE DAWN Of POLITICAL NIHILISM VOI I HI I I I TIE ■ 11111 ST 0 1 1 1 1

DAVI D OHANA

sussex ACADEMI C PRESS

B r ig h t o n • P o r t l a n d

Copyright © David O hana 2009 T he right of David Ohana to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 2 4 6 8 1097 5 3 1

First published 2009 in Great Britain by SUSSEX ACADEM IC PRESS PO Box 139 Eastbourne B N 24 9BP

and in the United States of America by SUSSEX ACAD EM IC PRESS 920 N E 58th Ave Suite 300 Portlands Oregon 97213-3786

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ohana, David. T he dawn of political nihilism / David Ohana. p. c m . — (Volume I of T he nihilist order) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-84519-289-1 (h/b : alk. paper) 1. Nihilism— History— 19th century. 2. Nihilism—History—20th century. 3. Totalitarianism—History— 19th century. 4. Totalitarianism—History—20th century. I. Title. H X 828.043 2009 320.5—dc22 2008031387

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Contents Foreword by Yehoshua Arieli Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction

The Nihilist-Totalitarian Syndrome

C h a pter O ne

The Nietzschian Revolution

C h a pter T w o

M y th ex nihilo

C hapter T h ree

The Nihilist Utopia

C h a pter Fo u r

T h e C ity o f M a c h in e

vi xiii 1 13 54

98 14 0

Notes

165

Bibliography

193

Index

218

Foreword by Yehoshua Arieli Faust, Prometheus and Beyond

I wish to express my satisfaction in having the opportunity to write about the thesis to be found in The Nihilist Order, a feeling not only due to my convic­ tion that we have here a book that is unusual and important. It is connected to no small degree with my many years’ acquaintance with David Ohana as a historian and as a friend, and my astonishment at the new aspects revealed to me over time of his personality as an intellectual, and as a man involved in the fate of his country and his world. He is remarkable for his original ideas and reactions, and the way in which his scale of values determines his judgments and actions. All these things find expression in The Nihilist Order. Ohana’s trilogy is the product of many years of research, thought and interpretation of the great issues of our time, beginning with his study, Nietzsche’s Philosophy o f History. The continuation of these efforts and the crystallization of the main theme of the trilogy took place in his doctoral thesis, which was written under my supervision and under the guidance of Saul Friedlander. Its title was “The Nihilist-Totalitarian Syndrome and Its Role Among the Radical Ideologies of the Left and Right.” After that, Ohana continued researching the revolt of the intellectuals against the principles of nineteenth-century liberal ideology while seeking to strengthen the basic assumptions of the thesis, to complement it and to broaden the historical and cultural canvas of the reader. The result is an extensive panorama of the modern period of crisis. The Dawn o f Political Nihilism, volume I of the trilogy, is a kind of a summary of Ohana’s positions with regard to the world of thought of moder­ nity. His main interest, however, lies in the presentation of the concept referred to above, which he calls the “nihilist-totalitarian syndrome.” This innovative perception is an attempt to understand the forces and motivations that sought to impose on the world, and especially on the West, totalitarian regimes and ideologies deriving from the nihilist mentality and the new radical culture. Ohana sees the common structure of all these currents to be a rejection of the great Western humanist tradition rooted in the Judeo-Christian monotheistic ethos and the heritage of classical culture, and also the intellectual and spiri­ tual horizons that opened up in the West in the eighteenth-century age of Enlightenment. The Nihilist Order clearly belongs to the school of historiography that can

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be described as the “Jerusalem school”, which began with Richard Koebner’s semantic approach to history and has continued with the historical writings of Chaim Wirszubski, J.L. Talmon and Zeev Sternhell. Ohana himself mentions that Talmon and Gershom Scholem, among others, have influenced his thinking. No less important, in my opinion, has been the influence of the currents of thought in the humanities and social sciences in Europe in our time: French existentialism, the cultural criticism of the Frankfurt school, Walter Benjamin, and the effects of the anthropology of the French Annales school of historiography on the understanding of the history of our era. Ohana’s alertness to all currents and to the international intellectual discourse is extra­ ordinary, as was shown in the interdisciplinary seminars he conducted for years in the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, where he brought up for discussion major topics of contemporary thought such as “myth and history”, “utopia and dystopia”, and in his seminars on Walter Benjamin and Albert Camus. However, despite all this, the book is entirely his in its originality of thought, in its central thesis, and in Ohana’s capacity to reveal through a critical analysis an amalgam of principles deriving from philosophical pre­ suppositions, revolutionary ideology and the existentialist schools of the modern period. Ever since he wrote his work on Nietzsche, Ohana has been concerned with the question of nihilism and its repercussions on the forma­ tion of the modern consciousness, and how to deliver mankind from its consequences. The question has guided him in his thinking and researches. This same originality characterizes his capacity to see the interrelationship of thought, revolutionary ideologies and political culture in an age when tech­ nology dominates the life of the individual and of society as a whole. The comprehensiveness, whereby a variegated totality of life and experience is explained by means of a theoretical construction - the “nihilistic-totalitarian syndrome” - gives Ohana’s work its uniqueness, originality and attractive­ ness. At all events, the product that has gone out into the world is special in the scope of its vision, in the many subjects treated and in the depth of its intuitions. And indeed, it is a fine book in all respects, and it reflects the considerable work that Ohana has put into it in order that it should be a “creation” in the full sense of the word. The richness and variety of the subjects it deals with sometimes recalls the abundant menu of “Babette’s Feast”. It spreads before the reader a vast landscape of European culture and its spirit in the fin de siecle and the first third of the twentieth century. Ohana rightly sees this period as a coherent historical unit in its intellectual tendencies and in its relationship to the heritage of the Enlightenment and the dominant patterns of the nine­ teenth century. The Nihilist Order examines the crisis in the self-consciousness of European bourgeois society at the end of the nineteenth century and the begin­ ning of the twentieth. The political orientation of the period was expressed in an intellectual counter-revolution that rejected the moral heritage of the philosophy of the Enlightenment and European humanism. With an original

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insight, Ohana claims that the motive-force of this counter-revolution was a nihilist-totalitarian syndrome that had all the hallmarks of a religious order. This revolution gave birth to a new mentality and political consciousness in which an existential nihilist perception sought to create a new totalitarian reality in all spheres of human existence. This radical intellectual current was consolidated at the beginning of the twentieth century, parallel with the rise of the totalitarian ideological move­ ments, Fascism and National Socialism on the one hand and Bolshevism on the other, sometimes preceding and influencing them and sometimes joining them. The book investigates, analyses and locates the thinkers and movements that formed part of this trend and contributed in various ways to the conti­ nuity of the nihilist-totalitarian current. The term “syndrome” indicates the heterogeneous complexity of this historical current both with regard to the personalities involved in it and their spheres of activity and with regard to the qualities that characterized it. I am referring here to the contradiction that seemingly exists between the nihilist world-outlook and the tendency to favor a totalitarian system. The essence of Ohana’s thesis is the claim that despite the contradiction between the two elements of the syndrome, the nihilist mentality does in fact tend towards an affirmation of political positions and cultures of a dynamic, vitalistic and violent character, which supply the needs of the nihilistic impulse. The argument of the trilogy proceeds from the philosophical thought of Friedrich Nietzsche to the metamorphoses of the revolutionary political thought of Georges Sorel and his teachings about the place of myth and violence in the crystallization of the revolutionary phenomenon. Ohana’s thesis on the rise of the Futurist movement as the bearer of the revolutionary revolt against the conventions of European bourgeois society, extends into most spheres of culture, technology, political struggle and ways of life. Only from this point onwards, with the appearance of the collective image of futurism and figures like Ernst Jiinger in Germany, can one speak of an “order”: that is, of a group of people with a sense of mission and a common world-outlook who wish to create a revolution in the consciousness of their period. Their distinctiveness lay in their conviction that this goal could be achieved through a radical change of basic perceptions in art, architecture, poetry, theater, the language of public communications and the style of mass political activities. We have here an analytical description and critical history of the existen­ tialist political trend, of which there were representatives in the literary sphere, in the arts and in technology; its message of a rejection of the past with its humanistic and liberal values; its orientation towards the future, which had to be characterized by a new morality, consciousness and form of action; and its motivations - a will-to-audacity, existential challenges and the experience of the dynamism of power and domination as an end-in-itself. In his theoret­ ical and literary writings, Ernst Jiinger was a realization of this “nihilist-totalitarian syndrome”. In seeing the essence of human existence in

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war and in the subjugation of man to technology and productivity, Jiinger negated the idea of respect for man and transformed him into a mere instru­ ment of power and the survival of the collective. The “City of Machine” forms a logical conclusion to the book, and the title of this chapter is an ironic reference to the distinction made by St. Augustine in his work Civitas Dei between the earthly city, the realm of sin, and the city of God, the realm of grace and redemption. In the domination of technology over the life of man, the “nihilist-totalitarian syndrome” takes on an inhuman character in which the mentality of the engineer dominates exis­ tence like a Messiah of steel and violence. In my opinion, this book is of tremendous educational value. There are not many works that evoke to the same degree the image of a period in its many aspects, and present the history of the crisis of modern culture and the mentality that gave rise to it with so empathetic an understanding and in such an original interpretation. One aspect of Ohana’s achievement is the inter­ connection of all the chapters and the impressive conceptual structure they represent, in which each one is both a case-study of the thesis of the book and a link in the chain of historical development. The subjects treated in The Nihilist Order are contained within a wider framework that Ohana calls the “Promethean passion”. The result is a vast panorama in which the schools and currents of modern thought appear one by one in their confrontation with the heritage of the Enlightenment and Western humanism. From every point of view, the challenge is a great one, and the intellectual and moral enthusiasm of the author, the originality of the general conception which shows up our period in a new light and reveals a Leitmotif behind modernity - the Promethean passion - cannot fail to capture the heart of the reader. In Ohana’s study there are insights that open up new horizons of understanding of the phenomenon of modernity and of the nature of the dialectical forces working within it. The following are thoughts arising from an examination of the essence of modernity and its relationship to the Promethean passion from the point of view of the historian. The essence of the modern era, of its thought and spirit, is not confined to man’s rebellion against a dependence on transcendental forces that rule over him, although this is one of the recurrent motifs of the modern period. The appearance of Prometheus, as a myth and as an arche­ type, takes place much earlier than the rise of Western culture, and at the same time is contemporary with it. The motif not only recurs in Greek mythology and in other pagan mythologies such as that of the Nibelung saga: it plays a considerable role in the Bible and is the basis of Christian doctrine, as the New Testament is given to redeem man from original sin, from the sin of man’s rebellion against his creator. The original sin is that of superbia, man’s pride, the prime motive of his sinful character. The Christian doctrine, derived from the Hebrew Bible, relates both to the uniqueness of man created in the image of God and to his rebellion against his creator, as one necessarily leads to the other. It is written that “God created man in his image, in the image of God

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he created him,” and it is clear that this unique status, of which we read in Psalm 8 that “you have made him a little lower than God and crowned him with glory and honor,” would lead him into the temptation of eating the forbidden fruit. For he is told that “when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The expulsion from the garden of Eden is in reality the beginning of his liberation, in which he is placed under his own authority, and thus the beginning of human history. This same drive to self-determination and the achievement of supernatural powers runs through history like a scarlet thread. This drive to transcend the limits of human nature was embodied in the legendary figure of Dr. Faustus at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and found its loftiest expression in Goethe’s tragedy Faust. Faust became the prototype of modern man, and there is in fact a family likeness between the passion of Faust and the Promethean passion, although they are not identical. N ot only is Faust one of the great works of world literature, it is an allegor­ ical drama about man’s indefatigable drive to satisfy his passion, to exhaust all dimensions of human existence and gain understanding of all the secrets of life. Hence Faust’s despair at the distance between the promise and its fulfill­ m ent, and his entry into a pact with the devil in order to achieve his desires and quench his thirst to know the secrets of existence. But the devil cannot fulfill the condition that will enable Faust to carry out his side of the bargain: the devil’s initiative becomes a curse. The reality that the devil can provide is only virtual. Only at the end of his life, when Faust frees himself from the tem ptations of magic and magical forces, does he find a moment of happiness in the vision of an act that can liberate a people. Faust’s final answer to his search for meaning and purpose in life can serve as an epitome of the spirit of m odern man renouncing the achievement of the infinite and the Promethan challenge: The sphere of Earth is known enough to me; The view beyond is barred immutably: A fool, who there his blinking eyes directeth, And o’er his clouds of peers a place expecteth! Firm let him stand, and look around him well! His world means something to the Capable. Why need he through eternity to wend? He here acquires what he can apprehend. The revolutionary significance of the concept of “modern history in the modern era” is not only the rejection of a dependence on the transcendent character of man’s fate and history. The aim of the modern era to restore th e world of the saeculum (the here-and-now) as the sole reality of man’s life is connected with a new and revolutionary perception of historical tim e. According to this, the relationship of the present to the future must be d eter­ mined by man’s will, power and foresight in moving from one present to th e

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other. Hence the relationship to the future is a never-ending process in which man’s freedom is realized. In this transition, human freedom is integral to the formation of human existence. Modernity is the awareness of the openness of human existence and the challenge to man and society to be masters of their own fate, to realize their desires through the forces at their disposal in this world, in the saeculum. The significance of the saeculum is not confined to the process of distancing oneself from the sphere of the sacred and from the power and influence of reli­ gious authority, although this process has been a condition for the creation of a secular mentality. The main purpose of this process was to restore things to their original splendor, to reveal the universe as “nature” and as the world of man with its revealed and hidden forces. Hence, the significance of modern history is that it is an incessant reconstruction of the human world. This consciousness and activity are expressed in a growing reduction in the authority of religion, in a reliance on the power and authority of common sense to determine the forms of life, in a loss of the authority of the past over the present and of diminished reliance on a knowledge of the past to deter­ mine the future. These attitudes are connected to self-understanding, as through science and the scientific method one may reveal and comprehend the forces active in the universe, and through technology harness them to the service of man. In this way, the belief in man’s capacity to be master of his fate gains a solid basis. The revolutionary advance of science and technology in the twentieth century gave man unlimited power to determine his fate and to change the founda­ tions of human existence and nature itself. The process was set in motion and accelerated by a broadening of the hori­ zons of European society in the age of discovery, and, to an even greater degree, by the thinkers and scientists who created an awareness that humanity was on the threshold of a new era, an expansion of horizons through knowl­ edge and unprecedented powers that constituted a revolutionary turning-point in history. It represented a realization of the ancient hope of liberating man from his limitations. This ideal of human autonomy and of man’s freedom to govern himself and create his own world is the very heart of modernity. The modern consciousness was the motive-force of the series of ideolog­ ical revolutions and of the metamorphoses of the industrial, scientific and technological revolutions. It was also the cause of the radical changes that took place in lifestyles, norms and the mentality of the individual and society as a whole in a time of unprecedented change. Man became the sole architect of his life, of the conditions of his existence and his environment. The world that man now lives in is entirely his own creation, a kind of alternative cosmos. He has the power to decide whether the biosphere of the planet will survive or not. Man has become the sole source of all authority and the only judge of values and norms. The consciousness of his virtually unlimited powers creates a temptation to deny the existence of values and norms as such. As Augustine said, the earthly city inherits the place of the city of God. Francis Bacon, the

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prophet of the new scientific method, coined the slogan “knowledge is power”. In his essay Instauratio Magna, he suggested that “through a total reconstruction of the sciences, arts and all human knowledge, raised upon the proper foundations,” one could remove the curse on man’s life caused by orig­ inal sin and restore the tree of knowledge. Here we witness a conjunction of the motifs that have nourished the imag­ ination of man ever since he became aware of his unique status among beings: the Promethean, biblical and Faustian motifs. Faust sold his soul to the devil in order to gain superhuman powers. Lord Bacon and the historical Dr. Faustus were almost contemporaries, but while Faust resorted to magic, Lord Bacon saw scientific knowledge as the answer to man’s distress. But, in view of our historical experience, the question arises: has the wondrous fulfillment of Francis Bacon’s vision distanced us from the curse of magic, which now takes on a modern form, the temptation to believe in man’s unlimited power to manipulate reality? Are we not living to an increasing extent in a virtual reality? Is it not a world that no longer recognizes limits to human knowledge or the limitations of good and evil? The twentieth century has been a time of violence and destruction. We have experienced the threat of an unprecedented dehumanization, and at the same time we have witnessed an unprecedented development of science and tech­ nology, which have distanced the present light-years away from the past. What shall be said, when we have crossed the threshold of the third millennium, about the faith we had in modernity and its capacity to create a new heaven and earth? Does it not recall an ancient story: the story of Lucifer, son of the morning, the fallen angel? Or does it not recall the myth of the tower of Babel? That is the real subject of David Ohana’s book: the confrontation of modernity with the heritage of humanism and the Enlightenment. The origi­ nality and innovativeness of The Nihilist Order lies in three areas: first of all, in the perception of the nihilist-totalitarian syndrome as a key to under­ standing central aspects of the twentieth century and of contemporary political thought; then, in the revelation of the hidden connections between philosophical thought and political theory and between new currents in art and technology that were involved in the crystallization of this tendency; and lastly, in the phenomenological analysis that lays bare a secular mythology and a political theology. The Nihilist Order is a major contribution to a broad­ ening of intellectual horizons and a deeper understanding of la condition humaine and of modern man and the crisis of modernity.

Acknowledgments The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the last manifestation of the ideological totalitarianism of the twentieth century, and the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York in 2001, the first manifestation of the political funda­ mentalism of the twenty-first century, are very different radical expressions of the human spirit with only twelve years between them. Both of them, however, testify to the common factor in the phenomenon of modernity. The special feature of modernity is the capacity of mankind to shape its destiny with its own hands. A person who looks at the post-totalitarian world cannot fail to be filled with fear and trembling at man’s destructive capability which came to fruition in the twentieth century, and at the same time he cannot fail to be filled with hope and faith at man’s capacity for self-restraint. This study focuses on two outstanding phenomena that came to fulfilment in the first third of the twentieth century: the modern desire to annihilate the man of the past and the modern passion for creating a “new man”. The Dawn o f Political Nihilism, vol. I of the The Nihilist Order, points to the essential connection that exists between these two interrelated desires that are possible only in the modem discourse. I wish to thank all the people who helped me to understand the special spirit of modernity that has found expression in The Nihilist Order. First and foremost, I would like to thank my teacher and friend the late Yehoshua Arieli, who has accompanied me on my path with a rare wisdom, providing a fruitful dialogue and critical thought. Likewise, my thanks are due to the late J. L. Talmon, who directed my first steps in research, but who unfortunately did not live to see the fruits of his labors. I also owe a debt of thanks and acknowl­ edgment to Saul Friedlander, Zeev Sternhell, Shlomo Avineri, George L. Mosse, Stanley Hoffman, Isaiah Berlin, Jurgen Habermas, Alan Blum, Nathan Rotenstreich, Menachem Brinker, Robert Wistrich, Moshe Hazani, Avi Katzman, Fonna and David Forman-Barzilai, and Yaakov Lavie. I would like to acknowledge the academic and financial support of BenGurion University of the Negev, The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, The Center for European Studies at Harvard University, the United States-Israel Educational Foundation for the Fullbright Fellowship, and The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. I especially thank Avigad Vonshak, director of the Ben-Gurion Research Institute, for his encouragement to publish my trilogy. Many thanks are due to David Maisel who was responsible for the English, to my dedicated assistant Moriel Ram and my colleague Moshe Shemesh who

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

put me in touch with Anthony Grahame, editorial director at Sussex Academic Press. Anthony, who was not alarmed at the challenge I set before him of putting out a trilogy on modern nihilism, has brought this book to publica­ tion with admirable dedication and insight. And last but not least, I thank my family: my humanist parents, Anet and Nissim Ohana; my wife Roni, who strengthened me in difficult moments on this journey with love and friendship; my twins, Tamar and Daniel, and my son Amir, all of whom provide a wonderful and decisive response to nihilism.

What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. This history can be related even now; for necessity itself is at work here. This future speaks even now in a hundred signs, this destiny announces itself everywhere; for this music of the future all ears are cocked even now. For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

What attracts them is the sight of the zeal that surrounds a cause as it were, the sight of the burning fuse, and not the cause itself. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Introduction The Nihilist-Totalitarian Syndrome

The trilogy The Nihilist Order traces the genealogy of the nihilist-totalitar­ ian syndrome. Volume I, The Dawn o f Political Nihilism, presents the general schema of the trilogy, and shows how nihilism and totalitarianism, two critical perspectives of modernity, combine into a new political phe­ nomenon. Until now, nihilism and totalitarianism were considered opposites: one an orderless state of affairs, the other a strict regimented order. On closer scrutiny, however, a surprising affinity can be found between these two concepts that dominated the history of the first half of the twentieth century. Over and above “nihilism” and “totalitarianism” as such is an additional dialectical phenomenon: the nihilist mentality, whether from inner compulsion or immanent logic, is driven to accept totalitarian patterns of behavior which are characterized by extreme dynamism. The philosophy of activism, violence and dynamism thus typifies cultural protest and at the same time gives content to political revolts: dynamic nihilism is anchored in the aesthetic absolute of the totalitarian mentality. Starting with Nietzsche’s philosophy, this book follows the development of an intellectual school char­ acterized by the paradoxical dual purpose of a wish to destroy, coupled with a strong desire to create imposing structures. This explosive combination of nihilist leanings together with a craving for totalitarianism was an ideal of philosophers, cultural critics, political theorists, engineers, architects and aesthetes long before it materialized in flesh and blood, not only in technol­ ogy, but also in Fascism, Nazism, Bolshevism and radical European political movements. Volume II, Homo Mythicus, concentrates on the influential figure of the French political sociologist Georges Sorel, who built a modern political mythology based on the therapeutic value of violence as a cure for the inau­ thenticity of modern life. Volume III, The Futurist Syndrome, deals with three varieties of the Futurist avant-garde movements in Europe, represented by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Italian Futurism and Fascism; Vladimir Mayakovsky, Russian Cubo-Futurism and Bolshevism; and Wyndham Lewis, English Vorticism and Hitlerism. Although the figures analyzed in the trilogy worked in different countries, and held opposing political beliefs, striking similarities are evident in their basic concepts and modes of thought, in the nature of their revolt and in their political aspirations. They all represent the

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INTRODUCTION

fateful synthesis of nihilism and totalitarianism that had such a devastating effect on the history of the twentieth century. The Dawn o f Political Nihilism discusses the relationship between culture and politics, or, in other words, the phenomenology of political radicalism. The subject to be examined is how the critique of European culture at the end of the nineteenth century directly or indirectly became a radical political cri­ tique that questioned the basic assumptions of the European political structure and eventually contributed to its overthrow and the rise of totalitarian forces. In the ideological development and cultural history of Europe in the first third of the twentieth century, parallel with the main political and ideological m ove­ ments, a state of mind emerged - “the nihilist-totalitarian syndrome.” The distinguishing characteristic of the thinkers of this new intellectual current w as not an abrupt change from one approach to another but the coexistence of nihilistic positions with dynamic structures of a totalitarian kind. Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Sorel, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti an d Italian futurism and Ernst Jiinger are at once test cases and represent a stage of crystallization in the evolution of the nihilist-totalitarian current. They experienced the crisis of modernism and laid a special path through the construction of a political mythology that included a conceptual system, images, symbols and myths of the modern world. As weavers of myths they created a dynamic political culture that struck roots in radical sections of the left and right, and was sometimes an independent current distinct from the known ideologies. As cultural critics they brought about an “intellectual revo­ lution”, according to the concept of H. Stuart Hughes.1 These “a n ti­ intellectual” intellectuals revolted against the Enlightenment and gave polit­ ical myth absolute primacy. Glorification of conflict as the structure of reality shaped the new type of authentic man. Modern technology, which they admired, provided the means of making revolutionary order out of chaos an d gave them a new Romantic myth serving the politics of violence. This nihilist style was shaped by radical nationalism or mythical socialism, or a com bina­ tion of the two, in the form of National Socialism. The origins of this new orientation were to be found in the crisis of selfconsciousness of bourgeois society in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. The cultural and political crisis that overtook the European intellec­ tual elite took the form of a rejection of the validity of the accepted ideas o f the Western heritage on the one hand, and of a proposal of a radical altern a­ tive to that crisis on the other. The “anti-intellectual” intellectuals stressed the primacy of the will, of action and myth, and rejected the rationalist trad itio n and its moral, ideological and political principles.2They jettisoned the concept of progress with its liberal, socialist and Marxist manifestations. The princi­ ples of humanism and positivism were condemned as expressions of a spurious society and culture. They loathed the Europe that was steeped in its historical past and immersed in illusions of progress, which worshipped the “ stockexchange” of democracy and fostered an imaginary world of tranquillity an d harmony within a false bourgeois order.

THE NIHILIST-TOTALITARIAN SYNDROME

3

Their radical critique of European society was not unique to the nihilisttotalitarian current. On the contrary, it typified romanticism from the start and served as a common basis for political conservatism on the one hand and revolutionary socialism on the other. What was special about this current was its readiness to come to terms with nihilism and affirm modernity and tech­ nology in the creation of a new lifestyle. An analysis of the new political style shows that the turning point was the shift from a moral approach to human existence to an aesthetic approach to life and politics. In place of objectives subject to moral norms based on religious or rational assumptions, the new aesthetic approach proposed the values of vitality, spontaneity, audacity and heroism, and saw effort, competition, struggle and confrontation as challenges to be faced and positive features of the new morality. The aesthetic approach was in keeping with a nihilistic attitude to the past that recognized only a man’s self-determination, the power of action and the authenticity of a work as significant and as valid in themselves. Violence towards the past and the affirmation of reality-as-conflict were the hallmarks of this syndrome, while it legitimized the aesthetic principle in politics. This attitude to history and society led almost inevitably to an under­ mining of the rational principles of the social discourse. The nihilistic mindset found in the modern age - in its revolutionary capacities in the spheres of science, energy and dominance over nature - entirely new qualities that were expressed in the desire to experience power and order and in the challenge of reorganizing human existence via technology. Technology in the modern age became a creative force through which a new order would be established. A new discourse involving matters such as new means of production, transportaion and communication, the machine, speed and energy, war as a total mobilization of power, struggle for its own sake, revolt and revolution, the politics of direct action and violence as an existential experience, entered into the modern consciousness. A violent order as an organized structure protecting the dynamic essence of the vortex of life was regarded by the thinkers of this syndrome as an aes­ thetic ideal, an ethos of the future society and a model of political and cultural elite superseding the accepted ideologies. The thinkers involved in the syndrome did not see themselves as belonging to a particular current or to a movement with a common platform. But viewed in a historical per­ spective, they can be seen to be sensitive barometers and seismographs of the political and cultural crisis in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth cen­ tury. These intellectuals paved the way for the totalitarian movements that sprang up between the two world wars, proposed a comprehensive solution to this crisis. The nihilist order was fundamentally different from a sect. A sect is a group that separates itself in order to pursue a closed way of life, but an order is a group that sets itself up to be the ideal type of a countersociety, an exemplary microcosm of a heroic society, a model that goes before the camp and seeks to mould it in its image. The nihilist order is not treated here as a sect with esoteric knowledge but as a litmus test of a his­

4

INTRODUCTION

torical understanding of the modern crisis and of political radicalism as a response to it. The concept of “nihilisrrTin its transformations in the history of Western philosophy has had many, sometimes contradictory, meanings. The first discussion of the subject is to be found in classical philosophy, where “nothing” (nihil) in its original sense of “not being” was the negative of “being”. Heraclitus’ disciple Cratylus took the idea of flow a stage further and said that one cannot step into the same river even once.3 In this way, they already stated the two principles enunciated in modern times by Jean-Paul Sartre, who said, after Hegel, that man is not what he is: he is what he is not.4 If Heraclitus believed that truth is in flow, Parmenides insisted that truth is in rest; and even flow, which is an illusion, belongs to the world of appearances. Parmenides believed that thought can only conceive of the existence of what is, and not of the existence of what is not.s This view forestalled German postKantian idealism: that is to say, the belief in the identity of thought with being.6 Discussion of the subject resumed with the saying of the satirical poet Persius, who in the first century c e wrote “de nihilo nihilum” (nothing comes from nothing).7 Later, the Christian philosopher Boethius (480-524) recalled this saying in his essay The Consolation o f Philosophy, where he wrote “nam nihil ex nihilo existere vera: sententia est” (“because the saying is true that nothing comes of nothing”).8 In a different form, the idea had already been expressed by Epicurus (270-341 b c e ), who wrote in his essay Physics that “nothing is the product of nothing.”9 The expression recurred in various forms: ex nihilo nihil (“from nothing, nothing comes”) and nihil ex nihilo (“there is nothing from nothing” ). The emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180) also wrote in his Meditations, “for nothing emerges from nothing, just as nothing returns to nothing.” In the Judeo-Christian theological tradition, “nothingness” and “naught” have no validity whatsoever. Jewish and Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages opposed the Greek idea of the pre-exis­ tence of the world based on Parmenides’ view that nothingness does not exist, and believed in the re-creation ex nihilo of the world: that is to say, the creation of something out of nothing. The first modern philosophical use of the word nihilism (Nihilismus) occurred in 1799, in a letter of Friedrich H. Jacobi to his friend Johann Gottlieb Fichte: “Indeed, dear Fichte, it would not worry me at all if you or someone else said that I compared idealism - which I mourn as nihilism - to a delusion.”10 Nihilism, then, is an extreme idealism that denies the existence of any independent reality. According to Jacobi, the nihilist is a sceptic whose reason leads him to doubt the existence of independent entities such as external phenomena, other consciousnesses, God or even himself. The nihilist, true to the Latin derivation of the word, denies the existence of anything or, alternatively, affirms nothingness. Jacobi described him as a man who lives in a world “whose source is nothingness, which aspires to nothingness, for nothing and with nothing.”11 Many thinkers have rejected Jacobi’s claim that

THE NIHILIST-TOTALITARIA N SYNDROME

5

nihilism is the inevitable outcome of all rational discourse, but at the same time agree that it is the chief danger that lies in wait for any philosophy. The danger appeared actual in the 1770s, with the decline of the rational metaphysics of the Leibnizian-Wolffian school. This school assumed an a priori knowledge of the existence of God, Providence and eternity, which counterbalanced the scepticism of David Hume. Without this a priori knowl­ edge, how could one justify one’s religious, moral and political beliefs? Jacobi put forward nihilism as a warning sign to indicate a parting of the ways.12 A moral criterion was added to the epistemological criterion.13 In saying that the nihilist denied the existence of all beings and consequently the existence of all values, Jacobi gave this concept its modern meaning, which was eventually to be developed by Fyodor Mikhaylovitch Dostoyevsky and Max Stirner. If all beings - God, the soul, the world - are rejected, all pseudo-beings such as values must be rejected at the same time. The nihilist finds the sole source of values in himself and is convinced that he is God.14 Romanticism made nihilism into an aesthetic definition. The deification of the self or the absolute “I” were seen as a device to annihilate the sphere of God. The subject occurs in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s early work Faith and Knowledge (1802), in which he said that “the first object of philosophy is to recognize absolute nothingness,”15 a claim that Fichte developed a little further. The first German romantics made a poeticization of Fichte’s ideas, and thus at the end of the eighteenth century the idea of the total creativity of the absolute self became dominant. Romantics like Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel, however, used the concept of nihilism to condemn the arbitrariness and artificiality of romantic poetry.16 In 1800, Jean-Paul, for example, attacked “the nihilist poets who deny everything and finally get lost in a form­ less void.”17 In the nineteenth century, nihilism was identified with a critique of the social and political consequences of atheism. In the first half of the century, the philosopher von Bader condemned “the scientific nihilists” who only caused hatred of existing social institutions. Donoso Cortes, in his article “Catholicism, Liberalism and Socialism” (1851), described the French socialism represented by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as nihilism because of its rejection of any human or divine authority.18 Others described Ludwig Feuerbach’s critique of religion or the radical individualism of Max Stirner as nihilism.19 But the thinker most closely identified with the metaphysical signif­ icance of this concept, apart from Nietzsche, of course, is Arthur Schopenhauer. His most famous work, The World as Will and Idea (1819), showed that his radical idealism was not only the nihilistic Western counter­ part of the Buddhist “nirvana” but that his nihilism was an autonomous position at the heart of Western culture.20 Schopenhauer’s ideas greatly influ­ enced the thinking of the young Nietzsche and Richard Wagner’s operas, such as “The Ring of the Nibelungs”, which he began to write in 1848, were based on primitive, Nordic and pre-Christian myth; thus nihilism also overtook the gods.

6

INTRODUCTION

In Russia, the concept of nihilism was introduced in the first half of the nineteenth century by the liberal literary critics. Their criticism heralded the movement for equal rights of the 1850s whose Russian form of nihilism was characterized by a desire to abandon romanticism and aestheticism and to harness the scientific vision to change society. The use of the word itself only began with its employment by a few members of the radical Russian intelli­ gentsia on the appearance of Ivan Turgenev’s great novel Fathers and Sons in 1861. “Nihilism” was ascribed to those who denied all authority or concepts, whether religious beliefs or moral ideas, political theories or social outlooks unless proved by reason or confirmed by their usefulness to society. The nihilist rejected all that was based on tradition, authority or value-judgements. Bazarov, the central character in Turgenev’s novel, resembled his historical counterparts Dimitri I. Pisarev, Nikolai Chernichevski, Nikolai A. Dobrolyubov and Vissarion G. Belinsky in their faith in reason, progress and science, in their strong desire to see changes in contemporary society and in their affirmation of the materialist philosophy.21 The “nihilists” considered themselves materialists because of their rejection of spiritual manifestations such as God or the immortality of the soul. They adopted Feuerbach’s motto that “man is what he eats”, adding ideas for the improvement of society. They claimed that their belief in progress authorized sweeping away “the rubbish of history”; this idea led directly to the anarchists’ sanction of the use of bombs when words were insufficient. The Russian nihilist was not an unbeliever who denied all principles but a radical positivist who wished to break away from religion and to liberate the people through scientific values. The nihilists were not wild revolutionaries, although the concept was adopted by anarchists like Sergei Nechayev and the terrorists of the “People’s Will” organization, the assassins of Czar Nicholas II.22 The nihilists contributed to the radicalization of the consciousness of the Russian intelligentsia, but they should not be confused with the anarchists. Pisarev was not a bomb-thrower or a revolu­ tionary activist, although he admitted that the nihilists saw Bazarov as their model. We know the radical slogan of “the theoretician of Russian nihilism”, as Albert Camus called Pisarev: “What has to be destroyed must be destroyed.” With regard to this, a statement by Nietzsche in a letter to the critic Georg Brandes on the seventh of March 1888 is instructive: “If I were in St. Petersburg, I would be a nihilist.”23 Nietzsche constituted a turning point in the history of Western philoso­ phy; Nihilism is no longer identified only as a philosophical approach, a literary movement or a political view, but rather characterizes a whole civi­ lization, or a two-centuries-long moment in its (modern) history - the moment of the death of God and the birth of the “new M an” who creates his world ex nihilo. Nietzsche adds a modern dimension to nihilism - and perhaps even identifies nihilism with modernity - when he defines it as an ontological category. Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner and the young Nietzsche shared the Romantic commitment to immediacy and to activity unmediated by emasculating rational concepts. They aspired to the unity of

THE NIH ILIST-TOTALITARIAN SYNDROME

7

poetry and philosophy, and considered objective truth a compulsion. They rebelled against the pretension of reason to know the real world as it is, since they considered reason partial (in both senses) and reality-distorting. The world can be redeemed only through art, which is intuitive, comprehensive and spontaneous. Schopen-hauer turned to philosophy and Wagner to music, while Nietzsche’s criticism was as comprehensive as could be: He was a philologist, a poet, a philosopher, a historian of sorts, and a cultural critic who covered nearly all aspects of human existence. The modernity of his thought, the radicality of his criticism and his philosophical style made him a thinker with a crucial impact on twentieth-century European civilization. One can consider him as the most comprehensive, intensive and original critic of nihilism in modern times. In Europe and America, the concept “nihilist” lost its revolutionary and anarchistic associations when it ceased to be a cultural vision, an aesthetic definition, the basis of a political platform or an intellectual movement. On the one hand, the concept suggested that moral norms cannot be justified by rational arguments, and on the other, it indicated a mood of despair induced by the emptiness and triviality of human existence. This dual significance was due to the religious nature of the concept in the nineteenth century, when it was used to attack atheism. Atheists were held to be nihilists in two respects: it was believed that the atheist was not subject to moral norms and therefore did not believe that life had any meaning. There are many literary figures of revolutionary atheists, including Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov (1870-1879) and Kirilov in The Possessed (1871), both of them conceived by Dostoyevsky. Ivan declared, “If God does not exist, then all is permitted,” and Dostoyevsky showed that it was Ivan’s atheism that made him confess to the murder of his father. In The Possessed, the Mikhail Bakunin-like Nikolai Stavrogin and the Sergey Nechayev-like Verkhovensky are set off against each other, and the latter takes nihilism to its satanic conclusion.24 The idea that nihilism is connected with atheism still exists today, although there are scholars who discern a mystical nihilism in religion itself, like Gershom Scholem with regard to Jacob Frank and his Sabbataian sect in the eighteenth century.25 Helmut Thielicke claimed in his Nihilism (1950) that in the twentieth century the image of the nihilist changed as a result of the change that took place in the view of the cause and significance of nihilism.26 The younger generation today sees the nihilist not as a despairing atheist or a cynic but as a robot-like conformist.27 The cause of nihilism is not seen as atheism but as industrialization and social pressures; its results are not egoism or suicide but indifference and irony. The literary portraits are not the romantic characters of Dostoyevsky but the more prosaic and impersonal characters of Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities (1931-1933) or Franz Kafka’s The Trial (1925). There are two approaches to the relationship between nihilism and morality. Those who take the first approach, the atheist existentialists, believe that moral values represent an arbitrary choice: they are irrational decisions

8

INTRODUCTION

made without any reason or purpose. An outstanding example of this approach is that of Jean-Paul Sartre in L ’fctre et le neant (Being and Nothingness) in 1934. The second approach, which is found in Britain and the United States, claims that moral values are essentially a product of social conditioning, and its outstanding representatives are the philosophers Alfred Jules Ayer and Charles Stevenson.28 The opponents of the first approach tend to have a theological outlook, and the opponents of the second approach, like the philosopher John Dewey, tend to have an educational outlook.29 “Redemptive destruction” from Bakunin to Ulrike Meinhof is totally athe­ istic. Bakunin saw destruction as something healthy, and Georges Sorel condemned anarchism and dissociated himself from it because he saw it as bourgeois, individualistic and aspiring to harmony.30 Here, anarchism has to be distinguished from nihilism. The starting-point of anarchism is the idea of a harmonious world whose tranquillity is disturbed by a group of corrupt politicians and wealthy people. Propaganda through action - terror against the minority that possesses the wealth and the power - restores the original order. The starting-point of nihilism is quite different. The world is viewed from the start as disharmonious, disorder order, and has to be treated as a reality of conflict. The paradoxical result of political nihilism is a reorganiza­ tion of the structure of the world, or, in other words, totalitarianism. In the Hegelian philosophical tradition and in the symbolist literary tradi­ tion the subject of nihilism constantly recurs. Karl Lowith, in his article “The Historical Background of European Nihilism” (1943), claimed that Hegel’s philosophy represented the final chapter of phenomenology, and the Hegelian finishing-point served as the starting-point for Karl Marx and Soren Kierkegaard. Marx’s plan of progress required a revolution in society, and Kierkegaard’s required an ethical “leap of faith”. One rejected the bourgeoiscapitalist world and the other rejected the bourgeois-Christian world.31 They depicted “what exists” as a world dependent on a false mechanism, and a new history therefore had to be constructed. The “Young Hegelians” also rejected the existing order and wished to make a new beginning. The destruction of the old world was an aspiration shared by all the socialist revolutionaries, a kind of “functional nihilism” for the purpose of creating a new society or ideology. In the symbolist tradition of descending into the abyss in Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire and Alexander Blok, the meaning of the abyss is a total immersion in depths from which there is no return, and which sometimes leads to nothingness. This is Dionysian art without redemption or catharsis. It is not tragedy, not rebellion; the sole refuge is the descent into nothingness. In 1906, Alexander Blok wrote to his friend Andrei Biely: “Beyond the fear and the anxiety there is a gulf into which one can descend, and nothing will remain.” Baudelaire’s favourite word was gouffre, a realm of darkness, an abyss, a vortex. The symbolists wished to liberate themselves from the habits of the past, traditional values and their cultural heritage through a cleansing destruction. Thus, the abyss, the nothing that lies beyond

THE NIH ILIST-TOTALITARIAN SYNDROME

9

the fear, contains a kind of solution, and hence the joy of annihilation and redemption in nothingness. Existentialism rebelled against the Hegelian and symbolist traditions. In existentialist thought, especially that of Martin Heidegger and Sartre, the concept of nihilism, following Hegel, gained an ontological status. Nothingness no longer indicated a rejection of the existing order, absence or the opposite of being, but was an essential part of being itself. Heidegger changed the classical saying ex nihilo nihil fit into its opposite, ex nihilo omne ens qua fit (from nothingness or absolute emptiness, all being emerges).32 His modern formulation is anti-classical and anti-Christian because it restores to nothingness a creative significance. Leszek Kolakowski attacked this existen­ tialist nihilism as an opportunistic point of view that means that life on earth contains no positive values but is a positive value in itself, and his conclusion was that nihilism can never be authentic.33 The nihilist order wished to represent authenticity at all costs. Its thinkers sought it precisely in the nihilist position that finds refuge in a totalitarian structure. In this way, nihilism was transformed from an expression of pessimism into a creative act, from a romantic phenomenon into a manifes­ tation of power. This reversal took place when Nietzsche recognized European nihilism as an essential principle of a new beginning. The innovation proposed in the current volume is that it shows the possibility of the existence of an “immanent nihilism”. One must make a distinction between a functional nihilism as a means of destroying the existing order in order to make way for the creation of a new reality, and the existential nihilism of modern man who creates himself a world in accordance with his new principles. This existential nihilism is one of the basic manifestations of the crisis of modernity. Hermann Rauschning, president of the Danzig senate and author of the best-seller Hitler Speaks (1939), was the first person to connect nihilism with the rise of the totalitarian regimes. In his early book The Revolution o f Nihilism, he examined National Socialism as a dynamist philosophy without a doctrine. It should be remembered that the book was published before the “Final Solution”. Nazism, in his view, is absolute liberation from the past, a process of destruction which must develop, according to its own internal logic, into totalitarian tyranny.34 Thus, by a necessary paradox, “political nihilism” turned into a political religion in Fascism, National Socialism and Bolshevism. Rauschning was the first to identify dynamism as the common basis of the three totalitarian regimes, although his book was primarily concerned with Nazism. However, it is difficult to agree with his assertion that the only differ­ ence between these regimes was the degree of their revolutionary impetus, and that their common feature was that they were revolutionary without having a doctrine. Ernst Bloch, philosopher of the utopia in the twentieth century, claimed in The Principle o f Hope that the nihilistic inspiration common to the totalitarian mentalities of both the radical right and left is “action for its own sake, which can simultaneously lead to the affirmation of Lenin and pave the way for

10

INTRODUCTION

Mussolini.”35 Twelve Years after Rauschning’s book was published, Albert Camus further developed his thesis in L ’Homme Revolte (The Rebel): unlim­ ited freedom leads to unlimited despotism;36 negating everything is affirming everything. The year Camus’ book was published, 1951, also saw the publi­ cation of Jacob L. Talmon’s The Rise o f Totalitarian Democacy, which claimed that the way is short between perfection-seeking anarchism and revo­ lutionary centralism.37 The association between nihilism, totalitarianism and technology is one of the key issues of the twentieth century. The most extreme manifestation of this association was the Holocaust, when six million Jews were annihilated by the Nazi machine. After the vanquishing of European Fascism and Bolshevism, as we gain an increasingly clear insight into the causes of Totalitarianism’s rise and success, we see that nihilism is hidden at the core of Totalitarianism - in its essence, its nature, its genes. The roots of Fascism - an example of the nihilist order lie in its utopian view of the “community of experience” and the quest for the “new man”.38 As a cultural phenomenon, Fascism gives pride of place to action rather than to thought, to experience rather to awareness, to style rather than to content. Its political acts are performed for the sake of the action itself, divorced from the social context. Fascism is not interested in social change, but in a perpetuum mobile that creates the illusion of change on the road to some utopian destination. There was a total lack of humanist content in the Social engineering and human Architecture of the Totalitarian regimes. In spite of the clear distinction which must be made between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, witness the major role played by the engineers and archi­ tects in these two revolutionary regimes. In both regimes, the engineers were attracted not by ideological content but by the totalitarian patterns in the nihilization of the old society and the construction of a new one. The books on Totalitarianism marked the beginning of the cold w ar and the theory of political science with which it was accompanied. As A bbot Gleason wrote in Totalitarianism (1995), “Totalitarianism was the great mobilizing and unifying concept of the cold war.”39 The debate on the validity of the theory of totalitarianism as applied to this regime or that became a chapter in the history of political thought. The concept was attacked from almost every possible angle. It was said that it was normative and therefore unscientific, that political manipulation was involved in its use in connection with the Soviet Union, that its use was coloured by the ideological orientation of the writer, that the symmetry in the use of the concept was questionable, especially with regard to fascist Italy and the Soviet Union, that the exterm i­ nation of the Jews was not necessarily a means to a totalitarian end but the end itself, that the concept was relative, that its meaning changed in the course of time, that it was simplistic, and so on.40 There was a certain justification in each of these assertions, but there is no doubt that the concept succeeded in showing up the radical novelty of twentieth-century dictatorial regimes. T he essential difference between the earlier forms of absolutism, tyranny a n d despotism and contemporary totalitarianism was the totality of the control.

THE NIH ILIST-TOTALITARIAN SYNDROME

In the twentieth century, such control was achieved through modern tech­ nology of media, of transport and of weapons. Totalitarianism is the outstanding political phenomenon of the modern age. Like “nihilism”, the concept of “totalitarianism” had an interesting ideo­ logical development. In the 1920s, it was used as a self-description by Italian fascism, and Mussolini expressed the desire to create a “totalitarian move­ ment”.41 In the 1950s, liberal thinkers like Hannah Arendt, Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Karl Popper, Raymond Aron and Jacob L. Talmon developed the concept as the common denominator of Italian fascism, National Socialism in Germany and Stalinism in the Soviet Union.42 In 1980s, right-wing ideologists described the Soviet Union as the sole remaining total­ itarian regime, an “evil empire” and Jeane Kirkpatrick, for example, distinguished between totalitarian left-wing regimes and authoritarian rightwing regimes.43 Many historians have perceived the totalitarian phenomenon in early times, in regimes such as those of Sparta, the Roman Empire, ancient China, the Aztec kingdom, oriental despotisms or Calvin’s Geneva.44 In the despo­ tisms of the past, the dictator established his rule through arbitrary laws, oppressive government, state religions, a division of labour imposed from above and forced labour; while in modern totalitarianism the innovations are ideological consciousness, party organizations, the mobilization of the masses and the use of new technology for unification and control. Although already in 1921 the historian Francesco Nitti pointed out the similarity between the totalitarianism of fascism and bolshevism,45 only with the pioneering works The Origins o f Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (1951) and Totalitarianism, Dictatorship and Autocracy by Brzezinski (1956) did the term “totalitarianism” become common in political parlance. Friedrich and Brzezinski listed six characteristics common to all totalitarian dictatorships: an ideology, a single party generally headed by one man, a police that employs terror, monopolization of the media, monopoly of weapons and a centralized economy.46 Herbert J. Spiro enumerates six different characteristics: subordi­ nation of everything to a single objective, a situation of constant insecurity and uncertainty, widespread use of organized violence, oppression of organi­ zations and associations that do not conform to the objectives of the regime, an obligation to participate in public organizations committed to the single objective and the universalization of the objective.47 Many approaches emphasize some particular element in Totalitarianism: the total politicization of society,48 the annihilation of borders between the state and social groups,49 the co-ordination of the activities of the society for the benefit of the single objective,50 the perpetuation of the revolution,51 the requirement that all must adopt its ideology and the attempt to impose the new lifestyle on the masses and on youth,52and the new type of dictatorship that developed in the mass-democracies after the world war.53 Benjamin R. Barber distinguishes between the “phenomenological” and the “real” use of the concept of totalitarianism.54 The phenomenological use tries to isolate its

12

INTRODUCTION

objective qualities: that is to say, it attempts to define the concept as a syndrome in the sense expounded in this book: i.e., the nihilist-totalitarian syndrome. The sources of the impulse to “utopian social engineering”, to use Karl Popper’s expression, are to be found both in the totalitarianism of the left and in the totalitarianism of the right.55 In both there is a desire to form a “new man” in a structured social framework, to keep society in perpetual move­ ment, to prepare for an eternal war. However, the desire to tame the dynamism within a rigid framework can take preference over any worldoutlook, so that engineers and architects are drawn to totalitarian regimes not for political or ideological reasons, but because of the possibility and oppor­ tunity of building and moulding a society on a totalitarian scale. There is an interrelationship between construction and de-construction: the construction ordered from above constantly requires the annihilation of historical man as known up to the present. The construction of a society, its ordering, its control, its unification, its centralization, and, at the same time, the constant dynamization of the society and the annihilation of the autonomous indi­ vidual: all these are basic to the totalitarian nihilism.

C h a pter O ne

The Nietzschean Revolution Nietzsche and the Nihilist Order W hat was the nature of the intellectual revolution instigated by Friedrich Nietzsche in the late nineteenth century? Why were both left-wing and rightwing groups inspired by this revolution? What does it still continue to disturb so many people? It is impossible to separate out one element of Nietzsche’s thought as the answer to these questions - the death of God, the critique of morality and religion, the Overman or the will to power. It is rather the revo­ lutionary combination of the consciousness of nihilism and the will to power that brings Nietzsche so close to us as we begin the twenty-first century: When the “new M an” rebelled against the burden of the past and rejected the contents of Western history, he became the midwife of his own world. Thus the nihilistic revolution is necessarily linked with the aesthetic one: Nietzschean nihilism1 - having gone beyond the traditional criteria of good and evil, truth and falsity - led to the new creative principle of the will to power. Traditional ethics was replaced by a new aesthetics. Nietzsche made use of a philosophy of unmasking that attempted to dig down to the root of things and eliminate the disguises worn by Western culture throughout history. But critique itself led to a historicism that examines concepts along the continuum of time. This method became a nihilistic unmasking that undermined the origins of traditional values. Even the basic notions behind what is generally considered Nietzsche’s positive philosophy - self-overcoming, eternal recurrence, the Overman, the will to power - expose the Janus-faced aspect of Nietzsche’s method: on the one hand, the compul­ sory nihilism of “the eternal recurrence of things,” yet on the other, the total affirmation of life as the implication of the Overman’s will to power. The primacy of nothingness and the primacy of life are mutually linked. Walter Kaufmann’s Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1950) played a vital part in the essential task of clearly separating Nietzsche from Nazism.2 Yet this influential book left Nietzsche without teeth and deprived him of his philosophical hammer. He was given a place of honor among other humanist thinkers. But we must not ignore the discourse of nihilism which strides arm-in-arm with the will to power, and the “nihilisttotalitarian” thinkers seized upon different aspects of Nietzsche’s nihilism, painting it with their own political colors. Nietzsche’s philosophical radi­ calism presaged various forms of political radicalism.3 This approach repudiated historical and romantic assumptions just as it

14

THE NIE TZSCHEA N REVO LU TION

rejected the philosophy of progress and Enlightenment. While historicism was guided by the past, the Enlightenment stressed the openness of the future, from which it derived the concept of progress. In contrast, Nietzsche and the intel­ lectuals of the nihilist order ignored both the guidance of past and the open future in favor of the dynamic present. The result was a rejection of the concept of progress, since historical continuity, in either the open rationalist sense or the rigid determinist one, was broken, and the dynamic present was detached from the cultural context with its centuries of accretions. The existentialist approach is centered around the Nietzschean assumption that the enhanced concept of humanity can be given a variety of interpreta­ tions, and is continually developing and self-creating. The historical, romantic, determinist and progress-minded approaches described the indi­ vidual as a culture-dependent and tradition-dependent historical entity; Nietzsche, however, created an original, unique anthropological image of the individual as affirming his fate (amor fati), yet also shaping it with his own hands by using the will to power as a creative principle. No longer must the individual blindly follow the heritage of the past; from now on the continu­ ally evolving world is identified with the continually evolving self, as the essence of the existentialist idea. Since the world is dynamic and self-creating, the individual must not remain fixed, but rather identify with the world’s rhythm. The existentialist approach to history thus served as a revolutionary turning-point by rebelling against the Judeo-Christian ethic and the classical tradition, and adopting the notion that the (nonrational) self must shape aesthetically the (nonrational) reality. This aesthetic view of reality is not subject to the domination of reason and goes beyond the accepted ethical distinctions of good and evil to adopt new distinctions based on creativity, stagnation, or degeneration. The implications of this view are far-reaching: sanctifying the here and now, affirming activism, and adopting a clear modernist approach that is neither teleological nor ethical, and that does not constitute a necessary link in the chain of progress or an accretion to the achievements of humanity that are passed on through cultural experience. This view thus disqualifies the concept of culture as the consolidation of historical continuity, consciously annihilates the continuity of time, and affirms the dynamic moment in the present. From now on history and politics are linked in this dynamic conception of time. A pragmatic approach is now developing which is not centered on the discovery of historical truth or the primacy of reason, but on existential expe­ rience in and of itself. Denying history the right to guide politics means revitalizing the present moment through a philosophy of dynamism and a poli­ tics of violence; this leads to the rejection of history, contempt for culture-preserving intellectuals, and the desire to destroy universities, museums and libraries. Rejecting history as a guide for politics places histor­ ical, social and political myths in the sphere of public activity. These myths, from the time of Nietzsche to the nihilist-totalitarian intellectuals, tried to

THE N IE TZSCH EA N REVOLU TION

15

create a unity in history - not a rationalist or chronological unity but an aesthetic and existentialist one. Nietzsche and his followers, the modern anti-rationalist cultural critics, are not historians in the accepted sense of the term, and certainly not according to the strict criteria of Leopold Ranke, who established History as an acad­ emic discipline in the nineteenth century. Some of the historical studies of these anti-rationalist thinkers made use of history to serve their political views: If historical events have no significance for their political ideas, these thinkers consider them irrelevant and see no point in preserving them in the collective consciousness. Such stories may be interesting to the academic historian, but the anti-rationalist thinkers are interested only in the pragmatic elements of the past, and in their opinion what is pragmatic is the mythical. The recon­ struction of heroic myths became a pragmatic tool in the criticism of decadence at the turn of the century, in the sense of looking for evidence in far-away classical civilizations. Since the members of the nihilist order consider politics the central expe­ rience of the twentieth century and an organizing and shaping factor in modern consciousness, they had to undertake unmediated action that did not rely on the heritage of the past. The anti-rationalist rebellion led naturally to contempt for intellectuals, and demanded political activism in place of philo­ sophical contemplation. Since these thinkers did not consider reason a justification for politics, they replaced it with myth. Nietzschean mythology the reconstruction of Dionysus and Zarathustra - was intended as a reply to Socrates. But it must be remembered that the Socratic moral ideal remained an aristocratic one, and that the enemy was not really Socrates but the universalism of Judeo-Christian ethics, which meant human equality and unity. The anti-rationalists’ claim that scientific rationalism provides the world with purpose, although to their mind it has no purpose, raises difficult questions, since empiricism, positivism, and pragmatism, which are based on an outstandingly rational method, deny any teleological meaning to the universe. The myth-creators were trying to shift the focus of modern philosophy from purposes with human meaning to independent aesthetic existence without any purpose. The modern world was stripped of its rational and moral teleolog­ ical goals, and was revealed as a solely aesthetic phenomenon. If the Socratic revolution presaged the transition from the mythic world to the scientific world, the nihilist order tried to stage a counter-revolution to recreate chaos, since only through the reality of conflict can the individual preserve his fighting nature and create myths for himself. The focus of the discussion shifted from the universal, rationalist, historicist dimension to the particu­ larism mythical and aesthetic one, and myth was preferred to paralyzing history. With the rise of modern aesthetic myth - myth ex nihilo, so to speak - secu­ larism attained its highest level of development. Myth became a substitute religion, an active, radical type of secularism. Nietzsche was the prophet of modern secularism - not the kind that claims, with Spinoza, that the sacred is

16

THE NIETZSCHEAN REVOLUTION

within us, but the sort that reveals the secular without the sacred, a new humanity sovereign over the world. This world has no universalist preten­ sions, whether sacred, rational or moral. Perspectivist philosophy thus reached nihilist conclusions. It is not searching for the truth as the primary ambition of philosophy, but instead seeks to create the world as a new myth. At the same time there arises a dynamic and creative conception of time. This modern concept, which creates myth, is not a reactionary call to return to our mythical roots in the past, but a claim that only the future will permit the rise of myth.4 And, indeed, the nihilist order created a series of myths that took shape within the evolving present. Underlying this modern mythology was Nietzsche’s genealogical approach and philosophy of unmasking, which were intended to remove all moral, utilitarian and directional camouflage from culture - whether this disguise took the form of a messianic paradise in the secular progress version, or a golden age in the religious version. Nietzsche was committed to a cyclical concept of a nonteological history, and Zarathustra is the personification of the myth of eternal recurrence. The revival of myth paradoxically constituted the conclusion of philo­ sophical inquiry. In place of the philosophy of reason Nietzsche sets up the myth of the will to power; in place of the search for objective truth, he extols subjective creativity; in place of universal rationalism, he urges creative aesthetics. The traditional philosophers had hitherto offered interpretations of the world or attempted to justify its existence; in contrast, the new philoso­ phers - including those of the nihilist order - were trying to create a world ex nihilo in their own image. This style of mythical creation, which has profoundly shaped modern civilization, is a product of the aesthetic imagina­ tion first embraced by Nietzsche. The “new M an” is the crown jewel of the myth-creating nihilist order. He is an individual who identifies with the rhythm of the modern world, who is tested in action rather than contemplation, through initiative rather than continuity, and creativity rather than the preservation of culture. Such a person considers the reality of conflict to be the natural arena and necessary condition for the creation of authenticity. Nietzsche’s “new M an” is a source of inspiration for the future, while the “old M an” is a historical type who has been defeated by the past. Out of the mass society of “old persons” Nietzsche hoped to create an Overman who would look soberly at the world with a modern awareness of nihilism, and would activate and enhance the will to power. It was this Janus-face of nihilism and the will to power in the Overman that attracted the radicals who created the “totalitarian nihilistic syndrome.” They considered nihilism the litmus test for distinguishing between the weak and the strong, while the will to power distinguished between the degenerate and the authentic. Nihilism of the negative or passive sort - to use Nietzsche’s terms - frightens the weak and makes him flee to his refuge of passivity and paralysis; while nihilism of the positive or active variety - again in Nietzsche’s terms - provides a challenge for the strong, who create a new reality ex nihilo

THE NIE TZSCHEAN REVOLUTION

17

in the process of coping with it. Similarly, there is a degenerate will to power which is the province of the weak, while the will to power of the strong is an authentic one. The Overman is the challenge of the intellectual revolution which Nietzsche instigated in Western civilization - destroying the classical heritage, historical culture and Judeo-Christian ethic - and at the same time strength­ ening the will to power as an existential, aesthetic and metaphysical principle.5 Destruction and rebuilding are the methods of the “new m an” who is contin­ ually creating and destroying his own world. He is destroying super-illusions and striving for comprehensiveness. He is not interested in categorizing or defining his values, but only in creating them and continually overcoming them. He does not sanctify permanent values as such, and contradictions do not frighten him. He is therefore considered a master of deceit and a legislatorking. Since the authentic individual - the crown of existential thought emerged from the Nietzschean school, the will to power is his human and cosmological principle. The individual as will to power is characterized by self­ overcoming, while the world as will to power is characterized by eternal recurrence; neither has any ethical aspect, both are lawless and meaningless. Therefore neither the existence of the individual nor the world - both of which have been revealed as nihilistic - requires any particular content or meaning, and they can be actualized and bestowed with meaning only in an aesthetic context. The world’s eternal recurrence and humanity’s self-overcoming consist of development without any goal, which implies a cyclical process that continu­ ally annihilates itself, or by the same token reconstructs itself. Either way the result is the same: there is neither direction, nor goal. Nietzsche affirms energy for its own sake, and so the Janus-faced aspect of the Overman - who anni­ hilates all values and affirms existence as it is - has no force. After all, the Overman, who strives to be a sovereign individual and attempts to enhance the will to power, lives with “empty energy” - energy that consumes itself. Nietzsche calls this energy “the world” and demands that we accept it as it is. The change in values therefore consists of replacing the value of the goal by that of the process, the value of reason by authenticity, and ethics by the prin­ ciple of the will to power; moreover, ethics is no longer a social issue but an issue between the individual and his world. The concept of good, rational and true are abandoned in favor of the concept of the authentic identity of the indi­ vidual and the world (that is, the will to power) as a new unified conception. If Nietzsche had limited himself to religious criticism such as that of Kierkegaard, of economic analysis such as that of Marx, or psychological exposure such as that of Freud, his philosophy would have been a specific critique of the world, and would have dialectically served part of reality after having been internalized by people. But Nietzsche’s thought was so radical in its critiques that it embraced every aspect of reality; it involved an absolute refusal to accept any consolation for the human condition, on the one hand, and an absolute affirmation of the self-sufficient individual, on the other. Thus

18

THE NIE TZSCHEA N REVOLUTION

religion, morality, truth and reason - as bulwarks against nihilism or tran­ quilizers in the face of chaos - are seen not as part of reality itself, but as illusionary superstructures whose historical relativism prevents them from being valid in an absolute sense. Religious thinkers such as Augustine, Pascal, Eckhart and Kierkegaard leaped from the awareness of nihilism into the absolute external to humanity, while Nietzsche not only placed the individual in the center but also perceived the human being as all there is. Man is not the crown of Creation but Creation itself. Nietzsche’s concept of the “new man” is totally subjectivist and thus opens to various interpretations: If there are no universal, objective criteria, then the whole basis of Western civilization is called into question. Each human being is a force of separate will to power, which means that he exists for his own sake and is validated by his own power. Thus all the foundation stones of Western civilization topple one after another: Judeo-Christian morality, ratio­ nalist philosophy, historical tradition. In legitimizing all interpretations, Nietzschean perspectivism also includes its own weak points, since objective explanations, moral norms and rational validity are no longer possible. Nietzsche uses history as a point of departure for reconstructing philosophy:6 After rejecting whatever has become redundant in history, what is left is the affirmation of existence - not out of historical conditioning or inherited custom, but out of a heroic existential approach, which embodies the exalta­ tion of freedom and power in its “Yes.” The will to power - as the central manifestation of the subject, and an existential, intuitive cognitive assumption - replaces the old criteria with new distinctions that affirm the authentic rather than the degenerate, the strong rather than the weak, the individual rather than the collective. Nietzsche’s radicality stems from the fact that he rejected the traditional criteria of Western thought and placed a new philosophical principle at the helm to drive the “new man”: the will to power.7 The will to power displaced reason from its central position. If Kant is the outstanding representative of the “classical aesthetics” of the eighteenth century, then Nietzsche is the exact opposite: In his view aesthetics, as the “critique of judgment”, is not parallel to morality, as the “critique of prac­ tical reason”, but rather replaces it. This is indeed Nietzsche’s great revolution - substituting the will to power, as a particularist aesthetic principle, for the universal moral imperative. Separating aesthetics from morality, which m eans raising creativity from a normative to a metaphysical level, was the central axis of the revolt against bourgeois norms in the late nineteenth century. The nihilist order led in the end to the aestheticization of philosophical thought and moral principles: Although the concept of “the aesthetic education of humanity” had already been formulated by Schiller, Kant, Schelling an d Schopenhauer, the principal innovation of the intellectual trend under discus­ sion was the interweaving of the political dimension, existential experience, and the aesthetics conception as complementary manifestations of the “ new man”.

THE NIE TZSCHEAN REVOLUTION

19

Nietzsche as a Genealogist o f History Nietzsche’s historical perspectivism was formed by Jacob Burkhardt’s lectures which he heard in Basle in 1870. He rejected the objectivity claimed by Hegel, as a philosopher of history, and by Leopold von Ranke as a historian. Nietzsche brought a breath of fresh air into the historiographical climate of opinion, which began with a religious belief in the operation of divine intelli­ gence and ended with the secular challenge of gaining an objective knowledge of history through scientific methods (i.e., historicism). “Historicism”, as an idea developed by Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801), is the manifestation of human nature through a study of its historical development. It attempts to predict the course of history by accumulating knowledge.8 The poverty of historicism was challenged, before Karl R. Popper,9 in a debate which took place at the beginning of the Enlightenment. On the one hand, the Swiss philosopher Issak Iselin (1728-1782) maintained in 1764 that Providence predetermined the purposes of history,10 and on the other hand, Johann Gottlieb Herder stated in 1774 that history was the chronicle of the actions, forces, and tendencies of human beings in relation to their time and place;11 however, history as a whole was planned by divine Providence according to a comprehensive purpose, the real­ ization of Humanitat. In another debate on the question, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) engaged in a disputation with Gotthold E. Lessing (1729-1781). In 1780, Lessing said that revelation could be compared with the process of education: what education is for the individual, revelation is for the human race.12 Mendelssohn could not accept that the aim of Providence was the progress of the human race, and he considered the progress of the individual alone.13 In 1784, the year of publication of Herder’s first book, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Immanuel Kant wrote his article on History.14 According to Kant, human culture arose as a consequence of “ungesellige Geselligheit” and the cause of history was man’s need to have a master who would compel him to subordinate his own will to that of the master. This problem found its solution in war. The purpose of history, however, was to create a league of nations which would guarantee man’s freedom. To Voltaire’s pessimistic conclusion in Candide, “Plus qa change, et plus c’est la meme chose,” Kant replied with a meaningful concept of history which promoted freedom, reason and morality. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1782-1814) went a step further: he claimed that the progress of man was accompanied by a corresponding progress in thought, and that each historical period represented a new stage in human thinking.15 Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling (1775-1854) held that history was the proof of the reality of God, and its purpose was to create a world-wide system of government.16 G.W. Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) radicalized the concept of history and expected it to end in his time. According to him, the rational and

20

THE NIETZSCHEAN REVOLUTION

the irrational, reason and instinct, all dialectically promoted the purposes of history. In the Hegelian theodicy, theological tradition and the rational chal­ lenge were interfused. Hegel’s philosophical system marked the end of traditional history.17 At the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century, the historians in Germany took the place of the philosophers, and historiography dealt with matters previously treated by philosophy. Nietzsche rejected the historical tradition accepted in the nineteenth century and proposed a “historical perspectivism.” His main purpose was to destroy the notion that the historical past taught some single truth, proved some general concept or constituted a universal key. In his view, as in that of Burkhardt, there were as many truths to the historical past as there were indi­ vidual perspectives. People had to look at history according to the motivation of life and not as a rational oracle, objective compass or moral beacon. Objective history was not a possibility. If history was no more than a means for the individual interpretation of each person, who drew his conclusions from it, used it for his own purposes and received from it support for his own conceptions, then all the projections cast upon historicism by the Enlightenment and Romanticism fell away. The concept of “progress” dear to the philosophy of the eighteenth century and which developed the histori­ ography of the nineteenth century was only the tip of the iceberg. By demolishing the preconceptions of God, morality, rationality and truth, Nietzsche tried, with his “philosophical hammer,” to expose the concept of progress in its theological nakedness. Historicism was revealed as a “histor­ ical fever” ravaging culture.

Art and History The young Nietzsche learned from Arthur Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner that art - the aesthetic perception of existence - was the redeeming principle of the world: Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the blind creativity of the will as the driving force of the universe and Wagner’s belief in the creation of myths as an alternative to the existing reality overturned the moral and rational order of the universe.18 Nietzsche claimed that the rational philosophers of Western culture from Socrates and Plato to Kant and Hegel had attempted to present a structured system of concepts (reason) and of values (ethics) correlative to a structured vision of the universe. Against this, the myths to be found in Greek tragedy had made it their purpose to expose the universe as totally lacking in any structure and to show reason as a “philosophy of delusion.” Reason was incapable of acting as a genuine support for man facing the abyss; only myth could serve him as an anchor in his shattered universe.19 Nietzsche’s early writings, and especially The Birth o f Tragedy (1871), were an attempt to interpret pre-Socratic culture in the light of Schopenhauer and Wagner.20 Nietzsche presented Greek tragedy as an ideal model of art.21 Tragedy, he claimed, gave aesthetic significance to an illusory order of the

THE NIE TZSCHEAN REVOLUTION

21

universe, while reason and morality, two sides of the same coin, tried to present themselves as the real order. Tragedy maintained the correct equilib­ rium in the vision of the world: the equilibrium between Dionysius and Apollo (BT4).22 These two forces expressed in aesthetics are the great creative forces of the collectivity. The relationship between them is like that between form and matter. Apollo symbolised proportion, restraint and self-knowledge, while Dionysus symbolised excess, impulsiveness and creative vitality. Greek culture, according to Nietzsche, existed as long as the Apollonian-Dionysian equilibrium was maintained, and Nietzsche depicted Greek history as the dialectical interaction of the Apollonian taming principle and the Dionysian creative principle. The Apollonian characteristic of restraining the blind vital forces found in Dionysius constituted the founding principle of Nietzschean aesthetics: tragedy as the culmination of art and as an aesthetic illusion was a metaphysical consolation for a world which was devoid of purpose, reason or moral significance. According to Nietzsche, Greek art at its height was represented by three giants - Sophocles, Aeschylus and Homer - who created the language of myth.23 Their creations - Oedipus, Prometheus and Odysseus - expressed in the language of myth the immanent problematics of man: suffering, rebellion, loneliness (BT 9). Aesthetics, as the language of myth, mediated between man and the universe and provided an overview: through the instrumentality of the myth, the whole of the present was perceived from the point of view of eter­ nity - that is to say, as something beyond time. By means of myth, the historical becomes supra-historical, and thus Greek tragedy becomes a suprahistorical model of art.24 The language of myth, aesthetics, becomes a new metaphysics, and in this Nietzsche is revealed as a modern metaphysician: his aesthetics was confined to this world and did not need anything beyond it; and aesthetics was given the task of providing redemption and catharsis.25 The Greek myths, in Nietzsche’s opinion, maintained the correct equilib­ rium between the historical and the supra-historical, and between the relativity of transient existence and its metaphysical, eternal significance.26 The participation of man in the lives of the gods by means of myth saved him from his boredom and bestowed a metaphysical significance on his daily life. Myth exposed the finiteness of existence, but it did so through utilisation of the illusive means of legends, gods and heroes, which gave life its metaphys­ ical dimension: the Greek, as in Homer, created his Olympian gods as a response to the horror of existence (BT 3). The creation of the gods and the Olympian culture served as a criterion for the continuation of life and for a will to persist in living despite the metaphysical pain it involved. The gods gave justification to human life in that they themselves passed through the human experience. Nietzsche’s immanent metaphysics was based on Schopenhauer, who taught that man was redeemed from passion by the aesthetic experience, and on Wagner who resurrected myth. Nietzsche’s innovation, which already stood out at this early stage of his writing before he developed his positive philosophy, was the passage from the transcendent to the immanent by means

22

THE N IE T Z SC H E A N REVO LUT ION

of an aesthetic myth which gave affirmation to life rather than provided redemption from it. Unlike Wagner, whose aesthetic myths culminated in chaos, Goethe, Schiller, Holderlin and Heine taught that the Greek gods overcame the chaos, transforming it into an orderly cosmos, radiating light and filled with positive significance.27 Before Nietzsche, the aesthetic education of mankind envisaged by the Enlightenment and the Romantic movement had been closely connected with moral and rational improvement. Kant, in his Critique o f Judgement (1790), expressed the view that aesthetic judgment of a universal character represented beauty as a moral good; Schiller, in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education o f Man (1795), gave greater importance to aesthetic than to ethical appreciation, but as a pupil of Kant, he preferred speculative reason; Schelling, in his System o f Transcendental Idealism (1800), taught that the supremely rational act was an aesthetic one in which truth and goodness were fused with beauty. Schelling claimed that mythology, reason and ethics were identical, so that intellectual observation could be regarded a aesthetic observation.28 Nietzsche, on the other hand, was the first thinker after the Enlightenment to sever any possible connection between morals and aesthetics. While Schelling saw art as the only sphere which reflected reality, Nietzsche regarded art as a total illusion which, therefore, unlike reason, was unable to make the false claim of depicting reality. Nietzsche attacked naturalism as the dominant artistic tendency of his time. He did so by criticizing the Greek chorus which acted as a kind of parti­ tion separating the world of the stage from the world of reality. In Nietzsche’s view, it was an escape from the absurdity of the universe (GT 7). W hen the human consciousness peers into the abyss of reality, its reaction is one of revul­ sion, silence and paralysis.29 This process renders man totally incapable of action, and it is at this point that art appears, sublimating the absurdity through an artistic creation which substitutes itself for the reality. Art trans­ forms the horrible into the sublime and the repulsive into the comic. The chorus is perceived as redeeming man from the paralysis of the will by serving as the Archimedean point in which the passive becomes the active, the m om en­ tary becomes the eternal and absurdity becomes art. The chorus as the culmination of tragedy, tragedy as the culmination of art and art as the culm i­ nation of aesthetics were the components of the new metaphysics form ulated by Nietzsche. Nietzsche traced the root of decadence to the Christian morality of Jesus and the scientific rationality of Socrates. Against this decadence with its dual Christian and rational aspect, Nietzsche contrasted the myth of Dionysius as a symbol of renewal. The Nietzschean Dionysius - very far from the G reek original and at the same time an interesting interpretation precisely because of its very deceptiveness - substantiated the myths through the masks w hich he wore. Oedipus and Prometheus, according to Nietzsche, were nothing else than masks of the many-faced Dionysius: Sophocles’ Oedipus embodied the dialectic of building and destruction, and Aeschylus’s Prometheus represented

THE NIETZSCHEAN REVOLUTION

23

the dialectic of sin and suffering.30 The many-faced Dionysius, chief character of the Greek theatre, was the central figure of tragedy: “Through tragedy the myth attains its most profound content, its most expressive form” (GT 10). Dionysius stood in the way of Euripides who tried unsuccessfully to impose a new myth on Greek art. Only with the death of tragedy did Dionysius make way for Socrates. The death of tragedy caused an alienation between man and the world: Nietzsche concluded that man had lost his orientation within his universe. Only tragedy could provide true joy together with authenticity. Comedy provided momentary pleasure, but tragedy died at the moment when the Apollonian-Dionysian equilibrium was upset (GT 11). The exposure of the abyss of reality without the Apollonian bridge created a dichotomy instead of a totality. The death of tragedy constituted a turning-point in the history of the Western world: the mythical universe made way for the scientific, histori­ cism banished myth and the intellectual came into existence. Who was the father of this unsung revolution in Western culture? There is no doubt that Nietzsche saw Socrates as the greatest revolutionary of Western culture, and Euripides, in his opinion, was only a “mask to Socrates” who translated the rationalistic revolution into the language of art.31 Euripides, Nietzsche thought, was a living monument to the death of tragedy who transposed reality onto the stage, decreased the role of the chorus and caused the spectator of his plays to see the actor as his double - a process which led to the mediocritisation of the spectator and the rise of the mob. A momentary pleasure took the place of the “Greek joy” which had served as the vehicle for transforming pessimism into a creative joy of life. In Euripides’ plays, realism and the everyday paralyzed myth.32 Man began to view himself solely in terms of history, or, in other words, gained self-knowledge by means of the momentary and concrete alone. The rise of the historical and the estrangement of the supra-historical understanding caused a secularization of metaphysics and the death of myth. The death of myth was only possible, in Neitzsche’s opinion, after Euripides had taken Dionysius out of tragedy (GT 12). Placing drama on a non-Dionysian footing gave rise to cold observation in place of Dionysian affectivity, realistic imitation in place of Apollonian form, barren rationalistic intellectualism in place of creative vitality, and consciousness in place of instinct. In Nietzsche’s view, the Socratic equation beautiful = wise = good fused aesthetics, epistemology and ethics in a revolu­ tionary formula which served as a foundation-stone for the new rationalistic culture. Thus Socrates was revealed as the great enemy of the Nietzschean Dionysius.33 While Socrates attempted to describe reality as susceptible to under­ standing and consequently justified, Nietzsche affirmed existence despite the disharmony which it contained (GT 15). Socrates affirmed the rationality of existence, while Nietzsche affirmed existence over and beyond its rationality or irrationality (GT 14). Socrates’ dictum that “thought is capable not only of knowing being but even of correcting it” (GT 15), in Nietzsche’s view was a

24

THE N IE T Z SC H E A N REVO LUT ION

“metaphysical delusion” or, as Sartre declared, self-deception. Metaphoric­ ally, Socrates spread a web of rational concepts over mankind in the hope of correcting the distortions and resolving the contradictions which existed in chaos. Contradiction and error, Nietzsche informs us, were the root of all evil in the view of Socrates, who deluded himself that the removal of the image of such things from consciousness would make them cease to exist. The identi­ fication of a logical consciousness with good actions gave man legitimation in the universe, but this justification was a product of Socrates’ sick intellect and had no real existence. The Platonic ideals were similarly only a transcendental escape from the chaotic reality.34 According to Nietzsche, the idea that knowledge and consciousness were able to correct the source of error in the world stemmed from Socrates’ fear of the limitations of man and the need for self-protection. Science as a cure for the sicknesses of mankind and for the existence of error in the world was an affirmation of life according to Socrates, but according to Nietzsche this way of affirming life was really its final alienation. Why? Because the models of reason, morality and religion which had created functional illusions in order to alleviate the rigor of life finally turned on their makers, becoming a new oppressive tyranny. The distinguishing features of the new theoretical man, the alienated product of science as a decadent culture, were: war against Dionysian art, a desire to eliminate myth, the offering of material rewards instead of metaphysical consolations, and a belief in the possibility of improving the world through knowledge and in the capacity of science to direct life (GT 17). Moreover, Nietzsche, who stressed the limitations and deficiencies of science, asserted that science was incapable of uncovering truth in its entirely, even supporting this view with the authority of Kant, “who denied decisively the claim of science to universal validity” (GT 18). In The Gay Science, Nietzsche said that the task of science was to conceal the truth, and in The Birth o f Tragedy, he held that the tragic truth hid behind the Apollonian image, and the task of tragedy was to reveal that truth.35 Nietzsche’s conclu­ sion was that tragic truth was preferable to scientific truth because it produces a more elevated way of life - a way of life of artistic creativity. Supra-histor­ ical tragedy is capable of identifying with the Heraditean reality, and, unlike science, it has no attainable purpose. The scientist, like the historian and unlike the artist, finds pleasure in every layer he peels off, as if he had already reached the kernel of truth itself. This illusory kernel, which every generation thinks it has reached, is the belief that it has achieved its purpose in a paradisical reality, in the Messiah. But Nietzsche observes that, beyond this kernel, other kernels are revealed which disprove the illusion that its purpose has already been achieved. Thus, belief in a purpose (telos) is like a Messianic belief. Cyclical and transient being which has no climax causes the whole intellectual structure on which the concept of progress is based to collapse. Nietzsche claimed that the loss of the illusion of science led to a tragic despair which served as a springboard for the resurrection of art as a new

THE NIETZSCHEAN REVOLUTION

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metaphysics.’6 Nietzsche did not question the validity of the realm of meta­ physics, but only of its retainers: science and religion. The Nietzschean alienation from the alienating Christian religion also contributed to the rise of the new metaphysics: art, as an immanent metaphysics, took the place of Judeo-Christian transcendentalism. Metaphysics had to cease its dependence on transcendental entities such as God, science and the political religions, and its new support was man himself, with art as his sphere of activity. Art gives creative expression to the personal and the vital, and tests man himself through his creative activity. Nietzschean art is not only a reflection of reality like Aristotle’s “imitation of nature”, but a metaphysical complement to nature without which existence is not possible. Existentialism, after Nietzsche, extended this principle by viewing art as the only possibility of true commu­ nication. In art, man is free from alienating intermediaries of any kind, and, because he has no transcendental refuge, he is face-to-face with himself. In rejecting the possibility of actions without a purpose, Socrates had also rejected art.37 This decadence produced a man who was totally alienated from his Greek add human nature. Nietzsche declared that the “new man”, in turn, produced an alienated music: opera, according to Nietzsche, was the outstanding example of modern decadence, just as the new dythyramb testi­ fied to the decline of the Greek music which had produced tragedy (GT 19). The young Nietzsche regarded modern opera (with the exception of Wagnerian opera, of course), as a concrete expression of reality and not a metaphysical illusion like tragedy. Wagnerian music was different because it represented the metaphysical within the physical universe and was therefore able to create myths. Faust was for Nietzsche the anti-Socratic figure par excellence: this, perhaps, was the connecting link between Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus and Nietzsche.38 Faust indulged in sorcery and sold his soul to the devil. Modern man, conscious of the disaster represented by the intellectual culture, began, according to Nietzsche, to search for means of casting out the evil, but he stopped believing in those means, and in this way Western rationalism itself contributed to the de-legitimation of the universalist pretensions of science. By destroying tragedy, Socratic culture had sought to make possible a life without restraints or boundaries, but instead produced the opposite result: man was revealed as bound by fetters of his own making, and his alienation only became worse. The knowledge that science, too, that last refuge of the weak, was ineffective, gave rise to a deep despair from which Nietzsche claimed it was possible to emerge only through a fresh recognition of the need for an artistic renewal of myth. “But without myth, every culture loses the healthy natural powers of its creativity” (GT 23). At the crossroads at which modem man stood in his despair, he effected the Archimedean revolution of looking back into chaos. Existentialism, likewise, following Nietzsche, stressed man’s need to make a new choice: a choice which was only possible in a moment of despair. Despair - especially in Kierkegaard and Sartre - was regarded as something positive because it forced man into reflection and self­

26

THE NIE TZSCHEA N REVOLUT ION

criticism, and to make a choice which was a new and authentic act. This did not normally happen in the course of daily life, but only in situations of exis­ tential crisis. It was precisely in situations of despair that man gained the strength to look at the disharmonious universe and to affirm life. Socrates’ rationalistic revolution, according to Nietzsche, signified a tran­ sition from aesthetics to ethics, and sought to repair a disharmonious universe by means of a universal rationalistic morality. Nietzsche effected the counter­ revolution, the revolution away from Judeo-Christian ethics and the classical-rationalist tradition towards the aesthetics of the disharmonious universe and its intensification through myth.

M yth and History Three years after The Birth o f Tragedy Nietzsche developed in his essay On the Use and Disadvantage o f History to Life (1873) his basic objection to historicism, which, he believed, harms the vitality and spontaneity of human existence. In these two essays, Nietzsche explained the contributions of myths to the formation of culture: myth, he said, led to an existentialist approach to history. Nietzsche exchanged the traditional historical learning for an educa­ tional edifice whose task was to uphold a certain type of life, a vital life.39 The stress on the present as the dimension of action in which vital myth operates, in place of the paralyzing historical consciousness, greatly influenced the finde-siecle philosophy of action. In his historical essay, Nietzsche extolled Greece as an exemplary culture because of its basic characteristic: “The Greeks gradually learned to organize the chaos” (HL 10). The Apollonian-Dionysian dialectic was at the heart of Nietzsche’s study of Greek culture: the Apollonian taming of the blind Dionysian force was what united the Greeks. Like the Germans in Nietzsche’s time, the Greeks had been in danger of being inundated by foreign cultures, losing their authenticity and disappearing into history. The victory of the Greek culture over the foreign cultures served Nietzsche as an analogy for his age in that it provided an example of man overcoming his alienation through his own efforts. Nietzsche maintained that the overriding aim was to promote life in its full force, and that therefore historical learning was not an end in itself but had to be subjected to a higher authority: that of life itself.40 Nietzsche drew the concept of “moral nature”41 from the Greek school, or as he said, “the idea of culture as a new and finer nature” (HL 10). For him, history was a form of self-consciousness. The conditions necessary for creative activity depended on the existence of a kind of stratum of forgetfulness, of an atmosphere of naivety, of a lack of intellectual reflection. An overdose of education and reflective knowledge emasculated vital spontaneity, and there­ fore Nietzsche spoke of the a-historical as a precondition to life. He explained the nature of the historical consciousness by comparing mankind to a flock: man, bound by the chains of time and the fetters of consciousness, suffered in

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compassion to the freedom of the carefree animals (HL 1). One may measure the elastic strength of a culture, an individual or a group by its capacity to forget and its lack of historical-mindedness.42 Historical culture and general historical learning were totally rejected because they represented every event and human or social phenomenon as a product of history: the images and historical perspectives of all times and places used for the purposes of instruction, comparison and explanation, stifled creative spontaneity. Historical learning taught one to see everything as a chain of development in which every action, initiative, impulse, move­ ment, idea and culture was explained and understood solely as a historical phenomenon, with the result that historical learning lost its independence. A general historical approach finally led to a devaluation, to a misrepresenta­ tion of the authentic, unique experience and to a loss of the sense of the specific weight of each human phenomenon. The “new man” who would carry out a revolution of values in historical culture was the model which Nietzsche aspired to. History, for this “new man” as yet unborn, serves as a laboratory for life: on the one hand, the indi­ vidual understands himself by means of history, and, on the other, he rejects the exaggerated use of it as something paralyzing and emasculating. The consciousness of chaos, which paralyzes others, stirs the “new man” to oppo­ sition and activity rather than to scepticism and indifference. His worth is tested by the amount of truth he is capable of bearing: he accepts the meta­ physical truth of the meaninglessness of life, yet paradoxically he affirms life in practice. The hallmark of his greatness is the amount of history he is able to take without the vitality of his personality being impaired, and his ability to assimilate his historical consciousness into his life in such a way that it is strengthened. Unlike Carlyle, Nietzsche was not only concerned with monumental history, but also with antiquarian and critical history (HL 2). He made a new categorical classification which noted the usefulness and harmfulness of all these classes of historiography to life. The study of history, for Nietzsche, was for the purpose of the intensification of life: the study of monumental history showed that the historical greatness which had once been possible could be possible again; the study of antiquarian history gave a degree of importance to the trivia of life as well; and critical history incriminated the past in order to justify the present in process of formation. Nietzsche regarded historical culture as a sickness, and his categorical classification of history was proposed as a cure whose prescription was his­ tory in the service of life. The enlightenment of the Greeks was proposed as a cure for the sickness of the German study of history. The former, accord­ ing to Nietzsche, represented an authentic, pluralistic and harmonious culture, while the latter symbolized decadence, monopolism and dichotomy. The dichotomy between life and history was expressed in historicism, sym­ pathetic to a historical culture which did not serve any purpose except for decoration and self-adornment, and which harmed a people’s cultural system

28

THE NIETZSCHEAN REVOLUTION

and led to the alienation of the individual. The assimilation of the individual into general moulds of insipid and sterile historical knowledge turned human beings into uniform products devoid of personal character (HL 5). History became a kind of oracle for the historical man who placed his trust in it. Instead of personal experience there was abundant illusion, consciousness alienated the experiential, the mania for knowledge created paralysis, selfcriticism disappeared and impotence took the place of self-overcoming. Therefore, Nietzsche’s goal was the Greek “Know Thyself”, as the knowl­ edge of man-who-is-not-a-god (HL 10). In a lecture he delivered in 1947, Thomas Mann declared that a super­ abundance of historical memory and an excessive preoccupation with history were signs of a decline.43 He confirmed Nietzsche’s view of “historiology”, or, as Nietzsche called it, “historicism”. According to Nietzsche, the historiog­ raphy of the nineteenth century caused a secularization of the idea of the “day of judgment” through the notion of progress which aimed to liberate man from the shackles of his God by means of a rational consciousness extended over time. Nietzsche pointed out the paradoxical result of this process: man, who liberated himself from theological history, put his trust in secular histori­ cism as new redeeming god. Religious salvation was replaced by a secular salvation whose new idol was now history and the idea of progress. Historiography, as man’s consciousness of himself, turned like a golem on its maker: man, who invented historiography in order to discover significance in history, ended by finding himself dominated by it. History had become the heir to God and the cult of historicism had taken the place of theology.44 Nietzsche saw historicism as a “disguised theology”, which science, as a secular church believing in an objective truth, used as a modern replacement for the Christian need to believe in the truth of the One God. Another sphere of knowledge reached this same conclusion from its own angle of vision. Anthropologists who have investigated ancient primitive cultures such as exist even today have discovered that a concern with history is very rare amongst them. These societies do, in fact, concern themselves with the past, but that is not a historical but a mythological past. In many societies, there is no connection between mythological time and the time of the present. Yonina Graber-Talmon demonstrated the functional use of time and events in myth for the purpose of explaining events in the present and legitimizing existing social institutions.45 While the historical past is a past which is gone, and “historiology” (or “historicism” ) is a concern with that which is gone, myth is something which continues to function: the mythical event is some­ thing which recurs again and again in the course of time. In the same way, B. A. V. Groningen showed with regard to the ancient Greeks, and W. K. E. Guthrie claimed in the same spirit, that each generation tends to emphasize those features in the past which are in harmony with its own ideas and occu­ pations.46 The main conclusion seems to be that the time which appears in myths clearly determines the events of the present. A study of Greek history,

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however, shows that the Greeks reconstructed the events of the past in accor­ dance with the needs of the present, and J. B. Burry, for example, described the invention of dynasties in order to provide rulers with legitimation to govern.47 In other words, there is a dialectical relationship between mythical and historical time, and each shapes the other in its own image. Mythical time tends to provide legitimation and to preserve, while historical time tends to renew if there are changes in the life of the present, but for that purpose it has to reconstruct mythical time. In all cultures, whether they have a historiog­ raphy or not, one may distinguish, among the events of the past, between those which are relevant to the present and those which are not relevant. Thomas M ann’s “civilizations” were concerned with the relevant past and had no need for more than that. Nietzsche had a similar point of view, which he supported by quoting Goethe’s words: “I hate everything that merely instructs me without increasing or directly quickening my activity” (HL Preface). Stories of historical events which had no significance for the life of the present did not interest Nietzsche, and he believed that there was no point in preserving them in the collective consciousness. History in itself was not important; but myth, as a configuration of basic events and modes of being, created models in which the present and past coalesced. In the Birth o f Tragedy, myth was said to be the most effective force in crystallizing culture: “W ithout myth, every culture loses the healthy power of its creativity: only a horizon defined by myth completes and unifies a whole cultural move­ ment” (GT 23). In contrast to the paralyzing Socratic intellectualism, the Apollonianartistic shaping, in Nietzsche’s system, formed the patterns of life, for every fruitful and productive myth had to pass through an Apollonian crystalliza­ tion in order to influence the present. And, on the other hand, any reconstruction of the past for the purposes of the present used the “Socratic” facts as raw materials for the creation of an Apollonian harmony. In exactly this spirit. Thomas Mann saw the great civilizations as “artistic unities”. Historical culture was revealed in Nietzsche as invalidated from the start: historicism paralyzes, emasculates and kills the life of creativity, while myth is vital through the very fact of its being the medium of the existentialist approach to history.

Time and History In Nietzsche, myth was understood as an immanent factor in history. Although it provided an overview of the world as a united concept, myth did not observe the world from outside but served as a vital element in the his­ torical process. In this connection, it is interesting to consider the Nietzschean concept of time. The elucidation of this subject makes it clear to us to what an extent the concepts of myth, history and time were interde­ pendent: I shall attempt to show that Nietzsche remained bound by the

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immanent and did not seek refuge from life in a transcendental redemption or other extra-temporal factor, but at the same time was faithful to a dynamic concept of time and existence. From his early writings, I shall now turn to a discussion of the concept of time in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-5). The book was written, as he said, in a torrential dithyrambic metre, and was considered mainly a poetic work gathering together philo­ sophical ideas in an unsystematic order. In Zarathustra, two different concepts of time were represented/8One was the cyclical concept expressed in eternal recurrence: “ ‘Everything straight lies’ [ . . . ] ‘time itself is a circle” (Z III Of the Vision and the Riddle 2). The other concept was the linear one expressed in the Heraclitean flow: “O my brothers, is everything not now in flux?” (Z III Of Old and New Law-Tables 8). The Heraclitean river described by Nietzsche represented perpetual becoming, while eternal recurrence was the movement of the motionless form of eternity which Plato in his Timaeus called “the moving shadow of eternity”. These two different notions of time indicate, on the one hand, a cyclic-deterministic concept as in Ecclesiastes (“The thing that hath been, is that which shall be”), and on the other, a flowing, romantic concept as in “Sturm und Drang”. The difference, however, is only apparent. An examination of Nietzsche’s image of the river shows that the concept of time implied in it is not Heraclitean but cyclical, because, even in relation to the river, Nietzsche speaks in terms of a cycle: “Behold a river that flows back to its source through many meanderings!” (Z III Of the virtue that makes small). We have thus two apparently contradictory images of a river, the first of which is linear and the second cyclical. On further examination, however, we see that the first river image, that of the “terrifying wind”, is not Heraclitean. Its main purpose is to disrupt the frozen, wintery quality of the universe, to destroy its structurality, to “make it dance” Dionysically, but not to represent a linear movement, totally rejected by Nietzsche (hence, also, his rejection of “progress”, which is a linear concept of time). Nietzsche’s concept was the Stoical-Ecclesiastes one of “The wind . . . whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to its circuits”; it was not a concept of becoming but a cyclical concept as described by Plato in his Timaeus. We can distinguish between two concepts of eternity: one concept, called by A. H. Wolfson “Platonic”, and the other which he called “Aristotelian.”"*9 The “Aristotelian” concept of eternity was time which continued to infinity. The “Platonic” concept rejected any kind of temporal relationships: eternity is the antithesis of time in the sense that the things that are eternal do not continue to infinity but are outside the process of time, like God and the laws of geom­ etry. Plato’s world of ideas is eternal in the sense that it is outside any temporal process: it is in a different category. But in Plato’s created world there are also temporal relationships, and the complete movement in the created world closest to the extra-temporal eternity was the cyclical movement, as described in the creation of the world in the Timaeus. Meister Eckhardt hoped to be “buried in God” and aspired to a total loss

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of personality in something transcendental, the obliteration of all conscious­ ness within the divine “nothingness”.50 Neitzsche’s nihilization is of another kind: it does not have the “static” quality of Eckhardt’s mysticism.51 It is, one could say, “dynamic”, a kind of hovering in which there is not a complete loss of the self, but its entry into the familiar Nietzschean Rausch condition. This dynamism is naturally emphasized by the dance images. Thus, Eckhardt is “static” because he is swallowed up in an entity which is outside time. One could call it a transcendental mysticism. Eckhardt’s God lies outside the process of time; he is eternal in the Platonic sense. Nietzsche is characterized by what one might call an immanent mysticism: Nietzsche rejects all that is transcendental and his mysticism is confined to the world; he therefore cannot reject movement, but chooses the movement closest to the frontiers of reality - and that is cyclical movement, which is the earthly approximation to the divine eternity as interpreted by Plato. “God is dead”, declared Nietzsche, and he remained within the boundaries of the immanent. In Platonic terms, Nietzsche climbed as high as he could in the immanent universe, reaching the highest possible point and then lost himself in the cyclical immanent eternal movement. He did not make the “leap” from the immanent to the transcen­ dent, as Albert Camus suggested with regard to other existentialists.52 Nietzsche did not obliterate himself in an extra-temporal eternity because he, like Camus, denied the transcendental. This immanent concept of time and existence was closely connected with the importance which Nietzsche attached to myths in history: myth, operating within history, transforms transcendental beliefs which are outside time. Myth, as an immanent factor, formed the aesthetic concept of the “new man” and his self-creation of the world. The “new man” did not need any extrahistorical factor. The myth, as a configuration of past reality, functions within history and culture and is self-sufficient in conferring a metaphysical signifi­ cance on a temporal existence.

Morality and History The technique of philosophical unmasking, which Nietzsche raised to the level of an art-form, began as a historical genealogy of Western morality and devel­ oped into a radical criticism which aimed to destroy in its progress all the norms and values of the Judaeo-Christian heritage and the classical tradition of European culture. Historical research turned into a criticism which left nothing standing of the accepted assumptions of Western morality: if being was divested of purpose (i.e., telos, the key concept of the Aristotelian philos­ ophy which also affected Christianity), then, according to Nietzsche, there was no longer any absolute or binding authority in the Judeo-Christian morality. The relativity and provisional nature of the accepted concepts of good and evil testified to their lack of validity. In his genealogy of morals, Nietzsche came to the conclusion that the accepted morality protected man from self-contempt

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and provided a means of survival, a stimulant drug and a useful illusion. In short, the accepted morality constituted a barrier against nihilism. Nietzsche’sideas on morality were scattered among all his writings, and, in order to examine the development of his thinking on this subject, I have decided to concentrate on three works: Daybreak (1881), Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and The Genealogy o f Morals (1887). In the course of my inves­ tigation, we shall see how the Nietzschean critique of morality was characterized by an inner contradiction which ran like a leitmotif through all his works: his attack on the historicistic method which examined each con­ cept in the process of time did not stop him from using the very same method himself. Moreover, his historicist research, which he called “genealogy”, was the raison d’etre of all his moral criticism. Nietzsche mixed diagnosis with prognosis, and the result is that his moral criticism itself became a moral alternative. “Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality” was the subtitle which Nietzsche chose for his book Daybreak. Indeed, in Nietzsche’s view, none of the philoso­ phers from Plato to Kant, not even Robespierre or the anarchists, had ever questioned the validity of the accepted morality, which was regarded as some­ thing a priori and was therefore beyond dispute (M Preface 3). Nietzsche’s intention was to destroy the unquestionable sanctity of this normative morality and to examine it in an “a posteriori”, that is, a historical perspec­ tive. Nietzsche’s starting-point was an aesthetic view of existence stripped of any significance or ethical dimension. Kant, said Nietzsche, had continued the misleading rationalistic tradition of Socrates, which had sought to make a rational organization of the disharmonious universe and bring a moral orga­ nization into history. In his investigation, Nietzsche sought to demonstrate that the develop­ ment of traditional morality had been conditional on custom and on temporary utilitarian considerations. Observing that “the free human being is immoral” (M I, 9). Nietzsche stressed the sovereignty of the individual as against his dependence on history, society or tradition. Nietzsche saw man, not as someone dependent on tradition, but as a once-occurring existential phenomenon. The sovereignty of man, he believed, was incompatible with any functionality or normativeness. European tradition had woven a spider’s web of conditions, rewards and punishments. The private individual sacri­ ficed himself upon the altar of general usage, inherited custom and utilitarianism. In this normative tradition there was no alternative for excep­ tional or superior people except to go mad in order to survive (Book 1, 14). To the historical process, which did not have any moral significance, there was gradually attached a collection of values, commandments and moral laws. The extra-historical morality affected the historical tradition until his­ tory and morality constituted a single body (M 1, 18). Nietzsche warned against what one might call the “unhistorical aspect of the historical”. His historicist research refuted the idea of the supra-temporality of moral values and placed them in their proper historical context. The

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generally accepted morality had not been inscribed on some immemorially sanctified tablet of stone, but was the product of manipulations, inconsisten­ cies and historical trickery. It followed, then, that the accepted morality was no better than any other power-value. On the contrary, the normative morality was revealed as the decadent instrument of the will to power of the weak and as a weapon of the slaves. Nietzsche wished to tear away the mask from the accepted morality which out of manipulative motives had tried to interpret history in its own spirit. He said that there was nothing wrong with a will to power as such, but that this particular manifestation, motivated by resentment, repressed urges and the desire for revenge was specifically an expression of weakness. In Daybreak, Nietzsche placed himself outside morality: his position was extra-moral, and this enabled him to examine the deceitfulness of morality in its progress through history. This was precisely Nietzsche’s aim in Beyond Good and Evil: to examine morality from outside and not from within. The typology of morality had failed thus far, thought Nietzsche, because whenever thinkers had tried to treat morality as a science, “they wanted to supply a rational foundation for morality” (JGB V 186). The philosophers’ considera­ tion of morality had been influenced by private considerations, their immediate surroundings, their status and the spirit of their period, but it was not motivated by a comparison of many different moral systems (JGB V 188). Obedience to morality, in Nietzsche’s view, had transformed mankind into a herd (JGB V 199).53 Obedience to a single code of laws emphasized the incompleteness of man and the subjection of the rational to the moral which had debased man into becoming an analytical creature alienated from his instincts. Moral conditioning was subtle and therefore dangerous: the art of command had disappeared and consequently moral conditioning reached its apex. Temporal concepts whose success had been due to the fact of their insep­ arable connection with history thus became supra-temporal. The manipulative act of a given moment became a binding command for generations. Despite the fact that the title page of the Genealogy o f Morals (1887) is followed by these words: “A sequel to my last book Beyond Good and Evil which it is meant to supplement and clarify,” it can be seen as a major essay of intellectual history dealing with the origins of the ideas of good and evil in Western thought. The thesis of the book was that the pair of concepts “good” and “evil” represented the conscious level of Western morality, its normative values. Nietzsche’s examination of the unconscious level revealed the hidden existence of preconceptions, institutionalized habits, norms underlying values, and the process of rationalisation. In his consideration of “the value of values”, he questioned the preconception which placed “good” on a higher level than “evil”. By the use of the historicist method, Nietzsche overturned the entire scale of values. Although the value of the accepted values had been regarded as a “sine qua non”, Nietzsche questioned their absolute validity (GM, Preface 6). Before Nietzsche, the English moral historians had also dealt with this

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subject, but their trouble was, he felt, that they had proceeded in a non-historical manner and blurred the genealogy of morals (GM I I ) . Nietzsche condemned the English utilitarians such as Mill and Bentham who had iden­ tified the good with the useful; the habit of seeing the good as useful and altruistic in the course of time had become a norm, and, from the time it was institutionalized, the norm became a value. Nietzsche, for his part, conducted an analysis of history in which he decided that the class hierarchy determined the hierarchy of values. Nietzsche’s etymological investigation elucidated “the value of values”, and, on the basis of four philological examples, he conducted a historical investigation with philosophical implications. For instance, in the German language, Nietzsche singled out the word “schlicht” (simple) as orig­ inally having referred to the simple man as against the nobleman. Only after the Thirty Years’ War was the meaning deflected to today’s sense expressed in the word “schlecht” (bad) (GM 14). Judaism created the slave-rebellion in the sphere of morality precisely by turning the wretched into the representatives of the good (GM I 7). The over­ turning of the aristocratic scale of values now left the poor, the humble and the lowly as the good, whereas formerly the priest had embodied the charac­ teristics of the nobility. Jewish hatred created ideals and transformed values. Here one can see an expression of Nietzsche’s view that historical phenomena are not to be judged in moral terms. History was a struggle between forces aiming at a will to power: Nietzschean overcoming took the place of Spencerian adaptation or Schopenhauerian pessimism, and was an expression of competition, conflict and struggle. Judaism, as a historical force, did not have a negative status in Nietzsche’s eyes, for two reasons: because he did not regard any historical force as negative (except in the Nietzschean sense of a perverted will to power), and because Judaism was a vital and creative factor in the transvaluation of values. The Jewish transformation of the nature of good and evil placed Nietzsche in an ambivalent position with regard to tradi­ tional Judaism: on the one hand, he felt admiration for biblical and exilic Judaism on account of its tremendous power of survival, and, on the other, hatred for the Judaism of the priests which had given rise to Christianity.54 Nietzsche, as a genealogist of culture, used an interesting psychological method: the exposure of the psychological mechanisms underlying beliefs and values undermined their “absolute” validity and revealed the deception inherent in the slave morality.55 The “good” was revealed as the dishonest instrument of the weak for the purpose of overcoming those who were stronger. The slave-revolt of Judaism was first and foremost a victory of ressentiment (GM 1 10). Ressentiment - an introverted and repressed sense of animosity - became a creative force which “transvaluated values”. An exam­ ination of Nietzsche’s analysis brings us to the conclusion that, in his view, for the nobleman, there were no people who were evil in the moral sense, only inferiors, from whom, however, he did not make any normative demands in the name of an ideal. On the other hand, the weak man was consumed with a sick hatred of the strong, not because of anything he had done, but because

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of the very fact of his strength and wholeness. Because he could not afford the honest reaction of taking a real vengeance, the weak man abandoned himself to a feeling of ressentiment. The weak man’s transvaluation of values expressed by the establishment of the slave-morality was not a real act of independence, but the unripe fruit of a repressed hatred reacting in a sick and unhealthy manner. Reaction instead of initiative, repression instead of instinct, the substituted vengeance of the transvaluation of values instead of confrontation and self-mastery - all these, in Nietzsche’s view, were characteristic of the perverted will to power of the weak. Nietzsche rejected the idea of external commandments: the strong man’s evaluation was not accompanied by a binding norm, while the weak man was usually bound by the norm. The subjects of ressentiment became weapons of war in the new culture which arose in place of the old one: a culture is a function of its scale of values. The new values legislated by Judaism - the slave-morality - destroyed the old culture and gave rise to a new culture based on one’s fellow-man, on social foundations. The social superstructure - religion, morality, culture - was set up as an artificial framework for the protection of the weak man who found it difficult to cope with his neighbor and his world. What, in that case, was the place of Nietzsche’s “social” man in the German philosophical tradition? In Kant, we find that man was basically a creature endowed with an “asocial sociability.” The individual needs the consciousness of his fellow-man in order to confirm his own existence, and in this respect sociability is necessary and is part of human nature. In Hegel, we find the dialectic of master and slave, a war of a consciousness, each one of which demands recognition as a free consciousness and thereby diminishes the consciousness of the other. Nietzsche rebelled against the approach of the Enlightenment: in Nietzsche, the principle of individuality was established in place of the principle of sociability. The man tested in his self-overcoming has no need of his fellow-man, seeing that individuality is anti-social. According to Nietzsche, the decadent culture brings together weak individuals who find it difficult to exist in isolation, and it blurs a man’s particularity and his personality. In his critique of morality, Nietzsche tried to locate the source of trouble and to distinguish between ends and means. The means, in the course of history, became a value in itself. From the moment when the functional values were institutionalized, they lost their original significance and became anachronistic. Temporary solutions became permanent; existing custom became a norm, and an institutionalized norm became a moral value. The class hierarchy, which in a fortuitous historical situation had determined the hier­ archy of values, was no longer binding. The aristocrat was not necessarily “good”, just as the person of low degree was not necessarily “good”. The aris­ tocratic interpretation and the Jewish-priestly interpretation were both rejected. Men were beyond good and evil. From now on, said Nietzsche, men would be judged not according to the traditional morality, but according to

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their authentic or perverted will to power. Political and sociological differ­ ences were wiped out by the qualitative differences in the degree of will to power in different forms to be found amongst people. Just as the slave-morality, as the perverted will to power of the weak, characterized a decadent culture, so the aristocratic morality, as the authen­ tic will to power of the strong, creates a healthy culture. Nietzsche’s point of view made it clear that he, the historian of culture, wished to remain within the area of discourse of Western culture, and he did not intend an oblitera­ tion of that culture, and a return to the chaotic condition of nature. His aim was to restore nature to culture, and by that means to pass from a decadent culture to an authentic one. The revolution which Nietzsche wanted to carry out was within the culture and not against it. The elements of construction and destruction were to be found within the culture itself, and the processes of sickness and recuperation, decadence and alienation were the signs of an inner struggle. In this respect, the transvaluation of values was the fuel dri­ ving history. The war between good and evil did not only take place in the historic battle between Judah and Rome, but also in the Renaissance and Reformation, during the French Revolution and under Napoleon (GM 16). Historical events were examined from the point of view of the struggle between “good” and “evil”: the collective illusion of Western culture, according to Nietzsche, was its Messianic faith in the victory of the “good” over the “evil” and in historical progress. History, for Nietzsche, was beyond good and evil: in the cosmic dimension, he had an immanent concept of being; and, in the human dimension, he denied the existence of moral or rational progress in the history of mankind. History was a dialectics, but not a progress: being was everything, and it left no room for moral or rational interpretation. The interpretation of events in terms of values was thrust aside by Nietzsche to make way for the immanent explanation of the cosmos by means of the will to power.

Nihilism and Will to Power The intellectual revolution begun by Friedrich Nietzsche in the second half of the nineteenth century heralded the transition from ethics to aesthetics in Western philosophy. The basic assumption of the young Nietzsche that the universe could be justified as a purely aesthetic phenomenon rather than as a moral order, raised aesthetics to an unprecedented level of importance (GT 5).56 Nietzsche was the first thinker to destroy any possible connection between aesthetics on the one hand, and reason, morals or truth on the other. In Nietzsche’s technique of exposure one may perceive an attempt to lay bare the essential condition of the world, to unmask phenomena and values which had taken root in the course of history. There had been a philosophical camou­ flage and an historical deception, and one had to expose the ultimate foundations and reach the bedrock of chaotic existence itself. Hence

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Nietzsche’s philosophical deciphering of the myths of Western culture as a starting point for the reorientation of philosophy. Nietzsche was a radical thinker who attempted to “clean up” Western culture and find the “natural­ ness of human nature”.57 He presented traditional philosophy with a modern challenge in the same way as Vico did for history, Marx for political economy and Freud for psychology: for him, the “radix” of Western culture was human action, rooted in the whole of existence. Thus, the young Nietzsche viewed the world from an aesthetic standpoint: the paradoxical result of the death of God was the birth of the self-created man, and thus nihilism paved the way for a concept of the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. The penetrating glance at the naked universe gave rise to two kinds of nihilism:58 a passive, non-aesthetic kind resulting from a fear of the chaos which had been revealed, and an active, aesthetic kind which served as the starting-point of the modern world. The Nietzschean perspectivism which regarded objectivity as an illusion created a private world of the individual. In this way, nihilism heralded modernism.

Nihilism as a Clinical Discovery Modem man, faced with the fact that the values on which his life is based are, all in all, institutionalized lies, recoils from a general questioning of the validity of these values. The frightening discovery soon becomes a general paralysis, a confrontation with a will-to-negation: “a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, a rebellion against the most fundamental presuppositions of life” (GM III 28). Modern man stands frightened in face of nihilism and does not know how to confront it. While the slave-morality, in Nietzsche’s opinion, perverted man’s character by directing his actions to decadent ends, nihilism, like a “new Buddhism”,59 completely paralyzes man. Nietzsche only valued movement and not the static: religion and morality had so far protected life, even though in a state of decadence, and they had at least prevented it from being swept away by the tide of nihilism. Accordingly, Nietzsche called for a sober selfconsciousness which would take its distance from religion and morality. The questioning of values would prevent their annulment and would lead to their transvaluation. Man is an evaluating creature, and this provides the only opportunity of attaining any significance of life or any communication with the other person, but Nietzsche showed that this evaluation does not truly belong to reality: “The total character of the world, however, is in all eternity chaos - in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthro­ pomorphisms” (FW III 109). Reality is disharmonious, and therefore has no value or direction: it is human beings that bestow values and direction upon it. These values are functional, illusory and therefore mendacious. Only the strong man who does not run away to false gods can look at the reality which

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is naked of all values and affirm it as it is. The stripping off of masks in the process of nihilization was Nietzsche’s task. Albert Camus said that “with him nihilism becomes conscious for the first time [. . . ] . He recognized nihilism for what it was and examined it like a clinical fact.”60 Nihilism as a clinical discovery was the result of the historical investigation carried out by Nietzsche. By means of the genealogy of the concept of punishment, the origins of law and justice and the source of guilt-feelings and conscience, Nietzsche exam­ ined the significance of the ascetic ideals in the light of the sentiment of guilt. The Christian concepts of compassion and sacrifice led Nietzsche to a nihilistic conclusion (GM II 5). The problem of guilt and bad conscience arose when the weak man was unable to justify himself according to the collective norms. The self-repression which the weak man inflicted on himself by means of the ascetic ideals (science, religion, historicism, truth) was the result of conferring value on things beyond life such as the world-to-come, objective truth and total knowledge. A destruction of life occurred for the sake of a life beyond life. The genealogy which Nietzsche made of the concepts “punishment”, “guilt”, “conscience”, “duty” and the “sacredness of duty” showed that the source of these concepts was in the sphere of legal obligations. Guilt as a feeling of personal debt was bound up with the personal interaction between borrower and lender, buyer and seller. This quantitative and materialistic rela­ tionship of man to the world around him, in Nietzsche’s opinion, formed the basis for the existing normative morality. And what was the origin of law? The source of “bad conscience”, in Nietzsche’s opinion was to be found outside man. The sources of conscience were to be found in the society and the state, and the purpose of conscience was to “tame” the individual by means of an interiorization of the norms of the society. Locke’s, Hobbes’ and Rousseau’s explanations were completely rejected by Nietzsche: the origin of the state was in domination and not in agreement.61 The socialization of subjects had the effect that man’s instincts turned against him, and for want of external enemies man began to oppress himself (GM I I 16). I shall now try to trace the path which Nietzsche took and to understand how, at the end of that path, he reached the conclusion that the consciousness of nihilism and the will to power were the Janus-face of the Ubermensch. Nietzsche examined the significance of the ascetic ideals and their influence on the nihilistic spirit of the time: asceticism was sick, seeing that it was a deca­ dent will to power directed against life itself. This was self-sacrifice, resulting in degeneration and pain and opposing the expression of beauty and joy. Asceticism’s source of being was self-torture, and thus asceticism sought the error precisely in the most vital place - in life itself. This was the nihilistic will to power. Nietzsche’s interpretation shows us that the ascetic ideal was actu­ ally on the side of life, but of a degenerate life. The priest-monk saw his sick flock, and his historical task was to rule over these suffering people. The priest changed the direction of their ressentiment to man himself.62 Religious morality infused man, through the ascetic priest, with a sense of sin and guilt.

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Man, in fact, was guiltless, but religion and morality, in addition to his feeling of alienation, made him feel guilty and a sinner. Nietzsche refused to see the priest as a healer, in other words, the Messianic solutions did not heal but, on the contrary, increased in his opinion, deca­ dence. The ascetic priest created the flock because in that way it was easier for him to rule. The strong came together in order to dominate, while the weak came together in order to survive, come what may; they therefore came together in a community, in a flock. The priest, whose objective was man’s alienation, increased the irritations under the guise of religion and morality, which only intensified man’s weakness. The priest sought to “save” man from his alienation by making it worse: religion and morality acted as temporary palliatives which reduced the suffering, but the more suffering was reduced, the more active religion and morality became, and man became more and more alienated. The feeling of guilt mounted and assumed the shape of sin: this was the leading concept of religious teachings. Man, alienated without a reason, suffering without knowing why, longed for tranquilizers, which the priest willingly provided. This conditioning completed man’s total subjuga­ tion. The fraudulent mechanism functioned by means of temporary tranquilizers and the crazed drug-addict asked, of course, for more drugs. The medication only increased the illness. The process of alienation became an inertia and a habit, and no longer needed an intermediary or priest working from the outside. The system functioned on its own strength. The process of alienation was now automatic and immanent: man had brought alienation on himself. The conclusion was that man, seeking moral or religious legitimization, was ready to pay for it even with his freedom (Z I 3). The fraudulent instru­ ments of culture - science, philosophy, history - in Nietzsche’s opinion negated man’s desire to endow life with an apparent significance. At a certain stage, man became aware of the mendacity of his consciousness and he arrived at nihilism. From now on, he rejected the false idealism which had endowed his life with a basis in the face of chaos and had given it an illusory meaning. Similarly, nihilism destroyed reason as a symbol of human autonomy. The priest and the secular ruler, who had institutionalized religion and the state on the ruins of the individual, used reason in order to present deceptive ideals - such as objective truth, binding morality and total science - as true ones. Through the nihilistic process, consciousness, becoming self-aware, destroyed reason and the ideals which had been created in its name. In this respect, nihilism, as a machinery of exposure, represented for Nietzsche a negative form of freedom, as it was a liberation from something. The next stage of freedom was a liberation foi something, the bestowal of a positive content on a freedom which had been liberated from the deceptive ideals or false gods. Nihilism, as man’s consciousness of the mask of reason, was not a liberation from that mask, but it was a guarantee that the idea of a dogmatic and universal truth had gone bankrupt. Hence, the free man chose his personal truth as the expression of his existential condition, and not the

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universal truth produced by rational reflection. Nihilism was a crossroads which man had arrived at, and from there he could fall into absolute noth­ ingness, suicide, scepticism and degeneration. But, beyond that, he could also return, and envisage and effect a transvaluation of values. Values, in Nietzsche, passed through a threefold change: man legislated the values )history), questioned their validity (nihilism) and affected a transvaluation of them (self-overcoming). Nietzsche’s analysis was the most radical one possible: in his opinion, nihilism derived logically and necessarily from the Christian-European heritage.63 Nihilism was caused and explained by the desire for truth which lay at the heart of the Western intellectual tradition: if one cannot accept the existence of God, nihilism is a necessary consequence. To sum up, therefore, one might say that Nietzsche’s description of the process of the development of nihilism led to the following unavoidable conclusion: Western culture was bound to arrive at nihilism!

The Destruction o f Prevalent Illusions The major Nietzsche scholars are divided with regard to the question of nihilism. Walter Kaufmann takes one side in his attempt to provide Nietzsche with a place of honour in the European humanistic philosophical tradition by belittling the importance of Nietzschean nihilism. On the other side are Nietzschean scholars of the first rank who see him as a nihilist in his basic metaphysical, ontological and even deconstructive philosophical position.64 Concerning Kaufman’s view that “Nietzsche believed that, to overcome nihilism, we must first of all recognize it,”65 one could add that Nietzsche claimed that, in order to overcome nihilism, we have to recognize the fact of its eternal existence, the fact that we have to live with it. Nietzsche’s philos­ ophy of unmasking has to be seen as a destruction of prevalent illusions: the “fictions useful for life” concealed its lack of significance, and Nietzsche stripped off the masks one by one - religion, morality, reason, truth. It is my intention to show that Nietzsche, in the course of the change from JudeoChristian ethics to an aesthetic view of existence, was true to his intentions and divested the concept “nihilism” of all value-associations and normative content. First and foremost, he had to unmask the lie of God. The existence of God was the greatest prevalent illusion, whose repercus­ sions were still to be found in his time as a permanent threat. Section 125 of The Gay Science is one of the best-known passages in Nietzsche’s work: the madman who proclaimed the death of God in the marketplace was evidence of the nihilistic significance of the fact, or, perhaps it would be more exact to say, the lack of significance of the fact. Man lost his orientation in his universe as soon as it became clear that it was a false universe. He realized that, just as it was possible to create God with one’s own hands, so it was easily possible to murder him. The concept of “God,” said Nietzsche, continuing the tradi­

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tion of the Young Hegelians, eliminates man’s individual freedom and his exis­ tential being.66 The believing man reduces all that is significant, instinctive, strong, to something infinite and abstract which man has created. Man, fearing his own power, transfers it onto God (WM 135). In a confused world, man seeks self-justification, religious or moral legitimation which will endow his life with significance, even at the price of self-nullification (GM III 28). Nietzsche thought that the source of religion was man’s attempt to find a response to his astonishment at his own power. This need required a substantialization, and men transferred their collective being to a unique Providence which united all individuals in an egalitarian religion. The dilemma in which man found himself owing to his feeling of finiteness allowed him one escape: nihilization and negation of himself before an infinite authority. Asceticism, monasticism and self-castigation represented man’s desire to repress his instincts on behalf of the Deity. Man became fenced in and restricted by values, imperatives and prohibitions as though by chains forged with his own hands. Moreover, the nullification of man before “God” represented a conscious attempt at self-nullification. By glorifying suffering and by protecting the weak, religion diminished man by making all individuals equal before God. The shallowness of this equality prevented man’s improvement and increased the substantialization of the “supreme ruler.” The individuals who were equal before their God were obliged to create a single code of laws, recognize a single divine truth and renounce their own will before the will of the Only One. Religion and the monopoly of God, which were invented by men as means to make life comfortable, tolerable and meaningful, now became ends in themselves and man was enslaved to the creation of his spirit. Hegel described philosophy as an owl of Minerva which appeared at the onset of darkness, at the end of history, and Schlegel described the historian as a prophet who looked backwards. In contrast to them, Nietzsche believed that the philosophy of history both reflected history itself and at the same time was beyond it. Thus, Nietzsche regarded himself “as the spirit of daring and experiment that has already lost its way once in every labyrinth of the future” (WM 135). For him, the history of nihilism was the shape of the future. For Nietzsche, the historian and prophet were one: “What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism” (WM Preface III). Just as he played the role of the exposing philosopher, so he assigned himself the task of the rousing prophet. “Nihilism stands at the door” (WM I I ) , said Nietzsche, and explained its coming by the internal logic of European history until that time, by the cultural development of Europe with its Christian morality. The questioning of the moral explanation of the world in the modern period undermined the foun­ dations of the Christian edifice. Secularization opened up a chasm, seeing that until then Christian morality had served as a bulwark against nihilism by endowing man with a definite value in face of the fortuitous nature of the forces of creation and destruction.67 Morality gave existence a meaning and

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man a significance. But now, it is reasonable to ask, what was the significance of nihilism as a counter-movement, or, to be more exact, as a movement acting against itself? The answer is: “The highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; ‘why’ finds no answers” (WM I 2). Morality served as a tool for the continuation of existence and prevented one from gazing into the depths of nothingness, but it also contained the truths which worked against it: the fiction was revealed as an illusion and the golem turned on its creator. Every phenomenon which Nietzsche examined - religion, morality, alienation, decadence - contained the seeds of its own ruin and destroyed itself. Of course, one can be hard on Nietzsche and ask: in what way is the prin­ ciple of the will to power preferable to the Judeo-Christian morality as a heroic attempt to give meaning to a meaningless world? But I shall put this question aside for the moment, and shall see how Nietzschean nihilism appeared as a psychological necessity reaching a major conclusion concerning man and exis­ tence: namely, that the cyclical nature of existence contradicts any aim, and it is consequently clear that history is without a purpose. Man created an illu­ sion of wholeness, order and unity in order to organize the chaos by giving it a meaningful structure, but the reflective consciousness exposes the illusion. Likewise, the belief that this world is an illusion and that one must therefore regard the next world as the true one - whether in the Christian version or the Platonic - also leads to a nihilistic consciousness. The conclusion is that objec­ tive truth, like a normative morality, is not a possibility (OTF 184). The elimination of the pair of concepts “truth” and “falsehood” does not elimi­ nate the truth for Nietzsche any more than the elimination of “good” and “evil” eliminates the good: Nietzsche only questions the right of certain people (the majority in a decadent situation) to determine the objective significance of this pair of concepts. Neitzsche removed the concepts “good” and “truth” from the traditional normative context and evaluated them according to modern criteria of power, intensity and authenticity. Where, then, can one place the Nietzschean concept of truth in the philo­ sophical tradition?68 All the philosophies tried to search for absolute truth: in Descartes, one has “cogito ergo sum,” in Spinoza, pantheistic totality, in Kant, transcendental unity. Nietzsche, however, claimed that certain conditions of existence determined certain forms of life. These forms of life required certain forms of knowledge. In the Nietzschean epistemology, Nietzsche rejected the intellect and its norms. If the intellect was rejected, the norms of the intellect - truth and morality - were also rejected. Kant thought that there were norms in the moral dimension, and he widened them to include the cognitive sphere. The assumption that there was knowledge was parallel to the assumption that there was morality: this was Kant’s method according to Nietzsche, who called for the mask to be removed. Faith, in Nietzsche’s view, was a psychological problem, just as positions, truths, values and norms were also projections. Likewise, scientific or moral beliefs were not different, from the point of view of their validity, from religious or political beliefs. In the cognitive sphere, Nietzsche shifted truth from the objective to the perspectivistic, and, in the

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moral sphere, the norm was rejected in favor of power manifested in individual creativity. Nietzsche recognized two kinds of nihilism: “active” nihilism and “passive” or “weary” nihilism. “Nihilism. It is ambiguous: A. Nihilism as a sign of increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism. B. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism” (WM, I 22). Active nihilism is a manifestation of strength, in that it is a force that destroys alienated ideals and questions the validity of normative values. “It reaches its maximum of relative strength as a violent force of destruction” (WP, I 23). “Weary” nihilism, like Buddhism, is a manifestation of weakness, a force that is self-destructive: “Attempts to escape nihilism without revaluating our values so far” (WM, I 28). It is a nihilism which does not fulfill its function. The release from religious faith and alienation from Christian morality led to the uprooting of man from his world, while he continued to search for a point of support outside himself. Man took hold of any super-human authority, such as the dominion of reason, social conformity or the worship of history. In another context, Nietzsche said that “extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones but by extreme positions of the opposite kind” (WM 55). Man, who lost these higher authorities, reached total despair: they were its other face. In both cases, man renounced his inner authority and transferred it onto the external entity by which he was dominated, whether it was the reli­ gious tyranny of God, the intellectual tyranny of historicism or the political religions. External tyranny and denial of self are two faces of alienation, the flight of man from himself. Later, we shall see that the will to power was not, according to Nietzsche, an authority external to man but the inner force moving the universe and spurring man on. The Nietzschean consciousness of nihilism was the Archimedean point in the encounter between alienation and freedom. The nihilistic consciousness is the guarantee of true freedom: modern man’s awareness of the internalization of the values of society within him leads to the uprooting of all specious values. The modern concept of alienation rose only in post-Kantian thought: only when man began to construct the universe according to the criteria of his knowledge did he ask himself why he should be enslaved to a world of his own creation. The paradox was that it was precisely when man became a free crea­ ture that he discovered himself to be enslaved. A dialectical reversal took place with regard to the meaning of alienation: until the nineteenth century it was thought (e.g., by Plotinus, Augustine and Richard Saint-Victor) that “alienatio,” or its Greek equivalent “extasa,” was an elevation of man, a condition in which he became estranged and distant from himself and absorbed in God.69 In the nineteenth century, the concept gained the opposite meaning, and in Hegel it was a transitional stage towards the unity to be attained through rational thought. Hegel saw alienation as part of the rational process, whereas earlier thinkers had regarded it as something on a higher level than ratio­ nalism. Feuerbach rejected Hegel’s notion of an intermediate stage, and thought that alienation was a reflection or reminder of an apparent duplica­

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tion of the human essence: religion, he believed, was man relating to his own essence as though it were the essence of something else. Karl Marx took a further step, and maintained that alienation was not an intermediate stage or a reflection of something, but a distortion of man’s essence. Man set up an alienating social order in a process which was a real, and not an apparent one. For Marx, the principle of property nullified the principle of freedom and equality. Marx’s solution was a kind of “internalization” through the elimi­ nation of private property. In other words, if one universalizes the principle of the absence of property, one can overcome alienation. “Internalization,” for Hegel and Marx, was an immediate way of overcoming alienation. Thinkers in the twentieth century - Marcuse, Fromm, Sartre, Ivan Illisch, Skinner - have claimed that the concept of internalization, which character­ ized freedom for Hegel and Marx, had become the enslaving factor in modern thought. Nietzsche forestalled modern thought by identifying the internaliza­ tion of the values of society as an alienation of man from his personal essence, but his understanding of the concept “alienation” was dialectic and not schematic. Unlike Hegel, Feuerbach and Marx, Nietzsche was not content with the castigation of religion or an economic system, because such a criti­ cism was total, because his concept of man was total: the subject was perceived as a world in itself. Therefore, two questions preoccupied Nietzsche: how does modern man perceive his world and how ought he to do so? The first ques­ tion was bound up with the problem of alienation and the second with that of freedom: the two questions were interconnected. Thus, the concept of alien­ ation receives its validity from the concept of freedom, being a precondition for it. In Nietzsche’s view, man’s alienation from himself caused a flight in two opposite directions: the rational and the religious are really only two sides of one coin, the same alienation in a different guise. The historical or “weary” nihilism, as an inevitable stage in the development of Western culture, destroyed the decadent man and cleared the way for the rise of a man of a new variety: the Overman, who uprooted the absolute validity of the old values and brought about the transvaluation of all values. This Overman was a person who, first and foremost, cast his eyes on a world without redemption and without a God.

Metaphysical Nihilism I agree with Arthur Danto’s basic premise that Nietzsche’s “nihilism never­ theless, is not an ideology, but metaphysics.”70 Danto distinguished between Nietzsche’s “metaphysical” nihilism (“reality itself has neither name nor form”) and the “St. Petersburg style of nihilism”: that is, a nihilism which rejects and destroys a whole series of religious, moral and political principles. My claim is that Nietzsche’s nihilism was not a functional nihilism but an immanent nihilism. Metaphysical nihilism is confined to the here-and-now or

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to put it in Ofelia Schutte’s words: “[...] Nietzsche would like to see the meta­ physician rooted in the earth.”71 Its meaning is not the rejection of the significance of the universe, and not “eternal recurrence” as found in the Stoics and Ecclesiastes, but a horrified, yet courageous glance at a universe without a purpose. Nietzsche’s universe was quite structureless: simply a quantity of blind energy. There are no things as such, but only energy. There is a nihilization within an infinity without structure and therefore lacking significance, and hence also lacking morality, truth, value or purpose. If there is no A or B, there is also no connection between one and the other. In Nietzsche, there are no “things” at all, and the “Rausch” is dominant. The universe is totally dishar­ monious. For him, God was a product of the order in the world, and the order in the world was the product of language. But the very existence of language, said Nietzsche, was the existence of an illusory structure, something which was projected onto the world but was not really part of it.72 Thus, in “The Seven Seals to Eternity” in Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche wanted to elim­ inate speech, because even speech creates an order. So long as there is language, there are things that are ordered, and as long as there are things that are ordered, there is God. Therefore, one has to kill God, who creates the illu­ sion that there are things that are ordered. Nietzsche claimed that the concept of the world as chaos is indescribable in terms of rational language and thought, and no significance could be drawn from it concerning man’s exis­ tence. This was a shocking discovery which only a strong man could bear. Nietzschean existence is a Heraclitean movement without logic, change without laws. The universe is a blind mass of ceaseless creativity. In the changing universe, Nietzsche proposed the doctrine of perspectivism as one of the pillars of his philosophy: “there would be no life at all if not on the basis of perspective estimates and appearances” (JGB 34). The disharmonious universe, according to Nietzsche, was a totality of elements without signifi­ cance. Man conferred validity on these elements and then they became meaningful for him, but they still remained meaningless in themselves. Meaning was relative to a certain will to power. In this disharmonious universe, there was no parallel between existence and thought, and Nietzsche, in his attack on Parmenides, claimed, as we have seen, that there is no general and fixed truth but only perspectivistic viewpoints. General truths are only instrumental and do not give an objective picture of the world, because an objective structure does not exist. In place of absolute rational knowledge and philosophical thought with its pretensions of providing an objective explana­ tion of the universe, Nietzsche offered a perspectivistic explanation. According to Kant, without the status of reason, the Copernician revolu­ tion would not have taken place and there could not have been any categorical imperative. According to Nietzsche, however, the attributes of a lawgiver belonged to a philosopher and not to reason, to an individual and not to a method. This represented a personalization of philosophy and of the idea of reason. The'legislation of a philosopher, thought Nietzsche, was his creation.

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The philosophers until then had interpreted or wished to change the world, but Nietzsche said that the truly courageous act would be to accept the mean­ inglessness of the world.73 According to Nietzsche, the philosophers were slaves to preconceptions and were conditioned by certain cultural attitudes. It followed, then, that every philosophical position was relative to a given histor­ ical-cultural situation. Here one may ask how Nietzsche defined his own philosophizing, for here we seem to have a tautology. Nietzsche claimed that his philosophical position did not contradict the principle of perspectivism because his method was an “experimental philosophy” and also a personal (Nietzsche’s) perspective. Nietzsche did not fit the rational criterion which traditional philosophy set for itself in the law of logos: namely, that of selfcontradiction. To use Karl Popper’s terminology, the Nietzschean method could not be refuted because the validity of the refutation itself was ques­ tioned. Nietzsche claimed, “it is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable” (JGB 18). It was not the dynamic reality with its contrasts and contrary tendencies, but reason which could not bear an inner contradiction. A comparison between Nietzsche, Albert Camus and Meister Eckhardt can throw a new light on Nietzsche’s views with regard to the meaninglessness of the universe. In Camus, the absurdity of the universe is dominant, but he does not deny the actuality of the physical world, but only that it has significance.74 Dr. Rieux in The Plague gave a significance to the lack of significance. Camus-Rieux said that the world was meaningless, good and evil did not exist, and yet one nevertheless had to act morally without any reason, as a command, a principle, an instinct. For Eckhardt the mystic, the world like­ wise had no meaning, but it was this world which had no meaning.75 He hoped, therefore, to be “buried in God,” to lose his essence in a transcendental entity, to be nihilized in God, but for him this nihilism was an ascension. Life passed away, but there was a higher existence. Camus might have said, “my kingdom is the kingdom of this world.” Eckhardt might have said, “my kingdom is the kingdom of heaven.” Nietzsche agreed with Camus that there is no kingdom of heaven and with Eckhardt that there is no kingdom of earth. For Nietzsche, there was no “this world” and no “next world.” Nihilism was immanent to existence, and yet Nietzsche nevertheless affirmed this existence devoid of significance. Nietzsche thus used history as a starting-point for a reorientation of philos­ ophy, which had established itself as a philosophy of deceit: in his radical investigation and in the genealogy of his fundamental concepts, man had discovered that the idols which he himself had created - God, morality, reason, truth - were revealed as a broken reed and as a Golem which turned on its maker. Nietzsche was the genealogist of human history who revealed the naked values as he saw them: as superstructures, narcotic drugs or energy-pills which gave taste and purpose to a world which had no taste or purpose. He looked at nihilism as it was and diagnosed history in its nakedness. Historical man discovered that his God was an image which man had created with his own hands out of*self-protection, reason was deceptive and a falsification of

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the evidence of the senses; morality, all in all, was institutionalized habit, and objective truth was not possible. Historical man was naked, a leaf tossed in the wind. Disillusioned with theology and disappointed with progress, he was suddenly conscious of the gaping chasm which threatened to swallow every­ thing up. Nihilism lay at the door!

The Will to Power and Eternal Recurrence The will to power was not a late manifestation in Nietzsche’s philosophy, intended as a counter-response to nihilism. The concept of the will to power formed an integral part of Nietzsche’s unsystematic system, and already at the end of the 1870s Nietzsche said: “Fear (negative) and will to power (positive) explain our strong consideration for the opinion of men” (WS 397).76The will to power is not the next chronological stage after the vacuum left by nihilism:77 the nihilistic consciousness and the will to power dwell side by side, and both are integral to existence, or, to be more exact, both are existence itself. “This, my Dionysian world,” said Nietzsche, “of the eternally self-creating, eternally self-destroying [ . . . ] ” (WM 1067). The Nietzschean therapy for his radical diagnosis (the death of God) was the existence of the will to power as a coun­ terweight to nihilism. As we have seen, Nietzsche wanted to find the ultimate basis of reality: after having removed the masks, the disguises, the falsifications, the illusions and the preconceptions, Nietzsche came to the conclusion that the will to power constituted the radical situation of the world. One could say that Nietzsche, in his attempt to give an explanation to existence, took the concept of the will from Schopenhauer as an expression of the existential nucleus, and added to that the element of power. Nietzsche’s starting point was to be found in Schopenhauer, and it had grown out of the despair which reached its culmi­ nation in Kant: a despair at the possibility of reason attaining a knowledge of reality. All the traditional metaphysical systems in Western philosophy had a certain structure, and in order to reveal it one had to perceive the relationship between the reality of the universe and man’s knowledge of the universe. Was there any correlation between them? Hegel thought there was, but Schopenhauer denied it, saying that knowledge of the universe was not attain­ able because it was expressed in the will as representation.78 Even Schopenhauer, however, made Kantian distinctions with regard to the struc­ ture of the universe. Nietzsche proposed a different system - one of chaos and not of structure - and the question of what justified his claim of the chaotic nature of the universe was the internal problem of the Nietzschean method. Nietzsche conferred on the cosmos without purpose or definition an imma­ nent explanation by means of an ontological-monistic factor, the will to power, and in this he may be regarded as the last of the pre-Socratics. The will to power was the ultimate basis, the first cause of all existence, the meaning of all things: “All significance is will to power.” The whole of

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existence was based on “one elementary basic fact”: the will to power. The will to power eliminated things-in-themselves and turned beliefs, knowledges and truths into reflections of the will to power. Facts did not exist, but only interpretations of facts. The denial of all projections led to the existential root of the universe, to an existence free of interpretations, of redundant layers. The Nietzschean will to power was a cosmic principle as well as a subjective and psychological principle. In other words, the will to power as a cosmic prin­ ciple guided all individuals, each of whom separately constitutes an authentic or perverted will to power. The cosmic element - the will to power - and the historical element - man - coalesced into a single whole: man was rooted in the universe. Man therefore had to affirm the universe, to say “yes” to eternal recurrence, by means of an authentic will to power. The sphere of the universe and the sphere of man were one and the same. This was the basis for the later Existentialism which identified existence with the self. The differences of approach of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer led to a difference in their attitude to history: in Nietzsche, one finds a maximalization of the will to power despite historical recurrence, while the Schopenhauerian passivity led to a minimalisation of the will to power. The intensification of the will to power was connected with a methodical direction: it did not concern man alone but was a universal existential phenomenon, and man was the personification of the will to power.79 Nietzsche’s description of the will to power as both a universal phenomenon and an individual phenomenon was an early formulation of Existentialism. Why did Nietzsche specially want to emphasize the will? The reason was that the will existed, not only in order to preserve existence, but also in order to strengthen it. Existence had not only to be accepted, but also intensified. The will did not perform any actions and had no intentions, but was a blind Dionysian force, a phenomenon without a purpose: something irrational, without a consciousness (WM 550). Unlike Schopenhauer, who wanted the will to be denied, Nietzsche wished it to be intensified (WM 692). In the condi­ tions of the universe, everything that existed was an obstacle and a stumbling-block for everything else, with the result that there was no harmony. The basis of power was really the disharmonious nature of the universe. Nietzsche placed the emphasis on existence itself and not on rela­ tionships. In this Heraclitean situation, all beings sought power, tried to expand, and came into conflict with other beings. The principle of adaptation for survival gave way to the Nietzschean principle of the will to power.80 The Nietzschean revolution was that of abandoning the idea of a purpose in favour of the idea of a process for its own sake. The main thing, the thing which brought satisfaction, was the pursuit of power, but the achievement of one’s goal was hollow and unsatisfying. Satisfaction and dissatisfaction were “ontologized.” Nietzsche wanted to detach modern man from social norms and to adapt him to the rhythm of his private world which he had created. Ethics was no longer a matter between man and his fellow man, but between man and the cosmos. Thus, the will to power could be understood as a search

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for authenticity: that is, as a desire to find a correlation between man and the rhythm of his world. Traditional philosophy claimed that, if the chain of cause and effect was broken, one reached a transcendental first cause. Against this, Nietzsche remained within the sphere of the immanent, claiming that the will to power was a permanent cause and continuous being, and that it was consequently eternal (WM 690). This was contrary to the cosmogonical vision of Aristotle, which maintained that, if the reality of the universe was not determined by a first cause outside the chain of cause and effect, one would find oneself in a situation of infinite regression. It was likewise contrary to Hegel’s concept of progress, according to which the unfolding of time was one of the revelations of the Geist, and that therefore progress was revealed in history. In distinction from these two concepts of regression and progress, Nietzsche identified eter­ nity with the infinite duration of time, or, in other words, with eternal recurrence. Thus, what, one may ask, were Nietzsche’s ideas concerning time and progress? The idea that the duration of time is infinite served, among other things, as the basis for the concept of human progress. If time was infinitely open, then there was a possibility of continual improvement: that is to say, there was no obstacle from the point of view of the framework of time. The idea of progress was based on the assumption of improvement: Kant’s distinc­ tion between the nature of the human world and that of the divine world was that, in His transcendental world, God began with good, whereas, in our world, we begin with evil. In the idea of progress, an inferior primordial situ­ ation is hinted at as a starting-point which needs to be transcended. This burden of values was totally rejected by Nietzsche. The idea of progress was for him a variant of the attempt to give an inner significance to process. If the main thing in the revelation of the will to power was the process rather than the purpose, then no importance could be attached to the conclusion of the historical process, but only to its development.81 Nietzsche said that one had to deny any significance to the process itself and to divest it of any sense of direction, either positive or negative. Plato also denied that being possessed significance or purpose, but he conferred these qualities on the eternal world of ideas. Spinozan pantheism, which identified the world with God, also denied that the world had a purpose, but “logical necessity” bestowed on being a divine significance. Plato and Spinoza took values from being and gave them to something else: Platonic ideas or logical necessity. In contrast to these, Nietzsche proclaimed a total nihilism based on eternal recurrence:82 “This is the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the ‘meaningless’), eternity” (WM 55). Among other interpretations of Nietzsche’s nihilism, one can draw the following conclusion from his positive philosophy: beyond nihilism, there is doubt which denies everything or freedom which affirms everything. It is precisely the meaninglessness of recurrent existence which gives affirmation to destiny. Nietzsche “saw himself as a phenomenon of fate rather than as a

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THE NIE TZSCHEA N REVOLUTION

wish to be other than he was.” Spinoza’s “love of God” (amor dei) gave way to the Nietzschean “love of fate” (amor fati).*3 Instead of subservience to an external and abstract entity, there was a great love of existence, of life-as-itis. Schopenhauerian passivity was rejected by Nietzsche because it conferred a value-status on reality, just as the Buddhist approach which rejected exis­ tence was also denied. Both approaches were contrary to the Nietzschean principle that one had to adapt oneself to the rhythm of the dynamic reality. Nietzsche affirmed the Heraclitean approach which led to an acceptance of reality-as-it-was without turning one’s back to it. The various projections the religious and political churches, science, philosophy, the state - all sought, according to Nietzsche, to make cosmetic improvements to reality. The affir­ mation of reality-as-it-is without preconditions and without any pretension to reason, purpose or significance, was the Nietzschean response to the recogni­ tion of the true situation and to liberation from the veils of illusion. Nietzsche’s nihilism is all-inclusive when it comes to the rejection of objec­ tive values. Nihilism is the rejection of all that deserves to be rejected, and this rejection paves the way for the affirmation and strengthening of the will to power. The rejection of an existence of pseudo-values led Nietzsche to a clas­ sification of men according to their strength and not according to their values.

Ubermensch Nietzsche was looking for a total man in the tradition of the German human­ ists of the eighteenth century (Schiller, Herder, Winkelmann), which required the harmonious development of man, with all his faculties. Nietzsche’s inno­ vation was that he propounded a new concept and a new principle in Western philosophy, characteristic of the total man: the concept of the will to power. The trouble was, however, that the concept of the will to power was essen­ tially nihilistic: it has no real content and signified only energy for energy’s sake. At this point, it is appropriate to explain the nature of what Nietzsche described as the sovereign individual, equal only to himself, who has been liberated from traditional morality and is an autonomous supra-moral being (GM III). The Nietzschean supra-morality required a total approach and an intensi­ fication of self-strengthening. The man who legislated his own values did not need the confirmation of the other person; his self-creation was the purpose of his supra-morality. His total vision derived from the will to power, which related to man as a sovereign individual. This process began with a negation, isolation and suffering, but later gave way to the affirmation of self-legislation and creativity. In the process of self-overcoming, the sovereign individual exchanged his external constraints for internal ones, liberated himself from established custom, and became an autonomous person, rising above the exist­ ing morality. Responsibility, as the dominant characteristic of the autonomous personality, required self-discipline together with freedom of the will.

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Nietzsche rejected the idea of duties and values of universal validity, or of good in itself. He maintained that the universal-Kantian imperative was invalid in view of the fact that different people acted differently. Actions carried a purely personal imprint and could not be turned into a binding system of values. Moral judgment was impossible, and an action could be regarded as good only because it expressed a noble personality, or, in other words, the quality of nobility was reflected in the action through the force of the personality. According to Nietzsche, there was no objective criterion for determining man’s essence, and Kant’s criterion of rational objectivity alien­ ated man’s nature. Rationalism saw nature and morality as two mutually antagonistic spheres, but Nietzsche believed, on the contrary, that it was nature which guaranteed the existence of absolute justice. The normative morality created a dichotomy in man’s nature: the individual versus society, nature versus morality, instinct versus law. What, then, was Nietzsche’s innovation? He held that every valid action in art or life represented a creative overcoming of raw nature and physical matter, an overcoming which augmented the value of “nature” itself. In ratio­ nalism, also, there was an attempted transcendence of physical matter, but in that case it was a transition from nature to something beyond it, to something which was not nature. In Nietzsche, on the other hand, the transition was from raw, material nature to a formed nature of a higher significance. In order to facilitate the birth of the “new man,” Nietzsche gave the criticism of man a place of greater importance than the criticism of society. M arx’s attempt to turn to his fellow man in order to realize equality was rejected by Nietzsche. In Nietzsche’s view, the wish to impose equality on human beings not only demonstrated a failure, but was also contrary to human nature, the common denominator of mankind. Nietzsche maintained that the ethical and rational concept of man, history and existence diminished man’s stature. Rational man was a limited ethical being who judged history according to utilitarian criteria and saw the universe as having a purpose. Nietzsche wanted to base life on aesthetics, in the broad meaning of the term: aesthetics, he felt, was something total, because it did not depend on a particular aspect of man (i.e., reason), but on a comprehen­ sive view of life and on the total creation of the private world. The disadvantage of the accepted ethics, according to Nietzsche, was its concept of man as a partial being: Kant had based morality on reason alone. Against this, Nietzsche proposed the ideal of the total man, the product of the allcomprehensive aesthetic approach to existence: a man who would be motivated not by reason but by myth,84 not by the accepted normative morality but by an individualistic supra-morality, and not by the JudaeoChristian ethics but by the new principle of the will to power. The alternative proposed by Nietzsche was the individualization of morality, but its weakness was that he did not suggest any particular content in place of the accepted morality: spontaneity, individuality and decisiveness as qualities-in-themselves have no significance. In my critique of Nietzsche’s

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method I have tried to avoid value-judgments, but my conclusion is clear: that the will to power in itself, just as it is, is nihilistic in content. Nietzsche was not the first person to use the concept Ubermensch, but he was the first to link this concept with the concepts of nihilism and the will to power.85 The concept of the Overman (der hochste Mensch), or, in another formulation, the “Overman” (der Ubermensch) was developed in Nietzschean nihilism and was the leitmotif of various books by Nietzsche. In On the Use and Disadvantage o f History to Life (1874), he wrote: “The goal of humanity cannot lie in the end but only in its highest specimens” (HL 2). In The Third Meditation (“Schopenhauer as Educator” ), he similarly regarded the “goal of development” as being the creation of “great human beings” (SE 6). In The Gay Science (1882), he made for the first time a distinction between “overmen of all kinds” and “near-men” (FW III 143). We have seen that, in the perpetual Nietzschean flux, there was a process of nihilization of values and norms; because the universe was infinite becoming, fixed values were not a possibility. What was possible was an “ad hoc” legislation of temporary values from which one also had, in turn, to liberate oneself. If the universe had no structure, laws or permanence, then locating things, giving them names and conferring values on them was the province of the Overman, who knew the wisdom of deception, the art of enticement, the craftiness of laws. “We deny end goals,” said Nietzsche. “If existence had had one it would have to have been reached” (WM 55). Because it had not been achieved, the world therefore had no purpose: such was Nietzsche’s nihilistic conclusion. Life had no significance and man had no purpose. On the one hand, the theory of eternal recurrence divested everything of values, and, on the other hand, the theory of the Overman affirmed every­ thing. The Overman accepted the meaninglessness of life, and yet nevertheless affirmed it! Was Nietzsche a futurist? This problem was posed in the Antichrist. Historicism depicted the development of human history as a continuity of time, while Futurism presented a desirable model of man. Until then, as we have seen, man had been conditioned by norms, ideologies and “isms” . Alienated man was the product of a decadent culture. In his Antichrist, Nietzsche described Christianity as a training in mediocrity. “The Church sends all the great men to hell,” he said. “It fights against all human great­ ness” (AC 5). Similarly, in The Twilight o f the Gods, he claimed that society held back the development of exceptional men. The time had come, he said, to reverse the conditioning process in order to facilitate the emergence of the Overman: “It aims to bring to light a stronger species, a higher type that arises and preserves itself under different conditions from those of the average m an” (WM 866). In his dialectic of the “last man” and the Overman, he said that one had to accelerate the process of the creation of the herd-society of the “last men” in the democratic era in order to hasten the coming of the Overman. The term Overman had two senses: the Overman was superior to himself in the sense of continual self-overcoming, and he was superior to others in that

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he overcame normative values. In a letter to Lou Salome in 1882, Nietzsche wrote: “Man must first free himself from this liberation.”86 Nietzschean freedom had no purpose, for the achievement of a purpose, according to Nietzsche’s inner logic, would nullify freedom. The significance of Nietzschean freedom was perpetual liberation and self-overcoming. As soon as freedom was institutionalized, it became alienated, and the values for which one was fighting became alienated the moment they were achieved. It followed that it then became one’s duty to alienate oneself from the alienated values. Freedom and alienation were immanent and were not exhausted in a single act. The Overman was the one who said “yes” to infinite liberation, to Sisyphic struggle, to eternal recurrence, to total nihilism. A permanent nihilism, which questioned the value of values, typified the authentic will to power of the strong man. And this was the connection between the conscious­ ness of nihilism and the will to power of the Overman: a permanent transvaluation of values. The Overman, who said “yes” to existence, affirmed naked being. The affirmation of destiny was the apex of freedom and also the apex of power. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche explained his formula of the Overman: “My formula for greatness in a human being is ‘amor fati’: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity” (EH “Why I am clever” 10). The maximalization of the will to power intensified existence. Thus, Nietzsche presented “nihilism” as “an ideal of the highest degree of powerfulness of the spirit [. . .]” (WM 14). On the one hand, the Overman was engaged in a continual process of negation of values and looked chaos in the face as it was, and, on the other hand, he was engaged in a continual process of confirmation and strengthening. The Overman was the man who said “yes” to the disharmonious universe and affirmed destiny as it is, and who said “no” to the value of values, and to the very existence of a scale of values. The will to power and the nihilistic consciousness constituted the Janus-face of the Overman. The Nietzschean Overman, as the personification of the will to power, confirmed himself in his destiny. That is to say, the Overman, in his nihilistic consciousness, was committed to strengthening the will to power. Moreover, the greater the nihilistic consciousness was, the more strengthening of the will to power was required. And, conversely, without the nihilistic consciousness, there could be no will to power. The weak man, devoid of a nihilistic consciousness, joined his fellows with an effete will to power, and together with them created the herd-society. The Overman fused the “Critique of Pure Nihilism” (nihilistic consciousness) with the “Critique of Practical Nihilism” (destruction of prevalent illusions), and in this way strengthened the will to power. He cast a look at naked being and affirmed it just as it is.

C h apter T w o

Myth ex nihilo In the Eye o f the Storm While the traditional philosopher or intellectual looked backwards, like the owl of Minerva, in order to preserve an objective opinion, the new intellec­ tual dwelt in the eye of the storm and created reality ex nihilo. Where Plato sought a philosopher-king who would unite reason and power, Nietzsche sought a philosopher-artist who would unite aesthetics and philosophy. The innovation of the “anti-intellectual” intellectuals was their desire to recreate chaos; in their opinion, it was only in a state of conflict that man could create aesthetic myths for the modern world. Myth ex nihilo was not a part of reality, but a fruit of the imagination, an aesthetic creation, a self-created conscious­ ness which annihilated the universality of Western culture. This anti-rationalist revolt led to contempt for rational intellectuals like Hegel or Durkheim. Not philosophical reflection but political activism,was now demanded, and reason ceased to be the “raison d’etre” of politics. In the fin de siecle, myth was placed at the center of the new existential idea.1 The modern world was stripped of its ethical and rational purpose, with aesthetics, as the language of myth, providing its key. Cultural nihilism became the cornerstone of modern aesthetics, changing it from a theory of beauty to a creative force. The focus shifted from the rational and historical dimension to the mythical and aesthetic dimension: the aesthetic justification of a world divested of values replaced the old criteria of good and evil, the products of Judeo-Christian ethics, with new criteria affirming the authentic and non­ decadent, the strong as opposed to the weak, the order or militant community as opposed to the collective, the future as opposed to the past. The Sorelian and the Futurist myth ex nihilo - a metaphorical and aesthetic action which is devoid of content and completely nihilistic - are unconnected with any ideological context; it is pure political fantasy. A myth, unlike a utopia, is not a vision of a perfect future society but an act of creating a counter-society by means of battle. It is an act of creation, not of prediction. The Sorelian myth of violence is nihilistic with regard to the given historical reality: “Our myths lead people to prepare for battle to defeat the existing order.”2 They express no rational or moral purpose, but lead to heroic action for its own sake. Only by means of a mythical state of mind can a militant group maintain its solidarity, heroism and spirit of self-sacrifice. Sorel influenced the Futurists, the nationalists and the syndicalists, the three groups which in 1919 founded the “fasci di combattimento” in Italy.3

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The Futurists, like Sorel, began with the nihilistic dilemma; they emphazised activity and dynamism for their own sake, and directed the myth towards political experience. Their glorification of the myth of war and technology was reflected not only in writing, but also in action.

From Nietzsche to Georges Sorel Georges Sorel (1847-1922) was born only three years after Nietzsche, but he did not publish his first two books until 1889, the year when Nietzsche went mad. Daniel Halevy, the author of two books on Nietzsche and a friend of SorePs, attested that when Sorel wrote Le Proces de Soarate (The Trial of Socrates) in 1889, he was not yet acquainted with Nietzsche’s writings, in spite of the great similarity between their analyses of Socrates and Plato as the deca­ dent rationalist fathers of Western civilization.4 Nietzsche’s and Sorel’s ambitions to go beyond the narrow borders of reason led them both, at a very early stage of their careers, to an aesthetic approach to the world and a revo­ lutionary demand to build a new culture. For Sorel this meant a political culture centered on a modern mythology. In On the Genealogy o f Morals Nietzsche reached the conclusion that the accepted morality was no longer binding, since it was the result of chance manipulations that had been insti­ tutionalized into obligatory norms. Nietzsche, followed by Sorel, claimed that the alternative - an aesthetic conception of the world - required a new morality that would be based on existential psychological assumptions rather than normative historical ones. Modern humanity must throw away the burden of history, the pretensions of the Enlightenment and the illusions of progress that led the European bourgeois to the edge of decadence in the second half of the nineteenth century. This history was exposed as a disguised theology that educated people to a slave morality, alienated them from their human uniqueness and made them mechanical rather than human. The volun­ tary challenge presented by both of them pinned its hopes on rousing myths that would provide a new unity - both aesthetic and existential - for modern humanity and the modern world.s Sorel related to Nietzsche in two dimen­ sions - as an influence and through intellectual affinity. In his most important book, Reflexions sur la violence (Reflections on Violence, 1908), Sorel translated the criteria of the will to power - authen­ ticity versus decadence - into revolutionary political and sociological distinctions. He was not interested in contents or essences in and of them­ selves, but rather in the forces driving the individual and society as the new criteria that go beyond the traditional distinctions of good and evil. Sorel projects these new criteria onto the realm of politics, sharpening Proudhon’s distinction between “consumer morality” and “producer morality.”6 This new dualism of the Proudhon school is examined as matching the Nietzschan dualism of decadence versus authenticity. Sorel thus combines Proudhon and Nietzsche, proposing a new morality built on the ruins of the old one. Sorel

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was therefore considered a moralist, but he gave the concept of morality a revolutionary twist by going beyond the content - whether moral or political - to the aesthetic form: It is not the “what” of the Judeo-Christian content that is important, but the “how” of the will to power, which classifies people according to their quality. Sorel’s version of the genealogy of decadent morality thus takes its content from both teachers. About Proudhon he writes: “Fifty years ago Proudhon pointed out the necessity of giving the people a morality that would fit new needs,”7 while about Nietzsche he writes: “It is chiefly the Homeric heroes that we must have in mind in order to understand what Nietzsche wished to make clear to his contemporaries.”8 The point of departure of Sorel’s critique of morality is thus Nietzsche’s thought. In 1907 he writes: Any group of ideas in the history of thought is best understood if all the contradictions are brought into sharp relief. I shall adopt this method and take for a starting point the celebrated opposition which Nietzsche has established between two groups of moral values, an opposition about which much has been written but which has never been properly studied.9 Indeed, sharpening contradictions and exposing the lack of social harmony are central points of Sorel’s critical theory. Aside from the analysis that reveals the structural contradictions of every thought or external event, a new alter­ native can be indicated, which strives to preserve the dynamics of human existence. Sorel learned from Nietzsche that existential acts do not stem from any purpose, but are projections of life itself: The struggle is everything. The social struggle that Sorel was talking about is an extension of Nietzschean concepts, since winning or losing have no meaning in and of themselves. Their significance lies in the fact that they grant vitality to a society or civilization that has been infected with the illness of decadence, by creating a “new m an” or a class of heroes who are placed in charge of social life. The Nietzschean heroes, according to Sorel, are the Roman, Arab, German and Japanese nobilities, as well as Homer’s heroes and the Scandinavian Vikings.10 Sorel is enchanted by this Nietzschean-Greek admixture, and in order to preserve the vitality of his period he concocts his own warrior class and chooses Homeric heroes: “that very ancient figure, the Achaean ideal cele­ brated by Homer, is not simply a memory; it has reappeared several times in the world.”11 This move is familiar to us from Nietzsche’s writings: Myth as a recurrent pattern is more effective than written and sealed collective memory - that is, history. Thus the importance of Homer in Sorel’s view is not his historical Greek heroes but his creation of an ahistorical pattern and granting the warrior class a mythic dimension. The same sort of Nietzschean hero also appeared in the Renaissance and the French Revolution and was personified in Napoleon. Sorel continues Nietzsche’s ahistorical pattern to the present time:

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I believe that if Nietzsche had not been so dominated by his memories of being a professor of philology, he would have perceived that the master type still exists under our own eyes, and that it is this type which, at the present time, creates the extraordinary greatness of the United States; he would have been struck by the singular analogies that exist between the Yankee, ready for any kind of enterprise, and the ancient Greek sailor, sometimes a pirate, sometimes a colonist or a merchant; above all, he would have established a parallel between the ancient heroes and the man who sets out to conquer the Far West.12 The Achaean-Homeric heroes, the American capitalist pioneers, and the syndicalist workers all belong to the warrior class extolled by Sorel. His heroes can be recognized by their combativeness. Until 1910 the role of the Sorelian hero was played by the proletariat, as the agent of the renewal of European civilization, but when it failed to achieve its intended goal it was replaced by another hero. From this point on Sorel focused on the revolutionary act rather than the hero carrying it out; what was important was the idea itself rather than the bearer of the idea, whether it might be an individual, a political party, a class or a nation. When Sorel became disappointed with revolutionary syndi­ calism, he turned to other political groups that were trying to secure the primacy of the revolution. He thus extended the Nietzschean revolution of the individual to the political arena by calling the “collective individual” - that is, the masses - the modern political force. The power latent in the masses enchanted Sorel, and they became the new standard-bearers: In the age of the masses “it was inevitable, therefore, that a few people should be struck by the idea that the great movements of the masses might be used for political ends.”13

Fin de Siecle and the Pragmatic Response Sorel continues to be a problem for many researchers and ideologues of the Right and the Left. He has become a litmus paper by which thinkers, researchers, and political activists shape their own beliefs and try to formu­ late their own ideas. An international colloquium on Sorel, held in 1982 at the fxole Normale Superieure, later resulted in the publication of Georges Sorel en son temps (1985);14and then, the Societe d’etudes Soreliennes was founded in 1983 and published Cahiers Georges Sorel.'5This “revision of Sorel”16tried to achieve three main purposes: the Gallicization of European socialism through Sorel; the reclaiming of Sorel by the Left; the rehabilitation of Sorel from the charge of contributing to the rise of Fascism, or to put it another way, the attempt to banish the memory of what Sartre called the “Fascist speeches” of Sorel.17 Sorel was a thinker who called himself a true Marxist, but viewed young Mussolini and Lenin as the two greatest politicians ever produced by social­

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ism. He was a Dreyfusard and an anti-Dreyfusard in the same decade. He waited for a cultural rejuvenation of decadent Europe, but kept silent during World War I. He was anti-Semitic but admired ancient Hebrew civilization. A revolutionary who discovered the modem instruments of power of the twentieth century, at the same time he looked at ancient heroic cultures as an inspiring model for the France of the fin de siecle. He supported the CGT (Confederation Generale du Travail) and “Action Fran^aise”, Revolutionary Syndicalism and Marxism, the Soviets and the great American capitalists, Proudhon and Bernstein. In the very same year that Sergio Panunzio glori­ fied Sorel as the father of Fascist syndicalism, Sorel looked at the Soviets as true revolutionary syndicates.18 Two members of the “Cercle Proudhon” which brought together Monarchists and syndicalists, Nationalists and Socialists - sought to have a monopoly on Sorel as the father of their con­ tradictory thoughts. These were Georges Valois, founder of the “Faisceau”, and the communist Edouard Berth.19 Sorel has influenced, in one way or another, French communist militants such as Georges Michael, Marcel Fourrier, Henri Barbusse, Paul Delesalle, Robert Louzon, Hubert Lagardelle, and Jean Bernier, as well as such French Fascists as Paul Bourget, Jean Variot and Rene Johannet. He wrote in various French political journals including Effort, Cahiers du Cercle Proudhon, Cite Frangaise, Avant-garde, Action directe, Independence, and Mouvement Socialiste. Daniel Halevy’s well-known apocryphal story of the Bolshevik Russian and Fascist Italian ambassadors to France who proposed erecting a monument above Sorel’s grave, once again emphasized the ambiguity that has surrounded Sorel’s memory. Two days after Sorel died, Delesalle wrote in Humanite: “Proletarians, exploited everywhere, believe me, one of your most lucid and greatest defenders has passed away.”20 Three days later, Georges Valois wrote in Action Franqaise: “I bow and pray before the tomb of the man to whom I owe so much.”21Julien Benda wrote in his La trahison des clercs: “it is current knowledge that Italian Fascism and Russian Bolhevism both derive from the author of the Reflections on Violence.”22 Of course, Sorel himself is responsible for that “baffling accumulation of paradoxes and contradictions,”23 as pointed out by Henry Stuart Hughes. Tracing the paths of the historiography on Sorel teaches us more about the ideological discussions and political debates which took place during the twentieth century than about Sorel himself. Many articles, reviews and books have been written on Sorel since he published his first book on Socrates in 1889.24 This literature points to the conclusion that the creator of the myth of the general strike and the sociologist of the myth himself became a myth used by different political activists and by various beliefs and ideologies. Just as every political camp has its own Sorel, so every generation also has its Sorel. It seems there is no other political theoretician in the twentieth century whose fame arose from a search for new myths and for cultural rejuvenation (ricorso). No wonder that Benedetto Croce called Sorel the “Vico of the 20th century”.25 Sorel broke ideological boundaries and felt himself both an insider

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and an outsider in various political camps. This is perhaps why everyone can find his own Sorel. For both Nietzsche and Sorel the primacy of myth displaced the primacy of reason in three respects. The first was the use of evidence from the heroic myths of ancient civilizations as a critical tool against the thought systems, ideologies and regimes that sanctified the existing order at the turn of the century. The second respect was the creation of aesthetic myths of the modern world as a response to the outdated culture of the Judeo-Christian ethic, the classical tradition and the philosophy of reason. Sorel’s aestheticization of politics clearly brings out the fact that he did not consider politics a mediating factor of parties or class interests, but a central cultural experience that shapes and organizes modern life. The third respect was the use of the new mythology, which was anchored in the cyclical conception of history, to rebel against the dominant concept of progress: Nietzsche's use of the Overman and the will to power, and Sorel’s use of the myth of the general strike as a central concept in political thought. Cycles of degeneration and renewal are discerned within a civilization, and at each decadent stage a new mythology must be created to breathe new life into history.26 Nietzsche’s Janus-faced Overman, with his awareness of both nihilism and the will to power, rejected the ideals that had nourished European civilization since Christianity: accepted truths, the imperative of reason, progress, various ideologies, the state and democracy. These values and milestones of Western civilization must make way for the new principle of the will to power, which classifies people according to their ability to create culture-forming myths rather than their historical, moral or class status. The Nietzschean Overman, who became the Sorelian “new man,” joined his peers to create a syndicate of individuals organized into a sort of proletarian fighting order that extols the myth of the general strike. As one of the pioneers of social psychology, Sorel compared political activity to the theatre and constructed a theory in which the masses would grasp socialism as an intuitive unity in the dramatic act of a general strike. In order to lead the workers into action one must allow them to participate in the drama in the form of a myth that personifies their hopes. Was Sorel a barometer, a kind of seismograph of his time, or did he con­ tribute to the emergence of twentieth century cults of violence? Of course he was both. Like the economist Marx, the sociologist Pareto, and the psycholo­ gist Le Bon, his analysis influenced his times. Sorel has to be considered a thinker who thought in terms of civilization, not just politics. That is why Sorel regarded myth as the subject-matter of renewal, rather than reason as the sub­ ject-matter of progress. From Marx, Sorel learned that the proletariat should be the center of civilization and its modern agent of renewal. But unlike Marx, Sorel thought in moral concepts rather than economic terms, in terms of psy­ chological phenomena such as myth rather than in a materialistic language. Sorel transformed Marxism from a model of social science to a myth of social war. Marxist ideology analyzes reality; Sorel’s myth mobilizes masses. Sorel’s early writings - Contribution a Vetude profane de la Bible (1889),

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Le Proces de Socrate (1889), La mine du monde antique (1901), Le systeme historique de Renan (1902) - can be classified as pragmatic-functional writing, in which historical truth, if it exists at all, is not given top priority. In these “historical research essays” Sorel summons evidence, as did Nietzsche before him, from the heroic mythical past of the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, and the early Christians. In Contribution Sorel crystallizes for the first time what I call “aesthetic creativity”: the Bible is to the Hebrew farmer-warrior what Homer’s epics are to the Greek citizen-soldier. The heroic myths in the poetic garb of the Bible capture Sorel’s heart. According to him, the language of the Bible is a combi­ nation of creative imagination, metaphors, images and parables, which is specific to ancient Hebrew culture. Unlike the Greeks with their plastic art, the Jews created a whole world with their language. This imagination made it possible to conceive of the existence of something beyond the customary order of things. Thus, the Hebrew language contributed to the materialization of a mythical world constructed out of the realm of fantasy, and fertilizing the real world. Jewish symbolism and the mythical world are intertwined: the Psalms of David represent the national myth of Hebrew culture.27 The mythical dimen­ sion is expressed by asserting that the messianic character of David is a mythical image in Jewish culture which needs a unifying factor in the light of persecutions. The messianic myth of King David bound the Jews, who were in exile from their land, together, in the hope that the Temple would be rebuilt. Thus, myth was of service to real life.28 The intellectualization of Hebrew culture in the person of King Solomon was rejected in favour of the heroic myth surrounding David. In the poetic language of the Bible, David’s heroism was elevated to a mythical level. [King David] achieved this recognition of his State by dint of his exceptional personal qualities and the important consequences of his rule. Whereas scholars attributed to Solomon the Book of Wisdom, in which the rule of reason is seen to be unduly declining, the populace put the emphasis on the Psalms of David, into which he breathed his entire soul.29 In short, it was not the content (wisdom per se, morality, or Jewish justice) which Sorel displayed as the glory of Hebrew culture, but the heroic myth in terms of preference for its form. In Contribution and later, in Le Systeme, Sorel sees the ancient Hebrew civilization (as expressed in the Old Testament) as a culture which could ascribe its success to the principle of “aesthetic creativity*. By emphasizing the heroic myths in the symbolic language of the Bible, Sorel gives prominence to the symbolic-mythical aspect of Hebrew culture rather than to its rational and intellectual dimensions. Sorel looks at ancient Greece, as Nietzsche did before him, through the prism of current events in order to secure far-reaching evidence. In his discus­ sion of Greece in Le proces, Sorel is hypnotized by his own selectivity, which

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combines direct Polis-style democracy with an idolization of the aesthetic, revulsion from the demagogy of rhetorical Sophists and the oligarchy of street politicians, and an ethic of creativity and citizenship based on military patterns. Sorel examines the rise and fall of the Greek polis through the prism of two formal principles: the aesthetic and the military. The success of this combina­ tion led to the flourishing of Classical Greece, whereas the decline of emphasis on the aesthetic and the military, on the direct responsibility of Socrates, led to the downfall of the polis. The military structure guides Sorel in his exami­ nation of polis institutions. The polis citizens are farmer-warriors; the binding force in each family derives from order, organization and hierarchy. There is an analogy between the family qualities desired and the character of the soldier, between the division of labor and the functioning of a good army.30 Sorel turns things upside down: The good citizen of a polis is judged by his military qualities; war is the test of good citizenship. Military excellence makes struggle fruitful; professional skill only presages the arrival of bureaucracy.31 Aesthetics provide the second criterion of the Greek polis strength. “The alliance between the poets and the families,” in Sorel’s words, typified for him the direct democracy of the polis.32 Until the Sophist schools were founded, education was equally available to all. Poetry served as a bridge between the aristocrats and the people. Homer’s heroes were raised to the level of a myth. The rise in professional skill, Sophist rhetoric, and philosophical elitism, pushed aside the myths of Homer’s heroes. The professional class of politi­ cians and propagandists alienated the ordinary, fearless farmer-warrior from the political structure which he had established and within which he func­ tioned without any intermediaries. The passage from an agrarian and mythical society to an urban and rationalistic one damaged the aesthetics which tran­ scended class distinctions through Homeric poetry, the great tragedies, and Greek mythology. The myth of the Roman Empire was examined in La Ruine, particularly in terms of its failure. Bureaucracy had neutralized the myth. Here too Sorel seeks far-reaching evidence and claims that the subject of interest is not the Roman Empire as a Great Power, but the fall of the Empire. Sorel searches for the cause of the collapse of the myth and the reasons for the destruction of a world power. There is no doubt that the collapse of 1870 and the decadence of the French bourgeoisie provided the backdrop for Sorel’s writings. Sorel uses the term “military decadence” as the term which most accurately describes for him the process of the decline of the myth of Roman power. Rome does not institutionalize its control of the fronts. Constantine thins out the imperial borders. Officials, as a result of the new administrative system, are paid more than the fighting regiments. The Empire shows weakness in face of growing Parthian strength and the periodic Jewish revolts. No serious attempt was made to reorganize the army. The principles of innovative mili­ tary thought, which were characteristic of Rome, were forgotten. The Emperors abandoned the Roman tradition and its conquests. “This bourgeois

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logic was fatal because the borders remained without adequate defence.”33 Yesterday’s conquerors became today’s policemen. The myth had become bureaucratized. The Empire’s justification had lain in its desire to expand, in great conquests, in organizational genius, in heroism, in virtue, in the myth. Now the aim of the Empire was to rest on its laurels, to be content with day-to-day achievements, to preserve the status quo. Standing still took the place of the adventurous spirit. The rot which set in affected Roman vitality. In the twilight of the Empire, Roman society had become an anachronism. A dichotomy developed between the citizens and the soldiers. The Empire moved far away from the essence of the Hellenist Cite,34 which, it may be recalled, Sorel had defined in Le Proces as a citizen-warrior society. By the fourth century C.E., Roman society had become a fiction. Like the French monarchy on the eve of the Revolution, so too in Rome the Emperors devoted their efforts to discov­ ering fiscal devices to meet the demands of the ever-dwindling public treasury. “Honorius amazingly resembles Louis XVI.”35 Rome lost the legal pagan and military orientation for which it had been distinguished, and turned from being a secular state into a Christian theocracy. Christianity exchanged the heroic concept of the city-state for the bourgeois concept of a pacifist empire. In order to succeed, Christianity had to conquer the middle classes. By making an effort to win popularity with them, it became more and more like them. “It was necessary to become Romans like them.” Roman decadence also became attached to the myth of the Christian warriors. i6 In his Contribution and Le Proces, Christianity is examined as a myth, not as history. For Sorel, the Bible is poetry, not historiography. Just as the myth of David united the Jews, in their Dispersion and in the shadow of persecu­ tions, on the basis of their messianic faith in the rebuilding of the City of David, so Jesus was transformed into a myth which sustained the Christian martyrs in their faith and strengthened their hope for the ultimate victory of the Christian “cite”.37The Christian martyrs fought against the Church estab­ lishment. In his Reflexions sur la Violence, Sorel once more compared Church history to a battle campaign.38 Sorel accepts early Christianity as ricorso, but begins to have doubts about it the moment it turns into an establishement in the framework of the Church. His fear was that the new framework would weaken the fighting spirit. Thus, religion and church are judged not by their content but by their form. The reli­ gious message or the establishment framework did not count as much as power, which was heroic, mystical, belligerent, and faithful. The first Christ­ ians, “renewers of Judaism,” became stronger with every persecution they suffered. The Gospels were written to serve as an ideological explanation of the anti-Christ as an excuse for persecution by the Romans. “Christian ideology” was based on heroic events.39 The early Church was militant and therein lay its strength. So, the Catholic Church was regarded as similar to the Socialist Party. In both of them, Sorel was looking for renewal, in both he rejected institution-

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alization. It was the creative activity which fascinated him. This equation was possible “since most of the noble bases of socialism are conditional upon the activities of a free spirit.”40 In his view, the Church in its day was too manip­ ulative, with most of its attention focused on ideology. The Church politicized the mysticism and the rationalization of faith which characterized the begin­ nings of Christianity. Liberal ideology replaced the myth and the warriors were supplanted by the Church Sophists.41 The later Church elevated theology and philosophy above myths and thereby became similar to utopian socialism.42 Studying the miracle of Lazarus, Sorel rebuts the rational expla­ nation given by Renan, his mentor and instructor in Bible research, as basically fictional.43 The attempt to give scientific explanations for miracles is completely refuted. The circumstantial-theological theory is rejected in favor of direct, supernatural and mythical explanations. The miracle thus now became something which later would be the myth. Neither of them needed the scientific, sceptical examination of details. One had to accept the miracle or the myth in its entirety. Positivism was utterly rejected. Sorel is not a historian. His historical research served to reinforce his polit­ ical outlook. Goethe’s slogan, quoted by Nietzsche in The Use and Abuse o f History, is equally typical of Sorel: “I hate anything which will only give me additional facts without directly multiplying or putting life into my activi­ ties.”44 Nietzsche and Sorel are uninterested in accounts of historical events which have no significance for the contemporary period. There is no point in preserving them in the collective consciousness. Stories of that kind may interest a scientific historian, but Nietzsche and Sorel, who are not historians, are only interested in the pragmatic component of the past. This is how Nietzsche describes this pragmatism: Without the myth, culture loses its natural and healthy creative power. Only when myth appears on the cultural horizon does the process of culture-in-the-making have inner meaning.45 Pragmatically, significance lies in the myth. In Nietzsche’s The Birth o f Tragedy and his early writings, the reconstruction of heroic myths became a pragmatic tool for criticism of fin-de-siecle decadence by making reference to the classical civilizations. Thus Nietzsche and Sorel could agree with Thomas Mann’s judgement that “historiology for the sake of pure knowledge and not for the purpose of advancement in real life [ . . . ] is murderous, is in fact death.’46

Socrates and the Aesthetic Response Sorel’s distinction between the Platonic Socrates and the Xenophonic Socrates set Sorel free to take an ambivalent position toward Socrates.47 He admires Socrates, but denounces Socratism. The abstractionism of Socratism hurts the

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moral and erotic basis of the familial organism. Individualism destroys the institution of family. Ratio replaces Eros,48 utopia replaces philosophy. The new Socratic institution, looking for a positive correlation with wisdom and beauty, is a dangerous deception. The new Socratic mold of simplified man, bureaucratic in thought and morally technocratic, rejected the classical polis whose distinction derived from principles of struggle, family, creative work, a city-state of citizen-warriors. In Reflexions Sorel denounces Greek opti­ mism, a product of Socrates philosophy, which was “optimism to an insufferable degree.”49 Socratic optimism searched for a place of rest in illusory harmony. Optimism passes with special ease from revolutionary anger to the particu­ larly ridiculous pursuit of social peace. Sorel associates optimism with the search for harmony. This is an illusion that involves Nirvana. The struggle abates. On the other hand, the pessimistic struggle leads to liberating consciousness and to creative struggle. Sorel tried to formulate a central claim in analyzing the rise and fall of the Greek polis: Socratic ethics changed Homeric aesthetics. Heroism in the agrarian-military society, which distin­ guishes itself by its direct democratic structure, was replaced by the demand for harmony in a technocratic oligarchically-controlled society. For Sorel, Plato represents professional philosophy and even more the philosophy of power.50 The so-called unity of thought and action in the hands of the philosopher-king is a governmental manipulation. Plato is too learned, he creates an alternative to reality, he established illusions; in a word, Utopianism. Plato’s and Socrates’ philosophic rationalism is opposed to the creative aesthetics of Sorel. To Sorel, governmental power, which was sepa­ rated by Plato from creative aesthetics in the epic form of tragedy, means tyranny in a philosophic cloak. A comparison of Sorel’s position with regard to Socrates’ trial and the posi­ tion he held with regard to Dreyfus five years after the writing of the book on Socrates, is fascinating: in both, Sorel shrinks from the politicization of a moral act, from the manipulation of those who set norms, and propagandists, from the gap between law and justice.51 The Dreyfus affair is for Sorel a parting of the ways. The remains of bourgeois morality disappeared. The political manipulation of the moral attained unkonwn peaks. “The liquida­ tion of the Dreyfus affair, from which Dreyfus’ devotees knew so well how to profit [ . . . ] showed that the things that matter most to the bourgeoisie are shares on the stock Exchange.” 52 The moralistic dichotomy of Nietzsche’s school serves as a basis for the important distinction that Sorel makes between producer and consumer morality. In the first group of values, Sorel makes a parallel between Nietzschean heroism and the morals of the master-class: “It is known how Nietzsche admired the values created by the high-rank warrior class, whose activities enjoyed complete freedom from social compulsion, who return to the simplicity of the wild beast and become victory-drunken monsters again.”53 The belligerent nature characterizes the new morality. “I have founded the pro­

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ducers’ morality [ . . . ] on feelings that necessarily develop from conflicts which the toiling workers wage against their masters.” 54Consumer morality, on the other hand, is that of plant parasites in times of decline: “The ideas that are common with modern moralists come mostly from Greece in its period of decline. One can say that we are in the area of consumers’ morality.”55 “Revolutionary syndicalism would have been impossible if such weak moral­ ity existed in the workers’ world.”56 The criteria pass from the field of ethics to that of struggle, from concepts of absolute justice and moral norms, good and evil, to concepts of production, effort and struggle. To Sorel, the producer morality means authenticity. The consumer morality signifies decadence. Authenticity and decadence are the litmus paper o f the new morality, characterized by form rather than content, which expresses a new heroic culture that changes its basic assumptions: no more universal-rational criteria, inherited from the Enlightenment, but particularaesthetic criteria. “The social war for which the proletariat incessantly prepares in the framework of the syndicates, may give birth to the bases of the new civilization, which suits a population of producers.” 57The morality of proletarian producers is now tested as an aesthetics (of form) and not as ethics (in contents). We are confronted with the aestheticization of the moral principle. Militant action is the important thing, not the message, the inten­ tion or the content: the lofty moral views do not depend at all on considerations, on education, or on the will of the individual. They depend on the state of war that the people agree to wage and is translated into precise myth.58 Sorel’s analysis leads him to the conclusion that morality does not repre­ sent a value-system but is a form of existence, an authentic or decadent model of of culture, society or the individual. In the respect, Socrates was the great enemy because he questioned the virtue of the Homeric heroes.59 In his histor­ ical genealogy of morality, Sorel arrives at the conclusion that “the further we descend the social ladder, the more good qualities we find.”60 That which is said to be moral is contemptible; “It is precisely the poor who provided good examples of heroism.” Nietzsche delineated the same genealogy twenty-one years before Sorel.61 Sorel believed that the poor man was not heroic because he was wild and close to nature, but because, like Greece itself, he was forced to fight. Ethos replaced ethics, the form overruled the content. . . ” The Sorelian hero characterized by his new belligerence is the multitude. Sorel expands the Nietzschean model in two directions: in the political direc­ tion the Sisyphean subject undergoes a political change and engages in mechanisms of revolt and violence; and in the social direction the superior man joins those who are similar to him and establishes a syndicate of orga­ nized individuals, the “order” of the militant proletariat. Sorel carries out a historic projection of the model of Nietzschean man. The ennobled individu­ alistic man now acts in the social / political dimension. Nietzsche’s analysis

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was esoteric and the revolution he made in Western culture had a philosoph­ ical character, while Sorel makes a social and a political projection, a normative extension. Sorel enhances the individual character of the mass, calling it “a collective individual.” In the era of the masses “the idea of using great mass movements for political purposes, is likely to penetrate the minds of some people.”62 SorePs politicization of Nietzsche consciously changes its object: from the Nietzschean individual to the Sorelian proletarian masses. In the era of the masses, Sorel adopts the language of aesthetics. The sphere of industrial production is compared to the sphere of art. In his introduction to Reflexions Sorel writes: “I wanted to show how analogies are found in art that make it possible to understand what the characteristics of the worker will be in the future.” Industry is compared to art and the worker to an artist. In both, one recognizes the capacity for invention, creation, design and a constant struggle. The never-ending process of creation resembles the process of production. Achievement-hungry trade unionsim is a Nirvana, while bour­ geois art is decadent. As for the artist, for the manufacturer, there are no exterior criteria. Their test is immanent. One can compare the artist and the worker to a warrior. All need a myth: The myth exalts people, it leads them always to ever-higher achievements. Art, industry and war are front lines, their activity is in the rational or quantitative field. Their greatness is in heroic, indi­ vidual and original actions. The anvil of creation is in praxis, not in theory created in the laboratory. The heroes are not generals, intellectuals or politi­ cians, but the anonymous soldiers in the workshop, on the battlefield and in the factory. They are against ideas of social harmony. Their world is the reality of the conflict and they shape it in the language of aesthetics. “Thus we must make of society a work of art and treat it as a harmony which is attuned to our aesthetic judgement.” 63 As the work-tool of the proletarian-artist, the machine is the foremost artistic weapon of the worker in the production process. For the worker, industrial production serves as a process of designing chaos. This is an artistic act which liberates the worker from alienation. “In these moments of creation, man is indeed free.”64The aestheticization of the process of production reaches its peak for Sorel in the ethos of the machine. “If there is something particu­ larly social in human activity, it is the machine. It is more social than language itself.” 65 Sorel shifts Nietzsche’s discussion of myth from the field of culture to that of politics. The strength of myths lies in vagueness, shallowness and cultural and political generalizations. The political myth involving by the masses distinguishes Sorel from Nietzsche: while Nietzsche dismantles the myth prudently like a dismantler of mines in order to arrive at the root of things, Sorel takes the political myth as a whole. Demythologization, the dismantling and analyzing of the myths, according to Sorel, destroy their political effec­ tiveness. In viewing the myth that works as a whole with inseparable components, Sorel was influenced by Bergson.66 We see that from Homer to recent commentators there was an interesting

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dialectical reversal with regard to the significance of myth “from a true story” to “a screen story”:67 in Homer’s time the myth presented true facts and its significance was in the telling of the truth. In modern times, as in fact already in Greece, the myth changes into a story, an expedient fiction. Conscious polit­ ical use is made of myth and Sorel maintains that Myth should be discussed as a means of action for the present. Any debate over the nature of their practical application to the historical process is without significance. 68 The myth is important in that it mystifies the political action by urging, encouraging and motivating the masses. According to Sorel, the political effec­ tiveness of the myth is not in its realization but in the very belief in it. “The myth that strike roots in the masses” is the political explosive of modern times: The present revolutionary myths are almost pure: they facilitate an understanding of the activity, the feelings and ideas of the masses which are preparing to join the decisive battle: these are not descriptions of facts but expressions of will. 69 At various times, the importance of the belief in myth was that, according to Sorel, it became political force: the Christian myth - although the myth of the collapse of the pagan world, the Second Coming of Jesus and the rule of the saints - did not come true as expected, but this did not weaken belief in it. Although the Reformation myth seems unimportant today, one should not deny its force in the past. The myth of the French Revolution would have been impossible without visions that were very far from reality. And in the myth of Italy’s unification Mazzini’s vision contributed to unification more than the politics of Cavour. Indeed, It is thus only of minor importance to know the details that comprise the myth that were meant to appear in fact on the historical plane of the future. These are no calendars of astrologers. Maybe none of the contents of the myth will in fact be realised.70 These myths taken from history became non-historical in that they were taken out of their contemporary context and continued to disturb historical memory and political action. Time in the myth deviates from contemporary historical time and herein lies its force. Experience shows us that the building of an unclear future in the dimension of time may be most effective [ . . . ] This happens when we talk about myths in which the most powerful aspirations of the people, of the party, or class persist [ . . . ] . 71

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Aesthetics, as a reply to Socrates, was interpreted by Nietzsche and Sorel in two ways: Nietzsche’s answer was in the existential aesthetics of art as the myth of tragedy, and Sorel’s answer was in the aesthetics of politics in the form of political myths. The modern myth of Sorel was translated into the model of the general strike.

Progress and the M ythical Response Nietzsche and Sorel reject historical philosophies of progress and regression. These two thus join the historians of culture such as Giambattista Vico, Jacob Burckhardt, Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee, who favoured the cyclic conception of the universe. Since they do not believe in progress, the future will bring no salvation: the Golden Age was sometime in the past and returns with historical regularity. The concept of decline is thus immanent to culture, hence their attraction to decadence. Nietzsche’s conception of history is defined as “eternal recurrence” and that of Sorel as ricorso. Their object is not the wisdom deployed in history together with freedom and morality. Their concept lacks values: they opposed the linear conception of history which sees a positive correlation between progress in time and the Nietzschean love of fate, amor fati. The will to power is actually revealed in the historical process and not in the purpose, which is the crown of progress. According to Sorel, the progress defined by Nietzsche as the “tip of the iceberg” masks illusions. Sorel rejoices in the opportunity to unmask them one by one: instead of harmony, the world of conflict is stable; he puts vital volun­ tarism in place of paralyzing determinism, in place of optimism he prefers fruitful pessimism. In his eyes, the illusion of progress is a narcotic and also a weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie, which desires the status quo, the perpetuation of the existing situation. For the bourgeoise is the conquering class and the philosophy of progress through education is its ideology; the theory of progress was accepted as a model for the bourgeoisie, the ruling class.72 Sorel attacks the various theories of progress: the historic school of Sovigny, the prediction of the future “according to what now exists” in the Newman version, the Darwinistic idea of adaptation and of course classical theories of progress: Jacques Turgot, the marquis de Condorcet and M adame de Stael. The monistic principle of the bourgeoisie, which imposes a single class ideology of “progress” in an ever-widening democracy is an illusion of optimal determinism and a useful tool, for the harmonious and rational arrangement of things, with the political aim of paralysis and passivity. “I find an opportunity to clarify the root, the significance or the value of the modern idea.” Sorel uses the method of historic exposure, thus destroying as far as he is concerned the illusions of progress which serve as a political weapon. This radical exposure is a method taken from the school of Nietzsche, the essence of which is the genealogy of concepts. Its purpose is to make clear the danger

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of the bourgeois mentality of searching for harmony. Behind the illusions of progress, the rationalism, linear development and optimism is an attempt to blend the contradictions, to calm the struggle, to suppress vitality and to harmonize the reality of the conflict. In place of progress Sorel puts ricorso. This concept is taken from Vico who was convinced that in order to understand history made by men, one must also investigate the hidden layers of human culture, especially the myths.73 Vico examines culture as a live organism and attempts to interpret its explicit and incidental expressions.74 According to Vico, human culture repeats similar forms of behaviour in various forms and it is possible in a certain convoluted movement of history to distinguish ricorso/corso. The corso becomes a second reincarnation, more complex than ricorso: the form is similar, the content changes. In Reflexions, Sorel says “Barbarism only preserved what existed,” and adds: “In this phenomenon, Vico found an illus­ tration of his ricorso theory.”75We are thus not surprised that Croce saw Sorel as “the Vico of the twentieth century.” 76 The general strike is the Sorelian myth of modern history. As we have seen in the case of the Greeks, the myth is present in history but goes beyond it: in a dialectical manner, it is an effective factor in changing the face of things, by molding the consciousness of the people involved in change. Hence the impor­ tance of Sorel, who outlined the connection between myth and politics. The myth is not explained by Sorel as a model of historical legend that was woven over a long period and finally was stylized retroactively as myth. To the contrary, the crystallization of the myth enabled its believers, from the begin­ ning, to change a given historical reality. What Sorel appreciates here is not scientific rationalization but political effectiveness. Sorel identifies myth as working in the service of history. Sorel’s general strike should not be envisaged in exact terms. We only have negative definitions: the general strike has no achievable purposes, it has no concrete plan of action and it is not formulated in terms of political action. The general strike is a myth, a series of ideas. It is of little importance if the general strike was partly successful or only a product of the popular fantasy.77 Its importance lies in the infusion of fighting spirit into the proletarian masses and the capitalistic owners. The general strike is a catalyst, a stimulative force with political drive. “I understand that the myth of the general strike astounds many cautious people because of its interminable nature.”78 Actually, this feature of the general strike underlines its mythical, not its practical nature. The general strike brings about a vital ization of history. Through the mythical character that Sorel ascribes to the general strike, he dismisses in advance any empirical criticism. The general strike is not composed of elements that can be assembled, disassembled, foreseen or veri­ fied. Its power is seen as a single complex: Indeed, the general strike is what I said: the myth in which the whole of socialism is encompassed, an organization of ideas capable of arousing

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instinctively all the feelings suited to the various forms which express the socialist struggle against modern society.7* The general strike is a coordinated group action, an organized proletarian act. It differs from anarchy, which derives from the Greek word anarchos (without government). The starting-point of the anarchists at the end of the nineteenth century was actually harmony.80 They thought that a compulsory union within the state framework should be replaced by a free association of individuals and groups. This liberal society, to be organized on just an economic basis, would be harmonious in character and not need any authority imposed from above. Sorel concludes: “This anarchism was thus entirely bourgeois, from an intellectual point of view”.81 The general strike is not an anarchistic act. On the other hand, it cannot be a rigid political institution like the trade unions. The myth of the general strike permits Sorel to find a solu­ tion between anarchy and organization, so it is characterized both by structure and the lack of it. To avoid a static situation caused by over-organization or being swept into complete chaos, Sorel suggests a solution to this apparent paradox in a myth of dynamic structure which preserves organization and order, yet remains spontaneous and fluid. The general strike is meant from the beginning to be a myth with a histor­ ical heroic educational function in an era of decadence. From this point of view, the general strike embodies the dialectics of myth in relation to history very well: the supra-historical myth of the general strike was meant to have a pragmatic function in current history. Sorel is careful not to specify what this myth is, for if the myth is spelled out too clearly and concretely in the here and now, it is in danger of being swallowed up by historical reality and of not going beyond it. On the other hand, if it is completely detached from its func­ tion in history, it runs the risk that it will no longer have any function in this world. In Sorel’s case, he is both a historian of myths and a creator of myth: he dialectically combines the mythological-synchronic past with the historicdiachronic past to fertilize contemporary history, using the heroic myths of the past. The general strike is a myth outside current history, but at the same time it is a myth that acts inside history and shapes it. The myth of the general strike is a modern example of the series of histor­ ical Sorelian myths that provide formal precedents which repeat themselves in contemporary periods: the leitmotif that links the myths of different times is a formal common denominator beyond time and outside of history.82 Thus, the myth is a form beyond history, and its essence varies according to histor­ ical periods. Analyzing Nietzsche’s and Sorel’s myths, one can identify a tendency to unity in history. Unity is expressed in the desire to find a total, comprehensive, super-temporal explanation for history.83 In this respect, the Nietzschean and Sorelian myths constitute an Apollinian concretization of historic chaos. The myth provides a clear sense of unity of form in history. These supra-historical myths become pragmatic ones the moment they are

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meant to play a role in present-day history, which was indeed the purpose of both Nietzsche and Sorel.

M arxism and the response o f violence In Sorel’s political philosophy, one can see the sum total of the fin-de-siecle climate of opinion: Henri Bergson’s vitality, Benedetto Croce’s categories of action, Gustave Le Bon’s psychology of the masses, William James’ pragma­ tism, Eduard von Hartmann’s unconscious, and the discovery of Vico’s ricorsi. The importance of Sorel is that he provided a political home for a wide range of contemporary opinions. The growth of the new social sciences was also reflected in Sorel: the new psychological trends (Theodule Armand Ribot, Jules Henri Poincare and the “Ecole de Paris”) gave a sort of academic legit­ imacy to a preoccupation with the emotions of individuals and of the masses. In the same way, they legitimized the revolt against positivism, progress and Emil Durkheims’ sociology. Sorel, Le Bon, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Federico Pareto and Robert Michels are examples of the connection which developed between an interest in mass psychology and “‘elitist” political conclusions. From 1901, Sorel and Charles Peguy participated in Bergson’s lectures at the College de France.84 In order to understand Sorel, it is necessary to under­ stand the “Bergsonian” Sorel. The ultimate cause, in Bergson’s pantheist view, is creative evolution: the flow of life means that construction and destruction are a single continuum.85 Bergson renewed the discussion of “ex nihilo nihil fit”: rejection of what now exists obviously involves the creation of something new. Bergsonian concepts, each one of which derives from the preceding one (e.g. duree, intuition, freedom, movement, the flow of life and elan vital), taken out of their broad philosophical context by Sorel and partially trans­ posed, were therefore misleading in Sorel’s theories. Bergson himself maintained that Sorel had too original and independent a personality to carry the banners of others and that “there is no connection between his (Sorel’s) daring innovations and my ideas.”86 For Sorel lofty moral views are no longer dependent in any way on the indi­ vidual’s considerations, education or wishes; they are dependent on the state of w ar in which the people agree to participate and which is translated into exact myths. His abandonment of traditional ethics brought Sorel to the aesthetic language of the workshops. In his view, the field of industrial produc­ tion was similar to the field of art. There was an analogy between art, industry and war. The workers’ tools were like the painter’s brush or the sculptor’s chisel, in that they became part of his very being. Sorel sang a hymn of praise to the ethos of the machine. “If there is anything which is especially social in the activity of man, it is the machine. It is more social than language itself.”87 The aesthetization of the machine did not make a fetish of the worker or personalize the machine but challenged the Marxist concept of alienation; the machine did not alienate man: it made him free.

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As we saw, Sorel translated into political terms the Nietzschean transition from the Judeo-Christian ethic to the aesthetics of the will to power. This is where the aesthetic politicization of Nietzsche occurred: the general strike was discerned as a poetic myth and revolutionary syndicalism was a “social poem”. Sorel changed the area of political discussion from science to myth, from ethics to aesthetics. If we look carefully at Sorel’s intellectual develop­ ment, we see that he began to revise Marxism in terms of the Nietzschean, Proudhonnist and Bergsonian concepts which had already shaped his own thought-processes. Bernstein was right when he defined Sorel as a new Marxism in Nietzschean form. Sorel revolted against the rational tradition from Socrates to the Enlightenment and transformed reason by means of an aesthetic view of the world. Historicism, romanticism, historical determinism and the theory of progress all described man as an historical concept. By contrast, at the center of the Nietzschean existentialist approach, man shaped his own world through myth. Guidance from past experience was abandoned in favor of an open future invading the present through the medium of myth. It was the power of myth to achieve the unity of man and his world through an immediate aesthetic - existentialist - political experience such as the myth of the general strike. The revision of Marxism by Sorel in the 1890s must be considerd together with the revisions by Eduard Bernstein and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. But whereas both the latter accepted Marx’s ultimate ai ms with respect to a classless society and equality, one supporting the method of social-democracy and the other a revolutionary elite, Sorel’s revision was centerd on the concept of class warfare. In the years 1895-1898, Marxism split into two opposing camps, each of which claimed legitimacy. Those who wished to attain Marxism “through the ballot box” focused on the rational, and those who preferred a combative Marxism, who idolized the concept of class war­ fare and saw in struggle a way to preserve the energy of the proletariat, focused on the irrational, vital, psychological and combative elements of Marxism. While the Bernstein and Leninist revisions claimed to be the heirs of the Enlightenment, Sorel’s revision revolted against it and wanted to free M arx from Marxism.88 Marx gave Sorel a coherent perception of the philosophy of history: history was class-struggle. The historical method and the ability to unite various elements within a single framework: this was the greatness of Marx, and this was what Sorel needed at the period when he assimilated different theories and thinkers such as Nietzsche, Bergson and Proudhon. When Sorel based Marxism on class struggle, he did not refer only to historical necessity and technological improvement, but gave priority to the class’s responsibility to itself. The proletariat did not only swim against the stream, but created the stream; the concepts of “w ar” and “classes” not only represented historical forces but also an expression of self-consciousness and self-determination. The key-question for Sorel was motivation, and he concluded that exploitation was not an economic of social category, but a psychological one: Man was

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not a Homo Economicus, but Homo Mythicus that is motivated by emotions, symbols and myths. Sorel was never a Marxist in the true meaning of the term.89 From the very beginning, he accepted only partially the basic principles of Marxism: he never espoused M arx’s conclusions on the nationalization of the means of produc­ tion, on historical determinism socio-economic forces, the dictatorship of the proletariat, or the concepts of alienation, property, the fetishism of goods or the division of labor. Sorel had an a priori view of what Marxism ought to be: Marxism should be an ethical message and a test of authenticity. Sorel’s revi­ sion of Marxism was not just the adding of another layer or a mere afterthought: from the first, his acceptance of Marxism was dependent on the revision he had made. Instead of economic mechanisms he wanted moral renewal, in place of Hegelian dialectics he returned to Proudhon, progress was to be exchanged for a perpetual struggle, voluntarism replaced the deter­ minism of economic forces, and permanent violence took the place of the revolution. The pace-setters in French politics were also examined according to the principle Sorel set himself in order to establish who was carrying the banner of these combative, vital, ethical values of Marxism. Sorel rejected the “Parti Socialiste Revolutionnaire” because of its Blanquist tendency. At first he supported the “Federation des Travailleurs Socialistes” (the “Possibilists” ), founded in 1882 and led by Paul Brousse. However, closest of all to his heart was the “Parti Ouvrier Socialiste Revolutionnaire”, founded in 1890 by Jean Allemane, who opposed the trade-unionism of the “possibilists” and supported the Proudhon view of direct proletarian action. The establishment of the National confederation of the “Bourses du Travail” by Fernand Pelloutier in 1892 and the CGT in 1895, which supported the general strike, direct action, the decentralization of the syndicates and workers’ unions, finally brought Sorel to abandon the political parties.90 Sorel’s final disillu­ sionment with the socialist political parties as carriers of the flag of action occurred with the creation of the united socialist bloc in October 1898. Despairing of party politics, Sorel began to support direct political cults. La Decomposition du Marxisme (1908), which was published in the same year as Reflextions sur la violence and Les illusions du progres, is thought to be the summary of the Sorelian revision of Marxism. The aim of the booklet, based on a lecture given to the international conference of socialist syndicates in Paris on 3 April 1907, is “to examine the significance of M arx’s thought.”91 Long before the Decomposition, Sorel had examined the meaning of M arx’s ideas in the trilogy: L ’avenir socialiste des syndicats which was published in Humanite Nouvelle in 1898 (and reprinted as Materiaux d ’une theorie du proletariat in 1919), Saggi di Critica del Marxismo (1902) and Introduction a L ’Economie Moderne (1903). This Sorelian trilogy on Marxism proved that Sorel had always been critical of the orthodox Marxist principles as formu­ lated, for example, by Engels, Kautsky and Gil Ged, and the social democratic interpretations of Bernstein and Jaures.

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Das Kapital was translated into French only in 1875, and as Daniel Halevi pointed out in 1880: “Paris did not know anything about Marxism.”92 Proudhon dominated the workers’ political consciousness in France during the 19th century. By means of Proudhon, Sorel hoped to retrieve Marx from the rationalistic-harmonious-philosophical context of Marx’s early writings, the inheritance of the Enlightenment, and to turn him into the militant Marx of class warfare. The Marx who attacked Proudhon was, in Sorel’s opinion, a very Hegelian Marx: within M arx there was a clash between two contradic­ tory trends, Hegel and Proudhon.93 Whatever was historical for Hegel - that is, whatever was a temporary thesis or antithesis, swallowed up in the dialec­ tical process - was immanent for Proudhon and Sorel. For them, contradictions existed side by side and balanced each other out: movement was everything and synthesis was a philosophical fiction. Sorel hung on to Proudhonism because he preferred M arx’s class warfare (contradictions) to the Marxian classless society (synthesis). In 1895, the interaction between Sorel and the Italian Marxist Circle became decisive. Sorel, in association with Lefargelle and Deville edited the Devertir Social which, together with the Italian Critica Sociale, founded by Fillipo Turati in 1891, was the organ for promoting the revision of Marxism. The foremost Italian representatives were Turati, leader of the socialist party, Severio Merlino, editor of Rivista critical del socialismo, the young Benedetto Croce and Antonio Labriola, professor of moral philosophy at Rome University and leader of the group.94 Sorel accepted from their critique of Marxism those principles which suited him. He was particularly impressed by their critical and professional analysis. Marxism, henceforth, was regarded as a conception which extolled political struggle - both class and ethical - and thus forged the figure of a proletarian-militant who saw his work as creative rather than alienating: it was not the economic content which was important but rather the form of militancy. Sorel’s revision of Marxism gave birth to revolutionary syndicalism: syndi­ calism represented for Sorel the value of self-consciousness and the expression of the daily voluntary struggle of the proletariat for freedom and at the same time for the deliverance of civilization. He saw the syndicate as a militant group of the proletarian masses and the microcosm of the free ideal producers society. Syndicates were the avant-garde which had to be isolated from the bourgeois order to avoid being assimilated within it. This “New School” revolted against the priority of theory over practice which, according to Sorel, typified the ideologists, politicians and social-democrats, and emphasized the primacy of the workers. It was the Syndicates and not the party which repre­ sented socialism.95This primacy of “ouvrierism” brought Sorel to an unsolved dilemma and drove him away from Marxism. The role of violence was to “ rediscover energy [ . . . ] thus”, concluded Sorel, “violence has become an indispensable factor in Marxism.”96 Sorel clarified his meaning in the preface to Reflexions, “We are ready to complete Marx’s doctrines rather than simply interpreting his texts.”97 It was the militancy of the conflicting classes that

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captured his heart. Violence was the proving-ground of the class war: only if it was violent was it an authentic class war. If violence ceased, then the class war became a distorted contest between two camps striving for class harmony. Every ideology has its own philosophy of history: violence, which expressed itself in the general strike, revolutionary syndicalism and the cult of violence was the Sorelian philosophy of history. Sorel, who declared himself a true Marxist who wanted to complete his master’s work through violence, turned Marxism upside-down. The result was absolutely different from the original: in order to arouse and stir up the working class, Sorel developed a theory of history that put violence in the center. This creative violence as the energic factor of history was transformed into a new political content, and when, at this juncture, the theory of the myth and direct action were added, nothing remained of the original Marxist model. Violence was the Sorelian philosophy of history which was anchored, first and foremost, in his revision of Marx; class-warfare was for Sorel the corner­ stone of the Marxist thought.98 The decadent bourgeoisie and the proletariat as devotees of social peace were signs, for Sorel, of a dual process of degener­ ation. He concluded that violence “tries to rebuild the class structure”, and “aspires to restore to capitalism the belligerence it once had.”99 History, according to Sorel, was the history of violence; it is impossible, he believed, to understand history without understanding the role of violence: the positive value of violence, which was characterized by such terms as “pure”, “ideal­ istic” , “just” and “purified”, lies in its vitalization of history.100 Violence was not just the key to the philosophy of history: it was a moral testing-ground. Sorel not only analyzed violence as an immanent historical tool but endorsed it as a permanent aesthetic value. As we have already seen, myth was a central concept in Sorel’s philosophy of history: the fuel that powered vitality in history was not to be found in ideologies, but in myths. The role of ideology, according to Sorel, was to perpetuate the existing system of interests or to replace it with another. On the other hand, the role of myth was to stage revolutionary actions and to undermine the existing order. Sorel used the study of history as a tool for a reorientation of political philosophy: he believed that an understanding of the inner logic of the rise and fall of ancient civilizations could give an impetus to present-day history. He differentiated between utopia and myth. Utopia was the image of reality, an imitation, a reflection. Utopia was not revolutionary vis-a-vis the existing order, but aimed, rather, “to direct the powers-that-be towards reform.” 101 A corroboration of this view may be found in Sorel’s attacks on Renan: “He (Renan) sees in socialism a utopia: that is, something which may be compared to reality.”102 Sorelian myth, unlike a utopia, was nihilistic with regard to the given historical reality: “Our myths lead people to prepare for battle to defeat the existing order.”103 Myth was not part of the harmonious order of things. It was an alternative order, a real substitute for the existing order, albeit artificial: in this way myth negated concrete histor­ ical existence and tried to eliminate whatever exists. Historical myths tried to

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negate the existing historical reality: examples are the myth of early Christianity, the myth of Roman power, the myth of the conquering barbar­ ians, the myth of the Reformation, the myth of the Italian “ Risorgimento”, the myth of the French Revolution and the myth of Napoleon. Following Le Bon’s social psychology, Sorel created a political philosophy according to which the future producers’ society would understand socialism through the intuitive and spontaneous drama of the general strike. Sorel, who accused other intellectuals of inventing utopias, did the same; or, to put the matter in Frank E. Manuel’s words, “Sorel. .. was committed to a utopia of absolute principles internalized by a heroic proletariat [. . .] there was, of course, no final conquest because the utopia lay in the conflict itself. ”104Sorel’s myth of the general strike, the central concept of his political philosophy, was in fact a utopia. The Sorelian distinction between power and violence parallelled his distinction between utopia and myth: bourgeois power rested on utopia while proletarian violence rested on myth. We saw how Sorel analyzed bourgeois power and found its origins in the harmonious philosophy of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. This philosophy represented an abstract construction, a Platonic state-of-mind, and for its realization power was needed. Only the myth of violence could destroy this arbitrary compul­ sion or static power, and the “general strike” was the crystallization of this myth. Sorel chose the concept of the strike, as applied to the proletariat, to recreate the concept of the warrior, the producer, as the human basis for a new civilization of creative men. The destruction of the bourgeoisie was at the same time the building-up of the creative proletariat through violence. In this respect, violence became creative at the very moment when it destroyed power. Power preserved order, while violence destroyed it; power was compulsion, while violence was freedom; power was decadent, while violence was authentic. No other thinker went as far as Sorel in glorifying the historical value of violence: movement, for him, was everything, and violence supplied the necessary energy. 105 In Sorel’s political philosophy one could find a new moral scale in the same way as in Nietzsche’s thought: authenticity, creativity and vitality were regarded as good, and compromise, weakness and decadence as bad. Sorel examined Socialism according to these new criteria, and when he looked for a new lexicon for the modern world, he found it in religious terminology, as when he said: “I owe to socialism all the highest ethical values, because it brings salvation to the modern world.”106Violence as the energizing force of history passed beyond descriptive analysis and attained a metaphysical signif­ icance. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the political myth became the hallmark of a European political style and was formulated in terms of this creative violence. Sorel made his revision of Marxism in 1895, because the revolution did not take place as Marxist theory predicted. As a result, he turned from orthodox Marxism to revolutionary syndicalism in its French or Italian vari­

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ants. But the “new school’ disappointed him also, and in 1910 Sorel broke away from syndicalism. It became clear to Sorel that the proletariat in France and Italy wished to integrate itself into the liberal state through political parties, trade unions, education and the army. The syndicate, according to Sorel, did not carry out its function of liberating the proletariat and hence civi­ lization, and Sorel turned away from it and looked for renewal in the myth of the nation.107Sorel left the “Mouvement Socialiste” in 1908, and declared that “Action Fran^ais” was the only serious national movement. When he published La Revolution Dreyfusienne in 1909, Sorel condemned the proDreyfus movement. In 1910 he expressed his disappointment with the Syndicalist movement, and in a letter to Agostino Lanzillo he claimed that his socialist writings had never been considered the most important part of his work.108 In the same year, 1910, he participated in the planning of La Cite franqaise, a national-socialist review he intended to found. In 1911 he joined the national group “Independence” and together with Variot was the co­ editor of the review which carried this name. Later, he was the spiritual father of the well-known “Cercle Proudhon” although he never joined it formally. The essence of Sorel’s preoccupations arising from the past, concerning the ancient heroic civilizations and the syndicalist revision of Marxism, did not change at all: Sorel kept searching for a myth which would bring renewal. Sorel’s move into nationalist circles in France and Italy did not conflict with the principles of his political theory, but served only to emphasize the more sharply that he attached greater importance to a myth (the revolution) than to its agents (the proletariat or the nation). In place of content (either left or right), which was the product of past tradition, there was an identification of the present reality with man as the essence of the existentialist idea. Since modern reality was dynamic, modern man was bound to identify with the rhythm of reality. Hence, Sorel introduced a concept which affirmed man’s aesthetic (non-rational) view of (non-rational) reality. This view departed from the accepted rational and ethical criteria of good and evil, replacing them with new definitions of authenticity and decadence, of producers and consumers. Sorel transformed an aesthetic view of the world into concepts of political action. The combination of the revolt against reason, the negation of progress, the affirmation of modernity and the theory of myths proved to be the point of collapse of the identification, hitherto regarded as essential, between the idea of reason and modern development. Man, for Sorel, created his modern world not by means of rational progress but through myth. The “new man” did not receive his world from inherited culture or from history, but identified with his modem world which he himself created, thereby becoming authentic. The modern myth stripped the political avant-garde of its ideological clothing by using modern, radical political concepts such as energy, activism, and violence in place of history, determinism and progress. To be authentic, one had to identify with the modern world, and if this reality was dynamic and nonrational, then a dynamic political style and aesthetic language had to be

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invented to suit it. This political style became the heart of a new dynamic polit­ ical culture which emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. In the above-mentioned modern phenomenon, aesthetics were no longer perceived in classical eighteenth-century terms, but as an active force embodying “social poetry” as an existential life-style which stimulates heroic action. The new criteria transcended categories of left and right. The aesthetic of dynamics, which found expression in the affirmation of violence (even a “symbolic” or “metaphoric” violence), was transformed into a romantic protest against the frozen and static bourgeois order. This revolt of the fin-desiecle period and afterwards became a political style which created the “generation of 1914”.

The Futurists as M odern Primitives The Italian futurist movement, more than any other avant-garde movement in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, typified what Allan Bullock called the “double image” of modernism.109 On the one hand, the Futurists brought to light major characteristics of the modern age (e.g., simul­ taneity, dynamism, speed, industrial and urban aesthetics),110 but at the same time, they added ideological concepts such as “revolutionary nationalism”, “heroic technology” and “mechanized warfare”.111 With regard to this second aspect of the image, futurism created a political style which molded and guided the Fascist ideology in its revolutionary and formative stage. This dual face of futurism - namely, “modernism” and Fascism”- was at one and the same time both the analysis of “the traumatic crisis of modernization,” - as the historian Renco De Felice called it,112 and its proposed solution involving a dynamic political style. The challenge which the futurists set themselves was to build a bridge, by means of political action, between the aesthetic concept of “modernism” and the sociological concept of “modernization”113 or “modernity”. This style was created out of a tech­ nological utopia and a modern political myth which integrated what the Futurists called the “new m an” into the new industrial society. Vladimir Tatlin’s statement with regard to Constructivism and revolutionary Russia, that “we created the art before we had the society,”114 also applied to Italian futurism and its role in paving the way to the Fascist society. Italian politics at the beginning of the twentieth century were influenced by a new vision of life inspired by Fascism and futurism. Politics departed from the traditional nineteenth-century analysis of ideology and the new forms of political protest were formulated as myths.115 These myths characterized the lifestyle of the European avant-garde and carried a political-aesthetic message. Aesthetics and politics were interfused with one another until it was impos­ sible to distinguish between them. In this respect, futurism represented the revolutionary phenomenon of an artistic-political movement, the first of its kind in modern Europe, in which the art did not serve the politics and the poli­

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tics was not the product of the art: the art of the futurists was political in the most immediate sense of the word. In contrast to the artistic character of impressionism, cubism, expressionism and surrealism, and in contrast to the home-grown movements of totalitarian regimes, the futurists as political artists created an autonomous revolutionary style. In order to understand the interrelationship between Fascism and modernism, it is worthwhile examining the futurists who contributed to the rise of the Italian Fascist ideology but did not join the Fascist regime: or, at least, not in their majority and not with the expected enthusiasm.116 In 1914, before the socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti was murdered, Marinetti wrote about a “minimum futurist programme”, still hoping to realize a maximal futurism. In many respects, futurism can be considered the ideal type of Fascism: unlike the Fascist movement in Italy, which had to compromise with the complex Italian reality in order to achieve political success and establish itself as a regime, the futurist movement was able to allow itself to remain modern, secularist and anti-royalist, and at the same time national-revolutionary, anti-socialist and anti-parliamentarian. The manifesto published by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1896-1944) on the 20th of February 1909 in the Parisian journal Le Figaro marked the begin­ ning of the Italian futurist movement.117 In this manifesto, there was the first statement of the principles of the movement which were developed in the years 1909-1915, the years of “early” futurism: i.e., a revolt against the historical tradition; dynamism as the essence of modernity; conflict, danger, war and the machine as symbols of the technological age which Italy was about to enter. Futurism as an urban avant-garde movement was in the beginning a school of painting and sculpture, but after a short time it embraced architecture, music, literature, theatre and the cinema as artistic expressions and as means of disseminating its political ideas. Futurism sought a political style which would harmonize with the artistic expression of the urban, industrial and techno­ logical reality. Thus, futurism, which originated in industrial Milan, represented both European modernism and the translation of this modernism into a violent political language. The futurists called themselves the “primitives of the new age”, and saw modernism as a new form of primitivism. Primitively-inclined artists such as Gauguin, Van Gogh, Modigliani and the cubists, who fled from modern civi­ lization, sought subjects for imitation or inspiration in ancient history (ancient Egyptian or pre-Columbian civilizations) or far-away continents (Africa, the Far East). Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism discovered primitivism, which can be defined as “a conscious return to the art of an undeveloped state”.11* In the years 1907-1910, the artists of Die Brucke fled from urban society to the lakes of Moritzburg. Kirschner, Heckel and Schmitt-Rottluff sought authenticity far from modern Munich and Dresden. The primitivist aspiration to the authentic, the ancient and the original typified modernism, but the inno­ vation of the futurists was that they sought the object of primitivism in the new age. In the original version of the “Technical Manifesto of Futurist

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Painting” (1910), the futurists declared: “We are, on the contrary, the primi­ tives of a new sensitivity multiplied a hundredfold, and our art is intoxicated with spontaneity and power.”119 While the “primitive” artists felt estranged from the modern world and all that was connected with it, the futurists worshipped everything to do with modernism: the telegraph, the atom, neon lighting and, of course, the motor-car. Paradoxically, the futurists attached to modern manifestations like the motor-car and the aero plane qualities normally associated with remote tribes and ancient cultures: spontaneity and simplicity, directness and transcendentality, now represented by the new phenomena of mobility, dynamism and speed. In “The Exhibitors to the Public” (1912), the futurists declared: “Our hands are free enough and pure enough to start everything afresh [ . . . ] . Our object is to determine completely new laws [ . . . ]”.120 A glorification of youth was combined with a revolt against the bourgeoisie and with a fin-de-siecle fashion of admiring the “noble savage” contemptuous of history. The futurist primitivism rejected the moribund past and the education which estranged one from life, and thus also rejected cultural institutions such as museums, libraries and academies. Like Nietzsche who contrasted “memento mori” and “memento vivre”, the futurists stressed the dichotomy: death - the past, and life - the future. This, however, was not a concept of “progress” which gave a functional importance to the past as a preparation for the future. For the futurists, there could not be any progress from the past to the future, or a development which gave legitimacy to history: they rejected the past a priori, due to the very fact that it was the past, and this applied also to themselves: “When we are forty, other younger and stronger men will probably throw us into the wastepaper-basket like useless manuscripts - we want it to happen!”121 Futurism did not spring up in a vacuum in the history of the Italian nation. The belief that the young were the only people who could carry out a neces­ sary revolution had found political expression in Giuseppe Mazzini’s Young Italy and the Risorgintento, and artistic expression in the Florentine Macciaioli movement, the Milanese La Scapigliatura movement, and in the Italian diversionists like Giovanni Segantini and Gaetano Previati. The futur­ ists had been preceded by figures and movements which called upon Italy to adapt itself to the modern age: an adaptation which would restore Italy to its leading position in Europe. From 1903, the Florentine movement prepared the ground for futurism through the journal Leonardo (1903-1907) and its successor, La Voce. Together with Croce’s La Critica, these movements made it their objective to destroy the dominance of positivism and materialism in Italy. The young Leonardists called themselves the “wild men of philosophy” and the “illiterate intellectuals”. A European intellectual climate which was both romantic and modern was not a contradiction in Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century, and futurism was the outcome of this historical devel­ opment. For the futurists, the rejection of history was not an intellectual idea or a

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philosophical statement: they regarded the active expression of violence towards the past as being in itself an authentic act of liberation. The destruc­ tion of past civilization (passeism) was seen as a violent act of liberation which was to be performed through a modern and futuristic synthesis of art and poli­ tics. The symbol which glorified the future (the aeroplane) and rejected the past (the book) obliterated the previously automatic association of primi­ tivism with the past. Now a new association had been created: that of primitivism with the future. Marinetti thought that the cult of the future, of the aeroplane and of dynamism possessed a mythical, archaic quality: “The poet must spend himself with ardor, splendor, swell the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.”122 The use which Marinetti made in his manifesto of “primitive” elements (fire, rain, night) indicated that there was not neces­ sarily any contradiction between the longing for the primitive and a modern vision. The futurists declared that they did not aim to renew anything but to express the new, to be a faithful channel of expression of their time; the myth of “the future”, “modernism” and the “racing car” served their purpose. Because the present was still bound by the chains of the old consciousness, they invented new forms of expression appropriate to the future, a kind of science-fiction: Enrico Prampolini’s colours of sounds, Carlo Carra’s syntheses of sounds and smells, Umberto Boccioni’s pictorial dynamism, the futurist theatre which placed the audience in the center, and an architecture which envisaged the city of the future. The futurists fused this new language of modernism into the political, mythical and aesthetic aspects of technology.

The Aesthetics o f Dynamism Modern primitivism found expression in the six main elements of futurist aesthetics: universal dynamism, physical transcendentalism, force-lines, transpositon of the spectator, states of mind and simultaneity. The futurists, as the new primitives, discovered dynamism as a first prin­ ciple of the universe and as a characteristic of modern art. Universal dynamism was declared to be the “culmination of art”, the “absolute concept” and the “effusion of life”; it was said to be produced by the interrelating motions of the moving bodies of which the universe is composed.123 Dynamism was revealed as an absolute in all forms of modern life: in language, in poetry, in literature, in struggle, in war and in work. Marinetti passed from the affir­ mation of all vital human actions to a glorification of all forms of rebellion: violence, conflict, misogyny and war were all regarded by him as valid expres­ sions of universal dynamism. Marinetti’s philosophy of dynamism, influenced by Nietzsche’s meta­ physics and Bergson’s concept of time, rejected the static ideal of reality. Dynamism speed, action and change were the qualities par excellence of modern existence; the metaphysic was to be a cosmic and total life-experi-

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ence which activated both its object and its subject. The theory of “univer­ sal dynamism” was formulated in terms of the concepts “total” and “magical”, and it affected all areas of life: if the meaning of life was move­ ment, and living meant action, then political activism and direct action were necessary consequences. The new sensitivity to the technological, mechanized and dynamic world of modern times led the futurists to a modern transcendentality represented by dynamism. The futurists did not deny the existence of the irrational, spir­ itual aspect of life: the place formerly occupied by wood and stone was now taken by the motor and electricity. “Physical transcendentalism” was the modern form of man’s basic need to search for the “beyond”.124 The futurists said, “one must communicate the unseen” .125 The “beyond” was represented in futurist painting by sounds, smells and sensations - non-visible existential elements. “Physical transcendentalism” was the disclosure abstraction of the physical reality and its conversion into a spiritual value. In futurist painting, there was an attempt to transform matter into something devoid of physical characteristics: reality was rendered as a metaphor and the metaphor became the reality. Boccioni’s painting The Street Enters the House (1911) was a visual demonstration of how houses could become noises. This transformation of values did not apply to the separate elements, which did not in themselves confer a sense of transcendentality; only their combination together gave the elements their new value. In this respect, futurism may be regarded as an aspi­ ration to perceive the world in a unified manner, and this is something it had in common with myths, for myths convey a definite feeling of formal unity in the universe and in history. Mondrian abandoned the subject126 and Kandinsky abandoned the “objective” appearance of the world; the futurists sought to achieve “physical transcendentalism” in both its objective and subjective forms.127This aspiration, however, may be regarded as a tautology, because they tried to achieve the absolute through dynamism, which they also considered a form of the absolute. The desire to express themselves in the language of the modern world led the futurists to an exposure of the force-lines of the object. For them, the forcelines were the internal vectors of the modern reality. The futurists rebelled against Benedetto Croce’s idealism and said that true art was intuitive, and was revealed by force-lines.128 They arrived at an imaginary reorganization of the objective universe, using force-lines as a new physical concept. This was a point of demarcation where the futurists’ construction ended and the intuition of the spectator began to come into operation. In the creative process represented by force-lines, the futurists stressed the transference of the spectator into the center of the picture.129They wanted the spectator to participate in the creative activity involving forms, colors and objects. The internal rhythms of the force-lines simultaneously affected the object, artist and spectator, and by this means the painters attempted to elim­ inate the psychological distance which had traditionally existed between the spectator and the object.

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By changing the respective positions of the artist and spectator in the creative center of life, the futurists demonstrated their desire to adopt an elitist role, directing society. They wanted to restore the romantic dimension of a mystical fusion with nature in place of a dichotomy of man and nature, the artist and the universe, the spectator and the seen.'30 They were hungry for Einfuhlung. empathy with the world of things, the identity between object and perception.131 The futurist concept “total unique form” reflected the challenge of achieving the holism “man-universe” and transforming the spectator from a passive observer into a participant in the dynamic experience of creation. The artistic theory of “placing the spectator in the center of the picture” also had an effect on the art of politics: the spectator or the crowd were from now on no longer passive objects of the political experience but were politicized by their participation in the experience of dynamism. The futurists regarded states of mind as the culmination of their art. In depicting the stormy modern world, they wanted to paint things as they happened: not to eternize movement but to continue it, to express atmosphere, feeling and spirit with their full force. The depiction of states of mind repre­ sented an Apollonian ordering of the Dionysian turbulence of life in the modern era, or, as the futurists put it: “Chaos and clashing of rhythms, totally opposed to one another, which we nevertheless assemble into a new harmony.”132 States o f Mind was also the title of Boccioni’s famous triptych representing, in three pictures - the atmosphere of parting, the mood of going on a journey, and the feelings of loneliness of those who are left behind. Similarly, Carra who employed the concept “states of will” and Balia in his paintings expressed the view that life is basically experience and that move­ ment is a state of mind. Like Boccioni, they saw dynamism as a soul-principle. In Estetica a Arte Futuriste, Boccioni defined simultaneity - the futurist way of approaching a subject from different points at the same time - as “a situation in which the different elements revealing dynamism come togther . . . The basis of all the plastic investigations made by the futurists is simul­ taneity.” 133 In his painting Music (1911-1912), Luigi Russolo tried to express several dimensions at once: the simultaneity of the sense of sight and the sense of hearing. The futurist simultaneity implied a total vision: the painted or sculpted object was a kind of representation of the world and all that therein is. This world was a total dynamism requiring the mobilization of all the spec­ tator’s senses, arousing in him a simultaneity of sensations, stimuli, impressions - a “synthesis of what a man remembers and what a man sees” and expressing all the existing though invisible elements such as sensations, sounds and smells.

The Racing-car, The “N ew Pegasus” On the 11th of May 1913, F. T. Marinetti published in Lacerba the manifesto “Destruction of Syntax, Imagination Without Strings, Words in Freedom.”

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There he wrote: Futurism is grounded in the complete renewal of human sensibility brought about by the great discoveries of science. Those people who today make use of the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the train, the bicycle, the motorcycle, the automobile, the ocean liner, the dirigible, the aeroplane, the cinema, the great newspaper (synthesis of a day in the world’s life) do not realize that these various means of communication, transportation and information have a decisive influence on their psyches.134 At the end of the nineteenth century, there began in Italy a process of rapid industrialization and technological development which brought about a dramatic change in social consciousness and cultural attitudes. Cities like Milan and Turin in a short time became centers of industry.135 The fast pace of life and the new experiences put an end to an age-old slumber. Street tech­ nology like electrification and domestic technology like the telephone changed norms at home and at work, in culture and in politics. The motor-car provided a good example of the awareness of this revolutionary change in the public consciousness. Motor-races became a common occurrence in Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century.136 The newspapers and commercial jour­ nals reported on them in detail and augmented their popularity.137The futurist racing-car was the symbol and existential expression of the new heroic spirit; the myth of the “new man”, the “homo mechanicus”, was to grow out of this modern-technological vision. The futurists expressed modernism through a dynamic reconstruction of the world via technology. By means of the automobile, the artist began to be an active participant in the direct experience of modernism. The books of Jules Verne, the apostle of technical progress, moulded the outlook of the futurists, as one saw in Marinetti’s early collections of poetry La Conquete des etoiles (1902), Destruction (1904) and La ville charnelle (1908), and in his chief novel, Mafarka le futuriste (1910). Paul Adam, in his book La Morale des sports (1907), greatly influenced the futurists by his poem in praise of the auto­ mobile, the mysterious power of motors and the intoxication of speed. This modern romanticism - or, in the words of Mario Morasso: “ il romanzo della machina” - replaced the heroic romanticism of the “cavallereschi”. The machine became a new cultural element, and the symbolist or deca­ dent school of poetry of the late nineteenth century now appeared outdated. The motor-car symbolized the age of the machine, represented the power of the elite and created the vision of a new world. Boccioni expressed this eloquently in 1912: “The era of the great mechanized individuals has begun, and all the rest is paleontology.”138 Marinetti’s aesthetics of the machine, like his pre-futuristic poetry, was highly eclectic in character and was a reflection of the general intellectual climate at the beginning of the twentieth century. Einstein’s theory of relativity, the energitism of Charles Henry and Bergson’s

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dynamism had completely altered the traditional concepts of time and space. In 1905, Marinetti published his celebrated poem “A Mon Pegase” , whose subtitle was “A L’Automobile de Course”.139 Speed, in the poem, was the raison d’etre of the racing-car. Expressions like “trunk of steel”, “vehicle inebriated with space” and “Japanese monster” appeared in almost the same form in the manifesto. The poem “ La Mort Tient le volant”,140 which appeared in 1908, also heralded the atmosphere of the futurist manifesto and expressed the antagonism between the modern life represented by the motor­ car (the steering-wheel, the road) and the decadent-symbolist motif of death. This tension between the principle of modernity and the principle of decadence characterized the modern primitivism of the futurists: death, the symbol of despair and favorite poetic subject of the fin de siecle was unfavorably contrasted with the motor-car, the exemplar of modernity. The racing-car ideally expressed the dual character of the futurists: a search for reckless energy and for regulated order at one and the same time. The dynamic structurality permitted the simultaneous existence of these two contrary elements without the sacrifice of either: both dynamism and struc­ ture were present. This dynamic structure was an aesthetic quality devoid of ethics, and the racing-car was not regarded as expressing any ethical values. Speed for speed’s sake was not a means to encourage progress, or particular values or achievements, and it was nihilistic in character - speed which swal­ lowed up everything in its course. If the machine was for Jules Verne an achievement of progress or an expression of technological competence, and if, in the De Stijl Movement, the machine was a means and not the end of human existence, for Marinetti, the racing-car was nothing less than the full expres­ sion of modernism. In “Multiplied Man and the Reign of the Machine” (1911-1915), Marinetti wrote: We must prepare for the imminent, inevitable identification of man with the motor, facilitating and perfecting a constant interchange of intuition, rhythm, instinct, and metallic discipline.141 “Rhythm” together with “metallic discipline”! And, in another place, Marinetti wrote that the “chaos of the new contradictory sensibilities” was organized with “order, discipline, method”.142 The “self” was completely fused with the machine, the old dualism between man and nature was cancelled out and the modern holism of man and technology came into being. Not only did man become “homo mechanicus”, but the machine itself passed through a process of humanization. “You surely must have heard the remarks that owners of automobiles and factory directors commonly make: motors, they say, are truly mysterious [ . . . ] They seem to have personalities, souls, or wills. They have whims, freakish impulses.”143 The futurists did not attempt to gain a deep understanding of the effects of mechanization in terms of social change. They regarded the aesthetics of

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Speed as a vital expression of the flow of modern life: a flow without direc­ tion, a phenomenon without a purpose and a race without an objective. For the futurists, eternity was static, and, by means of the machine, they wanted to express the dynamic moment. This dynamism postulated a new morality: “ the new religion - the morality of speed”, to use Marinetti’s expression, was to replace the Christian morality. While Christian morality restrained sensu­ ality and instinct, the new futuristic morality was to protect man from slowness, memory, analysis, slumber and habit. Human energy was manifest in speed which dominated time and space. The futurist aesthetics of speed superseded traditional criteria of good and evil: “After the destruction of the antique good and the antique evil, we create a new good, speed, and a new evil, slowness.”144 The replacement of the old values of “good” and “evil” by the modern values of “speed” and “slowness” showed an awareness of new models of existence representative of the modern world, characterized by intensity and dynamism. The modernism of the futurist “new man” was revealed, according to the futurists, in a technological consciousness and a nihilistic consciousness which represented a new point of departure for the beginning of the twentieth century. This modern identity distinguished the futurist “new man” from the man of yesterday’s civilization. The futurists’ politicization of nihilism singled them out as modern artists par excellence and as creators of a revolutionary artistic political movement. The futurists’ originality lay in the fact that they gave the consciousness of nothingness a political - cultural status in their philosophy. The “melting of man into the machine” was connected with the technological anesthetization with which Marinetti wished to permeate the “new man”: “We look for the creation of a non-human type in whom moral suffering [ . . . ] will be abolished.” 145 The creation of the avant-garde’s “new man” was a remarkable act of aesthetics, and the technological vision combined with a radical political gospel was what distinguished futurism from the individual nihilism of the Symbolists. The futurists wanted to create a totally new consciousness, a tech­ nological consciousness which would condition the “new m an” to the new age. The concepts of time, space, society, politics, theatre, architecture and technology were all adapted by the futurists to their aim of producing dynamic and revolutionary images in which the language of the machine would domi­ nate: the racing-car in technology, the man-machine in society, the sound-machine in music, the marionette in the theatre, the machine-gun in warfare and the “new city” in architecture, symbolized by the power-station.

Citta N uova In its general outlines, the vision of the futurist city came into existence even before the adoption of Antonio Sant’Elia’s architecture by the futurists in 1914. The pictorial and sculptural concerns of the founding fathers -

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Marinetti, Boccioni, Carra, Severini, Balia and Russolo - were particularly urban. The futurists attacked the “museum city” of the past, condemned monumental, functionalist and decorative concepts and planned a city of the future in keeping with the age of concrete, traffic, mechanization and adver­ tising. They regarded people and buildings as entities no longer alien to one another, but fused into an architectonic-human holism. The futurists were revolutionary in their total conception of the twentieth-century city, and in many ways heralded Le Corbusier, De Stijl in Holland and the Bauhaus in Germany. Marinetti described Rome, Venice and Florence as “cities which we consider running sores on the face of the peninsula”.146 In their manifesto, “Against the Ancient City of Venice”, the futurists called for the “stinking little canals” to be replaced by a futuristic, industrial, mechanized and modern Venice.147 But, despite the obvious urban tendency of the paintings of Carra (What the Tramcar said to Me) and Boccioni (The Street Enters the House), the futurist City began to emerge clearly only in 1912 with Marinetti’s book le Futurisme. The architectural principles of the book were: an architecture of engineering as opposed to classical architecture; a total architecture fusing buildings with transport and communications networks; a technological envi­ ronment in place of a timeless, monumental architecture remote from the requirements of the modern political man. The building as a technological entity and a dynamic essence, and not man, was Marinetti’s center of interest. Reyner Banham has pointed out the lack of social consciousness, and he concluded that realism bordering on a cynicism could become Fascist.148 The chief symbol in Marinetti’s city of the future was the power-station. It represented the city fortress of the year two thousand and had two func­ tions: to run the city of the future by means of electric energy and to express the absolute control of the engineers. The engineers, whom Marinetti described as “noble savages”,149 controlled this technological and mechanical universe. The power-station was the main point of intersection linking together the elements of the new city. The buildings, roads and bridges formed a complex and linked up with each other, and Sant’Elia transposed the multi­ surfaced area which Boccioni had developed in sculpture to the urban dimension.150 Futurist architecture was officially born in 1914, with Boccioni’s mani­ festo, Fortunato Depero’s Draft Manifesto, Giacomo Balia’s “The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe” and Enrico Prampolini’s “ A Futurists Architecture As Well”. What was especially noteworthy in that year was the futurist adoption of the Nuove Tendenze (New Trends) group, in which Sant’Elia, Guilio Ulisse Arata and Mario Chiattone participated. In their exhi­ bition of May 1914, Chiattone presented his “Constructions for a Future Metropolis” and Sant’Elia presented sixteen drawings and his “Messagio” attached to the exhibition catalogue. Sant’Elia’s drawings were a synthesis of futurist technology and cubist geometry, and included plans for buildings and city plans from the years 1912-1914 under the title “citta nuova” (new city).

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The drawings did not portray a general plan of the city but separate buildings, among which an “aeroplane station”, a “central railway station for M ilan” and an “electric power station” stood out. The “aeroplane station” was a revolutionary futuristic concept: a simultaneous combination of airport and railway-station in which the roof of the railway-station served as a runway for aeroplanes making their way between two skyscrapers. In his revolu­ tionary “declaration” of modern architecture, Sant’Elia called these projects “new structures”. The “new structure” no longer represented an adaptation to reality but was a revolutionary concept which changed reality: We must invent and rebuild ex novo our Modern city like an immense and tumultuous shipyard, active, mobile and everywhere dynamic, and the modern building like a gigantic machine. Lifts must no longer hide away like solitary worms in the stairwells, but the stairs - now useless must be abolished, and the lifts must swarm up the facades like serpents of glass and iron. The house of cement, iron, and glass, without carved or painted ornament, rich only in the inherent beauty of its lines and modeling, extraordinarily brutish in its mechanical simplicity, as big as need dictates, and not merely as zoning rules permit, must rise from the brink of a tumultuous abyss; the street which, itself, will no longer lie like doormat at the level of the thresholds, but plunge storeys deep into the earth, gathering up the traffic of the metropolis connected for necessary transfers to metal cat-walks and high-speed conveyor belts.151 The futurist “new structure” was at one and the same time a photograph of the modern age and an instrument for changing the existing historical situ­ ation, being a means of change and no longer a point in a consecutive historical sequence. Architecture, in Bruno Zevi’s words, was the “visible aspect of history”.152 In this respect, it could be said that futurist architecture both expressed and proclaimed the revolutionary situation at the turn of the twen­ tieth century and the revolutionary consciousness accompanying it. The anti-historicism of futurism, said Manfredo Tafuri, was the outcome of five hundred years of expectation of a future purification in European culture.153 Sant’Elia represented the historical break between the old classical world and the new technological world: the new ideal of beauty rebelled against all that was decorative, monumental or static. Instead of the ancient cathedrals and assembly-halls, they now envisaged the creation of large hotels, railwaystations, huge roads and vast harbors. Sant’Elia’s new city was a well-organized complex which allowed no room for the spontaneous or the unexpected. The transportation services were a ramified network dividing up the city according to its length, width and depth on seven levels. In the “gradinate”, as the buildings which rose above the transport network were called, each floor was set back from the one below. The city of the future was described in the “declaration” as follows:

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The problem of Modem architecture has nothing to do with defining formalistic differences between the new buildings and old ones. But to raise the new-built structure on a sane plan, gleaning every benefit of science and technology, settling nobly every demand of our habits and our spirits, rejecting all that is heavy, grotesque and unsympathetic to us (tradition, style, aesthetics, proportion), establishing new forms, new lines, new reasons for existence, solely out of the special conditions of Modem living, and its projection as aesthetic value in our sensibilities.'34 Futurist technology was completely impersonal. Man was swallowed up in the power-station, the racing-car, the “new structure” and the city of the future, all of which exemplified a smoothly-running machine operated through dynamism. The “futurist syndrome” expressed the Janus-face of the city o f the future: structured order on the one hand and a negation of humanity on the other. In the conclusion of the “declaration” there was a summing-up of the principles of futurist architecture: it was against historicism, staticism, classicism, functionalism, monumentality, decoration, preservation and restoration, and in favor of the use of new materials, simplicity of style and the expression of the mechanical world. Sant’Elia’s exaggerated rationalism made no allowance for individual voluntarism. It is not surprising that man did not appear in his drawings and there was almost no human content in the “declaration” or “manifesto”. Futurism was the antithesis of M artin Buber’s idea that “the essence of architecture is a kind of humanization of space”.155 In the “manifesto of futurist architecture” (1914) one finds the idea which Sant’Elia returned to more than any other, namely, the anti-historical radi­ calism of futurism: “Our buildings will last a short time longer than the length of our lives, and every generation will have to construct new buildings for itself.”156 This permanent renewal was connected with the futurist theory of the caducita, according to which works of art have to commit suicide. Industrial things take the place of Classical nature. In this sense they are new nature.157 The futurists, like Francis-Marie Picabia, Marcel Duchamp and Konstantin Melnikov, did not regard the new nature as an external and alien factor, but as an inherent quality of technological existence. In the techno­ logical world, new “laws of nature” were revealed which required a “fresh examination” of the old conditions. In this respect, the futurists felt architec­ ture to be a suitable expression of the mechanical world: “Architecture has to be the most befitting expression, the fullest synthesis and the most artistic and effective integration of this world.” 158 In the catalogue Futurismo e Futurismi, Enrico Crispolti explained the mythical and utopian foundations of Sant’Elia’s new urban vision: “Sant’Elia found his imaginative utopian instrument for a new urban vision in the vertical solution, and projected himself into this myth, represented in all its primitive vitality by industrial North America.”159 A decade after Sant’Elia and early futurism, the futurists - Balia, Depero, Marchi, Prampolini and Panaggi - were still continuing their architectural

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experiments, but the “architectonic dynamism” of Sant’Elia and Boccioni had disappeared. The Turinese futurist group, which included Luigi Colombo (Fillia), Ugo Pozzo, Diulgheroff, Beppre Fernando, Mino Rossi and Alberto Sartoris, in 1923 proposed futurism as the art of the new Fascist state. “Futurism” completely lost its original dynamic significance, although the term continued to be used throughout the Fascist period. Futurism traveled a long way from its dynamic, innovative stage to the static stage of the Fascist establishment, as presented in the Sala D elb 1922, created by Terragni in 1932 on the tenth anniversary of the Fascist revolution. It is true, however, that “the utopian character of Sant’Elia’s designs could only be presented as a new vision of a coming urban architecture, as mere idea - in short, as a utopia.”160 In futurism, however, one may nevertheless discern a logical historical development of concepts and images like Sant’Elia’s utopia which through a dialectical process were handed down to the Fascist period. There is a clear line running from the “new city” (citta nuove) to the “futurist city”, and from that to the ‘Fascist city”. In the end, only dynamism separated the holistic, centralistic and total approach of futurist architecture from that of Fascism.

M odern War “War, the world’s sole hygiene” - a phrase which recurred in various forms in the futurist manifestos - became an essential political credo of futurism. Futurist theory and the practice of war paralleled one another and affected one another. In 1911, Marinetti was involved in the war against the Turks in Tripoli, and in 1912 in the siege of Adrianople during the Balkan wars. When the war broke out in Tripoli, Marinetti wrote in the second futurist political manifesto: “Today, we cannot admire anything except the remarkable symphony of the lead shrapnel and the wild explosions of the artillery.” 161 In Tripoli, there emerged the new futurist slogan of “Pan-Italianisna”: “We are proud to feel that the sentiment of warlike enthusiasm in the entire country is equal to our own enthusiasm [We must] announce the birth of panItalianism.” Already in 1909, Marinetti had praised permanent violence and continuous tension as protecting the authenticity of the individual and of society: “Patriotism and love of war have nothing to do with ideology: they are principles of hygiene without which there is nothing but decadence and death . . . We cannot advance resolutely towards the future without our personal hygiene of daily struggle and our collective hygiene of a bloody clash every ten years.”162 The systematic political activity of the futurists in their early stages focused on two main issues which preoccupied the Italian national consciousness at the beginning of the century: namely, the irredentist claims against Austria and the interventionist movement in favor of Italy’s entry into the First World War. The question of Tripoli was the connecting link between the irredentists

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and the nationalists: the irredentists who wanted a greater Italy within its natural boundaries soon lent their voices to the colonialist demands of the Italian nationalists who wished to be like their European neighbors. The futur­ ists played an important role in the Tripolitanian adventure which paved the way for the rise of Fascism. In 1911, Camille Mauclair wrote under the title “Futurism and Young Italy” that, “following the recent Tripolitanian action [ . . . ] futurism, which sprang out of literary paradoxes, has to be taken seri­ ously.”163 In his consideration of the relationship between “fantasies of faith” and realpolitik, Adrian Lyttelton wrote in connection with the futurists that “the distance between the politics of fantasy and the politics of violence is a short one.”164 Marinetti’s coverage of the Italian-Turkish war as a military correspondent in the autumn of 1911 was one of the first written testimonies in Europe to war in modern times. For instance, Marinetti wrote a great deal about the use of aeroplanes, which changed the old way of looking at things: for the first time, one could get an aerial view of land battles, movement became of primary importance, the soldier threatened by machine-guns from the air was soon to be caught in the trenches, and the warplane brought the front close to the inhabitants of the cities. By means of the new technology, modern warfare contributed to making it a total conflict. Marinetti reported on the new perspective of war to the French national newspaper L ’Intransigeant in a series of articles entitled “Une Bataille Moderne”. More developed and evolved expressions of Marinetti’s impressions from an aero­ plane following the Libyan episode appeared in the “Technical Manifesto of Futurist, Literature” in 1912, and formed the basis for the new futuristic artform called “free word poetry” (parole in liberta): “This was revealed to me when I was flying in an aeroplane. As I looked at objects from a new point of view, no longer head on or from behind, but straight down, foreshortened, that is, I was able to break apart the old shackles of logic and the plumb lines of the old way of thinking.” 165 The Balkans was the new war front to which Marinetti made his way in October 1912. His impressions of the sights, sounds and smells of mechanized warfare, in addition to the new discoveries in science and technology, found literary expression in “Destruction of Syntax - Imagination Without Strings”. Marinetti constructed a new poetic vision on the basis of the images and analo­ gies of the Turkish War. The 1913 manifesto reached its final conclusion in the first collection of “free word poetry” in Zang Tumb N um b.166The “parole in liberta” as a dynamic expression of the experience of the Tripolitanian War echoed Marinetti’s poetic inventions in the manifesto of 1913. Marinetti’s political activities following the war in the Balkans were expressed in 1913, in the period of the elections to parliament, in two polit­ ical platforms which served as the basis for the creation of the futurist political party. In the first political manifesto and in the futurist political programme, the demands were anarchistic, nationalistic and modernistic. In these plat­ forms, the principles were formulated which led the futurists from revolt against liberal and parliamentary ideas and from anti-intellectualism to direct

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support of violence and radical political action. The cult of political action and the affirmation of modern war were embodied at that period in three expressions167 in Marinetti’s “ war map” - “The Transfer of Troops and Reinforcements Around Bengazi”; in Brini’s “war cartoon” “The Peace Map and the War M ap”; and in Marinetti’s sketch “The Riot in Milan”. These expressions showed various aspects of time and a new perspective deriving from an aerial view. Marinetti and the futurists urged the Italian public to join the First World War because it constituted an entry-ticket into the modern world. For them, participation in the European War was a test and a battlefield in the great confrontation between futurism and passeism, and therefore Italy could not afford to stand aside. An adaptation to modernism meant joining the war. The question of whom Italy was to join was open to debate: the futurists hated Germany and Austria because of their commitment to “Italia Irredente”, and they were intellectually and emotionally close to France, their second country. Entry into the war became a central question of political controversy in Italy. The Socialists supported the Marxist line which saw the war as a struggle which did not concern them between two groups of capitalists. Mussolini was ambivalent and opportunistic, and only on the 15th of November 1914 joined the interventionists and intellectuals who supported the war. On the other side, Marinetti saw the approaching war as a battle for the cultural future of Europe.168 Marinetti’s avant-garde of yesterday now became the interventionist norm in Italian politics. The interventionists were organized in groups called “Fasci di Azione Rivoluzionaria”, and in January 1915 the first Fascist national Congress was held. On the 31st of March, Marinetti and Mussolini made a joint appearance in Milan in favor of Italy’s entry into the war. The enthusi­ astic demonstrations ended with the arrest of Marinetti and Mussolini and a strengthening of their relationship. The London Agreement of the 26th of April led to Italy’s entry into the war on the side of its new allies, France and England, on the 24th of May. Marinetti, Boccioni, Russolo and Sant’Elia joined a Cyclist Unit. An attraction for the machine and the aeroplane and an enthusiasm for the mechanical aspects of the war were common to Marinetti and Mussolini. Mussolini expressed his Dionysian-Nietzschean enthusiasm in the style of futurist “aeropoesia”,169 and admired the technicians - pilots and engineers - who were the architects of the Italian nation.170 Modern war found an immediate expression in the works of the futurists. In his book Guerrapittura, Carra tried to mix, as he said, “futurist politics, plastic dynamism, war drawing and free word poetry.”171 Examples of this were his pictorial reactions to Joffre’s Battle of the Marne in 1915, which were a symbol of the victory of futurist dynamism over “passeism”. One of them was called “The Night of January 20th 1915,1 Dreamed This Picture”, and another was called “Futurist Synthesis of War Bombardment”. In Brini’s cartoons “The War Flag and Our Flag” (8th December 1914) and “The Ruins” (23rd December 1914), the main subjects were the “smoking can­

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non” and the strategic aerial bombing which began to be discussed in Europe with the rumours of German preparations to produce a long-range Zeppelin.172 Trench-warfare was pictorially expressed in Severini’s “Soldier in a Trench” and Brini’s “Now the Soldiers Are Being Thrown Into the Trenches”, both of 1915. There were modern pictorial expressions in keeping with the new warfare: maps such as those by Marinetti in 1914-1915 tried to catch “sequential movement” by means of time and space, which was also the aim of the military maps which described troop-movements. In telegrams of the years 1914-1915, there was a use of telegraphic abbreviation in original examples such as “Telegram 41” and “Telegram 69”. The outbreak of the First World War constituted the climax of the futurist movement and the beginning of its decline. Marinetti and Russolo were wounded, and two of the main and most promising artists - the painter Boccioni and the architect Sant’Elia - were killed. In the same way as for Ernst Jiinger in Germany, who was also wounded but who continued to admire the first mechanized war, for the futurists, also, the war served as a fruitful myth for their creative and political activities and a technological vision which harmonized,with their modern and dynamic style. Aesthetic dynamism super­ seded the old ideologies: We Italian Futurists have amputated all the ideologies and everywhere imposed our new conception of life, our formulas for spiritual health, our aesthetic and social dynamism.173 The futurist political style found in the war a means of fusion of the aesthetics of dynamism and the total vision of modern life. The war was no longer regarded as the ideological expression of a leftist or rightist outlook but as a reflection of the modern world as a reality of conflict. Although war and violence were not in themselves the essence of modernism, modern war was likely to be nihilistic, as Walter Benjamin expressed it, because it became an ideological aim in itself, a self-sufficient process and a phenomenon in which there was an aesthetic pleasure.174 The redemptive power of destruction and the vital strength of the conflict knew no bounds so far as the futurists were concerned. In this respect, the myth of modern war or “heroic technology” provided the motive-force for the nihilistic temperament of futurism. The futurist revolt against the rationalistic and harmonious tradition of the Enlightenment found the war to be a reality of permanent conflict, an anvil upon which the futurist “new man” was forged.

From Utopia to M yth to Politics Futurism was based on a paradox: on the one hand, the futurists created a mechanical utopia of the modern world and a vision of a technological and

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industrial society completely separated from the past. On the other hand, the futurists wanted to translate this utopia into the language of the present by means of a new political style involving the use of aesthetic myths. This tension between the utopia of the future and the myth of the present ran as a leitmotif through the history of the futurist movement. The utopia, a total vision, influ­ enced the myth, which was a means of mobilization, and the myth, for its part, affected the political life of Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century. The image of the desired future did not remain only a wish, but was translated into a revolutionary political language based on a series of symbols which aimed at changing the existing reality. For the futurists, the existential concept of history was the principle on which the reorganization of history hinged. Whereas historicism, romanticism, determinism and the doctrine of progress regarded man as a historical phenomenon dependent on tradition and culture, the futurists wished to identify reality with the individual as the epitome of the existential idea. Because the reality was dynamic, man, they felt, ought not to be hidebound but should empathize with the rhythm of the modern world. The futurists rejected the past-fixation of historicism and romanticism and the future-fixation of the cult of enlightenment and progress, in favor of a concen­ tration on the active present. The revolt against the classical tradition and historical continuity, JudeoChristian ethics and the principles of the Enlightenment (the rational, moral and egalitarian unity of mankind) brought the futurists to an affirmation of the modern world as an aesthetic phenomenon. This was a revolutionary concept in which the individual, who was considered irrational, was expected to adopt an aesthetic approach to life. This approach abandoned the accepted ethical criteria of good and evil in favor of new criteria of authenticity and decadence. The sanction of modernism and rejection of culture as an expres­ sion of the continuity of history expressed the futuristic concept of time: the negation of the past and the affirmation of the future. Within this dynamic conception of the present, history and politics converged, resulting in an attitude which gave the primary importance not to the discovery of historical truth or to the primacy of reason, but to the exis­ tential experience in itself. The denial of the capacity of history to influence politics had a direct consequence: the vitalization of the present historical moment. The liberation from the weight of the past was carried out by means of a philosophy of dynamism and a politics of violence. The rejection of history as a suffocating burden and the affirmation of technology, urban life and industrialization brought the futurists to an aesthetization of the modern world. The futurists said that art was the only history they recognized, and because it was the history of the present, and the present was continuous action, the only possible art for them was the art of action. The futurist art of action was directed against the burden of the Italian past - Christianity, the Roman Empire and the Renaissance - which weighed heavily on Marinetti and his futurist colleagues. The more radical was the wish to distance oneself from the culture of the past in order to enhance the impor­

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tance of participation in the modern world, the more the abhorrence of history and culture as crystallizations of the collective memory and consciousness increased. Cultural nihilism became the cornerstone of futurist aesthetics. This revolt against the past was translated into conceptual ideological values: The past was identified with death, decadence and all that was static, and the future was identified with life, vitality and dynamism. And what was more characteristic of the dynamic alternative than violence? Functional violence became integral to its change from a mark of protest against the expressions of the past to a political characterization of the futurist ideology.175 The anti-rationalist revolt led to contempt for intellectuals, and political activism was now demanded rather than philosophical reflection. For the futurists, reason ceased to be the “raison d’etre” of politics as a main experi­ ence of the twentieth century and as an organizing, forming and altering consciousness. Myth was now placed at the center of the new existential concept. The modern world was stripped of its ethical and rational purpose, and was revealed as an aesthetic phenomenon. Aesthetics as the language of myth provided an overview of the modern world and created the right rela­ tion between the historical and the supra-historical, between man and his world, and between the transient and the eternal. The focus shifted from the rational and historicist dimension to the mythical and aesthetic dimension, and myth was favored in preference to history. Myth wished to capture all at once, through an aesthetic experience, the unity of modern man and the modern world. The “total art” of the futurists, who wished to seize life as a single totality, was an example of a myth operating on behalf of existential history. The violent political-mythical action was the existential moment in which history, politics, man and his world were fused into one. The futurists transformed what Stephen Kern called the “culture of time and space” into a political style and an art-form special of its kind.176 This transposition became a political challenge which on the one hand sought to demolish the status quo and on the other hand to create a myth of the modern world. In this respect it represented a revolutionary use of myth. The combi­ nation of the revolt against reason (and also against history) and the affirmation of myth (and also of modernism) constituted a turning-point in modern history. If thus far the association between reason and modern devel­ opment had seemed natural, now a new and revolutionary possibility had made its appearance. Now the possibility had come into existence of concepts which were non-rational and modern at the same time. In other words, modem man could build up his modern universe, not through rational progress, but by means of a new myth. Man, rebelling against history, identi­ fied with the modern world which was the product of his creation and by this means became authentic. No longer were there illusions of a necessary rational development, but there was an ideal of authenticity which consisted of iden­ tifying oneself with the rhythm of the modern world. If this reality was dynamic, it had to be matched by a similar political style. This style became a series of ideas which fertilized the organized political movements at the begin­

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ning of the twentieth century: radical nationalism, mythical socialism, and a fusion of both in a form of national socialism. The new futurist ideology sought to completely overturn the whole basis of Western culture: Judeo-Christian morals, rational philosophy and histor­ ical tradition. The futuristic dynamism affirmed the modern world, but now the justification was not rational or moral, but existential and aesthetic. The aesthetic justification of the world divested of values replaced the old criteria of good and evil, the products of Judeo-Christian ethics, with new criteria affirming the authentic and non-decadent, the strong as opposed to the weak, the individual as opposed to the collective, the future as opposed to the past. The new futurist values of intensity, dynamism and authenticity were criteria of form rebelling against the old Western moral or rational criteria. The amoral aesthetics of the futurists was essentially modern, and radically different from the classical aesthetics of the Enlightenment.177 The separation of aesthetics from morals was the main feature of the revolt against the bour­ geoisie at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Although the concept of the “aesthetic education of mankind” could be found in Schiller, Kant, Schelling and Schopenhauer, the innovation of the futurists was to combine the political dimension, the existential experience, the language of myth and the awareness of technology in coherent expressions of the “new man”. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, it had been usual to associate ethics with action and aesthetics with contemplation: the futur­ ists, however, sought to transform the aesthetic contemplation of the modern world into the active concept of action in the dual dimension of existential experience and artistic - political activity. The aesthetics of dynamism became a romantic protest against the bourgeois, decadent and static culture, and this romantic protest finally became a particular political style with a validity of its own.178 The dynamic character of futurism and its internal logic required a polit­ ical movement which would not become conservative even after it was established. Hence the problematic of the futurists when they joined the Fascist revolution and especially after it succeeded. The Italian futurists prepared the way for the rise of revolutionary Fascism, but after it became institutionalized, their initial enthusiasm waned. From the beginning, they were concentrated in the radical left wing of Fascism, and they hoped that the Fascist revolution would lead to the triumph of the modern principles of futurism. Their disappointment proved to be as great as their hope had been. Mussolini disposed of Marinetti in the most diplomatic possible way by appointing him to the Fascist Academy. Mussolini’s political sense warned him against too great a closeness to the nihilistic futurists. Because the futur­ ists wanted to preserve nihilism as a permanent principle, maintain the dynamic momentum and continue the revolution after it was established, they soon found themselves outside. The revolutionary establishment which set up a new order was unable to include the futurists in its midst, and it ejected them at the first opportunity or demoted them upwards. This was an additional

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proof of the difference between the ideal type of pre-revolutionary cult of violence, affirming a perpetual revolution, and institutionalized post-revolu­ tionary regimes. The futurists created a series of concepts and myths of the modern world which prepared the rise of Fascism, but their political culture did not permit them to identify with the regime, which they found to be too static.

C hapter T hree

The Nihilist Utopia A M an for All Seasons The connecting link between futurism and Ernst Jiinger was war and tech­ nology. The futurists wished to draw Italy into the First World War because they felt that the national prestige required it and it corresponded to their outlook (“War is history’s sole hygiene” ). They hoped that the war-experience and the new technology would bring Italy into the modern era. Jiinger took the “nihilistic-totalitarian syndrome” to its ultimate conclusions. He used the myth of the “masculine community” of the trenches and the public memory of the first mechanized war in order to construct a utopia in which technology directed, guided and mulded man and his role in the new hierar­ chical society. What the modern, Jiingerian vision of technology has taught us is not how totalitarianism used technology for its own purposes, but how tech­ nology influenced the totalitarian and nihilistic conception of man. In other words, the Jiingerian technological utopia was conducive to a new political form of totalitarian nihilism. For both the futurists and Jiinger, the First World War was a watershed. Previous to 1914, the Futurists claimed that Italy’s entry into the war would inevitably give birth to a new civilization, would sever the umbilical cord that bound it to the stultifying past and would inspire the younger generation with a new and vital spirit. But the war which was the climax of futurism also heralded its fall, and the “first wave” of futurism - the most significant totally disintegrated. The futurist avant-garde bequeathed to the masses its values supportive of the war (although it was not only the futurists who did this, and their influence was not always direct), thereby exhausting its polit­ ical role. The artistic vision which had turned into a political reality now left the way open for an organized movement like the fascist party. Before 1914, the idea of a war had served as a myth of the future creative of the present, or, that is to say, it helped to mold the political attitudes which encouraged entry into the war. In Russia, similarly, the revolution, before it broke out, was seen by the futurist movement as a vague myth of the future, but, when it happened, its members were scattered to the winds, and only a few were among the artists patronized by the Bolshevik regime. But, unlike all these, Ernst Jiinger used the war, which he wrote about after 1914, as a myth of the past creative of a utopian model of an alternative society. Jiinger wished to form the younger generation which had returned from the war to unem­ ployment and a materialistic, meaningless existence into a counter-culture and

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society of the future which would institutionalize the heroic and spiritual values of the “masculine community” and the generation of the trenches. He thus combined the myth of the war and the myth of technology to create a modern utopian vision. Jiinger, born in Heidelberg in 1895, was the eldest son of a typical bour­ geois family with four sons.1 In his early years, his family moved to Hanover on the decision of his father, the owner of a chemical factory, who was concerned for his children’s economic welfare. However, dissatisfaction with a comfortable bourgeois existence caused the seventeen year-old Jiinger to seek out a life of danger and adventure. He crossed the French frontier at Metz and burnt all the money in his possession in order to sever his connection to the past. This episode and others like it were related by him twenty four years later in his book, Afrikatiische Spiele (African Games).2 He then made his way to Africa where, like Marinetti, he found what he called “the promise of happi­ ness”. After he had stayed a few weeks at Sidi-Bal-Abbas in N orth Africa, his father brought him home, but he did not remain there for long. Later, Jiinger described the reasons for his frequent flights from home: “We grew up in the atmosphere of a materialistic epoch, and we all consequently had a taste for something out of the ordinary, for situations of great danger.”3 In 1914, before the outbreak of war, he volunteered for the 73rd Hanover Fusilier Regiment, in which he served for four years. He began as a private, and a year later was appointed a junior officer.4 He did not volunteer for ideo­ logical or nationalistic reasons, but in the hope of finding in the army what he had found in Africa: a life of existential significance, of danger, of spon­ taneity and vitality. He finally found his Africa in the fields of Flanders. The primitivism he longed for changed in content but not in essence, and his myth of Africa was now replaced by the myth of the war. In those years in which he dwelt in the trenches of northern France, Jiinger was in charge of platoons of commandos and was wounded seven times. Like Rommel, he received the highest decoration for valour in the German army. After the war, he returned to his defeated country, and began to take his first steps in civilian life in much the same way as the Weimar Republic itself. His sojourn in the trenches had given birth to an exhaustive battle-diary documenting his experience in the war. The diary, which appeared in 1920 under the title Staklgewittern (The Storm of Steel), won its author immediate fame and was an instant best-seller. Jiinger became the spokesman of the generation of the trenches which had sacrificed all and felt that they had received nothing in return. In 1923, Jiinger received his certificate of discharge from the army, but not before he had contributed to the army yearbook a chapter concerning the tactics of infantry platoons advancing under fire. That same year, he began to study botany, zoology and philosophy at Leipzig university. The study of botany and zoology remained his main interest apart from his work as a writer. In 1925 he married, and a year later a son, Ernestal, was born to him. After the a p p earan ce of Stahlgewittern, which went into many editions, Jiinger produced three more books based on his war experience: Der Kampf als

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inneres Erlebnis (Battle as an Inner Experience) (1922), a detailed analysis of the “mentality of the trenches” , Copse 125 (1925), dealing with the British army’s encampment in an area marked on British maps as the “Rossignol W ood”, and Feuer und Blut (Fire and Blood) (1929), describing the German attack of March 1918 as a major battle on a small scale.5 He did not write about the First World War again, but its horrors, its language and the values and feelings it inspired remained with him ever after. From 1927 onwards, Jiinger lived in Berlin and imbibed the atmosphere of pre-1933 Germany: a mass of militant political groups, an atmosphere of intrigue and machination, clubs which spawned utopias, subversive agitation in beer-cellars, violence in the streets and corruption among the higher author­ ities. In the air were romantic feelings which blended a yearning for oblivion with out-and-out lust. Jiinger declared in the spirit of that time, as Thomas Mann had done a dozen years previously, that all democratic regimes were in contradiction to the essentially tragic nature of the human destiny. His interest in botany and zoology was not scientific but metaphorical: he wished to study the sphere of animals and vegetation as a language of symbols for an under­ standing of the metaphysical essence of the world. In the 1930s, he travelled a great deal in Brazil, Morocco, Scandinavia and France, and in his travelnotes there was still a sense of nostalgia for the primitive and a feeling of hostility to the compromises and adjustments of the world in which he lived. In 1932, Jiinger published Der Arbeiter (The Worker), a technological utopia of the modern world which was the high-point of his intellectual achievement.6 The year 1937 saw the imprisonment of Ernst Niekisch, the leader of the “National Bolsheviks”, who sought an alliance of Germany with Russia against the West. Jiinger’s sympathy with this group brought him a visit from the SS: one, however, which had no further consequences. In 1939, Jiinger published the utopian novella A ufden Marmorklippen (On the Marble Cliffs), in which there were hints of a criticism of the Nazi regime.7 The distribution of the book was stopped in the spring of 1940 after thirty five thousand copies had been sold. For Jiinger, the Second World War was a completely different experience from the first. If the First World War was a hell in the trenches, the second was a pleasurable experience in the streets of Paris. As an officer of the German occupation, he spent his time in the French capital in the company of collaborationist authors and cultural critics, in visiting artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and in frequenting literary clubs and cafes on the boulevards. All this is described in his wartime notes, the first part of which was published in 1942 under the title Garten und Strassen (Gardens and Streets).8 Towards the end of the war (1943), his book Der Friede (The Peace) appeared and was popular among the young German soldiers on the western front. 9 When the war ended, his books were banned in the British zone of occupation in Germany, but at the same time were freely available in London. In November 1944, when he lost his 18 year-old son Ernestal on the Italian front, he wrote that “the only true community of the w ar” was

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the community of the bereaved. His stay in Paris was interrupted by a sixweek journey to the Caucasian front, but the quiet places he visited there in no way recalled his experiences in Flanders. These landscapes were later described in his utopia Heliopolis (1949) which developed the theme of A u f den Marmorklippen in which the representatives of anarchy and the repre­ sentatives of nihilism confront each other in the person of the hero, Lucio de Gir.10 After his commander General Heinrich von Strolfnagel was executed, Jiinger was sent back to Germany, and in October 1944 he was discharged from the army. His diary (1949), which covers the period of the Second World War in detail, ends with the entry of American tanks into a village near Hanover in April 1945.11 After the war, there was talk of him being placed on trial in Nuremberg. Seeking to preserve his honor, Jiinger refused to be tried by the de-Nazification court, although clearance by that court would have enabled him to publish his books freely.12Since then, however, a great deal of water has flowed under the bridges of the Rhine: Jiinger lived on to become the most important cultural figure in Germany after Heidegger. His long life and his many books which appeared in successive editions caused the character of his youthful writings to be to some extent forgotten. In 1982, he received total rehabilitation when he was awarded the prestigious Goethe prize at a splendid ceremony in Frankfurt. Three years later, the chancellor Helmuth Kohl made a pilgrimage to the village of Wilflingen, where Jiinger, lived, to congratulate him on his ninetieth birthday. He died in 1998, at the age of a hundred and three.

The Aesthetics o f War The basic experience of Jiinger’s youthful writings was that of the First World War. In his literary production from 1920 to 1934, he sought to make the battle-experience of the “man at the front” into the model of the totalitarian society in which the “new man” would express his essential nihilism through war and modern technology. At a time when the literature inspired by the First World War, such as the works of Leonard Frank, Fritz von Unruh, Arnold Zweig, Ludwig Renn, Ernst Toller and of course Erich Maria Remarque, protested against the horrors of mechanized warfare, Jiinger showed enthu­ siasm for precisely the things they abhorred.13 In the writings of his youth, Jiinger seized on the war as an “existential moment” in terms derived from the Nietzchean school of thought. Unlike many thinkers who betrayed Nietzsche when they took Zarathustra into the trenches, he had a profound understanding of the Nietzschean Lebensphilosophie and a deep love for the progenitor of the “will to power”.14 When Jiinger fused his interpretation of Nietzsche with his sense of the aesthetic attraction of the war and the experience of the trenches, he was no longer one more author writing about the war but had become its most enthu­ siastic advocate. Jiinger saw the First World War as the most concrete

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manifestation of Nietzche’s existential, aesthetic and nihilistic vision. He did not look for the most “exalted” moment but for the moment. One cannot prepare oneself for a mystical moment of this kind, for such a moment is like an earthquake which overtakes a man unawares. According to Jiinger, the experience of the war was not relative but absolute, enabling a man to discover himself and finally understand the meaning of life. Later, and especially in Der Arbeiter (The Worker), Jiinger no longer stressed this spontaneous and exis­ tential aspect of the war but rather the total mobilization of a society in which fighting is regarded as a form of work. Earlier, however, the war was perceived in his first book, Stahlgewittem, as a sight of overwhelming beauty: a salvo of artillery is described as a “storm of steel”, a shell is a “hurricane of fire”, an aeroplane dropping bombs is “like a bird of prey” and buildings with their walls and roofs are destroyed “as though by magic”.15 The title, “Storm of Steel”, however, hints at his later approach which treated technology as a natural phenomenon like a storm. The technological battlefield represents the primal, mythical, irrational forces which lie beyond conventional bourgeois economic or ideological concepts. In a similar manner, Paul Fussel observed in his fascinating book The Great War and the Modern Memory (1975) that British soldiers resorted to mythical means in order to fathom the incompre­ hensibility of the Great W ar.16 The mythologization of war was partly the result of contemporary artistic developments like futurism, art-for-art’s sake and literary modernism which treated the horrors of the First World War as a magnificent spectacle representing the primal will in action, over and above conceptualisation. In presenting his vision of mechanized war, Jiinger turned to broad sections of the middle class in Germany. The experience of war was still new, and quite a number of ex-servicemen were intoxicated by it and knew no other reality than “wars among nations, civil wars, and preparations for future wars”.17 Jiinger turned to those, both on the left and right, who were disgusted with the Weimar Republic. These ex-servicemen were disappointed with post-war Germany, with “the morning after”, and Jiinger set before them a new human type, the worker-warrior, who would sacrifice himself in the service of tech­ nology. As H. P. Schwarz observed: “Jiinger regarded war as the most dangerous form of work: he saw the soldier as the prototype of the modern worker and the battlefront as the authentic vision of the modern age. The soldier was engaged in what Jiinger called ‘the work of death’, and the soldiers were ‘lords of machines’, work-battalions, impassive men of power.”18 Stahlgewittem is an ultra-precise realistic description of the soldiers in the trenches. Jiinger strikes an admirable balance between the perspective of the soldier who feels horror when going into battle and that of the detached observer who tries to perceive the real meaning of the scenes of the war. In his battle-diary, the private and later officer Jiinger noted everything that took place and “what he thought about it at the time it happened.” 19 The war was depicted soberly: columns of soldiers filled with their bodies a battlefield which was like a desert of the insane; the dug-outs, trenches and holes which

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served as shelters and homes for millions of soldiers were a sort of microcosm of Dante’s inferno. The war changed its character after the Somme offensive of 1916, and it was now clear to many young people that it would not be a temporary affair and a joyous youthful adventure, but was something with which they would be burdened for weeks, months and years. W hat was the value of men’s lives when the eye became accustomed to the daily sight of thousands of human livers flying in the air? Nothing existed except a frenzied crescendo of mutual slaughter. Noble feelings ceased have any significance at a time when the machine overruled humanity. Men were hardened and became atoms, and their outward appearance reflected this: this was the first time that German soldiers wore steel helmets. In the shadow of death, stiff­ ness and rigidity becam e a way of life. The soldiers becam e a laboratory for the production of death on a massive scale and for the exploitation of means of destruction. This did not, however, make them particularly brave. They communed with themselves alone at night and performed their duty out of nervous energy. The fighters became conquerors of fear, lions of the trenches. They were famished, clothed in rags [ . . . ] . What more convincing proof could there be of the triumph of the ideal over the sordid reality? To be killed in a fever of excitement may be impressive, but to fight in a situation of hunger and want is even more extraordinary. Despite the defeat, Jiinger was convinced that none of this experience was without value. War, like all human activities, was both good and bad. The differences between individuals and nations were intensified at a time when all energies were directed to confronting one another in battle. Jiinger did not try to reject the memory of the war. He valued it. Germany, he felt, needed a generation of steel for the days to come, when the pen would give way to the sword, words to actions, sentimentality to sacrifice. Jiinger believed in “the rational concretisation of the idea of force” for the sake of preserving the fatherland, and the ordinary soldier was the person who embodied this prin­ ciple in time of war.20Jiinger saw the war through the eyes of an officer. The officer, to him, was the intellectual and spiritual norm, the pioneer of the front, who in practical terms represented the will-to-victory. While the masses saw only the external appearance of things, Jiinger and his colleagues were depicted as being able to see their profound essence.21 In reality, however, Jiinger in his patrician incomprehension failed to sense the difficulties of the ordinary soldiers. He was surprised at their lack of enthusiasm for the cause and complained of their incapacity to attain the standards he set himself. Two pages after Jiinger boasts that he was able to survive in the trenches longer than his subordinates, he describes himself as enjoying red wine and an omelette in the autumn air. On another occasion he reprimanded his men for not preparing his breakfast of fried eggs properly.22It is clear from his descrip­ tions that for lieutenant Jiinger the war was different than it was for ordinary soldiers, who were merely “civilians in uniform”. Jiinger’s description of the war reached its climax in his account of the great German offensive of March 1918. The moment approached of the last

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supreme effort. The fate of nations was to be sealed in blood and steel, and the destiny of the world hung in the balance. Jiinger was aware of the historical significance of the moment and was convinced that each man felt that his indi­ vidual existence was rendered insignificant by the weight of the historic responsibility placed on his shoulders. Such moments made him feel that in the final analysis the history of nations and the fate of the individual were decided in battles. On the eve of the battle, the tension in the air could be cut with a knife. The officers gathered in a circle exchanged nervous jokes and were unable to preserve their clarity of mind as the artillery bombardment pro­ ceeded. Nerves were paralyzed, and people were no longer even frightened. Death lost its meaning because “the will-to-live passed collectively to the nation.” This made everyone indifferent to his personal fate. This jumble of feelings mixed with alcohol as the army advanced towards the enemy aroused both the bestial and the godlike in man. The army was infused with a bloodlust. In 1914, the youthful Jiinger had thought that the war would be a joyous adventure; he was not at all worried by the prospect of fighting. Now, looking back over four years in which a whole generation had been ordered to lay down their lives, he saw how the idea of the fatherland had taken on reality. The fatherland was no longer an empty concept, a mere symbol. It was a reality, or else how could one explain the sacrifice of so many? After four years of apprenticeship in the blood-soaked battle-arena, Jiinger came to the conclu­ sion that ordinary life gains true significance only through the sacrifice of the individual for an idea. There are ideas in comparison to which individual lives are no longer of any importance. Only by passing through the cleansing furnace of the war were the soldiers of the front equipped to go forward and deal with their love-lives, with friendship, politics and their professional lives. Not every generation is so honored. The soldiers on the front were steeped in bloodshed, but their thoughts encompassed great values. Those who have experienced their feelings so intensely are most fortunate. Stahlgewittern ends with the words: “Germany lives: Germany will not disappear.” While Walter Flex’s Der Wanderer zwischen beiden Welten (The Wanderer Between Two Worlds) (1915) and Fritz von Unruh’s Opfergang (Way of Sacrifice) (1916) represented two idealistic approaches to the war one romantic and the other expressionistic - Jiinger’s approach was quite different: his “realistic idealism” was an act of will.25 It fused romanticism and realism, enthusiasm for the war and a shrewd observation of the changes it produced.24 Unlike L. A. Lazco, an officer in the Austro-Prussian army, who in People at War and The Vanity o f Peace, two anti-war novels written in 1918, described the war as a fearful and bitter experience which impaired the individual’s understanding, Jiinger saw it as the laboratory of a “new man”, an experience which dispelled illusion and exposed the naked reality, an aesthetic manifestation which transcended good and evil. In Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis, the war was described as an aesthetic and existential phenomenon:

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All goals are past, only movement is eternal, and it brings forth unceasingly magnificent and merciless spectacles. To sink into their lofty goallessness as into an artw ork o r as into the starry sky, that is granted only to the few. But who experiences in this w ar only negation, only inherent suffering and not affirmation, the higher movement, he has experienced it as a slave. He has no inner, but only an external experience.2*

Jiinger experienced the reality as a mysterious movement of spirit: “We are confronted with a riddle: the mystery of the spirit that pours out now and then across the world, seizing whole multitudes of men together. No one knows where it originates.”26 Ernst von Salomon also wrote of the thread binding together the loyalties of a single race, in which each person shares the same sufferings and is subject to the same penetrating vibrations.27Jiinger described the riddle and at the same time provided the interpretation: he was a barom­ eter who experienced the present within himself but who also discerned the significance of his era and his place in it. Men of action like Salomon and Jiinger described themselves in their books as reflecting the things that were taking place in their time.

The N ew Man According to Josef Goebbels, the overriding aim of the nationalists durning the time of the Weimar Republic was to transform the masses into a people. In the war, order had been universally imposed: the masses disappeared overnight, and an exultant, enthusiastic mob had been transformed into a people marching into battle. Jiinger describes how this mob became a people and an army: New gods were raised to the throne of the day: strength, the fist and virile courage. The long columns of armed youth thundering along the asphalt embodied all of these qualities: the crowd was suffused with jubilation and reverential awe.28

This was the vanguard which preceded the Reich. The mob was orga­ nized into a fighting formation, and the moral Jiinger drew from it was, “this is how things should be!” The anarchic nature of existence should be moulded by the will into strength, audacity and courage. After the war, with the defeat of Germany, the people split apart into a disorganized mass as it had been before, and Alfred Rosenberg is supposed to have said, “ Even the revolution cannot be seen as a revolution of the masses springing up organ­ ically under the leadership of great individuals [ . . . ] that would be foolish bourgeois philistinism.”29 The subculture of the Weimar Republic raised up the masses from the dunghill and made them the arbiter of cultural norms in

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place of the elite. Jiinger expressed his patrician disdain for this phenome­ non: Since the mass is unable to emulate the few, the few are being called upon to emulate the mass. Politics, dram a, artists, cafes, patent-leather shoes, posters, newspapers, morality, tom orrow ’s Europe, the w orld of the day after tomorrow: all this is to become thundering mass. The mass is a beast of a thousand heads, it obstructs all movement, crushes anything it cannot swallow or engulf; it is envious, parvenu, common. The individual has once again been defeated, betrayed most savagely by men born to represent him.30

Jiinger advocated a nationalism of a new kind: a nationalism based on the individual. Its scale of values was not derived from external phenomena, social beliefs or traditions, but was drawn from itself. The existential outlook which identified the individual with his universe automatically identified nationhood with the individual. The individual was the sole criterion of an existential nationalism of this kind: “It [nationalism] is more than just one idea among others. It does not seek out the measurable, but the measure. It is the surest route to the maternal being that gives birth to new forms in every century. And we have seen that there are still men who can create after the fashion of the warrior.”31 This individual existential nationalism was necessarily a creative nation­ alism bringing together individuals whose universes are not fashioned out of an inherited culture, but who create something out of nothing. They create the future, the coming Fiihrer, power and the Reich. It is the special quality of this nationalism not simply to exist but to create, and thus to herald and precede the Reich. The creator is he who is primal and primitive, who is lib­ erated from the influence of culture and education. He is the object of Jiinger’s admiration: Over millennia, society has tamed our impetuous urges and desires; the savage, brutal, shrill tone of our instincts has been polished, smoothed and dampened. Growing refinement has enlightened and ennobled man; yet the beast still sleeps in the depths of his existence. There is still much of the animal in him . . . and when life’s dial swings back to its primitive guiding line, the mask falls: primitive man, the cave-dweller sallies forth naked as ever, with all the savagery of his unfettered instincts.32

Unlike Freud who sought to “sublimate” the animal, Jiinger does not allow anything to undergo a transformation. Everything remains “bestial”: “There will always be wars while this bestial legacy remains in our blood.”33 Whereas Freud wished to purge man of savagery, Jiinger wished to undo the “polishing” and “smoothing” carried out by society and to restore man to his original bestiality. He makes no attempt to suppress feelings or desires. Only

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through an act of killing or penetration, only through an explosion, can one transcend one’s limitations and merge with the cosmos:34 And, finally, there is ecstasy - a state of mind granted not only to the holy man, to great writers and great lovers, but also to the great in s pi ri t . . . Ecstasy is an intoxication beyond all intoxications, a release th at bursts all bonds. It is a madness w ithout discretion or limits, com parable only to the natural forces . . . A man in ecstasy becomes a violent storm, a raging sea, roaring thunder. He merges with the cosmos, racing toward death’s dark gates like a bullet tow ard its target. And should the waves crash purple above him, he will already be long past all consciousness of movement or transition; he will be a wave gliding back into the flowing sea from whence it came.35

The act of Jiinger’s writing is itself a declaration of war and is synonymous with destruction. Klaus Theweleit calls this act a nihilistic impulse which releases Jiinger’s word-vortex.3* The writing in works like Stahlgewittem and Der Kampfals inneres Erlebnis has nothing to do with artistic self-expression. These texts are acts of literary homicide and their language does not “describe, or narrate, or represent, or argue.” The texts are detached from their objects and their intention is to attack reality and experience, to transform life into non-life. The reality loses any life of its own; people become dead creatures, moribund. Reality is invaded and “occupied”: Jiinger uses a language of occu­ pation which acts imperialistically against any form of independent life. The fuller and more intense life is, the more it has to be attacked and uprooted. Language as the delusion of a last refuge from reality is a basic principle of Jiingerian art. From Junger’s point of view, to write articles, poems or stories as if the language itself had not inhaled poisoned air or been pierced by barbed wire was romantic evasion or bourgeois illusion at a time when the very foun­ dations of bourgeois culture had been undermined.37 Language had become a part of the violent structure of the world.38 The Jiingerian use of language played a central role in the nihilist-totalitarian syndrome. In place of the reality which had been destroyed and the vacuum that had been created, a replacement had to be produced ex nihilo and a new reality constructed. Reality was detached from itself, and, in the words of Walter Benjamin, “As far as the eye could see above the edges of the trenches, the land had become the terrain of German idealism itself - every shell creates a philosophical problem; every barbed-wire fence a representation of autonomy; every barb a definition; every explosion an axiom.”39 Theweleit described it as “the metaphysics of battle” which created a landscape to be conquered by philosophical jargon. The act of writing was compared to physis, to another nature. For the sake of protection, the threat had to be neutralized by discourse, by a hurricane of words.40 In Jiinger, the subject is greater than events, significance overrules culture. In order to destroy the sphere of life, it first had to be “penetrated”. Paradoxically, writing

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gave a feeling o f stability to th is delusional reality, to this play o f illusions. W ritin g a b o u t b attle becam e a b a ttle o f w riting:

Our battle-cry as we meet the enemy merges into his own crying; it is a cry wrung from hearts trembling on the brink of eternity, a cry long forgotten in the sweeping tide of culture, a cry of recognition, terror and thirst for blood. Yes, the fighter thirsts for blood. This is the feeling, second only to his terror, that engulfs him in a torrent of red waves: when shivering clouds of annihilation hang heavy over fields of rage he is intoxicated, blood­ thirsty. Strange as it may sound to men who have never struggled for existence, the sight of the enemy produces not only the most extreme hor­ ror, but redemption from heavy, intolerable pressure. The voluptuousness of blood hangs over war like a red storm-sail over a black man-of-war: in its limitless momentum it is comparable only to Eros itself.41 T he Jiingerian Eros is expressed in b lood-lust an d lust for b a ttle tra n sm u te d in to rhythm ic, dynam ic an d d ram atic w o rd s like “ p o u n d in g h e a rts” , “ d e v o u rin g ” , “ squeezed o u t” , a “ flood o f w h eels” , “ quivering c lo u d s” , “ sh ak in g ” , the “ sto rm o f th e d e tac h m e n t” , “ w ith lim itless sp eed ” , etc. Such language n o t only destroys the em pirical reality b u t pro v id es access to th e reality o f these people an d th e ir con d itio n s. T his ch ao tic reality , beyond th e scope o f no rm al language, can only be ap p reh en d ed a t tw ilight;

It is difficult to describe any event of this more fundamental nature and this occasion is no exception. A man approaches and whispers: “Repair gang. Cable shot to pieces.” No Questions: the brain thinks telephone, wires ripped to shreds, connection to command first duty of the troop, yes sir, yes sir. War academy, order of active service: an intimately familiar sequence. Then, suddenly all knowledge becomes ridiculous, insignificant: there begins a dialogue of shadows. Words take on second meanings; they pierce the surface and plunge into depths inaccessible to the understanding. Sensation surges around some other center; we feel our way in twilight.”42 In a n o th e r description o f a b a ttle , Jiinger ad m its th a t even the people in th e b attle w ere unable to grasp th e reality o f things o r w h a t they w ere ex p e­ riencing now :

What meaning had hands raised in surrender here, shouts of “Mercy!” or “Comrade!”? Only one pact mattered - the pact of blood [ . . . ] . These orgies of fury were brief, raging fever; when they burned out, the trenches were left like beds disheveled from the convulsions of the dying. Pale figures in white bandages stared at the miracle of the rising sun, unable to comprehend the reality of the world or of what they had experienced.43

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The primal language was in process of adapting itself to our time, or, as Jiinger himself put it, “Something was still in process of becoming, something held things back. It was an area of life that was deep and close to chaos: it was not yet a law, but it contained new laws within itself. What came to birth was the essence of nationhood, a new relationship to what is basic, to mother earth. One listened to the primal, secret language of the people which one then translated into the language of the twentieth century.”44 This language consti­ tuted a kind of myth ex nihilo: a new reality sprang up within the chaos, true to its own laws, which did not depend on historical continuity. It represented the essential, the new, connected to an original conception of nationhood which was now in process of formation. The organic folk language became the modern existential language. The Jiingerian language is distinguished by a coldness which borders on alienation: Just yesterday I spent hours staring nervously, rigidly at the crumbling earthen wall opposite me . . . There was a dead man under it, though all that could be seen was one leg. He must have been lying there like that for some time. The foot, no longer able to support the weight of his boot, had fallen off at the ankle. The anklebone and the brown, gangrenous flesh that had peeled away from it were clearly visible. N ext came the crudely knitted underwear and the grey pants, which the rain had already rinsed clear of clay. One should oneself properly have been lying for no lesser length of time in some similar place.45

The soldier lying there was the “other”, an alien existence, and in order to describe him with sufficient alienation one had to use a dry and laconic language. One’s gaze meets the “other”, the enemy, and the soldier, confronted with the tempter who had tempted him for so long, now sees himself reflected in the image of the enemy. The soldier who had charged forward now discovered his own past, the “lost reality” which he had hoped to find in battle. In another place, Jiinger describes the face of the enemy as “reflecting all the flames of prehistory.”46 This image, this symbolization, however, prevents one from experiencing the true reality, and one’s only reac­ tion is anger, fever and trembling. The soldier never feels at rest. The enemy could also be considered from another point of view. Jiinger believed that the experience of the war had given him a special hidden perspective. He had come to the conclusion that the soldiers rotting in the trenches on the other side were not his enemies but friends who, together with him, were participating in a vast adventure. The essence of this cosmological adventure was the transfor­ mation of the world into a technological unit in which the soldiers and workers complemented one another. The soldiers consumed w hat the workers produced. In this “permanent war economy”, the enemy did not have any normative or national significance. The Jiingerian language could sometimes be used to describe a nihilization

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of space. Eulenberg E. Dwinger described the atmosphere of tension produced by shots emptying a town square, the fire raining down upon the crowds clearing out a neighborhood.47 The aggressive desire to achieve a completely empty neighbourhood, a clear space, had attained its goal. Similarly, Jiinger described a group of three soldiers firing with a machine-gun on a crowd of about five thousand people: “A minute after the order to fire was given, the crowd had vanished without leaving a trace. There was something magical about the spectacle. A deep irrepressible joy rose up when the foul demon was expelled.”48 Jiinger felt a joy of victory. The “foul demon” was vanquished that is, the threatening mob was made to disappear - and, simultaneously, the threat to the soldiers was neutralized. The world was once again a clear space, an open territory, a virgin body.49 In his book Feuer und Blut (Fire and Blood), Jiinger proposed another way of annihilating a mob: through what Hermann Rauschning called the “revo­ lution of nihilism” - a mass-revolution without purpose which encourages a belligerent dynamism, forms the masses into a continual phalanx and the structural nihilism of the war-machine.50 This war-machine is self-creating, and like the phalanx of antiquity advances in straight lines and in perfect order. The war situation was the reason and justification for the existence of the fighting battalion. War is the secret of the new magic. “What did we then know about life?” asks Jiinger. “We came to life with a total naivety, disturbed by a sense of inner dissatisfaction. The war for us was renewal, the resurrec­ tion of the urge to heroism. We were entranced by it.”51 The enchantment of the war, its rhythm and its violent character could only be created and preserved through a machine-like battalion. The particular beauty of the machine derives from its internalization of the inner qualities of the human being: “If we are able to bring the flashing intu­ itions of our blood through to our consciousness, to express them in a concrete manner, we will have the inner characteristics of the machine; but, in order to achieve this, one needs distance and ice-cold thought.”52Jiinger knew that he lived in the machine-age, in the eye of the storm, and as a modernist he wished to be part of it: “Our generation is the first one to reconcile itself to the machine, to see it as having not usefulness but beauty.”53 He expected the machine to supply qualities in which man is deficient such as speed, power, luminosity, expressivity and wholeness. The beauty of the machine is connected with its function of providing the human body with its needs. The machine is a structure in which the details play a special part. The hierarchical nature of its organization make it into a totality. The war-machine stretches the concept of the machine-as-a-totality to the limit of its capacities. Non-mili­ tary machines like railway-trains and racing cars can possess an inner wholeness, but only the war-machine can give full expression to the machineas-a-totality. Jiinger’s view of technology was deeply influenced by the experience of modern warfare. The experience of battle was a shock for his senses, and he reacted by becoming a detached observer who protected himself from the

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threat of modern technology by raising it to a higher level. In other words, generalizing from his experience, Jiinger concluded that the best way of dealing with technology was to adopt it in its entirety. In this way, the tech­ nological Overman who was a kind of “organic construction” would combine human instincts with technical precision. The subject of Jiinger’s article “On Pain” was this man of steel or “new m an”. According to his article, bourgeois culture tries to disregard poverty and servitude by creating a whole world of political and technical “comfort”, exemplified by Nietzsche’s “last m an”, who was bourgeois, hedonistic and comfortable. The meritorious man, on the other hand, is the one who is full of contempt towards the world of bourgeois mediocrity, and who is able to bear the pain of the technological era. An elite group or an artist or hero knows the value of self-discipline and realizes that it is pain which directly creates the power of life. The body is not regarded as having any value in itself, but is an object or tool for the attainment of higher values which are achieved through the technological impulse. Man must be transformed into a machine. Discipline is “the means by which man connects himself to pain.”54 For the bourgeoisie, a “good” man is one who can be influenced, who is changeable, mobile, somewhat restless. By contrast, “the disciplined man is closed up: he has a stern mentality - one-sided, objective, hard.” Above all, a man must learn the value of self-sacrifice. From this aesthetic starting-point, man can achieve a complete objectivization of his own body. This self-objectivization can only take place in a world in which the concepts of space and time have radically changed.55 An affinity with the machine also influenced the form of the “new man”. A “face of steel” is not the description of a soldier, but refers to the ideal of the “ new man” the soldiers hoped to become. It was war, terror, anger and hostility that brought this person into being: We were the god of w ar incarnate; like other Germans w ho had made their periodic on history. We rose up with a Germanic fury th at brooked no resistance. Only terror could counter the hatred of the men we confronted, yet allow us to retain our dignity. And so we stand here today as the terrible executors of an absolute justice - a justice that follows its own laws, a justice asserted against even the strongest will in a hostile w orld.56

The battlefield was the progenitor of the “new man”. Jiinger’s patrician approach led him to the conclusion that the masses who invaded the battle­ field destroyed the image of an organized army of select individuals. In his opinion, the bourgeoisie had opened up the trenches to the masses and made a business out of the war, which is the only place where a man can be truly a man: “Only one mass-phenomenon is not ridiculous: the army. But the bour­ geoisie has made even the army ridiculous.”57 According to Jiinger, the man who was not militaristic was “bourgeois”. Jiinger attacked Marxism at a

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sensitive point by depicting the Marxist mentality as bourgeois and anti-mili­ taristic, or, in other words, as degenerate. The answer to degeneracy was dynamism. The “new man” paved the way for a society, culture and nation which existed on a permanent war-footing - a model to be forged in the trenches: We were on constant battle alert, always lying in ambush; straining all our senses, anticipating the next murderous encounters, as weeks and months seeped away. From the Alps to the ocean, across fields, woodland, swamps, rivers and peaks, winter and summer, day and night, there stretched a chain o f men rigid with tension.58

As well as readiness for battle, the creation of this new people involved the idea of marching to war: “all the energy of a man’s body is channelled into self-expression through the army.”59 All life’s values are negated and become worthless except the wish to fight which is the basis of the will to power. Normal life was obliterated for the sake of this will to power expressed in war: We were passed by endless streams (of men) - men willing to sacrifice life itself to satisfy their will to life, their will to battle and power they represented. All values were made worthless, all concepts void by this incessant night time flooding into battle: we sensed that we were witnessing the manifestation of something elemental and powerful, something that had always been, that would long outlive human lives and human wars.60

The value of the “new m an” was not relative but absolute, and for that reason he was totally subject to the will of the leader: “A man whose inner worth is not established beyond all question has to learn to obey to the point of stupidity, so that in even the most difficult moments the will of the spiri­ tual leader (Ftihrer) can annul his instincts.”41 The search for a figure of authority seems to be deeply ingrained in Jiinger. In Fetter und Blut, the w ar situation was personified by officer Jiinger, who had been badly wounded but continued to fight and made his way to the enemy lines. His battalion gained control of a major strategic road and Jiinger brought the news personally to the general. The officer, wounded in the head and arm, had attained his objec­ tive, and his efforts were now acknowledged: he finally met the general and was personally congratulated. The general, who remembered young Jiinger as a brave and promising youth, was glad to see him alive because he had heard rumours that he had been killed in battle. At that point, the officer lost consciousness and fell to the ground. Officer Jiinger effaced his personality in front of the authoritative father-figure. The will to power and a conscious nihilization complemented each other once again.62 In Der Kampfals inneres Erlebnis, Jiinger describes war as “the father of all things and equally our own father [ . . . ] . War is the revival of barbarism,

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to live means to kill; the true roots of war come from the depths of our being and all the terrible things taking place throughout the world today are but the image of the inner condition of the human soul mirrored in events.”63 Renewal through war is represented as a baptism and enthusiasm for war is taken a sign of virility:64 “In battle, the individual is like a raging storm, a restless sea, roaring thunder.”65 The war created a community of men which functioned like “a single wave” under the influence of a “great destiny”. They worked “together like a single organism in face of the hostility of the outside world.” The individual soldier “melted into the totality, into this ‘masculine commu­ nity’, and thus became a ‘new man’”: This is the new man. The pioneers of storm, the elect of Central Europe. A whole new race, intelligent, strong, men of will. Tom orrow , the phenomenon now manifesting itself in battle will be the axis around which life whirls ever faster.66

Eight years later, in his article “Fire and Movement” (1930), Jiinger devel­ oped his existential outlook into a concept of life as struggle: “Just as war expresses not only part of life, but life in all its power, so life itself has a warlike character.”67 Pacifists, thought Jiinger, failed to realize that war is the “magnetic centre” of humanity, that the desire to destroy is fundamental to man and that every great creation of history necessarily requires destruction: “Technological war is the means by which life has been shaped by the human spirit.”6" This form of existentialism leads to a different kind of culture in which the “new man” displays his bestial and belligerent character: God may be on the side of the big battalions, but are the big battalions on the side of the highest culture? The answer is simple: the highest culture has the duty to possess the biggest battalions.69

Thus, everything is reversed. The barbarian is the man who is repelled by death and uniforms, and the real man of culture is the one who is able to distin­ guish between commissioned ranks. The highest form of this hierarchical culture is war, but there is always the danger of becoming a plebian which threatens every positive cultural phenomenon: “The days have passed when war was considered a part of high culture. Today, even the masses have the possibility of participating in games of life and death.”70 Most of the soldiers at the front were materialists and petty-bourgeois who had no understanding of war. They were not full members of the “new race of steel” because, unlike these, the true front-line soldier was a mixture of volunteer and mercenary. The soldiers at the front were the “day-workers of death”.71 Battle renews and reinvigorates the soldiers at the front, releases ancient and primeval forces, and shatters the decadence of the modern world. The mentality of the soldiers at the front was exemplified in the Freikorps, private armies which sprang up after the First World War.72 Klaus Theweleit’s

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study, Male Fantasies (1978), seeks to examine their psychology. These “white troops” - hence the name “white terror” - used by the socialist government of Friedrich Ebert to suppress the communist insurrection of 1919-1920, saw the radical German working-class movement as the greatest threat to their image of the German nation. Theweleit’s study, which covers about 250 novels and memoirs by the members of the Freikorps, investigates their hopes and fears and their glorification of war and violence. A literature of recollec­ tion was popular in the 1920s, and there were hundreds and thousands of books giving an obsessive description of feelings of violence, male fantasies and experiences of the war. This mass-phenomenon paralleled the flowering of a proto-fascist literature in France and Italy in the 1920s reflecting the rise of militarism and a longing for male comradeship and nostalgia for one’s lost heroic youth. The writers of the Freikorps were drawn to the individual nationalism of the 1920s rather than the national-socialist ideology. They did not record their memories but gave a written form of experience. Their aim was not to commu­ nicate but to totally uproot and destroy. In their writings, the self became machine-like through what Foucault called “techniques of the self” . Theweleit analyzes the discourse of the Freikorps, and Male Fantasies is a work of polit­ ical symbolism. It is not an ideological survey of the subject but a study of the symbolic construction of the “other” as a mechanism for consolidating the self. Fascism, according to Theweleit, was not “a form of domination, a general ideology or a system at all”73 but a sexual language, an “epistomological code”, an anti-Eros in the service of nihilism. Underlying fascist propaganda,74 there is a constant war against anything that contains enjoy­ ment and pleasure. War is not regarded as a process of maturation in which the fighter passes through an initiation-ceremony on the path to maturity, an event which sharpens his perception of the world. War is an experience one chooses, a mirror which reflects one’s identity. War is neither an initiationceremony nor a confrontation with the beast within us. Theweleit effects a deconstruction of these myths concerning war which describe it as an initia­ tion to manhood or to bestiality. Theweleit, the successor to Elias Canetti, is a scholar of the school of Michel Leiris, the author of Masculinity, and of Georges Bataille, who studied the works containing a symbolism of power.75 Male Fantasies dwells on fantasies of violence as symbols of sexual desire. According to Theweleit, the desire of the male ego is to liberate itself from anything reminiscent of the female body, warmth or softness. Instead, the masculine culture identifies with the urge to destroy, self-denial and “steely hardness”, as Jiinger described it.76 It was claimed that the front-line soldiers of the First World War sought to attain the condition of a “body-machine” or, in other words, to realize the utopian conception of the mechanical body.77 The “new m an” was a man whose physique had been machiniszed, whose psyche had been eliminated. The “new man” did not kill out of a simple lust for blood or romantic dreams of glory, but because he wanted to remain whole.

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The front-line soldier as the “new man” had two aspects: on the one hand, he typified the “chaos of battle”, and, on the other, “total mobilization”. Jiinger’s “new men” comprised a new social order which also had a dual char­ acter: “quiet anarchism within a very rigid order.”78The “new m an” regarded war as a permanent model of action-for-its-own-sake: The fight, stripped of any remaining moral motivation, could thus be carried on for its own sake, as the expression and correlate o f inner experience. The monstrously senseless battles and their total challenge to the subjective, boundless ability to hold one’s ground could be grasped irrationally as a “volcanic process” a “well of life” [ . . . ] . By mystical submission one could achieve the most painful, yet most heroic experience.79

In 1925, Jiinger joined the staff of the journal Stahlhelm (steel helmet), whose principles were similar to those of the Croix de feu in France: namely, opposition to the treaty of Versailles, to the republican regime and to universal franchise. In 1926, Jiinger described war as the mother of modern nationalism: “Modern nationalism [ . . . ] . needs that which is out of the ordinary [ . . . ] . The mother of the nation is war [ . . . ] . War is our mother, it infuses us with soul [ . . . ] so that our values will be heroic values, values of fighters and not of shopkeepers [ . . . ] . We do not want the useful, the private and the plea­ surable, but what is necessary and what is required by destiny.”80 By 1927, he was disappointed with the leagues of the Bund (association) of front-line soldiers (and especially with the Stahlhelm), which he had ceased to see as suit­ able models for a future belligerent society but had become party-like structures. Jiinger now produced his “new man” in the image of the soldierworker of the trenches of the First World War. The anonymous soldier of the war was a fitting symbol of the hero of the industrial - military process: “His positive feature is that he is replaceable, and for each one that falls there is another to take his place.”81 The community of “new men” came into being with the new forms of existence and new industrial forms which grew out of the w ar era: “This war is not the end but the beginning of violence [ . . . ] a breaking of new frontiers [ . . . ] The war is a great school and the new man will spring forth from our race.”82 The war, which produced the new communal masculine relationship, was not seen by Jiinger as an experience of the past, a trauma or something unrepeatable, but as an ever-valid model and a creative phenomenon: “Battle is not only destruction but also the masculine form of creation”.83

Total M obilization It was believed that the major process taking place in our time - the “mate­ rial battle” (Materialschlacht), to use Nietzsche’s expression - was the

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creation and destruction of a world. Jiinger would add: by technical and indus­ trial means. In this technological, nihilistic era, the choice that faces the ordinary worker is to participate of his own volition as a cog in the new tech­ nological order or to stand aside. Only the loftier natures, the heroic worker-warriors, are fit to experience the modern work-war process. By the concept “total mobilization”, Jiinger meant to express the full scope of tech­ nology. In the war of the future, the country which produces the most material will win. War is a “storm of steel” because of the massive mobilization of materiel; war is really an enormous work-process involving continual produc­ tion and consumption. In his article “Total Mobilization” (Die totale Mobilmachung), published in 1930, Jiinger wrote: Next to the troops which encounter each other on the battlefield, there arises a new kind of troops of commerce, of provisions, o f the arms industry - the army of w ork in general. In the final phase, already indicated tow ard the end of this war, no more movement occurs - even if it is a homemaker at her sewing machine - which does no t dwell w ithin a performance that is at least mediated in terms of war. In this absolute seizing of potential energy, which transforms the war-leading industrial states into Vulcan-like forges, there is indicated in perhaps the most obvious way the beginning of the age of the w orker.84

Germany was defeated in the war because it failed in total mobilization. Too many sections of the German bourgeoisie cherished ideas like safety, plea­ sure, comfort, individuality, individual freedom, rationality, investment and progress. The Germans did not want to risk everything for the sake of some noble ideal. In the wars of the future, however, no one at all will be safe. Anticipating the aerial battles of the Second World War, Jiinger wrote: “The age of directed bullets is already behind us. The commander of the squadron can no longer differentiate between combatants and non-combatants, and the cloud of deadly gas hovers over every living creature. The prospect of a threat of this kind thus permits neither a partial nor a general mobilization, but only a total mobilization which involves even a baby in the cradle.” Jiinger expanded his experience in the trenches into a general conception of a work-state. From his appreciation of mechanized warfare he progressed to a vision of a society based on a perpetual mobilization for total war. In Jiinger’s article, “Total Mobilization”, the argument focuses on modern warfare: war is a natural catastrophe requiring a total mobilization. Jiinger develops the idea of the total fusion of technology and warfare in the modern era. In battle there had been an increasing use of the machine totally imbued with the modern spirit - the same “spirit as underlies technology.” Total mobi­ lization operates in the same way in a world war as it does in a world revolution; it infused the First World War with the “genius of warfare” and the “spirit of progress”. Modern wars are different from those of the monarchical era when

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conflicts were limited and were characterized by partial mobilization.85 From the French Revolution to the First World War there was an all-out industrial and financial effort. All efforts were directed towards war in a “huge workprocess” which historically is the essential distinguishing feature of the modern world. It is the active energy of contending industrial states which gives meaning to the modern era as an era of work. Activity in peacetime is merely a preparation for activity in wartime. Every citizen works for the sake of war, from the industrialist to the ordinary worker; everyone, even the new­ born babe, is threatened by war, since bombs are no longer selective. The most important feature of total mobilization, however, is that everyone becomes a “w orker” in a new “ order of work”.86 “Total Mobilization” served as the basis for Walter Benjamin’s thesis of the aestheticization of politics.87 Total mobilization is pure pleasure, some­ thing totally purposeless, completely detached from any idea of usefulness. The idea of pure pleasure becomes destruction for its own sake: the battlefield is a “spectacle”, a “vulcano”, a “landscape”, the scene of “a relentless battle of life and death,” quite apart from any political or historical significance. Jiinger believed that “total mobilization” was the factor which distin­ guished the twentieth century from the nineteenth century, which had been characterized by limited wars, a clear distinction between combatants and civilians and partial mobilization. Germany was defeated in the war because it mobilized only part of its technological and economic capacity, and so it can be said that the First World War was a turning-point in which there was a limited “transformation of life into energy”, and of war “into a gigantic work-process”,88An “army of labor” developed, and Jiinger’s conclusion was: “Mobilization transformed the world of war into something more historically important than the French Revolution.” “Total Mobilization” appeared in a collection of articles which Jiinger published in 1930 under the title War and Warrior: In his introduction to the collection, Jiinger wrote: “The inner connection between the articles in the collection is German nationalism.”89 “The increasing penetration of the dangerous” into the daily life of the modern era fascinated Jiinger.90 In a series of articles and photographs dating from the years 1929 to 1933, Jiinger transferred the delights and horrors of the material battle (Materialslacht) to the post-war urban-industrial land­ scape.91 In these photographs, he tried to capture moments of danger, because the “dangerous” is disruptive of harmony. In his discussion of Jiinger’s attrac­ tion to photography and danger, Karl Heinz Bohrer related his “aesthetics of violence” to Benjamin’s theory of “shock”. Photography, he said, is a defensemechanism against the fear produced by the shock of modern culture.92 Jiinger’s three books of photographs extol the technological era. Photography is a technical means suited to the quasi-revelatory instantaneous quality of that era. The photographer “captures a bird in flight like a man in the moment of truth, the moment when he is wounded in an explosion [ . . . ] . This is a way of seeing that is special to us: photography is no more than a means to that end.”93 Photography permits an objectivization of pain. In the news on

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television, we see photographs of athletes who have developed their bodies as objects of calculation and discipline. The sculptured body of the athlete “makes possible a pure relationship to the photograph. This is one of the images in which the type or race of the worker expresses itself.”94 Jiinger’s treatment drains the shock of fear by freezing it in the realm of consciousness before it enters the realm of experience. Bohrer suggests that “heroic realism” is a way of dealing with the shock of the war and of modern technology by aesthetic means. 95 Jiinger was one of the last representatives of the aesthetic tradition which began with Edgar Allan Poe and was developed by decadent aesthetes of the nineteenth century like Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley.96 Poe’s aestheticization of horror was intended to have a definite emotional effect on the bored readers of Victorian society. Wilde believed that art reveals the dark mystery of the soul, dormant lusts and secret desires. It permitted one to see beyond the veil of everyday existence into the realm of the mysterious, the irrational. Many artists and thinkers in Germany such as Paul Tillich and Martin Heidegger spoke of a revelatory experience, a “moment of truth” in which the banality of everyday life is transformed through some event which disrupts routine. A radical change of form takes place which requires a “decision” outside the sphere of normal social or polit­ ical discourse.97 According to J. P. Stern, Jiinger’s attitude to war passed through four stages: the view of war as the highest expression of life and as the “existential moment” (1920); the view of war as part of the totality of life and of its “total achievement” (1930); the view of war as a dialectics of liberty and sacrifice (1940); and the last stage, expressed in his comment: “we finally passed the zero-point of nihilism.”98 Jiinger went from viewing war as a positive exis­ tential expression of nihilism to expanding it into a system of life through “total mobilization”. For Jiinger, war, with all its attributes - decisiveness, action, violence, total mobilization - was independent of political or moral considerations. It was the “how” and not the “w hat” that was important; thus Jiingerism was beyond good and evil: W hat is essential is not w hat we fight for but how we fight. The quality of fighting, the engagement of the person, even if it be for the most insignificant idea, counts for more than brooding over good and evil."

We have here “a separation of aesthetics from morality, a raising of beauty from a normative level to a metaphysical level.” 100 The aestheticization of political irrationalism is expressed by Jiinger as follows: “Today we are writing poetry out of steel and struggle for power in battles in which events mesh together with the precision of machines. In these battles on land, on water and in the air there lay a beauty that we are able to anticipate. There the hot will of the blood restrains and then expresses itself through the domi­ nance of technical wonder-works of power.”101 Since the aesthetics of war are

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unconnected with its purpose or moral validity, one is left with a total aestheticism. Jiingerism as a fusion of aestheticism and militarism does not distinguish between categories of “what” but between categories of “how”, between “the restoration front and the other camp determined to carry on the war by any means, and not only by means of war. We have to know where our true allies are to be found. They are not to be found in a place where people wish to be protected, but in a place where people want to attack; we are close to situa­ tion in which any conflict which erupts anywhere in the world will strengthen our position.”102 Conflict is the anvil on which the new moral dichotomy between “people who wish to be protected” and “people who want to attack” is forged. Jiinger looked for people who would set up an order, who through their organized violence would achieve broad, undefined objectives. In the words of Shakespeare’s King Lear: “I shall do such things! What they are, yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth!”103 The content is of no impor­ tance in Jiinger, because the concept of the worker-fighter is “beyond values”.104 The work has an inner quality and is not a moral imperative, and private property is detached from its connection with ethics: “It is character­ istic of the liberal way of thinking that attacks on property, like its defence, are made on grounds of morality. In the world of the worker, the question is not whether property is moral or immoral, but whether it corresponds to the worker’s program.” 105 The two separate moral entities of the “citizen” and the “worker-warrior” bring Jiinger to a new socio-cultural consciousness which is beyond traditional bourgeois good and evil. In Jiinger’s universe, technology and nihilism go hand in hand. Like Spenger, Schmitt and Heidegger he is intensely drawn to “the nihilistic quality in the attraction of modern technology.”106 These thinkers - “the Gestalt school of technology” - were greatly impressed by the combination of the power of nihilism and the technological ethos in the modern era: Jiingerian aesthetics combine “total technology” with the “anarchic sphere”.107 Jiinger aims at a “technological totality” which creates an aesthetics of form, order and clarity as the result of a technological development which replaces the “sphere of the subject”. This outlook corresponds to our views concerning the thinkers of the nihilist-totalitarian school of thought, who saw technology as the world’s organizing principle which subjects man and society to its requirements. The symbol of the “nihilist-totalitarian syndrome” in the technological age was the tank, and in this respect war was a microcosm of technological develop­ ment. In his article “Fire and Movement” (1930), Jiinger praised the tank as a model, but also as a metaphor for a balance between firing-power and move­ ment in the battlefields of the First World War. The tank is “a machine for creating movement,” and its appearance in the war was “one of the most important moments in the history of warfare.” The tank was “the expression of a new age of freedom” which had not yet fully arrived, and represented “a new image of w ar.” The aeroplane, the battleship and the tank represented

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the end of the culture of matter and its replacement with the dynamism of fire­ power and movement.108 The First World War, in which the lethal weapons of modern technology were used for the first time, was the crucible of the “new m an”. What moti­ vated the “new man” was “the attraction of the machine” and the challenge of “existing without feelings”. Here, Jiinger’s observation, “Technology is our uniform,” was apt. An analysis of the symbolic relationship of irrationalism and technology in the essays “Copse 125” and “Feuer und Blud” (Fire and Blood) leads Jiinger to the conclusion that the generation of the trenches “created the machines, and for that generation the machine was not inert steel but rather an instrument of power which subjugates cold reason and blood. It gives the world a new face.” The man-machine holism was exemplified by the relationship between the soldier and the technology of war: “We have to transfer what we have within us onto the machine.”109 The machine, which had formerly been seen as functional and utilitarian, was now viewed as expressing the true essence of the modern man: Yes, the machine is beautiful; its beauty is self-evident to anyone who loves life in all its fullness and power. Nietzsche might well have been writing of the machine (though it did not yet have a place in his Renaissance landscape) when he argued that life was more than D arw in’s wretched struggle for existence, but a will to higher and deeper goals. The machine must be made more than a mere means of production to satisfy our pitiful basic needs; it should provide us with a higher and deeper satisfaction."0

This “aestheticization of technological form” is indicative of the direction in which Jiinger’s critique of modernism was moving. As Jeffrey Herf pointed out, Jiinger became the most prominent spokesman of “reactionary modernism”, an ideal or cultural trend “which was reconciliation between the antimodernist, romantic and irrationalist ideas present in German nationalism and the [ . . . ] modern technology.” The reactionary modernists combined “ political reaction with technological advance. Where German conservatives had spoken of technology or culture, the reactionary modernists taught the German Right to speak of technology and culture.”,n This school of thought included thinkers like Oswald Spengler, Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Hans Freyer and Werner Sombart. Unlike the reactionaries of the Volksgemeinschaft who rejected industrialization and technology, which they felt were harmful to the spirit of the people, these thinkers of the “conserva­ tive revolution” came to the conclusion that Germany had to adopt modern technology and at the same time create a socio-economic system which was capable of mastering it. The aim was to consolidate German national power through the adoption of the products of modern industrialization, to create an authoritative national socialism which would constitute a “third way” between capitalism or the “Manchester spirit” and blind collectivism or

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communism; concomitmant with this aim was the encourgment of a spirit of self-sacrifice and a love of danger in place of the Enlightenment spirit of calcu­ lated rationality, and the development of qualities of masculinity, bravery, hardness, discipline and honor. The reactionary modernists sought to embrace technology within the framework of Kultur (culture) - which meant commu­ nity, blood, will, independence, form, creativity, race, etc. - while rejecting the characteristics of Zivilization (civilization) - reason, intellect, internation­ alism, materialism and money. (Kultur and Zivilization do not have the same meaning in German as “culture” and “civilization” in English). These ideo­ logues of the new German nationalism wished to create order out of the chaos that existed in Germany after the First World W a r.112 Jiinger kept his distance from the political parties, because - as Max Weber would have said - he wished to avoid the institutionalization of the charis­ matic community which was born from the experience of the trenches. “The degree of movement and the life-force” were more important than political objectives in the narrow sense.113In his article “Nationhood and Modem Life” (1927), Jiinger adopted the idea of “magic realism”, which served as the basis of his concept of technology. The idea was that modern life, which had once appeared to be formless and chaotic, had created a symbolic dimension.114The machine, in the modern era, had permitted a comprehensive order: “a higher order [ . . . ] the mathematics of the organic [ . . . ] . ” The technology of the machine was a kind of symbolic purification and had endowed the workerwarrior with the “ritual forms of an alien sect.” 115 As the type of the “producer” in the mass-society, the worker-warrior was no longer a mean­ ingless cypher in mathematical calculations but had achieved significance precisely in that role, and had risen, as Jiinger said, “from mathematics to metaphysics”. Junger’s Der Arbeiter appeared in October 1932, three months before Hitler came to power. The book’s title can be translated “The Worker” or “The Technocrat”. We have decided to use the former. The subtitle of the work is Herrschaft and Gestalt (Dominance and Form): the Herrschaft is the worker-warriors’ control of technology in the “work-state”, where “domina­ tion and discipline are one and the same.” The Gestalt is the ideal type of the soldier-worker mentality. Jiinger wrote: Gestalt cannot in the usual sense be described ( . . . ) Insofar as it is to be sought beyond the will and beyond history (Entwicklung), it is also to be sought beyond values. It possesses no quality."6

Jiinger used the concept “Gestalt” in a very similar way to the contempo­ rary Berlin school of Gestalt psychology represented by Koffka, Wertheimer and Kohler. He claimed that where socialist propaganda in the nineteenth century had been directed at the workers’ class consciousness, in the twentieth century it ought to be directed at their “technological consciousness” . Technology was to be co-opted by means of what Jiinger called “the Gestalt

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of the worker”, which provided a new way of apprehending the modern world: By Gestalt we refer to the highest meaningful reality. Its appearances are meaningful as symbols, representations and impressions of this reality. The Gestalt is the whole truth which embraces more than the sum of its parts. This 'm ore’ we call totality [ . . . ] . ' 117

Gestalt was for Jiinger what myth was for Sorel; and indeed, Gestalt was in fact completely mythical.118 Form (Gestalt), said Heidegger, has first of all to be understood against the background of the psychology of the period as “the whole which is more than the sum of its parts.” This is also the basic characteristic of myth according to Sorel. Form, as an image of reality, creates a higher or alternative reality. Here we are confronted with a paradox: tech­ nology is a means to the rationalization of work, but the dominance of technology is achieved through something which is devoid of any quality i.e., through a neutral Gestalt. Jiinger goes even further: for him, people are actually machines subject to a metaphysical language. In tactical terms, Jiinger’s metaphysical Gestalt is intended to resolve the contradictions of bourgeois society: those between law and power, between the state and society, between the mathematical universe and the organic. The mythical Gestalt represented the change from the decadent liberal society to the new work-state based on technology - that is, from the physical to the metaphys­ ical. The Gestalt had no moral or psychological significance and was to be evaluated through the consciousness: it was a means of training human beings to accept certain forms of knowledge irrespective of their will. For Jiinger, Gestalt was creative form as opposed to lifeless and repetitious abstract reasoning. It was identified with creative Kultur and not with sterile Zivilizatiotr, Gestalt was without history and could not be explained in terms of the rational concepts of bourgeois culture:119 “From the moment in which one begins to experience things in terms of a Gestalt, everything becomes a Gestalt.” 120 Like the futuristic “force-lines” by which reality could be inter­ preted, the Gestalt was a metaphysical magnet which directed people by means of hidden lines of force: “One ought never to forget that here it is a question not of cause and effect, but of simultaneity. There is no purely mechanical law; the changes in mechanical and organic conditions occur through the superordinate realm of the Gestalt.”121 Gestalt shapes all things in such a way that they become raw material for total mobilization. The “Gestalt of the worker” is a modern concept possible only in an era of work and in a situation of total mobilization in which all human resources are mobi­ lized without distinction.122 The 1930s was a time which fell between periods; it was a time of anarchy, nihilism, war, fear and confusion. People had to behave in their everyday lives like soldiers on the battlefield who know that they are part of a totality, of something larger than themselves. In the tech­ nological era, everything expresses the Gestalt of the worker-warrior.

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According to Jiinger, “Of all existing forms of work, arms are the most impor­ tant. This is due to the fact that the driving-force of the worker is the will to dominate. Here there is no means that is not simultaneously a means-topower, or, in other words, an expression of the total character of work.”123 The “Gestalt of the worker”, which replaces liberal and Christian values, organizes the whole of human experience as a symbolic participation in work, which is the human form of cosmic energy. The heroic worker, like the unknown soldier who fell in the fields of Flanders, is totally surrendered to the lofty demands of Gestalt.,24 He is detached from bourgeois individualism and is someone whose freedom is surrender to the superior force of work oper­ ating through us. Thus, the “subject” becomes a medium for the energetic force of work: the “subject” fuses with cosmic technology, creating a hopedfor union between the worker and his work, between the will to power and its agent. The nihilization of modern man, his subjugation to his work, is in fact his liberation.125 Jiinger rejected evolutionism and historicism and all forms of historical causation, and at the same time created a vision of work in which the logic of technology formed part of a symbolic universe which rejected humanistic values. The Gestalt is dynamic, has no quality, is beyond all values and is not the result of a historical process: “It is not the history of form but its dynamic interpretation.”126 The philosopher Stanley Rosen finds Gestalt to be absolute nihilism: “This dynamic emptiness permits Jiinger to unite his conception of form with his desire to annihilate the rationalist, bourgeois, romantic content of modern European civilization.” 127 In Rosen’s words, this combination of Gestalt and technology permits the “desired nothingness” to be obtained.128 Jiinger rebelled against the sentimental romanticism of the past and was intoxicated by the modern era. He believed that the battlefield and the metrop­ olis could satisfy the yearnings of anti-bourgeois youth and could serve as an equivalent of what he had sought in Africa. The machine had to be accepted as part of German culture and not rejected as an alien element. The city and the machine were to be regarded as aesthetic phenomena, as examples of the beautiful and not of the useful or the rational, connected to the philosophy of life as an expression of the will to power: We must penetrate the forces of the metropolis, which are the real powers of our time: the machine, the masses, the w orker . . . We m ust try to lay aside the objections of the misdirected romanticism which sees the machine as being opposed to cu ltu re.129

According to Jiinger, the spirit of the modern era had made its appearance with the self-sacrifice of the soldiers at the front, which was something unchar­ acteristic of the village-society of the past. The city and the front-line soldier shared the same “metaphysical will”: “The city is the mind with which the will of our period thinks . . . we should abandon ourselves to this era.”130 Jiinger considered “the big city with its automobile and neon lights, its massive

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political gatherings, its dynamic rhythm [ . . . ] . All this,” he said, “has a signif­ icance, a deep significance, which I also feel within my self.” 1,1 The battlefield and the movement of the motor-car had become a “second nature” for modern man, and aviation was the battlefield of the aristocracy. The pilot was the “new man, the man of the twentieth century [...] . Flying is the living expres­ sion of the life of power.” 132 In his article “Progress, Freedom and Necessity” (1927), Jiinger pointed out that an acceptance of modernity did not necessarily mean accepting all the values associated with it such as liberalism, Marxism, rationalism, the freedom of the individual or the idea of progress. Jiingerian pessimism rejected the idea of technology as part of historical progress, and thus rejected the mechanistic and materialistic view of technology in nine­ teenth-century thought, and especially in Saint-Simon, Spencer and Marx. Marxism and liberalism seemed to him different versions of the Western belief in progress which could be traced to the French Revolution. Jiinger claimed that the source of the idea of progress was man’s illusion that he was able to control history. He believed that history represented a play of forces more powerful than man. In submitting to these forces, mod­ em, technological man had developed secular symbols which had taken the place of the traditional religions. “Homo ludens” had replaced religion with technology: life religious ceremonies are equivalent [ . . . ] and one can consequently see greater religiousness today among the spectators at a film or at a motor-race than in the pulpits and altars of churches.133

T he Work-State The new human type is not to be evaluated in racial, biological terms but meta­ physically, as the representative of a new organization of the world. This modern type, the “worker” has no significance outside the restless activity of work: the new world run by the worker is a representation of the will to power. The new language is a symbolic expression of the a historical will to power which is devoid of meaning. There is no need for words in order to understand the new language, which is “an echo of the basic mythic law.” The historian Hans Peter Schwarz claimed that Jiinger gave a simplistic mythical explana­ tion to the multi-faceted and contradictory phenomenon of the rise of modern technology and its relation to political and social change in Europe. He also ignored the historical differences in the technological and cultural develop­ ment of various forces. Schwarz maintained that Jiinger “found a general formula by which the whole modern phenomenon could be explained: move­ ment, the encapsulation of all significance in speed, the transposition of all life into energy. With this basic assumption that movement was the ‘universal key’, Jiinger cast the horoscope of our time.” 134 Michael Zimmerman added that work as the rationale of the modern technological era is an irrational

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objective: production for its own sake.135 The Jiingerian view of man and the cosmos is wholly modelled on the Nietzschean vision of chaos as the will to power, but in this case we have a workshop, a foundry engaged in perpetual production for its own sake: O ur technological world is not an area of unlimited possibilities; rather, it possesses an embryonic character which drives tow ard a predetermined maturity. So it is that our world resembles a monstrous foundry . . . Its means have a provisionary, w orkshop character, designed for temporary use. To this condition it corresponds that our environment has a transitional nature. There is no stability of forms; all forms are constantly moulded by dynamic unrest. There is no stability of means; nothing is stable outside of the rise of production curves.136

Der Arbeiter hovers somewhere between dream and nightmare - an impression which is enhanced by a radio broadcast of the period, in which Jiinger said: “I wanted to avoid using general unifying terms such as are used by all the political parties: terms like culture, soul, ideal, personality, psychology, Goethe, Hegel, Shakespeare [ . . . ]. I wanted to describe our reality as it would be described to a man from the moon who had never seen a motor car and had never read a page of modern literature [ . . . ].”137 After the Second World War, Jiinger persistently claimed that the book had been intended as a diagnosis rather than as a prognosis, and that he had merely been a seismograph or barometer of his time. Der Arbeiter straddles the border between myth and utopia. H. P. Schwarz described the book as a “political myth” in the Sorelian sense, and Gerhard Loose regarded it as a negative utopia or “utopia of nihilism” which over­ turned the humanistic assumptions underlying traditional utopias.138 Karl Heinz Bohrer saw Der Arbeiter as an anti-utopia like Aldous Huxley’s Brave N ew World (1932) and Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis (1926).139In Der Arbeiter the emphasis is on a literary description of style, appearance and form, which conveys the character of the worker not in economic terms but in terms of a dominant style. Thus, Jiinger was not interested in historical or political facts: for him, the mythical “phenomenology” embedded in Der Arbeiter was the most recent aesthetic representation of the will to power. Junger’s “report” on the modern era was therefore not a social analysis but a fictional repre­ sentation of the utopian (or anti-utopian) style. His writing, like the contemporary film ttoir, portrayed the future as a technological totalitari­ anism where there was no room for human individuality or feelings. The analogy today would be the space-utopia. In Der Arbeiter, Jiinger takes the “nihilist-totalitarian syndrome” to its ultimate conclusion in his formulation of the technological vision of the modern world. Where Jiinger had once emphasized the “existential moment” of war, he now envisaged a “total mobilization” in which labor had no limits and individuals could be sacrificed to the requirements of the society. The

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“worker” was neither a nationalist nor a socialist, neither a democrat nor a revolutionary, but a technician, a member of the “ranked state”, the “new order” or the “work-state”. The “worker” achieved personal satisfaction not through pursuing any external goal but through manifesting energy in produc­ tion, transportation and management. These three activities gave rise to a new phenomenon, the “Gestalt of the worker”. Originally, Jiinger saw the Gestalt of the front-line soldier as the model for the “worker”. In the modern battle­ field and in the modern work-process, the individual is a standardized phenomenon who wears a uniform; not a private person but a type.140 This state of affairs results from the congruence between “the battlefield and the sphere of work.”141 Battledress, as a special kind of work-uniform, appears lighter in color, and the usual work-uniform looks more mili­ taristic.142 The bourgeois citizen “is prepared to compromise at all costs”143 and the worker is “prepared to fight at all costs.” In the Jiingerian work-state, everyone would be a “worker”, just as in bourgeois society everyone is a “citizen”. In the army, everyone is a soldier, no matter what his task is. In the same way, in the new modern society, everyone would be a “worker”, no matter what his rank is. The worker is seen as a nut or bolt in a military machine.144 War is no longer an end in itself, but a manifestation of the general phenomenon of work. The worker-warriors no longer fight spontaneously but are systematically “called up for work.” According to Jiinger, the war neces­ sitated the setting-up of a postwar order which found expression in the ranked society of the work-state, the model of which is to be found in military orga­ nization.145 Jiinger compares the future state to a battleship where, unlike in a pleasure-cruiser, everything has to be checked repeatedly and one has to be on one’s guard, perpetually on the alert. In the state mobilized for work and for total war, there is no longer any distinction between citizen and soldier, between front and rear of the battle-line, between war and peace.146 In the state of the future, war and work become identical concepts. Who is this “worker”, who is not a concept, an idea or an ideology, and who cannot be explained by history, dialectics or any system of values? According to Jiinger, the “worker” is the characterization of a type, the type of “new man”, successor to the “old man”, the citizen of bourgeois society. The “worker” has no class-consciousness, and does not belong to any social class in the old sense, nor to the “class of nineteenth-century revolutionary dialectics”.147The “worker” and the “bourgeois” are not classes but “forms” , and Jiinger now describes the political conflict between these two forms of Gestalt. Jiinger believed that economic thought was by its very nature limited. It came into being in the eighteenth century in a rationalistic and moralistic atmosphere, and was directed at the bourgeois mentality. The nineteenthcentury bourgeoisie saw workers as representative of a new class, a new society and economic order.148 The distinction between exploiters and exploited came to be viewed in these bourgeois terms of economics, creating a “dictatorship of economic'thought.” 149 The fact that a worker was better

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paid had no connection with his value as a worker, a value related to domi­ nation and freedom. The opposite was true: “Economics is not a force which permits freedom.” The “worker” has to struggle for a power and freedom which cannot be achieved within the economic order. No labor movement ever focused on w ork as a separate and independent phenomenon.150 Thus far, the laborer regarded work as a source of income and nothing more: work was dictated by necessity. For the “worker”, on the other hand, work is the source of true freedom: not the anarchical freedom of the bourgeoisie, but the freedom of the soldier. Everyone is free by the very fact that he works, represents a new “form ” which now enters history, a human type which will now dominate the world. This type of “worker” produces a new hierarchy, different from that of the past (the bourgeoisie), or that of socialism, which is oriented towards the future: “What distinguishes the two periods is not that their values are higher or lower, but the very fact that they are different.”151 The Gestalt of the bourgeois seeks security above all, and depletes life of all that is “basic” by suppressing the reality of danger, harmonizing conflict and fostering the illusion of progress. The vitality, the aggressiveness and the violence which emerged from the crucible of the war were remote from nineteenth-century bourgeois tradition. Hatred of the bourgeoisie caused Jiinger to write angrily: “It is better to be a criminal than a bourgeois!” The “worker” is the opposite of the “ bourgeois”: “He is connected to basic forces. The ‘worker’ will become increasingly dominant because of the ‘higher law of struggle’.”152 The German, in Junger’s opinion, did not make a good bourgeois. The German nation followed a historical path different from that of the Western democracies. The failure to exploit the full capacity of German society weakened the German position in the international arena and thus led to a mobilization of the population during the war which was only partial. Germany was not able to implement a total mobilization, and Jiinger now sought, as an alternative, to establish a “work-state” which would be an order of worker-fighters. In the new work-state, the historical classes and classdifferences would become irrelevant. Although Jiinger, like Spengler and Moeller Van den Bruck, sought to create a new socialist consciousness, Spengler complained to him that “like many others, you did not succeed in liberating the idea of the 'worker’ from Marxist prosology [ . . . ] . ”153Jiinger, who rejected the Marxist concepts of “social classes” and “class warfare” and replaced them with the idea of the bourgeois society as a mass-society, proved to be one of the first diagnosticians of the mass-society. Instead of a classless society, Jiinger proposed a society graded in ranks like the army. Jiinger distinguished between the bourgeois era, identified with modernism, and the age of the worker, which began when modernism ended. The age of the worker is more modern than modernism, and can be identified with postmodernism. For Jiinger, the starting-point of postmodernism is the Nietzschean belief that the death of God, and consequently the decline of Christianity and its secular counterpart, the bourgeoisie, were the decisive

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events of the modernist period. As Jurgen Habermas has stated, modernism was the project of the Enlightenment and the equality of man. Jiinger sought to subvert this programme and so developed an anti-Enlightenment dialectic. According to him, there was no possibility of liberation.154 This was a deter­ ministic assumption implicit in the concept of “forms” (Gestalten) - the behavioral patterns of history - as against human freewill. Jiinger therefore wished to “inform his time from the viewpoint of an archaeologist.” In this, he foreshadowed major manifestations of postmodernist thought like Michel Foucault’s “archaeology”, Jacques Derridas’s “traces” and the “metanarra­ tive” (myth) of Jean-Francis Lyotard. In the metaphor “archaeology” which has become a synonym for Foucault’s subversive action, one may discern the fingerprints of Nietzsche, who was the ultimate source of both Jiinger and postmodernism. “Archaeology” meant that history was not a continuous narrative but a series of layers, of different organic cultures. This view, which conformed to Oswald Spengler’s and Arnold Toynbee’s concept of history as a succession of different cultures, posits a cultural relativity in which there are neither eternal truths nor supra-historical values. Values change with histor­ ical circumstances. The archaeological approach meant a total historicism whose political implications could be embraced by thinkers like Heidegger and historians like Ernst Nolte. The motivation of the Jiingerian order was not spiritual or material, but “ heroic realism”. The source of this expression was the title of an article published by Jiinger on the 28th of March 1930 in Die Literarische Welt. The worker’s aim was not wealth or happiness, but total conformity to ideal type: “What is important to us is not to live, but to be able to live with great­ ness [ . . . ].”155 The modern world was dominated by the type of the “worker”, who exemplified the concept of work. Work allows us to domi­ nate the world. “W ork”, said Jiinger, “is not a technical operation” but an exercise of will that makes use of technological means.156 In the modern era, “work is the impulsion of the fist, of the mind, of the heart, of life in the day­ time and at night, of science, love, art, fidelity - of the cult, of war; work is the quiver of the atom, the motion of the stars and the power of the systems providing energy.”157 The absolute dominance of work and of the type of the “ worker” also determines the form of life of individuals. The central princi­ ple of the work-state is the “total mobilization” which drives the world. The uniform of the work-state is the working-clothes of the “w orker” . Religion vanishes, private property remains.158 The romantic concept of the bohemian artist, which is a relic of the bourgeois art of the last century, disap­ pears.159The art of the “worker” is based on the Gestalt of work as a life-style: it is a concretization of work, and responds to life in its totality. In politics, the democracy of parties is replaced by “the dictatorship of the worker”; the free press allowing a difference of opinion is eliminated and is replaced by a technical press giving only information and news. The private lives of the “workers” is placed under the scrutiny of the state, and the social c o n tra c t is replaced by a plan which guides the workers. This prevents them from meeting

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the same fate as the aristocracy in the eighteenth century and the bourgeoisie in the nineteenth.

Form and History In The Destruction o f Reason (1962), Georg Lukacs said that, for Jiinger, the dividing-line between death and life was that between the two “forms” - the bourgeois pacifism of the Weimar Republic and Prussian-German aggressivity.160Jiinger, like Spengler, belonged to the a-historical school of thought and made no attempt to demonstrate the superiority of capitalism to socialism. One should remember that “form” already existed as one of the main concepts in vitalism. In The Decline o f the West (1923), Spengler spoke of “forms” as the key to understanding history: “Form and law, narrative and concept, symbol and formulation each have different origins. What we have here is the relationship between life and death. Concepts destroy the working of 'intu­ ition* [ . . . ] . The artist and the original historian have an intuitive grasp of how things develop.” 161 Spengler expanded the analogical method, as a way of understanding history, into a general morphology, a system of symbols or w hat he called a “physiognomy” of history .Jiinger’s symbolic representation of the historical reality was somewhat influenced by Spengler: the meaning of the morphological interpretation of history is that forms dominate history in the shape of symbols and metaphors and mould the socioeconomic reality. Spengler was interested in the meaning of the empirical reality, in suggesting some hidden possibility: “It is not T that realizes the possibility, but 'it’ real­ izes itself through my empirical nature.” For Jiinger and Spengler, world history was an aesthetic and symbolic phenomenon, a drama molded by domi­ nant forms, which themselves were representations of an a-historical will. Lukac’s criticism of this is that these world-creating forms were not human agents but merely forces “guiding the drama of history.”162 Lukacs discerned a dehumanization of history in Spengler’s and Jiinger’s attempts to find meta­ physical principles of history more basic than the materialistic historical approach of Marx. Jiinger’s “form” was part of the general climate of myth-creation. Jiinger wrote: “The idea of ‘forms’ is revolutionary because it captures things in their entirety and in the total fullness of life. The great virtue of the concept is that it is beyond the moral or the aesthetic, just as it is beyond scientific laws.”163 There was a similarity between the views of Jiinger and those of Ludwig Klages, an author and a member of the circle of Stefan George. Klages’s irra­ tional vitalism replaced nihilistic negation with the conscious production of myths: his doctrine of consciousness was based on a theory of myths that opposed “images”, which were living expressions, to “things”, which were creations of the mind.164 At the center of Klages’s myth-producing vitalism was “ Promethean humanity”, which had sprung out of “Heraditean man”. In Jiinger’s thought, this vitalism assumed a political and modernistic orien­

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tation: the “new man” turned not towards Greek mythology but towards a technological utopia. Between 1880 and 1930, leading German intellectuals like Dilthey, Simmel, Scheler and Weber questioned the rational and progressive interpre­ tation of history. They felt that the world had lost its sense of direction and that people had begun to look for a new perspective which would restore their lost equilibrium. Extreme vitalist subjectivism even went so far as to deny the possibility of understanding history in a rational and objective manner. Only the mythical was significant, and Jiinger said about the origin of myth: “Historical myths are created by the victorious.” The myth of the “worker” perceived the dominant force of contemporary culture to be a life-force opposed to the bourgeoisie. This new approach owed something to Spengler’s “ Prussian socialism”, but the difference was that where Spengler identified Prussianness with the kind of socialism he admired,165 Jiinger claimed that Prussianness “repressed what was basic,” and he imagined a state in which “ the life of work did not eliminate the basic but embraced it.” In contrast with the vitalism of the work-state, the dead bourgeois world was one of security, and the arbitrariness of the existing regimes had therefore to be violently destroyed through an energetic nihilism which would uproot the illusory stability and security of the bourgeoisie. Just as bourgeois revolutions utilized the concept of spiritual weapons, so the workers’ revolution would utilize objective, technical weapons.166 All the organs of bourgeois culture - radio, newspapers, schools - would become instruments of the revolutionary process. The nihilization of bourgeois culture would pave the way for a total­ itarian state whose style would be that of work.167 It was Wilhelm Freiherr von Humboldt who first noticed the sense of secu­ rity of the German bourgeoisie. Jaspers and Heidegger’s teachings helped to undermine it.168 Jiinger represented the “forms” (Gestalten) of the “bour­ geois” and the “worker” as opposites, in line with the mythical approach to history, which is anti-historical: “Form is what matters; no development can add to it or subtract from it. A history which is a development cannot be a history of form [ . . . ] . A development has a beginning and an end, a birth and a death, and form rejects these. History does not create any form, but it changes with form.”169In the process described here, myth is depicted as anni­ hilating history. In 1981, Jiinger wrote: [In 1 9 3 2 ,1 saw] that a new type of planetary man was putting himself in place and that he bore within himself a new metaphysics of which, on the empirical plane, he is not yet really conscious. Today still his visage remains partially hidden [ . . . ] . Today we live in a transitional stage between two immense moments o f history, as it was the case in the time of Heraclitus. The latter found himself between two dimensions: on the one side, there was myth, on the other, history. And we find ourselves between history and the appearance of something completely different. And our transitional era is

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characterized by a phase of Titanism which the modern w orld expresses at all levels.170

A comparison of Junger’s mythical approach with Wilhelm Dilthey’s approach to history is particularly interesting. In Dilthey’s view, historical relativity leads to a contradiction between the historical approach and the anthropological approach. The significance of transforming history into myth is that the more one “sees”, the deeper one enters into the concrete. Only the “forms” of vitalistic anthropology and of typology can reach essences and are capable of constructing myths, and the same principle applies in reverse: whenever there is human historical development, real history loses any vital significance.171 Spengler, as we said, believed that history gained its signifi­ cance from the creation of myths, and Klages believed it gained its significance from vitalism. Junger’s aim was to combine myth, authenticity and vitalism with a comprehensive vision of modernity. They all shared the idea that the historical process assumes certain “ forms”. To the degree that history is domi­ nated by myth, it favors one “form” and eliminates the others. In using a vitalist terminology rather than a Marxist one, Jiinger was influ­ enced by the vitalism which had developed in German biology, by Bergson’s elan vital and by modern atomic physics. His cosmological vision of work accorded the worker an ontological status, and related to work as energos in the original sense of the term, as a manifestation of the energy in the cosmos which includes man. The idea of man’s work as energy relates it directly to cosmic energy, and the purpose of “total mobilization” was the “transmuta­ tion of life into energy.” Work effects a synthesis of human activity and natural energy by means of technology, for indeed, as Jiinger said, “technology and nature are not opposites.”172 In the technological era, work-as-energy is channelled into modern war, and the First World War was in Junger’s opinion “the first shared work of humanity.” The engine is the Jiingerian symbol of modernity. The total mobilization of the modern age by means of technology is a self-operating activity, containing its objective within itself. What nature was to earlier generations, machines are to our time. Technical perfection is not progress but a basic fact. The machine, as a manifestation of the will, is now the organizer of things.173 The engine “constructs” this self-sufficient dynamism,174 and thus “techni­ cians [ . . . ] are the lords of dynamism.” In the engine one may perceive the nihilistic and totalitarian basis of the technological order: “The engine is the audacious toy of a race which is able to blow itself up and find pleasure in it, and to see this act as a confirmation of the order to which it belongs.”175 It is not surprising if ideologists of the Third Reich like Baumler and Ernst Krieck employed a similar vitalistic and mythical language in attacking the bourgeoisie Alferd Baumler, the author of Nietzsche, Philosopher and Politician (1931), suggested that intellectuals should train to live “the life of political soldiers.”176 The life of the soldier was regarded as an ideal form of life, and the “political soldier,” the man of the SS or the SA, represented the

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fulfilment of life in all its power. In Myths o f the East and West (1926), Baumler considered the relationship between myth and history: “The problem of myth,” he said, “has no hope of a solution as long as they concern them­ selves with the question of how myth becomes reality, for in that case they lay a weak foundation for human development. If, on the other hand, we ask how myth springs up within history, no satisfying answer can be given, because the formulation of the question is erroneous. Myth is definitely unhistorical. Myth not only reaches prehistory, but also attains the ultimate foundations of the human soul.”177 An illustration of Baumier’s thesis was the Jiingerian “worker”, which was a myth of the modern world - a world which is a work­ shop, as against the bourgeois world which is a museum. The workshop, comparable to a battlefield, was perceived in terms of a myth of belligerence for its own sake. In his attack on bourgeois culture, creative vitalism fused with irrational nihilism to create a mythical language. With Jiinger, this myth­ ical language became the very heart of a doctrine of vitalist consciousness.

Heidegger - The Will to Will Martin Heidegger’s attraction to Jiinger’s writings, especially Der Arbeiter, no less than his friendship with the author himself, is deserving of attention. In 1938-9, Heidegger gave a university course entitled “Beyond Metaphysics”, and in the winter 1939-40 he gave a private seminar at the University of Freiburg on the work of Jiinger, and especially Der Arbeiter. The seminar aroused opposition in the National Socialist Party, and he was finally prevented from giving it. Jiinger was the only writer or thinker with whom Heidegger corresponded on a regular basis and with whom he had a close rela­ tionship. Their first meeting, which occurred only after the Second World War, took place in the heart of the Black Forest. There, Heidegger suggested to the writer of Der Arbeiter that he should bring out a new edition of his book. Jiinger refused, and that was the end of the conversation concerning Der Arbeiter.'7*The book, which was reprinted in the collection M y Complete Works, was the best possible symbol of the meeting of the two thinkers in their common desire to understand the modern world and the universal domina­ tion of technology. In 1955, Heidegger showed Jiinger his article “The Front Line”, which was first published in the Festschrift for Jiinger’s sixtieth birthday; in 1959, the article appeared as a book under the title Zur Seinfrage (On the question of being).179 Heidegger was fascinated by Jiinger’s criticism of bourgeois decadence, his positive view of a future elite and his desire for an authoritarian community, but at the same time he welcomed the national-socialist revolution as a means of preventing the realization of precisely the technological utopia envisioned by Jiinger. Heidegger viewed the advent of the new Reich as an opportunity to revitalize the German Volk, in contrast to Jiinger’s vision of making the entire world into a single technological planet.180 In formulating this vision,

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Jiinger was not only speaking to all Germans, but to all Europeans. Heidegger was convinced that Hitler’s national socialism made possible a “third way”, an alternative to a technological conception of reality such as had gained acceptance in the United States and Russia. Der Arbeiter represented for him the best description of this technological understanding of reality. Jiinger’s Nietzsche-inspired aestheticism made an impression on Heidegger, and many of his works could be seen as a confrontation with Junger’s thought. In this connection, it is worth mentioning Heidegger’s series of seminars on Nietzsche given from 1936 to 1940 and from 1940 to 1946. Heidegger did not compare Nietzsche to Kierkegaard or to the “philosophy of being”, and unlike Jaspers did not see him as an existentialist thinker, but regarded him as the last of the metaphysicians. In their contempt for mass-culture, Jiinger and Heidegger were influenced by Nietzsche’s analysis of the moral dialectic of the master and slave. Massculture - that is, the bourgeois world - was identified with the bourgeois world which aimed at comfort, mediocrity and security. Elitists that they were, Jiinger and Heidegger believed that the technological era could reach fulfil­ ment only under the leadership of an elite which would reject the shallow optimism of the masses. Both of them awaited the Nietzschean Overman who would complete the nihilistic process.181 In Heidegger’s writings about Jiinger, there are five main points: The nature of technology in Junger’s thought; Der Arbeiter as a realization of Western metaphysics in technological terms; Junger’s vision of a universal technology as the embodiment of an active nihilism; Jiinger as an essential link in a chain leading from Nietzsche to Heidegger; and the problematics raised by Der Arbeiter, which explains Heidegger’s view of national socialism as “an encounter between organized existential technology and modern man.”182The common factor between the five points is Heidegger’s view of Jiinger as a witness and representative of modernity. Jiinger and Heidegger shared a conception of modern freedom as freedom-to-work. The Nazis claimed that there was a direct connection between the metaphysical significance given to work by thinkers such as Jiinger and Heidegger and the performance of work on behalf of Germany. Here one must ask the question: was the inscription on the gates of Auschwitz - Arbeit macht frei (Work liberates) - a gross, cynical exploitation of Junger’s thought or its logical conclusion?183 The first public expression of Heidegger’s vision of the new world of work was his rectorial speech of May 1933, “The Strengthening of the German University.” The speech was steeped in a Jiingerian spirit, and it employed a Heideggerian philosophical language close to Junger’s harsh romanticism. Heidegger claimed that at that time - in the early 1930s - the university was the main battlefield for the struggle of the revolutionary forces against the enemies of the Volksgemeinschaft. Only those who were bold, those who were hard, those who were obstinate, those willing to risk all for the sake of an ideal beyond themselves would be welcome in the new university. For this reason, the students would undergo military training. The university was not a place

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for acquiring knowledge but a student elite paving the way for the “new man”. Instead of an ivory tower, the university would become an observation-post and a place of direction. Very few people, said Heidegger, understood the true meaning of science. True science - philosophy - was the highest form of energeia, man’s “work-essence” .184 The meaning of philosophy was work. If the philosopher’s effort was the highest form of the essence of work, and if the aim of the revolution was to engender a world of authentic work, it was the philosopher’s duty to lead the people to this new world. Accordingly, Heidegger divided the German “service of work” into three categories, corre­ sponding to the division in the ideal society of Plato’s Republic: military service, physical labor and the service of knowledge.185 Heidegger pointed out that the first two forms of work - that of the soldier and that of the worker had already been the subject of Junger’s reflections. He returned to these ideas, confirming them, in 1941.18< On the 27th of November 1933, Heidegger declared that, in the new German reality, “the German student has embarked on a new path of sacri­ fice, even if there is no blood as in the battle of Langemarck (a bloody battle of the First World War which became a symbol of the unshakeable German will). The new German student now passes through the ranks of work: he stands side-by-side with the SA”.187 Deeply marked though he was by the violent, masculine language of Jiinger, Heidegger nevertheless hoped that national socialism would provide an alternative to the technological universe envisioned by Jiinger. From 1934, however, it became clear to Heidegger that national socialism had taken the erroneous path of strengthening, not weak­ ening the hold of technology. In the lectures he gave on the poet Holderlin in the years 1934-1935, Heidegger attempted to show how humanity could liberate itself from its technological destiny.188 In Zur Seinfrage (On The Question of Being), Heidegger explained the rela­ tionship between the Nietzschean metaphysics of nihilism and the will to power and the conclusions Jiinger drew from them in Der Arbeiter.189 His conclusion was clear: “Junger’s interpretation of nihilism is entirely expressed in terms of Nietzschean categories.”190 Total mobilization is the large-scale realization of man’s domination of the world by means of technology. Total mobilization is the process whereby the type of the “worker” mobilizes the entire world, so that work, identified with Being, becomes the very style of existence and of man’s domination of Being. Total mobilization is a form of active nihilism in that it is an expression of the nihilistic will to power since man’s mastery of technique has no significance, direction, value, purpose or content. It is will to power for its own sake, mobilization for its own sake, man’s way of preserving his own vitality, or, as Heidegger expressed it, the “will to will.” Nihilism is no longer European or Western but metaphysical; it becomes the fate of the whole world as a normative condition: “The meta­ physical character of the type of the worker’ corresponds to the intentions of the type of Zarathustra with regard to the metaphysics of the will to power.”191 Believing that the technological era that Jiinger envisaged was the

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climax of Western metaphysics, Heidegger not only hoped for a new begin­ ning for Germany but saw Hitler’s revolution as a new dawn for Europe as a whole. Heidegger believed that the essence of modernism for Nietzsche was the dominance of nihilism, which had three manifestations: the supremacy of science and technology, work as a universal existential style, and the recogni­ tion of existential nihilism as a normal condition. Nietzsche declared in 1880-1881 that the age of barbarism had begun and that the scientists would serve it. The question that Jiinger and Carl Schmitt would consequently ask was Zarathustra’s question which appears in the fourth and last part of the book: “Who will have the courage to be lord of the earth?” Nietzsche did not identify the lord of the earth, but in 1881-1882 he prophesied: “The time will come when the struggle over the rule of the earth will be decided, and it will be decided in the name of essential philosophical doctrines.” In 1883, he again asked: “How can one rule the earth?”, and in 1884, he added: “I am writing for a race of men who do not yet exist, for the rulers of the earth.” Although Zarathustra was the prototype that personified the metaphysics which made the Overman possible, he was not yet the Overman but only his spokesman.192 Then Jiinger and other thinkers came, and each one fashioned his hero Rainer Maria Rilke’s angel, Trakle’s stranger, Oswald Spengler’s barbarian, Sorel’s syndicalist, and the Italian and Russian futurist - in accordance with the metaphysical model provided by Zarathustra.

The Jiingerian Order Jiinger sought organic structures which, like Edgar Jung’s “Gemeinschaft”, would not depend on personal freedom of choice: “One cannot belong to an organic structure through a personal decision or an act of bourgeois liberty, but only through a genuine involvement determined by the particular nature of the work.”193 The “Organic Structure” which Jiinger looked for was described by Albert Camus as “a religion of anti-Christian technique whose believers and soldiers are the workers, since the worker is a universal phenom­ enon.” Seeing a direct connection between the nihilistic dynamism of Rosenberg’s “empire of blood and action” and Jiinger’s “universal techno­ logical empire,” Camus wrote: “The legislation of the dominant new regime takes the place of a change in the social contract. The worker is outside the sphere of negotiation, compassion, literature, and is trained for the sphere of action. His legal obligations merge into military obligations. We see that the empire is simultaneously a factory and the world’s military encampment, and Hegel’s warrior-worker rules there like a slave.”194 The justification for the work-state was the total mobilization of the worker-warriors through the rationale of technology: this internal logic, according to Camus, necessarily led to “the nihilistic formulations of Ernst Jiinger.” In his article “Decline or New O rder” (1929), Jiinger declared war and the

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worker to be the cornerstones of a new sociopolitical order which would trans­ form the bourgeois, conservative and decadent forms. The new order would have three basic features: “a new principle or a new legislation [ . . . ] which will guarantee the unity of the rising order”; “A ‘new man’ . . . who will trans­ late this principle into reality;” and “exalted new forms, in which the actions of the new type of man will find expression.”195 The political camp which possessed these features - the new principle, the new man and the new forms - whatever its content might be, would be the order favored by Jiinger at that time. In 1925, Jiinger declared that “national socialism has more blood and fire than the so-called revolution has supplied in all these years.”196 He sent copies of his books to Hitler. Only one of them has survived: Feuer und Blut (Fire and Blood), dedicated “to the national leader, Adolf Hitler.” Hitler, for his part, sent him a dedicated copy of Mein Kampf and in 1927 offered him the chance of representing the national socialists in the Reichstag. Jiinger declined this offer, as he totally rejected the parliamentary system and expressed his disappointment at Hitler’s decision to adopt parliamentary tactics. He thought Hitler was too moderate.197 In the 1920s, Jiinger, influenced by his brother Friedrich Georg’s book, Aufmarsch des Nationalismus (The March of Nationalism), called himself a “nationalist”.198 Jiinger, Ernst von Salomon, Ernst Niekisch and Wilhelm Kleinau met in these nationalistic circles: Hitler called them “children of chaos.” By the end of the 1920s, Jiinger feared that the Nazis would betray the purity of their national-revolutionary ideals. J. P. Stern believes that Junger’s teachings served as an “intellectual superstructure” for the Nazi political program.199 At that time, Jiinger was the most important writer to remain in Germany, and he hardly made any attempt to oppose or to protest against the Nazis’ exploitation of his name as a soldier and a patriot in order to glorify their aims. Jiinger never joined the Nazi party, but, to say the least, he did not regret the fall of the Weimar Republic. On the contrary, he felt that the Nazis’ rise to power was the “metaphysical solution” which would put into practice the scheme of total mobilization in its pure form.200 The many explanations which have been given for the fact that Jiinger did not join the Nazi party all agree on the point that Jiinger, with aristocratic disdain, rejected the plebeian aspects of Nazism. Junger’s aloofness towards the Nazis from 1930 onwards, despite his closeness to them in the 1920s, was due to his wish to preserve the purity of the ideals of the new nationalism. He feared that the Nazi party was open to the same “party egoism” as he found in the other parties, and rejected its legalistic tactics and compromises with the Weimar Republic. He believed that Nazism was only a temporary phenomenon.201 Nor did his ideas really correspond to the Nazi ideology, as he did not promote a biological racism.202 The rejection by the Nazis of his intellectual and aesthetic criteria should also be noted. The Jiingerian “new man” undoubtedly foreshadowed and paved the way

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for the man of the SS, and, in fact, said John Norr, “Junger’s ‘new man’ was not so different from the Nazi stormtrooper of the period: part ex-serviceman, part delinquent, displaying an attitude of 'heroic realism’, which meant 'fighting for its own sake’.”203 Stanley Rosen saw a connection between Heidegger’s inner logic in Being and Time and Junger’s in Der Arbeiter, and their attraction to Nazism. Nihilism and fascism were linked by an umbilical cord: “Jiinger is of interest because his career provides us with a series of steps similar to those traversed by Heidegger: at first, an active encouragement of the contemporary nihilistic motives; then, disillusion with the political mobi­ lization of what was supposed to be a spiritual purification; last, [ . . . ] waiting for new, anti-nihilistic revelations of Being.”204 In Rosen’s opinion, the nihilization of Western civilization proceeded in a straight line from Der Arbeiter to Nazism. In 1934, one year after Hitler came to power, a Nazi figure expressed appreciation of Jiinger ‘s contribution to the outlook of German youth: “German youth is first of all indebted to Ernst Jiinger for the fact that technology is no longer a problem for us. They have accepted the admirable view about technology expressed in Feuer und Blut; they live in harmony with them. They no longer need an ideology with which to overcome technology. Jiinger has liberated us from that nightmare.” The “ nightmare” in question was the hostility to the automobile, technology, industrialization and urbanism which characterized volkisch anti-modernism, the cultural despair of Van den Bruck and Spengler’s pessimism.205 The nihilistic-totalitarian Gestalt not only permitted Jiinger to admire the revolutionary Nazis (“people steeped in love for dynamism” ), but also to be sympathetic to the German communists of the late 1920s, in whom he found “a positive, militant will to power.”206 After he was disillusioned with the Stahlhelm, Jiinger and some of his friends began to write articles for journals directed at youth movements, and he was particularly drawn to Freischer Schilly a young Bund (association) which adopted the “revolutionary-nation­ alist” position favouring German-Russian co-operation in international politics. The demand for change in Germany led to the emergence of the “national Bolshevists”, who were close to the German Communist Party and were largely the creation of Van den Bruck. According to them, Germany did not belong to the democratic West, and it would find its salvation in an alliance with Russia against the West and against republicanism. H. Fischer, an outstanding Jiinger scholar, saw a connection between the national Bolshevists’ high regard for Nietzsche and Nietzsche’s criticism of “bourgeois decadence”.207 Towards the end of the 1920s, Jiinger turned to small groups which engaged in “direct action” against the existing political order. Until 1932, when Der Arbeiter was published, he was associated with the “Prussian anarchists” - violent militants who were active in the Landvolk movement in Schleswig-Holstein, and who resembled Niekisch’s “Wiederstand” group. It was the militant Gestalt, not the political content which interested Jiinger. As he put it: “The more cynical, Spartan, Prussian or Bolshevik life becomes, the better it will be.”

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Jiinger, unlike other reactionary Germans of the “conservative revolu­ tion”, admired the Soviet Union, which, according to him, was characterized by a “Prussian Leninism” aimed at turning Russia into a totally organized technological society of high productivity. He was intrigued by the possibility of a real workers’ state coming into being under communist rule where the rulers did not hesitate to impose a machine-like regimentation on the popula­ tion. He believed that Marxist communism was merely a mask for Russian nationalism, which itself was only a manifestation of the world-wide techno­ logical process. Lukacs said that, from the Marxist point of view, Jiinger was a technological determinist who failed to understand the nature of social rela­ tionships in the capitalist system. Edgar Jung maintained that Jiinger’s ideas represented one of the sophisticated forms of Bolshevism that gained currency in Germany; Karl Paetel warned that Jiinger’s work could be interpreted in various ways; Niekisch tried to co-opt Der Arbeiter in support of his demand for an alliance between Potsdam and Moscow, and Der Arbeiter was viewed by him as a manifesto of “national Bolshevism”. Niekisch gave expression to Jiinger’s vision, after returning from a visit to Russia in 1933, in language which seems to come straight from Der Arbeiter. In his opinion, the Soviet Union was “a workers’ state, ascetic and poor,” and the Russian worker was a “new type” who had found in the rhythm of the machine the means of fusing the mechanical world of industry with the living organism of the State.”208Just as Jiinger called for the distinction between the city and the countryside to be eliminated in the state of the future, so Niekisch viewed the destruction of the kulaks as representing “a situation in which the city dominates the earth as technology dominates nature.” Italian fascism and the Soviet Five-year Plan were regarded by Jiinger as the epitome of the new order. In both cases, he was impressed by the regula­ tion of work by the state and by the militarization of youth.209 The clarity and precision of this new order contrasted favorably, in his opinion, with the chaos and confusion of Weimar. Indeed, a statement by a Russian commissar on the Soviet five-year plan seems a confirmation of Jiinger’s vision: “Because of the necessity of defeating the parasitical classes, the Soviet Union has become a country where everyone works, where the possibility of leading a parasitical existence has been decisively plucked up by the roots.” 210 Another proponent of “national Bolshevism” in Germany was Karl Radek, the leader of the party, who admired Jiinger’s writings and approved of forced industrialization and its social-Darwinistic implications. Jiinger, who never concealed his taste for violence and destruction, was delighted with the Stalinist work-state, and his pro-Russian leanings replaced his earlier support for Nazism. The more populist the Nazis were, the more Prussian Jiinger became, the more disdainful of mass-demagogy, of party tactics and political manipulations. The Soviet Union seemed to him to be harder and more deter­ mined than Nazi Germany, and the Russian Communist party was more ready than the Nazi Party to ask people to make sacrifices for the sake of technology. He did not view Bolshevism from the standpoint of Marxist ideology, but saw

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it as a total mobilization in which technology rather than social struggle was the “opium of the masses”. Jiinger thus sought in “National Bolshevism”, Italian futurism and Russian communism the order that would embody the myth of the work-state, based on nihilism, technology, the aesthetics of violence, the Gestalt of the workerwarrior and total mobilization. In this he belonged to an intellectual current which was active in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century and was characterized by a nihilist-totalitarian mentality. This current did not join the totalitarian movements but created a set of concepts, myths and images which prepared and foreshadowed totalitarian thought between the two world wars.

C

h a pter

Four

The City of Machine Cosmic Engineers What was the secret of this attraction of totalitarianism? One of the conclu­ sions reached in this book is that in Nazi Germany and bolshevik Russia the intellectuals, engineers and architects were drawn not to the ideological content but to the totalitarian form of the new social order. Both in Germany and in the Soviet Union, the engineers played a role of primary importance in the building of the new society. The modern technology assimilated by the national-socialist regime in Germany and by the communist revolution and the industrialization in the Soviet Union was described by the scholars Friedrich and Brzezinski as the key to understanding the character of totali­ tarianism.1 The historian Kendall E. Bailes, in his book Technology and Society Under Lenin and Stalin (1978), supported this claim with his idea that “the monopolization of modern technology is essential to a totalitarian regime.”2 A short survey of technological utopias and of the ideological and technocratic role of engineers in totalitarian regimes will show the “engi­ neering principle” to be a common denominator in the technological organization of society. The historian should make a clear ideological distinction between the Nazi regime in Germany and the communist regime in the Soviet Union. The bolshevik regime saw itself as a necessary means to an ideological end, whereas Nazism saw itself from the start as a totalitarian ideology, movement and regime. Totalitarianism in the Soviet Union based itself on technological ratio­ nalism and on the egalitarian, rationalistic and anti-romantic principles of Marxist-Leninism, while that in Germany was motivated by an irrational, romantic tendency to destruction and to self-destruction. In Revolutionary Dreams - Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (1990), the historian Richard Stites described the creation of the culture of the revolutionary regime in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and the attempt to form a new aesthetics.3 This aesthetics was based on the attempt to replace the peasant and bourgeois morality with a proletarian and egalitarian morality, on the new ceremonies of the cult of Lenin which replaced the ceremonies of the Orthodox Church, and on patterns of personal and social conduct expressing rejection of inequality. The visions of a new society prevalent in Russia were based on the cult of reason and on urban life, technology and the machine. These visions represented various different versions of the socialist future described by Lenin in State and Revolution (1918). In this future, a state

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of rational harmony would replace the struggle between private interests, and technology would rule over nature. Technology was represented by writers, artists and ideologists as creative of modernity, as a source of happiness and as a means to the victory of social justice over hunger and poverty. The infatuation with the machine reached its climax with the Soviet enthu­ siasm for American Taylorism (“time-and-motion study” ) and novel theories concerning time, space and movement. For the first time in history, artists, writers and engineers were invited to create a new society together with the political authorities. The artists were asked to supply the “social needs” of the revolutionary era by devising slogans, writing poetry and plays, decorating cities and organizing festivals which would celebrate the new order. The futur­ ists and the constructivists were expected to identify with the bolshevik revolution, to see it as a continuation of the revolution in literature and painting, and to combine art with industry as part of the effort to form a socialist society. In an attempt to express his ideal of the “engineer-artist”, Tadin planned the “Tower of the Third International”, a communications and information center twice as high as the Empire State Building in New York. The theatrical producer Meyerhold developed “biomechanics”, a theory of organized movement, in order to create a “man of high speed”. In the Soviet Union in the 1920s, avant-garde literature, plus architecture, music, dance, theatre and the cinema were all mobilized in the interests of technological fantasy, speed and efficiency. In Germany, as demonstrated by the historian Jeffrey Herf in his Reactionary Modernism - Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (1984), the tradition of the “engineer-artist” sought to repre­ sent the beauty of the world through technology. The revolt against reason in Weimar and Nazi Germany, as Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer and Ernst Bloch have pointed out, combined forces with social rationalism in giving technology a m etaphysical significance.4 C arl W eihe, ed ito r o f th e jo u rn a l o f

the German National Association o f Engineers, claimed that the “metaphys­ ical basis” of technology permitted one to see a similarity between the development of nature and that of the machine.5 The engineer was close both to art and to nature, and, like the artist, sought to create a “sense of technical order” which became a fantasia of forms; the “engineer-artist” strove to capture the beauty of the world in technology. The a-moral dualism which characterized the nihilistic order appeared once again in Heinrich Hardensett’s Capitalism and the Technical Man (1932). Two general types are represented in the book: the capitalist, a man of commerce rather than creativity, who represents the world of figures, abstraction and money, and the “technical man”, a creator who seeks “to raise time and space through the creation of forms.”6 Instead of the anarchy of capitalism, the technical man creates order and classic forms such as streets, canals, bridges and buildings. In this respect, the Nazi engineers formed part of what Daniel Bell and Jurgen Habermas called “aesthetic modernity”, a revolt which drew its inspiration from Nietzsche and the avant-garde before the First World War, who rejected

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the normative assumptions of morality and utilitarianism.7 They represented a cult of the new, rebelling against bourgeois culture and refusing to accept any limitations, or, as Daniel Bell expressed it, they had “the megalomania of self-infinity.” The Nazi engineers, like the futurist artists and architects, took part in what Benjamin and later Horkheimer described as “the revolt against nature.” The weakness of the Enlightenment in Germany and the absence of a liberal tradition there permitted the rise of “the amoral aestheticism of the engineers.” Taylorism and Fordism were a central feature of the engineering tradition in the Soviet Union and Germany in the 1920s. Frederick W. Taylor (1856-1915), an engineer from Philadelphia said to be “mad about order”, compared the human body to a machine and industry to a military organiza­ tion.8 For him, the factory was not only a place of productivity but a school of moral instruction. Eugene Zamyatin expressed surprise concerning the neglect with which Taylor had been treated: “I cannot understand the gifted men who came before us. How could they fill whole libraries with a certain Kant and pay so little attention to Taylor, that prophet who saw a thousand years into the future?”9 Taylorism spread through Russia like wildfire: Taylor was translated into Russian before the war, the first Taylorian Society was established in 1915, and the first congress onTaylorism was held in 1921. But the phenomenon also stirred up controversy in Russia: figures like Tolstoy and S. Frank, the anti-modernists, the people in the villages and others feared the nightmare of a “nihilistic rationalism” imposing a quasi-mechanical rhythm of life. The sailors and workers of the Kronstadt commune also looked with suspicion at Bolsheviks promulgating Tayloristic work-methods. But others like Lenin declared that work, machines and a disciplined population would be the cure to Russia’s sicknesses. Lenin was convinced that Taylor’s methods of scientific management and organized work had to be adopted. Henry Ford (1863-1947) radically changed American industry through a revolution in production, the organization of factories, engineering innova­ tions and especially the mass-production line, whose characteristics are precision, mechanization, co-ordination, speed and standardization. He explained the nature of his work in two articles written in the 1920s. In “The Meaning of Time”, he advocated planning, co-ordination, synchronization and elimination of waste of time, materials and energy; in “Mechanization, the New Messiah”, he explained the moral aspect of Fordism. The Ford system was compared to a Prussian regiment in which the workers are disciplined and submissive, and work with military precision in an efficient industrial machine.10In 1929, however, he admitted that a huge concern is really too big to be human. In the years 1920-1926, the Soviet regime ordered 24,000 trac­ tors from Ford, which was equivalent to about 85 percent of Soviet production. During the period of the Five-Year Plan, many agreements were signed with the United States concerning machines, spare parts and the provi­ sion of information by experts from Detroit.11 In one year alone -1 9 2 4 - eight editions of Henry Ford’s My Life appeared in Russia, and his articles were

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translated and published at frequent intervals. Introductions to his books were written by engineers, economists, Taylorists and students. The architect Le Corbusier praised Ford and Taylor and sought to rejuve­ nate French society through the application of technology and to fashion it according to the model of “the happy, balanced, active, useful, healthy and manly engineers.” 12 Taylor and Ford were assimilated into this technological vision of a new society which was immediately channeled into political forms. Images representative of this vision were to be found in abundance in various political ideologies in Europe: the machine which was supposed to change society also had to transform its surroundings. Hence the central role of art and architecture in creating the forms of the new environment.13 In Germany in the 1920s, there were three main schools of thought which gave technology a place of central importance: expressionism, and especially the playwrights Ernst Toller and Georg Kaiser, which attacked the dehuman­ ization brought about by technology; the Bauhaus, with its leader Walter Gropius, which combined rational and social-democratic principles with tech­ nological functionalism; and the “new objectivity”, with its leader Mutasius, which praised the machine, preached technical progress and social engi­ neering, and described the new aesthetic as follows: “Architecture directed towards a single norm, which is the only way the universal importance of harmonious civilizations can be discovered.”14 Beauty was seen as a “second nature”, and was associated with mechanics and technological form. The utopian basis of the new aesthetics, said Ernst Bloch, revealed a situation in which “a social machine which functioned badly was exchanged for a better machine.” 15This faith in rationalization was exemplified by writers like Franz Kollman who regarded machines, industrial buildings, steel structures, rail­ ways and submarines as the “sources of power” of the beauty of the future.16 In Germany, Henry Ford was viewed as representing scientific management, but, in addition, he represented what Gottfried Feder called “productive capital” in contrast to Jewish capital.17 On the other hand, in Communist Party circles, Ford was considered “no less revolutionary than capitalism itself.” Left-wing writers like Erich Kastner and Alferd Davlin disliked the expressionist hostility to technology. It is interesting to note that Heinrich Hardensett saw points of similarity between the United States and the Soviet Union in their fascination with Taylorism.18 There was a direct connection between the “religion of the engineers”, as Friedrich A. Hayek called Saint-Simonism in his Counter-Revolution o f Science,19and what James Burnham called the “managers’ revolution”: “Both fascism and Stalinism had the same basic assumptions and ideas - the ideas from which the managerial ideologies developed.”20 In France, there was a tradition of the engineer-as-a-molder-of-society which one finds from SaintSimon to Sorel.21 Saint-Simonism was a proto-technological ideology which rejected the traditional division of classes in favor of a union of all productive and industrial elements - bourgeois, farmers and proletarians - against the old and aristocratic elements. A strain of anti-intellectualism led to an admiration

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for the engineer, the manager and other experts as ideal leaders who could create order. In contrasting productivity and financial exploitation, the engi­ neer Sorel praised the productive morality, seeing architects and engineers as practical people rather than as thinkers. The futurists also played an impor­ tant role in stressing the importance of the engineers in their vision of a technological society, both among the radical right on the eve of the fascist rise to power in Italy and among the revolutionary left on the eve of the bolshevik revolution in Russia. In August 1918, Mussolini changed the name of his newspaper from The Socialist Daily to The Productive Soldiers' Daily. He condemned the members of the socialist party as “bloodsuckers” and “parasites on labour”.22 Mussolini’s credo is contained in a single word: produttovismo, and was described by one of his supporters as follows: “The fascist state is more than a state: it is a dynamo.”23 The strong influence of the futurists on the fascist movement was evident when the fascists came to power and began to set up committees of experts in all areas. The party conventions in autumn 1921 called on the local fasci to draw up lists of experts in the public services and in economic life. The gruppi di competenzia sought to broaden the appeal of fascism by making it less ideological in character. This normalization policy aimed at toning down the revolutionary claims of fascism and decreasing local violence. Ideological purity was sacrificed in favor of collaboration with the liberal elites. But after the political crisis of 1924, with the murder of Matteotti, the gruppi di competenzia became no more than technical advisors to the security services. In a similar way, Edmondo Rossoni’s trade-union organizations were made subject to the authority of the party and the state. The growing commitment of the regime to the state rather than to revolu­ tionary syndicalism precluded any attempt at a radical change of direction. The fascist technocracy was neutralized in all spheres of administrative and economic power.24 Fascism, like Saint-Simonism, wished to fulfill the aspirations of a new ruling group which had grown up outside the traditional classes, but fascism was different from Taylorism in one major respect: although technology and production were supposed to serve as a bridge between different interests, in the case of fascism the managerial group was forged in the trenches among battles and violence. The character of the right-wing ideology was produced by this combination of technology and vitalistic sources of energy.25 In this, fascism resembled the German radical right or the representatives of the “conservative revolution”, one of whom, Spengler, made the following state­ ment: “The center of the artificial and complex business of the machine is the organizer and manager. Together with the manager, there is the engineer, the priest of the machine [ . . . ] , the ruler of the machine and the arbiter of fate.”26 But Spengler never believed that technology replaced power, despite the fact that the engineer was a necessary adjunct to rule in the machine age. From Sorel to Mussolini and the German conservative revolutionaries, the techno­ logical vision was linked to the will to power. The image of the engineer

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working in the service of nationalism or a belligerent ideology gained added psychological weight when it was associated with the dominance of the hard and energetic machine culture, disdainful of nineteenth-century sentimentality and petty-bourgeois democratic weakness. The United States or “Americanism” had a dual image: that of an empire of technical rationality, disturbing to people like Spengler and Heidegger, and that of the embodiment of democracy and of capitalism-in-action, abhorred by German and Italian nationalists.

The Soviet U nion’s Steel M essiah The rapid industrialization of Russia in the 1890s speeded up technological progress, urbanization and proletarianization.27 The growth of cities, the construction of large buildings and the development of public transport gave rise to visions of a revolutionary Russia exploiting technology for the benefit of the population and permitting a new form of society. New horizons of utopian thought arose at the end of the czarist empire and, together with other factors, influenced the path of the revolution itself. The use of modern indus­ trial technology in Russia, the spread of technological education and the importation of translated literature created a new genre: a technical sciencefiction disseminated in popular scientific journals. The books of Herbert George Wells and Jules Verne were translated, and the latter became the most popular foreign author among the Russians.28 In this period of rapid indus­ trialization, these were some of the main Russian works in this field: Electric Story by V. N. Chikolov (1904), Automatic Underground Railway on the Saint Petersburg-Moscow Line by A. Rodnykh (1902), and The Legacy o f a Billionaire by V. Bakhmetov (1904). Chikolov was the most interesting of all. An engineer by profession and a popularizer of science, he had a vision of a future world transformed by electricity and production. A battlefield in Saint Petersburg was conquered by a huge “tower of technology” as a monumental demonstration of economic growth engendering peace. The message was the disappearance of wars in the technological era. In Russia, as in Germany and the United States, the rapid industrialization aroused utopian expectations and apocalyptic fears concerning the new possi­ bilities which industrial society opened up. This was particularly pronounced in Russia because of the existence of an autocracy and of radicalism stirring amongst the intelligentsia, and the revolutionary appearance of a new social factor, a semi-rural and semi-proletarian working class.29 The growing consciousness of Russian labor was demonstrated by the translation of “urban utopias”, which were widely disseminated, especially after 1905, and which described the technological city in the society of the future. An outstanding example was Looking Backward, 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy (1889). The Marxists, declared Karl Kautsky, the leader of the German socialists, do not prophecy the future but have an inkling of “the future social structure.”

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These futuristic visions described the life of the community and family meals in vast halls, and emphasized a considerable use of electricity, gas, modern building-materials and rapid transportation. Particular stress was laid on “productive” work. The most popular utopia in Russia was Bellamy’s, which described an ultra-industrial society a hundred years after the time of writing, with its large cities with their various quarters, their neighborhoods and imposing public buildings.30 In this hierarchical and military society, there were festivals, parades and gatherings accompanied by background-music for the masses. There was no difference between a waiter and a doctor. They were all members of a well-organized state which functioned like an army, based on discipline and a religion of solidarity, and which made work obligatory for all its citizens. Bellamy said that his dream of a bureaucratic, military and author­ itarian socialism was inspired by the Prussian values he admired and by his dislike of the competitiveness of the American economy. Looking Backward was first published in Russia in 1891 and in the space of a generation sold 50,000 copies in seven different translations. After the revolution, a Bolshevik journalist wrote that this was “the first novella to describe scientific socialism,” and a Soviet scholar remarked that it was eagerly read by both the intelligentsia, the workers and the students. The only work of specifically Marxist science-fiction published in these years was that of the Bolshevik writer Alexsander Bogdanov, who described a communist utopia in Red Star - the First Bolshevist Utopia (1908).31 Bogdanov, a physicist, economist and philosopher, described the future of the Russian proletariat and envisaged a Marxist society on Mars three hun­ dred years ahead of the earth technologically. The problems of the workers and farmers and the Russian ethnic questions had disappeared, as though they had never been, due to the mechanization of agriculture, the building of ultra-modern cities, free choice of profession, and consumption in accor­ dance with the Marxist model of the communist vision. Factories operated in a completely automatic manner through electrical energy and a “dynamic equilibrium” of supplies, work and production requirements coordinated by a sophisticated machine and computers. Equality, collective labor, comrade­ ship and the liberation of woman were the values cherished by the people on Mars. The laws were not based on religion or philosophy, but on science. Differences did not exist, accepted norms had disappeared, but talent was rewarded. Men and women, wearing uniforms, bore names devoid of sexual identity, and behaved towards each other in a businesslike and comradely manner. The role of art was to celebrate the common efforts of the masses in the past and present. Brotherhood on Mars was expressed by a mutual transference of blood in order to prolong life. Red Star was the one and only attempt before the revolution to portray a Marxist future for the world. The book had great success after the revolution and was a cornerstone of Soviet science-fiction. Together with Gorky and Anatoliy Vasilievich Lunacharsky, the first minister of culture after 1917, Bogdanov, in the years before the

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First World War, constituted a Marxist counter-movement to the official bolshevism of Lenin. There were also anti-utopias expressing fear of technology. Nikolai Fedorov’s Evening in the Year 2217 (1906) was a prophetic anti-utopia about an anonymous woman-citizen who had the identity-number 437-2221 and lived in a socialist city where the citizens bore their work-numbers on their arms.32 In the Saint Petersburg of the twenty-third century, built entirely of stone, steel and glass, hunger, cold and sickness had disappeared and members of the community received their salaries according to their needs. All citizens were asked to select a certain season in which to have sexual relations and to be delivered up anonymously to those who chose them. In this Platonic vision, the state was responsible for raising the children, who had no parents. The heroine and her male friend, excluded from society, longed for love and family-life and were ready to renounce the form of happiness guaranteed them by the state. More than anything else they wanted the right to choose. Fedorov’s book, which was written before the revolution, was the closest to Yevgeny Zamyatin’s famous anti-utopia We, published in 1920. The author of the work is not a figure known to the historians of Russian science-fiction. It is possible that this was a Russian version of some works which appeared in translation in Russia at that period, such as Looking Back: “The New Utopia” (1891), by the popular British author Jerome K. Jerome, or The Year 3000 (1898) by the Italian anthropologist Mantezga. The driving-force behind We was the writer’s fear of the consequences of modern concepts of urban­ ization, industrialization, rationalization, harmonization, social justice and equality, which he saw as a nightmare of conformity and repression.33 The period of “belligerent communism”, which began in 1918, lasted for three years until the advent of the “new economic policy” (NEP) in 1921.34 It meant total control of the economy by the state, nationalization of the facto­ ries, distribution of the land to the peasants, a growing conflict between the cities and the rural areas, and mobilization of the workers. An American jour­ nalist called it “the greatest economic experiment and social adventure in world history.” “Belligerent” communism gave rise to projects, ideas, fantasias and utopias which bore witness both to the death-throes of the old order and to the possibility of renewal. The violence and threat of civil war proved a suitable climate for visions of a new world. The most remarkable vision of the future to come out of the period of “belligerent communism” was The ABC o f Communism. (1919), a lengthy, best-selling interpretation of the communist platform by two communist econ­ omists, Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenil Preobrazhenskii. Their essay discussed in a popular form classical Marxism, European history, capitalism, the war and the Soviet state. It prophesied the coming in the near future of full commu­ nist rule in the Soviet Union in accordance with Marx’s ideas: “In a few decades, a new world will be fully realized in Russia, with new men and new leaders.”3S Two principles were emphasized in the essay: order and mecha­ nization. The ideal of order was contrasted with the Russian tradition of

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anarchy, social chaos, disorder and panic on the one hand and with capitalism, which fosters competition, destructive egoism, unemployment and war between nations on the other. In the communist future, a stable order would prevail in the world: “When social order will be like a well-oiled machine, everything will work in accordance with the directives of the Bureau of Statistics.” In this essay, the influence of Bogdanov’s Red Star is strongly felt. The utopia was translated into terms of ideology in order to adapt it to the reality of the revolution. In 1917, the “Proletkult” movement was founded, whose task was to create a popular proletarian culture through and for the working class.36 At the time of the civil war, the movement numbered half a million members and had thirty-four newspapers and three hundred associa­ tions. It was joined by the “Komsomol” and “Zhenotdel”, youth and women’s associations, which came into existence at the height of the war with the purpose of molding moral and sexual behavior. Overnight, new schools and cultural institutions sprang up with the aim of influencing the values and feel­ ings of the awakening Soviet people. Urban intellectuals dreamt of light-dominated cultures which would replace the darkness of the old world. The idea of the light of the city and the darkness of the village was an expression of the anti-rural Marxist outlook which claimed that the city and village had opposing values, the city being identified with culture, progress, dynamism and light. Electricity had not yet reached the villages, despite the fact that it had already come to Russia in the 1870s Lenin, who was enthusiastic about technology, was obsessively concerned with the electrification of the Soviet state. The revolutionary pathos and Promethean pride of the dream of electrification received public expres­ sion in a propagandist spectacle which Lenin presented before a crowd which had gathered at the Kremlin. During his exposition, which he accompanied by pointing at a large map, the electricity was cut off throughout Moscow in order to supply it to the spectacle.37 Lenin lent his authority to the “Government Committee for the Electrification of Russia”, whose head, Maximilianovich Krzhizhanovsky, asked rhetorically, “Does not electrifica­ tion in a period of great economic disorder seem fantastic, utopian?” And here we may recall Lenin’s statement, “Communism means Soviet power plus the electrification of the country.” H. G. Wells put it as follows: “Lenin, like all orthodox Marxists, rejected any utopias, but he finally yielded to the utopia of the electricians.”38 Krhizhanovsky wanted electricity to eliminate the differ­ ence between the city and the village in the interests of a utopian vision of an enlightened, happy and clean civilization. The proletarian poet Mikhail Prokofevich Gerasimov described the Soviet Union as a power-house which received its inspiration from the common pool of collective energy: the Kremlin was a dynamo creating magnetic poems which “electrified the soul” and brought victory over darkness. “When electricity came,” wrote Mayakovsky, “I lost my interest in nature.”39 Mayakovsky wished to see great cities, skyscrapers, forests of chim­ neys and a network of giant motorways covering the land. A basic

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characteristic of the utopian ambitions of the Soviet leaders and the bolshevik intellectuals and intelligentsia was the desire to create an urban order and see the victory of the machine over nature. In the proletarian poetry and the revo­ lutionary science-fiction the world constantly appeared as a world-city built like a machine, which molded nature into symmetrical forms. The bolshevik leaders’ appetite for technology, electricity and huge production-units, and their view of the city as a symbol of power and rationality in contrast to the backwardness of the village, was characteristic of the struggle between the countryside and the city: a struggle which symbolized the dichotomy between rationalism and wildness, the state and the populace, order and anarchy. As Boris Pilnjak observed, it was a struggle between “machines and wolves”.40 Another dream made its appearance during the civil war: that of the admin­ istrative utopia. A demand for the prussification of Russian society was formulated in the essay Against Civilization (1918) by A. Poltaev and N. Funin, two representatives of the avant-garde. These two writers assailed the soft, sentimental and Christian civilization of the French and English, advo­ cating instead the German Kultur of military discipline, courage, solidarity, comradeship in battle and machine-like organization. “The society of Kultur,” they said, “is a good machine in the literal sense of the w ord.” They sought to cure the “psychosis of individual liberty” by “a voluntary servitude aimed at creativity in the service of all.” Their hope was to fuse German Kultur with bolshevist virtue, resulting in mechanical regimentation, proletarian soli­ darity, class-violence, hierarchy and revolutionary discipline.41 The Russian tradition of admiration for the Prussian military model reached its climax with Trotsky’s vision of the militarization of the workers. When the civil war was nearing its conclusion towards the end of the year 1919, Leon Trotsky, who was still Minister for War and head of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, was invited to Moscow and charged by Lenin to solve the two main outstanding problems: the economic crisis and the lack of manpower for industry. In December of that year, Trotsky presented a detailed twenty-four point plan for pulling Russia out of “its present state of collapse of productive forces and economic chaos.” The basic concept of this plan strongly resembled the administrative utopia of Against Civilization: a thoroughgoing organization of society on military lines and the transformation of the entire Russian population into an army of workers. Trotsky’s proposals were discussed on the 12th of January 1920 in the All-Russian Central Council of Trade-Unions; Lenin was the only speaker, among the sixty or seventy who were present, to support Trotsky.42 The first document Trotsky presented, enunciating the principle of forced labour, appeared in his book Terrorism and Communism as follows: The introduction of compulsory labor is inconceivable w ithout the use, in one form or another, of the methods o f militarization of labor. The foundations for the militarization of labor are the forms of state compulsion w ithout which the replacement of capitalist economy by a

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socialist system will forever remain an empty sound. N o social organization except the army has ever considered itself justified in subordinating citizens to itself in such a measure and in subjecting them to its will to such an extent as the state of the proletarian dictatorship considers itself justified in doing. Only the army, just because it was deciding the question of life and death of nations, states and governing classes, was granted the powers to demand, from each and all, complete subordination to its mission, aims, regulations and orders.43

On the 22nd of January 1920, the central committee of the party adopted some of Trotsky’s specific proposals. These were mainly concerned with the crisis in manpower and the means of solving it: “One must understand the militarization of the economy in the present conditions in Soviet Russia, and treat the problems affecting the economy, the workers and the state institu­ tions as though they were military problems.” Trotsky’s biographer Isaac Deutscher, who admired his subject, stated that in 1919 and 1920, his grotesque flights of fancy concerning the similarity between the bureaucratic and military spheres exceeded the requirements of social and economic poli­ cies.44 During the civil war, Trotsky had been in charge of the total mobilization of the Bolsheviks against the white armies and the auxiliary forces of the Western Alliance: housewives, prisoners, priests and members of the former regime were all conscripted. About six million Russians were mobi­ lized for industry in the first half of 1920, but Trotsky’s plans went beyond the limits of mobilization of a nation in wartime. To deal with the chaos, the government had to “regard the entire population of the state as a reserve-army of manpower.” The economy had to be run through military ordinances, and it was the duty of the population to organize itself into regiments, companies and divisions under the command of military officers, which trained in indus­ trial centers. Every worker had to become a soldier. On the 25th of January 1920, at the third congress of the National Economic Council and the Moscow Soviet of the Workers’ and Farmers’ Representatives, Trotsky outlined his programme for the organization of mili­ tary industry: The task of the present moment is to draw our economy closer to military procedures. The military establishment must come in line with the economic establishment. A military region is to be established wherever [there] is an industrial region. W ith the contraction of military fronts, we shall gradually make a transition to a militia system.

W hat is a militia system? It means that the population of a given area is incorporated into the ranks of a regiment, a brigade, or a division, where these units are located. The posts of commander should be occupied by our red [Army] technicians, the new engineers the members of the factory

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of plant administrations. These [also] will be our colonels, divisional commanders, generals, battalion and company commanders. O ur army officers’ schools should be located in the principal industrial centers, so that everyone attending these schools will become an officer and leader of the corresponding industrial regio n /5

Trotsky went on to describe his proposals for the organization of an army of labor: A w orker with wide experience in various branches of industry will be appointed Chief of Staff of the labor army. His assistant will be the former Chief of Staff, an officer of the General Staff with similar experience. The O perations Division of the army is now called the Operations Division of Labor. It is in charge o f executing and preparing all operational orders relating to labor, as well as preparing labor communities. Formerly this O perations Division used to transmit orders: “Take such and such a village,” or “Advance so many versts in a certain direction.” Now the orders of this division will be labor orders: “To procure so many cubic sazhens of firewood in such and such a district.” Since we find it necessary to make a transition to compulsory labor on a large scale, we shall not able to utilize the trade unions in drafting hundreds of thousands and millions of peasants for production. They can be mobilized only by the use of military methods. They will have to be organized into military formations, such as labor detachments, labor companies, and labor battalions.46

It was not the aestheticization of politics, the manipulation of the masses and their mobilization by means of parades and marches which attracted Trotsky, but the model of “the Egyptian Pharaohs who built the pyramids.”47 Fundamental to the economic-military analogy was the challenge of trans­ forming a nebulous entity into a machine operated on orders from above. It was military culture and the psychology of the machine which inspired Trotsky in building the socialist society. Lenin also noticed Trotsky’s liking for “the managerial side of things.” His successor as Minister for War, Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze, sought to continue the program of “the milita­ rization of society.” In his article “The Front and Rear in the War of the Future” (1925), he claimed that in time of war the differences between the front and rear disappeared: in the future, the nation would be like a battlefront. Therefore, the best way to prepare would be the complete militarization of society: discipline, reorganization of the administration, placing the economy on a war-footing and the perpetual military readiness of the entire population would, metaphorically speaking, turn the Soviet Union into a mili­ tary camp.48 But side-by-side with the tendency to militarism and rigid structures in the Soviet tradition of government, there was also a strain of revolutionary icon-

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oclasm and cultural nihilism. The arrival of a revolutionary culture and the appearance of a new style of life necessitated the ousting of all the old forms and the creation of myths, rituals and new moral values by means of revolu­ tionary festivals and atheistic “God-building”. There were attempts to change Russian work-habits and to reorganize the old Russian conceptions of time, space, movement and order by subordinating them to the culture of the machine. Every utopia is in some way or other a text calling for the elimina­ tion of the existing order and a profound criticism of the existing society, and the technological utopias in Soviet Russia were no exception. The old senti­ ment of revolutionary iconoclasm was reinforced by the Bolshevik revolution, whose orientation towards the future was created by the destruction of old forms and social and economic patterns. The character of the nihilism of 1917 was quite different from that of the nihilism of the 1860s. The Russian nihilists of the nineteenth century preferred science to faith, materialism to idealism (“a pair of gumboots is better than Pushkin” ), realism to romanticism.49 After the revolution, however, manifestations of mechanization, robotization, prim­ itivism, vagabondism and suicide became very common. Artistic and intellectual movements sought to replace color and form with emptiness, sound with silence, fashion with nudity, language with symbols, poetry with blank sheets of paper. This Russian trend fused with a parallel European fashion which had sprung up after the First World War. By 1920, this style of “nothing whatsoever” (nichevoki) had found expression in the reading, writing, speaking and printing of nothing. Representatives of nihilism directed their attacks on philosophy and religion as bourgeois phenomena. The school of thought that went furthest of all was the extremist “enchmenism”, which sought to negate both consciousness, spirit and psychology. At the first congress of the “Proletkult”, the proletarian cultural movement, they said that “the proletariat will begin the work of destroying the old culture and the creation of a new culture immediately after the revolution.”50 The poet V. D. Alexandrovsky succinctly captured the nihilist mood in a poem he wrote in 1918: “Blow up, smash to pieces the old world! In the heat of battle of the universal struggle, by the glow of flames, show no mercy - strangle the bony body of destiny!”51 During the civil war, Mayakovsky was asked to play the role of Bazarov in the film version of Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. Unfortunately, the film was never made, and the question of how the poet would have interpreted the nihilists of the 1860s in the light of the bolshevik revolution and the technological era remained unanswered. The link between the nihilism of the nineteenth century and the cultural nihilism of the revolu­ tion was the characteristic attitude of the Russia intelligentsia to all that was old or institutional: in the nineteenth century, this phenomenon was called oblomovism and in the twentieth century meshchanstvo. In December 1918, Mayakovky declared in his poem “Too Soon to Rejoice” that “this is the time for bullets to hit the museums!” Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg said that Mayakovsky wanted to destroy all “the warehouses and storehouses of man’s

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spirit such as palaces, art galleries, salons, libraries and theatres.”52 This decla­ ration was extraordinary close to Marinetti’s call in 1909 to destroy “the libraries and museums”. From now on, the new art would belong to the masses, the street, the squares and the hoardings. A culture of memory would be replaced by a culture of actuality, and the public arena would pass from the museum to the square. The “nihilist-totalitarian syndrome” reached its culmination in Russia with Alexei Gastev’s vision of the machine. Gastev spent much of his life in industry, wrote industrial poems and mechanical utopias, and attempted to put them into practice in the institute he founded. He raised the fascination of machines to the level of a religion with a “steel Messiah” and a “mechanical heaven” - to give the titles of works written by two industrial poets during the revolution. His vision of “mechanism”, a concept he borrowed from the French, envisaged a “metallic monster typifying the period, with a man’s soul, nerves of iron and a muscular system,” and people growing up amongst steel and turning into machines. For him, the humanization of the machine and the mechanization of man were two aspects of the same vision: “a vortex of stone, metal and workers all mixed together.”53 Gastev’s long work written in his Siberian exile before the revolution, Express - Siberian Fantasy, was a utopia which took the form of a journey in an express-train called “Panorama” - a steel monster symbolizing strength, speed and compressed space. The old Europe was overtaken by a dynamic Siberia covered with a network of cities, factories, canals, tunnels, stations and roads. Towns like the “City of Energy” and the”City of Steel” were center of life and creativity. In this country, a struggle was taking place between “Americanide” factories, Siberian rural socialists and an international prole­ tariat living in a metropolis where a Russo-American language was spoken. Express was a kind of mixture of proletarian enthusiasm for the machine and Soviet science-fiction, and it contains many hints of later utopias.54 In 1919, Gastev described a technological culture existing in machine-cities throughout the world where the machines automatically produced the goods.ss The people engaged in production - already not “workers” possessed only one skill; the machines were the managers and made the deci­ sions. There was a unity of language and thought, only one kind of speech, a single consciousness and a standardization of costume, sex and housing. In this human geography of movements and symbols copied from the machine, man became a productive unit bereft of identity - B, A, 324 or 75 - “devoid of personality or soul, feeling or poetry, no longer expressing himself through shrieks of pain or bursts of laughter, but through pressure-gauges and classifying-gauges.” Gastev prophesied that “social engineering would turn man into a social automaton.” Bogdanov felt that Gastev’s machines took the place of the gods and czars whom the Bolsheviks wanted to destroy. Zamyatin’s We was a satire on Gastev’s vision of the machine. Gastev’s vision of the “man-machine” was by no means new. In 1747, the writer Julien Offray de La Mettrie, promoting a materialistic outlook,

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described men as “moving egotistic machines.”56 His work Man, a Machine, appeared in Russia in 1911, and Jules Amar’s The Human Motor also came out in Russia. One may ask whether they were talking about robots. Robots - mechanical men - came into existence with Karel Capek’s play Universal Robots in 1920.57 In an early work written in 1908, Capek described the ideal worker as “a machine, which can only move, not think or feel. The worker has to turn into a machine. He just has to move, that’s all.” Later, seeking the difficult conditions of existence of the workers of Prague, Capek invented the term “robots”, meaning human creatures who work without thinking. The robot, for him, was something nightmarish. On the 24th of August 1920, Gastev inaugurated the “Central Institute of Labour”, a center which trained workers to think, act and work according to his system. The institute taught “social engineering” - in Gastev’s opinion the essence of the new proletarian culture - which shook a man out of his passivity, idleness and ingrained habits in the interests of order, discipline, timing and organization. The origins of the new mentality, he believed, were to be found in modern industry, the army and the revolutionary movement. One had to march forward like the people of the new metropolis, be like a battalion perpetually on the alert; armed with the idea of labor, one had to conquer the countryside with companies of workers. The German expres­ sionist author Ernst Toller, visiting one of these educational centers in the 1920s, was impressed with the spectacle of hundreds of workers learning the principles of machine-operation in an identical manner.58 The workers, sitting in rows on benches, were all drilled in the same way; a machine guided them with its movements and a camera recorded their progress by means of moving lights. And all this was done without books, without meetings or explana­ tions, through actual work, beginning with the simple movements needed for basic tasks and building up to the running of complex factories. The aim was to train the “human machine” and to create a new breed of men through social engineering. Between the years 1921 and 1938, 1700 institutes were set up, training half a million workers. Twenty thousand instructors in two hundred different techniques constituted a kind of civilian army. Gastev’s vision of the “new man” envisaged an Overman who would overcome nature, death and time through a new religion of labor. The attempt to create “new men” by means of science and technology derived from the nihilistic spirit of the 1860s, and it finally led to this scheme to “program” millions of workers. “Gastevism” believed that the process of modernization through the culture of the machine would usher in a new era of power and honour for the indi­ vidual and the nation.59 P. M. Kratchnev took Gastev’s vision out of the factory and extended it to daily reality.60 His contribution to the cult of the man-machine was to shift the emphasis from the individual to society as a whole. He was partic­ ularly concerned with questions of timing and coordination and the institution of a single, exact time-schedule, and for that purpose militant groups - soldiers of efficiency - were set up in the Soviet Union and preached

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elimination of the waste of time. Kratchnev invented the concept “social time”, which meant the conformity of all “individual times” to a schedule observed by everyone. In July 1923, the “Time-League” was founded, and its members included Kratchnev, Gastev and other Taylorists such as the stage-director Meyerhold. Lenin and Trotsky were honorary members.61 The first cell was set up in the military academy. By the end of 1924, eight hun­ dred cells had been set up in factories, comprising about 25,000 members. The image of the “Time-League” was closer to that of the police-force than to the army. The time-efficiency campaign began in the field of production, but soon spread to the Red Army and was transmuted into theories of social organization. Taylorism spread throughout the army already in the 1920s, and Trotsky’s “militarization of labor” is evidence of this. The process reached its culmination in the years 1923-1925, and doing things “the mil­ itary way” became a current idiom for increasing efficiency in civilian life. The army was regarded as the main field of experiment for the elimination of deficiencies and a model for life as a whole, a cultural force in the shap­ ing of the nation. The army was compared to a factory, and there began to be a “militarization” (that is, the introduction of a single standard) of goods and appliances. Kratchnev’s vision was to found a mass-movement which would make Russia into an efficient space in which there was unity of space, time, order and movement. There is quite a close connection between the visions of Gastev and Kratchnev and the work of the Soviet engineers. From studies of the rise of the “technical intelligentsia” or the “technical experts” or the “technical elite” in the Soviet Union (the “technostructure”, to use Kenneth Galbraith’s expres­ sion)62 from the time of the bolshevik revolution onwards, it appears that the first communist engineers had their origin in Czarist Russia. They were gener­ ally members of the urban middle or upper class, and usually nationalists believing in a hierarchy of talent. Like the communist party itself in its early stages, they suffered at first from a lack of legitimacy. At the beginning of 1918, the Bolsheviks began to actively court the engineers in the hope of gaining their cooperation in building the new society. In the years 1918 to 1928, a mutual relationship developed between the communist establishment and the pre-revolutionary “technical elite”, but it was a marriage of conve­ nience rather than a love-match. This relationship really had two motivations: the need, which they both felt, to end the atmosphere of uncertainty which prevailed in Russia, and their mutual belief in Promethean values like creative forces which would enable man to dominate nature. Many of the engineers looked with growing apprehension at the economic chaos which was over­ taking the Soviet Union. Some of them blamed the Bolsheviks and some questioned the legitimacy of the Bolshevik seizure of power, but by 1918 the great majority worked for the Soviet regime. There was an ever-growing collaboration between the “all-Russian Union of Engineers” - the trade-union of the master engineers - and the authorities. The statement of a Russian engi­ neer that “workers without engineers are like soldiers without commanders”

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typified the mutual relationship of the engineers and the Soviet regime in the years 1918-1928.63 The engineers played a decisive role in the industrialization of the Soviet Union, and the influence of the old “technical intelligentsia”, which began to assert itself during the revolution, increased during the 1920s and was visible in most of the industrial plans of the years 1928 to 1941. Like Lenin, who regarded technology as essential for building the new society, Stalinism also, as a regime and social system, encouraged technological development. The “revolution from above” carried out by Stalin expressed the latter’s desire to make drastic changes in Soviet society.64 The years 1928 to 1931 saw the intensification of a class-struggle between the technical intelligentsia and bureaucratic elements like the party officials, the industrial managers, the chief government inspector and the political police.65 After 1931, the Communist Party used its power to increase the authority and raise the status of the engi­ neers, and to give the technical intelligentsia greater legitimacy than the working class. Before the Second World War, Stalin promoted young tech­ nical experts and represented technical achievements as essential interests of the Communist Party. In 1935, Stalin and the Party Central Committee conceived the idea that the technical intelligentsia should be a model for the development of a classless communist society in the Soviet Union, and that the working class should be raised up to its level. In that year, a Soviet newspaper wrote: “Only in a state which builds socialism under the leadership of the proletariat and its Communist Party can the technician or the engineer develop his creative power.”66 In view of all this, Spengler’s opinion of engineers in Russia appears to be totally mistaken. “The economic organizer, the factory manager, the engi­ neer, the inventor,” he said, “these are not the Russian style [ . . . ] . Machines and industry are essentially un-Russian and will always be alien to the Russian, representing sin and something satanic.”67 Contrary to this belief, however, production experts had a central place in the politics of planning of the Soviet Union. A Soviet engineer testified to this: “Our inter­ ests as engineers require the manager to have power within the party.”68 And indeed, in the 1960s and early 1970s, two-thirds of the ruling elite of the Soviet society, the members of the Politbureau and the Central Committee had received advanced technical training. This proportion increased with the years. Many of them had been production-engineers in industry, and all of them had begun their professional careers in the two generations previous to 1941. We see from this that, before the Second World War, experience in production was an important stage in the early careers of the Soviet ruling elites. By 1941, the engineers had become an inseparable part of the ruling apparatus in the Soviet Union.69

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The “Steely Romanticism ” o f N ational Socialism It was not only in the Soviet Union that the engineers played a role of primary importance in the building of a new society. In Germany one must look for the origins of the fascination with technology, or, as Thomas Mann put it, “technological romanticism”, in the nineteenth-century intellectual tradi­ tion.70 German engineers were grouped in national organizations, the largest of which, the “Association of German Engineers”, was founded in 1859. Its organ, Tecbnik und Wirtschaft (Technology and Economics), called for “tech­ nology in the service of the community”, and cherished the hope that a unity of interests between the state, capital and technology would eliminate class conflicts.71 The engineers played an important part in what the historian Charles Maier called “the strategy of bourgeois defense.”72 The main ideo­ logical body among the engineers was the “Union of University-trained German Engineers,” whose mouthpiece, Technik und Kultur, appearing in the years 1909-1937, expounded the “philosophy of technology.”73 At a time when in France, England and the United States the social sciences were claiming legitimacy on the basis of their social achievements, in Germany, on the contrary, the engineers claimed legitimacy in the name of Kultur.7* Technology was identified with the authenticity of “culture” (Kultur) and not with alienated “civilization” (Zivilization). According to Adorno, the jargon of “authenticity” associated technology with spontaneity, experimen­ tation, feelings, blood, will and instinct while civilization was associated with abstraction, intellect, reason and conceptualization.75 The world of myth interfused with technical progress. The technological self-awareness of the engineers was held to derive from the deepest impulses of German Kultur rather than from the materialism of Western Zivilization. Technik’s assimila­ tion into Kultur made possible a selective modernism which according to Jeffrey Herf was able to see technology, a potential source of disorder, as the basis of a new order.76 In his essay Principles o f Technological Philosophy (1877), Ernst Kapp anticipated the technological spirit in saying that the hammer had now replaced the arm; glass eyes, the telescope, and loudspeakers had replaced the eye and the ear; the telephone and the telegraph were extensions of the nervous system, and the machine was the mirror-image of life.77 In a book which appeared in 1906, the first of many published under the auspices of Technik und Kultur, Ernst Mayer put forward the then widely disseminated idea that technology, far from representing a corrupt use of techniques by commercial interests for purposes of profit, embodied the personality of the engineer and inventor and served to change the “human essence”.78 Technology, he said, sought to organize nature, an aim which was “the essence of technology, the secret of man’s victory.” “The creative urge” and a “lofty cosmic purpose” impelled man to organize “chaotic nature.” In other words, technology’s dominion over nature fused creativity with order and organization.79 Ulrich

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Wendt, in Technology as a Cultural Force (1909), claimed that the history of technology represented the “increasing spirituality” of the worker. The spirit participates in the work-process, the machine and philosophy become one, and technical progress brings technology and culture together.80 Among the many works representing this line of thought, two stand out particularly. Max Eyth, in the collection of articles Life-Forces (1904), expressed the opinion that in a fine machine or electric motor there was more spirit than in the most impressive passages of Virgil or Cicero,81 and J. Schenk declared that “artists and engineers are both concerned with creative forms and images.” Professors and engineers, he said, should stress “the cultural value of construction.” Technology should not be associated with the abstract world of the bureau­ cracy, but with “the world of healthy reality [ . . . ] of creative work.”82 The association of health with work and the view of engineers as industrial artists were common in the German engineering literature. The National Socialist Party was from the beginning aware of the cultural tradition of the engineers, and major figures in the party were engineers them­ selves. Gottfried Feder, an official of the party, in his book Manifesto: Breaking the Bondage o f Money, made a distinction between “Jewish finance capitaP’and “the national wealth.”83 In other essays, he dwelt on the differ­ ence between “creative capital” and “parasitic capital”, changing the struggle between capitalists and workers into a nationalist one.84 By describing capital as a force of creativity and by accusing the banks of representing a degenerate economic system, Feder sought to mitigate the inter-class struggle and to channel it into an aestheticization of the work-process, for which the “Bureau for Work-Aesthetics” was responsible. In his essay The National Socialist Library, Feder tried to demonstrate that Nazi theory was based on economic organization and technology. In the journal Technik und Kultur of July 1933, he claimed that National Socialism was in keeping with the tradition of the engineers and their desire to place service to the nation above private profit.85 He believed that Nazism would fulfill the engineers’ demand for social status and technological development. Hitler asked for Feder’s book, The German State and Its Social and National Principles (1923), to be adopted as “the guide for our movement.”86 The first “official” Nazi statement on the movement’s attitude to tech­ nology was Peter Schwerber’s essay, National Socialism and Technology: the Spirituality o f the National-Socialist Movement (1930). Combining Nazi ideology with the German engineering tradition, the essay viewed racism as the means by which German society and modern technology could be recon­ ciled. The aim of Nazism was declared to be the liberation of technology from “the rule of money” and Jewish materialism. Technology was thus not the material foundation of Nazism but an “independent factor” in a new post­ materialist culture. Nazism, according to Schwerber, was the product of the “generation of the trenches” of the First World War which now sought to express the idea of freedom embodied in technology. Schwerber saw tech­ nology as a natural, creative force with its own requirements, which

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represented the victory of “spirit over matter.”87 Nazism, he said, embodied a new approach: unlike the Jews who had perverted technology and made a wrong use of it, the Nordic race was ideally suited to technology.88 Hitler was consistent in regarding technology as a modern expression of the will to power. He never agreed with the hostility of the volkisch ideology to technology. He thought that in a struggle between nations or races, the one that was technologically backward would necessarily be defeated. The Germans, he believed, had to win the battle against nature. Already in 1919, in a speech advocating German rearmament as a response to the Treaty of Versailles, he declared: “It is our duty to defeat Germany’s poverty by means of German steel. That day will surely come.”89 In the section of Mein Kam pf where Hitler discusses the Aryan, Japanese and Jewish races, Aryan culture is described as “a synthesis of the Greek spirit with German technology.”90 Hitler acknowledged the influence of Feder’s ideas on his thought, which combined German economics with racial principles. His frequent flights in aeroplanes, his journeys in fast cars on the Autobahns (speedways), his many speeches on the radio and his knowlegeability in architectural matters testify to his warm attitude to technology. At the same time, he rejected the social implications of the industrial revolution. In 1936, he announced a “Four-Year Plan” which included an accelerated economic development, a rationalization of industry, a diversification of the sources of energy and a rapid rearmament. The program aimed at strengthening German economic independence through a technological offensive, and it was accompanied by slogans encouraging national economic and technological development. National Socialist propaganda, which combined the “conservative revolu­ tion”, “steely romanticism” and racial ideology, found a loyal representative in Josef Goebbels. In his speech at the opening of the motor-show in Berlin on the 17th of February 1939, he said: We live in an era of technology. The racing tempo of our century affects all areas of our life. There is scarcely an endeavour that can escape its powerful influence. Therefore, the danger unquestionably arises that modem technology will make men soulless. National Socialism never rejected or struggled against technology. Rather, one of its main tasks was to consciously affirm it, to fill it inwardly with soul, to discipline it and to place it at the service of our people and their cultural level. National Socialist public statements used to refer to the steely romanticism of our century. Today this phrase has attained its full meaning. We live in an age that is both romantic and steel-like, that has not lost its depth of feeling. On the contrary, it has discovered a new romanticism in the results of modern inventions and technology. While bourgeois reaction was alien to and filled with incomprehension, if not hostility to technology, and while modern skeptics believed the deepest roots of the collapse of European culture lay in it, National Socialism understood how to take the soulless framework of technology and fill it with the rhythm and hot impulses of our time.91

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Goebbels’ simultaneous appeal to the masses and the engineers give a fasci­ nation to his speeches. In the age of mass-politics, he said, a political leader has to adopt for himself the modern instruments of propaganda in order to bring about a “spiritual mobilization.” In March 1933, he declared himself “in love with the press, the theatre and the radio.” The expression “steely romanticism” recurred again and again in his speeches published in the monthly German Technology, which appeared from 1933 to 1942. In the titlepage of the issue of February 1933 there was a picture of Goebbels making a speech, with a Volkswagen on his right side and Hitler on his left. In Heidelberg in July 1943, Goebbels described his futuristic vision of the Third Reich: The Reich of droning m otors, grandiose industrial creations, an almost unlimited and unenclosed space which we must populate to preserve the wonderful values of our time - that is the Reich of our romanticism.92

Because of the urgent need for technology and engineers in the Nazi regime, there were calls for a technological co-ordination between the state, industry and engineering. The politicians and cultural critics who were pub­ lished in Technik und Kultur called for the establishment of a government bureau which would direct technological planning in accordance with national aims. The national efforts at technological co-ordination were entrusted to Robert Ley, who headed the German Labour Front. Ley wanted to bring together the existing engineers’ unions under the authority of the Front. Reichsbund deutscher Techniker (RDT) had been founded in 1918 in order to promote the interests of the engineers in national politics; a few of its functions passed to the Deutsche technokratische Gesellschaft (DTG), which was set up as an international body in 1932 under the slogan, “tech­ nocratic socialism.”93 In exchange for support of the Nazi State, the engineers were given organizational independence. RDT comprised 30,000 members, and its leadership expressed a readiness to help the regime in mat­ ters pertaining to unemployment, energy and armament and to work together with the Nazi engineering organization Kampf-bund deutscher Architekten und Ingenieure (KDAI).94 In 1934, Hitler placed Fritz Todt in charge of the organization and devel­ opment of technology. As an engineer and party member, Todt, more than any other figure, had roots both in the Nazi Party and in the cultural politics of the engineers. After a struggle with Feder, Todt won the leadership of the A m t der Technik (The Head Office for Technology), the bureau which coor­ dinated Hitler’s objectives with those of the engineers. Ley saw the A m t der Technik as a tool for political control, while Todt wished this strategic insti­ tution to be based on the engineering tradition.95 Todt sought to convince the engineers that the Nazi ideology was suited to modern technology.96 According to the autobiographical testimony of Albert Speer, Dr. Todt was put in charge of three portfolios: he was appointed minister for the develop­

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ment of the road-system, waterways and power-stations; he was Hitler’s personal representative as Minister for Armaments and head of the Department of Construction within the framework of Goering’s Four-Year Plan; and he was charged with setting up the “Todt Organization”, numbering 50,000 members, which built the “Atlantic Wall” - Germany’s line of fortifi­ cations in Western Europe - and the German submarine base on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as directing the development of the road system in the occupied territories from northern Norway to Russia and the south of France.97 The A m t der Technik gave the Nazis the organizational monopoly necessary for rearming after Hitler’s Four-Year Plan, which was intended to free the technical workers from Jewish capital. The engineers’ leaders joined in the effort to realize the ideal, believing that their commitment to techno­ logical rationality would finally be substantiated in the service of the state. They knew that their power and importance increased with the development of production and armaments.98 In September 1933, Todt wrote, “German technology will be the foun­ dation-stone of the totalitarian State,” ” and it would “make the technological and spiritual approach the basis of the National-Socialist world-view.”99 For instance, the construction of the national network of Autobahns would be based on a unified plan in contrast to the chaos of the “Weimar system”. The new roads, he said, would not harm the German nation but would give it back its lost unity. Examples of Nazi technology were the Volkswagen, the Autobahns, the air force and Albert Speer’s “Bureau for Work-Aesthetics”. The “Bureau for Work-Aesthetics” adopted a technocratic aestheticism in place of the volkisch pastoralism which had formerly been in vogue. It should be remembered that during the industrial revolution and subse­ quently, work and production were not considered a matter for aesthetics. When Speer’s bureau was set up, not only was aesthetics combined with industrial production, but industry itself was regarded as a principle pro­ ductive of aesthetic values. In Robert Ley’s “German Labour Front” there was a department headed by the architect Speer whose task was to give offices, factories and workshops an attractive appearance by providing plants, enlarging windows and transforming areas of asphalt into lawns. Under the slogan, “Everyday life in Germany will be beautiful”, the bureau tried to change the physical and spiritual landscape of German industry. Speer wished to give “a new face to the German workplace.” 100 This combi­ nation of social and cultural policies was intended to encourage social harmony, or, as Speer said, “to create a national society without classes” through an aestheticization of work-relationships. Aesthetic illusions were inspired by political objectives. Nazism created a subordination of work to politics, and gave it in return a cultural image which “would free physical labour from the painful feelings of inferiority from which it had suffered for hundreds of years.”101 Speer remained loyal to Hitler to the end, although he was aware, like Todt before him, of the relative strength of collapsing

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Germany vis-a-vis the allies with their industrial-military capacities. The technocrats never rebelled against the ideologists.

In the Technological Era Its way of seeing the world in aesthetic terms caused the nihilist order to explain life through a mythological symbolism. The argument ran that although modern technology as an aesthetic phenomenon may seem threat­ ening, it is abstract, beyond good and evil. Like work and art, modern technology cannot be seen in teleological or pragmatic terms: it is a will to power without any purpose except its own propagation. Influenced by Nietzsche, Jiinger regarded technology as the last representation of the will to power, and thus, according to him, the essence of technology was not mechan­ ical or technical but metaphysical. The world was mobilized by means of technology, and humanity carried the most recent historical manifestation of the will to power. Humanity, seized by an unbridled will-to-dominate, would be redeemed only if it subjected itself to this technological will to power. In the course of history, people experience themselves and their world in various ways, and values are consequently not eternal but relative: they serve the will to power, represented today by technology. In Heideggerian terms, technology is not so much a will to power as a will-to-will, but because it does not serve any purpose beside itself, it can nevertheless finally be regarded as a nihilistic will to power. Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s famous film made in 1928, is the cinematic par­ allel to Junger’s vision of the technological era. In this film, conceived by Lang during a visit to the United States in 1924, the huge machines of the metropolis move in a rhythmical manner and the workers are sacrificed on the altar of the machine. While the lord of the metropolis rules from the communications center over the workers in the machine-room, a love affair develops between his son Feder and Maria, bringing peace and harmony to the workers. Feder witnesses a vision of the Moloch of technology sacrific­ ing his victims, as an independent force of technology which demands submission and ritual sacrifice. The machine-center of Metropolis, called “the new tower of Babel”, relates technology to myth. The biblical myth is used to convey an ideological message about the worker who is tom between the hands which created and the mind which conceived - a division which the film seeks to overcome. The historian and cultural critic Seigfried Kracauer thought the wholly mythical narrative of Metropolis expressed the ideological theme that “the heart mediates between the hand and the brain,”102 and thus fascist propaganda sought, in Goebbels’ words, “to con­ quer people’s hearts and retain them.” Kenneth Galbraith offered the interpretation that in the post-industrial society “we have become the slaves of thought as well as of action, of the machine we have created to serve us. ”io3 Whatever the case, the matter has been well summed up by Paul

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Valery: “The whole question focuses on the following point: is the human mind capable of controlling what the human mind has conceived?”104 Metropolis expresses two contrary approaches to technology: the expres­ sionist approach which stresses the oppressive and destructive side of technology - an approach whose origins lie in the battlefields of the First World War - and the approach of the 1920s, represented by the technolog­ ical cult in literature and art, in scientific journals, and in the engineers’ and architects’ journals: i.e., a belief in technical progress and social engineering. Hitler and Goebbels were enthusiastic about the film, and Hitler expressed a desire for Lang to make Nazi films. In 1933, Goebbels offered Lang the post of Nazi film-maker (“cinematographer” ) in Berlin, but Lang fled from Germany on the very night the offer was made. However, his wife, Thea, the writer of the script and a member of the Nazi Party, remained in Berlin and continued to work in the cinema until 1940. Metropolis remains in the modern consciousness as an artistic message in which the myth of technology expresses the reality of the twentieth century, and, in the words of Jacques Ellul, writer of The Technological Society (1954), “enslaves the world to its laws.”105 With Metropolis, technology put on flesh and blood and became a totally indepen­ dent entity. The figure of the modern golem who rises against its maker first appeared in a novel by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818).106 In the many film-versions of the book from Boris Karloff to Mel Brooks, which are very different from the original novel, we see a young scien­ tist who creates a being from human body parts stolen from cemeteries. On a rainy evening, Dr. Frankenstein breathes life into his creature, but there is a mishap. Igor, his assistant, mistakenly stole the brain of a criminal for the arti­ ficial creation, and when the man-monster awakes, he smashes everything in his path and kills the people of the town in a murderous frenzy.107 Before the frightened doctor is able to return his creation to the laboratory, the towns­ folk destroy the creature. The man-who-creates-and-destroys-himself is an important point of reference in philosophical anthropology, from the biblical myth of the creation of man to the Nietzschean myth of the man who creates himself out of the ashes of God. The technological myth carries the rationalism of the Enlightenment to the point of absurdity: the technological golem is the ultimate conclusion of the “nihilist-totalitarian syndrome”, reached via a rationality which becomes irrational until it culminates in self-destruction.108 Through its aestheticization, technology went from being the metaphysical principle of the twentieth century which gives meaning to modern life, as Jiinger described it, to something totally banal, devoid of human content mere form without values, like a computer game. In his article “Myth and the Communications Media” (1959), Marshal McLuhan examined the way in which the new language of communication which reached the stage repre­ sented by the modern media became a myth.105' Another way of characterizing languages as myth is to say that the medium is the message: the social activity of the media in printing, photography, films, the telegraph, radio and televi­

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sion itself became the message. The effect of the medium, like its message, lies in its form and not in its content, and McLuhan reached the conclusion that the medium represents “mythical pictures” whose ideological assumptions we internalize in a refined form. Sorel forestalled him when he said: “We are pris­ oners of the form of things rather than their content.”110 Thus, the myth becomes a medium which mobilizes for mobilization’s sake. This is the meaning of myth ex nihilo. The nihilist order revealed technology to be a tool of nihilism not only with regard to its specific function in war, but in negating any human qualities by drawing us towards it through aesthetic identification. But this technological nihilism is only one side of the picture: the other side is technological totali­ tarianism. The sophisticated hidden totalitarianism of modern technology is liable to subject the human resources and the aesthetic sense to its demands, to uproot the slightest criticism or opposition, and to become the one-dimen­ sional expression of the omnipotent technological establishment. The spectators of modern war or of its reproduction in the media are liable to be hidden partners in the aestheticization of technology. The fate of an act of aestheticization placing beauty above moral values is to be commonplace and lifeless. Modern technology has traveled some distance from its idolization at the end of the nineteenth century and the creation of a political mythology around it, to the utopian or anti-utopian vision expressed in Junger’s The Worker, Gastev’s Express and Lang’s Metropolis. In these works, technology does not serve man but is a new metaphysical language subjecting mankind to its demands, and making political considerations of left and right irrelevant to the all-consuming totalitarian leviathan. In addition to organization, supervi­ sion, standardization and control - qualities characteristic of the totalitarian regimes between the two world wars - technological totalitarianism is distin­ guished by inner unity, automatic co-ordination and a quasi-musical harmony. The futurist marionette and the Russian robot were a cynical meta­ morphosis of the “new man”. In the vision of Jiinger and Bogdanov, the Nietzschean Oveman who creates himself, who fashions himself as a bridge towards the future, was no longer a special person but a standardized creation who wears a uniform. The modern vision of technology does not tell us how totalitarianism uses technology for its own purposes, but, on the contrary, how technology becomes totalitarian and nihilistic towards mankind. In this, the nihilist order proclaimed a new culture of totalitarian nihilism.

Notes Introduction: The Nihilist-Totalitarian Syndrome 1

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6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14

Henry Stuart Hughes, Between Commitment and Disillusion: The Obstructred Path and The Sea Change 1930-1965 (Middleton, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1987). David Ohana, “The ‘Anti-Intellectual’ Intellectuals as Political M ythmakers,” Zeev Sternhell, edM The Intellectual Revolt Against Democracy 1870-1945 (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1996), 87-104. David A. Russel & David Konstan, Heraclitus: Homeric Problem (Boston: Brill, 2005); Alexander Mourelatos, ed., The Pre-Socratics: A Collection o f Critical Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Kathleen Freeman, The PreSocratic Philosophers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946), 104—132, 284-285; Gregory Vlastos, “On Heraclitus,” American Journal o f Philosophy, 76(1955), 337-368. Jean Paul Sartre, L ’fctre et le Neant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943); Joseph P. Fell, Heidegger and Sartre - An Essay on Being and Place (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979); Christopher Macann, Four Phenomenological Philosophers: Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty (New York: Routledge, 1993); Jon Mills, “The False Dasein: From Heidegger to Sartre and Psychoanalysis,” Journal o f Phenomenological Psychology, 28(1), (1997), 42-65. Geoffrey S. Kirk & John E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 263-286; Hermann Frankel, Studies in PreSocratic Philosophy, //, eds. Regiland E. Allen & David J. Furley (New York: Humanities Press 1975), 1-48. Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1952), 51-69, 82-86. William Keith Chambers Guthrie, A History o f Greek Philosophy, III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 238-239. A. M. S. Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae libri quinque, ex editione Vulpiana cum notis et interpertatione (London, 1823), V. 1. Diogenes Laertius, Diogenis Laertii de Clarorum Philosophorum Vitis, Dogmatibus et Apophthegmatibus libri decem ex italicis codicibus nunc primum excussis recensuit C. Gabr. Cobet, Graece et Latine cum indicibus (Paris: F. Didot, 1850), X. 38. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Werke III (Leipzig, 1816), 44. Jacobi, 22. Fredrick C. Beiset, The Fate o f Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 4, 81-83. Gunther Baum, Vem unft und Erkenntnis: Die Philosophie F.H. Jacobis (Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1969), 37. Jacobi, 49.

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Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, Faith and Knowledge (trans. W. Cerf &C H. S. Harris), (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977). Dietrich Von Engelhardt, “Romanticism in Germany” in: Roy Porter Sc M ikulas Teich, eds. Romanticism in National Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988), 109-133. “Nihilism,” Magazine Litterairey 279 (Julliet-Aout 1990), 16-67. Carl Schmitt, Donoso cortes in gesamteuropaischer Interpretation (Koln: Greven, 1950). Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence o f Christianity (trans. G. Ebot), (New York: Harper, 1957); M ax Stirner, The Ego and His O wn (trans. S. T. Byngton), (New York: B. R. Tucker, 1907). Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea (trans. Hakdane & J. Xamp), (London: K. Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co., Ltd, 1906). Fredrick C. Copelston, Philosophy in Russia - From Herzen to Lenin and Berdyaev (Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 1986), 183; Evgeni! Lampert, Sons against Fathers - Studies in Russian Radicalism and Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). Wanda Bannour, Les nihilistes russes (Paris: Anthropos 1975); James Joll, The Anarchists (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964); George Woodcock, Anarchism - A History o f Libertarian Ideas and Movements (New York: World Publishing 1962). Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), chap. 347. Nikolai Berdyaev, Dostoevsky - A n Interpretation (trans. D. Attwater), (New York: Sheed Sc W ard, 1934); Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky - The Seeds o f Revolt, 1821-1849 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). David Ohana, “J. L. Talmon, Gershom Scholem and the Price of Messianism,” History o f European Ideas, Vol. 34 (2), (2008), Arye Dubnov, ed., Jacob Talmon and Totalitarianism Today: Legacy and Revision, 169-188. Helmut Theilicke, Nihilism (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1962). Rolland Jaccard, Le tentation nihiliste (Paris: Presses Universitaires De France, 1990). Alferd J. Ayer, Languagey Truth and Logic (New York: Dover Publications, 1952); Charles Stevenson, Ethics and Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944). John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (New York: United States Armed Forces Institute, 1944). Georges Sorel, Reflexions sur la violence (Paris: Riviere, 1908), 56, 342. Karl Lowith, “The Historical background of European Nihilism,” in: Nature, History and Existentialism (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 10. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, VoL IV: Nihilism (trans. F. A. Capuzzi), ed. D. F. Kreli (San Francisco: Harper &C Row, 1982). Leszek Kolakowski, Modernity on Endless Trial (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). Herman Rauschning, The Revolution o f Nihilism (New York: Alliance Book Corp., 1939), 12,13, 23, 56. Ernst Bloch, The Principle o f Hope, III (trans. N. Placie, S. Plaice & P. Knight), (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 945; idem, “The Impulse of

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Nietzsche,” in: Heritage o f Our Times, eds., Neville & Stephan Paice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 325; see especially, Anson Rabinbach in his “Unclaimed Heritage: Ernst Bloch’s Heritage o f Our Times and the Theory of Fascism,” N ew German Critique (Spring, 1977), 5-21. Albert Camus, The Rebel (trans., Anthony Bower, with a foreword by Sir Herbert Read), (New York: Penguin, 1953). J. L. Talmon, The Origins o f Totalitarian Democracy (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1952). Ansgar Hillach, “The Aesthetics of Politics: Walter Benjamin’s Theories of German Fascism,” N ew German Critique, 17 (Spring 1979), 120-128. Abbott Gleason, Totalitarianism - The Inner History o f the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 3. Alexander J. Grows, “The Isms in Totalitarianism,” American Political Science Review, LVIII, No. 4 (1964), 881-901; Robert C. Tucker, “The Dictator and Totalitarianism,” World Politics, XVII, No. 4 (1965), 555-583; Robert Burrows, “Totalitarianism - The Revised Standard Edition,” World Politicsy XXI, No. 2 (1969), 272-289; Irving Howe, ed., 1984 Revisited - Totalitarianism in Our Century (New York: Harper &c Row, 1983); Guy Hermet, Pierre Hassner & Jacques Pupnik, eds., Totalitarianism (Paris: Economica, 1984). Opera omnia di Benito Mussolini, eds. E. Susmel fic D. Susmel (Florence: La Fenice, 1956), Vol. 21, 362. Hannah Arendt, The Origins o f Totalitarianism (New York: H arcourt, Brace, 1951); Carl Friedrich &c Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956); Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies (N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950); Raymond Aron, The Opium o f the Intellectuals (London: Seeker & W arburg, 1957). Jean J. Kirkpatrick, ed., The Strategy o f Deception - A Study in World-Wide Communist Tactics (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1963). M. Greiffenhagen, “Der Totalitarismusbergriff in der Regimenlehre,” in: R. Kuhl, M. Greiffenhagen M artin & Johann Baptist Muller, eds., Totalitarismus - Zur Problematik eines politischen begriffes (Miinchen: List, 1972), 23-59; Davis B. Bubrow, “Old Dragons in New Models,” World Politics, XIX, No. 2 (1967), 206-319; Karl Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957); Barrington Moore, Political Power and Social Theory (New York: Harper & Row, 1965). Francesco Nitti, Bolshevism, Fascism and Democracy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1927). Friedrich & Bzezinski. Herbert J. Spiro, “Totalitarianism - Critique of a Concept,” International Encyclopedia o f Social Sciences, XVI (1968), 106-112. Franz Neumann, The Democratic and Authoritarian State - Essays in Political and Legal Theory (Chicago: Free Press, 1957), 245; idem, Behemoth - The Structure and Practic o f National Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1942). Harry Eckstein & David E. Apter, Comparative Politics - A Reader (New York: Free Press of Glencoe 1963), 434. Moore, 74-75. Sigmund Neumann, Permanent Revolution - The Total State in a World at War (New York: H arper and Brothers, 1961), XII.

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Hans Kohn, “Die Kommunistische und die Faschistisch D iktatur,” in: Bruno Siegfried Jenkner, ed., Wege der Totalitarismusforschung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974), 56. Leonard Schapiro, Totalitarianism (New York: Praeger, 1972), 17. Benjamin R. Barber, “Conceptual Foundations of Totalitarianism,” in: Carl J. Friedrich, Michael Cutris & Benjamin R. Barber, eds., Totalitarianism in Perspective: Three Views (New York: Praeger, 1969); see for example: Karl Deutsch, “Cracks in the Monolith - Possibilities and Patterns Disintegration in Totalitarian Systems,” in: Carl F. Friedrich, ed., Totalitarianism Proceedings o f a Conference Held at the American Academy o f Arts and Sciences (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), 308-309. Malachi Haim HaCohen, Karl Popper - The Formative Years 1902-1945, Politics and Philosophy In Interwar Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 3 8 3 ^ 4 8 .

C h apter O ne

The Nietzschean Revolution

1 See Bernard Beginster, The Affirmation o f Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (Cambridge, MA: H arvard University Press, 2006); compare other inter­ pretations: Elizabeth Kuhn, Friedrich Nietzsches Philosophic des europdischen Nihilismus (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1922); Michael Allen Gillespie, Nihilism before Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), chaps. 6-7 2 Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1950); and compare Walter H. Sokel, “Political Uses and Abuses of Nietzche in W alter Kaufmann’s Image of Nietzsche,” NietzscheStudien, 12 (1983), 429-435. 3 Tracy B. Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics o f Transfiguration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); Bruce Detwiler, Nietzsche and the Politics o f Aristocratic Radicalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 4 Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse o f Modernity (trans. F. Lawrence), (Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press, 1987), 105. 5 Charles Bamlach, Heidegger's Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism and the Greeks (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 247-325. 6 M ark W arren, Nietzsche and Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), 79-110. 7 Arthur Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 214-228; Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy (trans. Hugh Tomlinson), (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 49-52. 8 Bruce Haywook, Novalis, The Veil o f Imagery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959) 9 Karl R. Popper, The Poverty o f Historicism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957). 10 Isaak Iselin, Philosophische Mutmassungen iiber die Geschichte der Menschheit (1769). 11 Johann G. Herder, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (1774). 12 Gotthold E. Lessing, Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechtes (1780). 13 Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, oder iiber religiose Macht und Judenthum, Werke, Bd. V (1819-1825).

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Immanuel Kant, Idee zu eirter allgemeinen Geschichte in wellbiirgerlicber Absicht, V III (Wiesbaden: H. Staadt, 1914). Alexis Philonenko, Theorie et praxis dans la pensee morale et politique de Kant et de Fichte en 1793 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1968). Paul Collins Hayner, Reason and Existence: Schelling’s Philosophy o f History (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967). Georg Willhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy o f History (trans. J. Sibree), (New York: Dover Publication, 1956); Werke, Vol. XII: Vorlesungen uber die Philosophie der Geschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969). Georges Goedert, “Nietzsche und Schopenhauer,” Nietzsche Studien 7 (1978), 1-26; Bryan Magee, The Philosophy o f Schopenhauer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Hans Kohn, “Wagner and His Time,” The M ind o f Germany: The Education o f a Nation (New York: Scribner, 1960). Benjamin Bennett, “Nietzsche’s Idea of Myth: The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics,” PMLA, 94 (1979), 420-433. The young Nietzsche wrongly saw Wagner’s Germanic mythology through the spectacles of the Greek myths. For him, Wagnerian myth was the only hope for the resurrection of Europe. For further reading see: Michael S. Silk & Joseph P. Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). All Nietzsche’s quotations are given in the translations of W alter Kaufmann in the following books: Beyond Good and Evil (JGB), (New York: Vintage Books, 1966); O n the Genealogy o f Morals (GM) and Ecce hom o (EH), (New York: Vintage Books, 1969); The Gay Science (FW), (New York: Random House, 1974); The Birth o f Tragedy (GT), (New York: Vintage Books, 1967); The Will to Power (WM), (New York: Russel & Russel, 1968); Nietzsche’s quotations from: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Za), Twilight o f the Idols (GD), and The Antichrist (AC) are taken from; The Portable Nietzsche, ed., W. Kaufmann (New York: Viking Press, 1954); The Use and Abuse o f History (HL), (trans. Adrian Collins), (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1949); “O n Truth and Falsity in an Extra-Moral Sense” (OTF), in: Early Greek Philosophy and Other Essays (trans. M.A. Miigge), (The Complete Works ofN ietzsche9ed., Oscar Levi, Vol. II), (New York: Russel & Russel, 1964). See also Vol. VII, The Wanderer and His Shadow (WS), (Human, All Too Human II), (trans. Paul V. Cohen); Daybreak (M), (trans. R J. Hollingdale), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). The numbers in parentheses refer to aphorisms and to sections in the above-mentioned books. On the birth of Greek tragedy and theatre in Athens, see: Margarete Bieber, The History o f the Greek and Roman Theatre (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1961); on Greek tragedy in general see: Leo Aylen, Greek Tragedy and the M odem World (London: Methuen, 1964); Yale Classical Studies, Vol. XXV, Greek Tragedy (1977); T. B. L. Webster, “Greek Tragedy,” Fifty Years o f Classical Scholarship (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968). Benjamin Bennett and Allan Megill explained Nietzsche’s myth not as concerning to the history of anthropology but rather to the history of aesthetics. See, Bennett, op. cit., 421; Allan Megill, Prophets o f Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). For other interpretations see: Ernst Cassirer, Das Mythische Denken, Vol. II of Philosophie der Symbolischen Formen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,

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1973), 281-311; Jacques Derrida, “La Mythologie blanche,” Poetique, 5 (1971), 1-52. In 1871 Nietzsche wrote: “Let such ‘serious’ readers learn something from the fact that I am convinced that art represents the highest task and the truly meta­ physical activity of this life.” BT, “Preface to Richard W agner.” David Ohana, “The Role of Myth in History: Nietzsche and Georges Sorel,” Religion, Ideology and Nationalism in Europe and America (Jerusalem: The Historical Society of Israel, 1986), 119-140. Meyer H. Abrams, Natural Supematuralism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: Norton, 1971). Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate o f Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987). Jean-Paul Sartre, La Nausee (Paris: Gallimard, 1938). James C. O ’Flaherty, Timothy F. Sellner & Robert M. Helm, eds., Studies in Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition (Chapel Hill: University of N orth Carolina, 1979); William Arrowsmith, “Nietzsche on Classics and the Classicists,” Arion, 2 (1975) 5-27; John T. Sheppard, Aeschylus and Sophocles; Their World and Influence (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1963). On Euripides see especially: George M. Anthony Grube, The Drama o f Euripides (New York: Barnes & Noble); Thomas B. Lonsadle Webster, The Tragedies o f Euripides (London: Methuen, 1967). For another point of view see: Desmond Conacher, Euripidean Drama; M yth, Theme and Structure (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1967) Werner J. Dannhauser, Nietzsche’s View o f Socrates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1974); Herman J. Schmidt, Nietzsche und Sokrates Philologische Untersuchungen Z u Nietzsche's Sokratesbild (Meisenheim am Gian: Hain, 1969). E. Havelock, “The Orality of Socrates and the Literacy of Plato,” N ew Essays on Socrates, ed., Eugene Kelly (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984). Nietzsche wrote in 1888 that he was the “first to become serious about the rela­ tion of art to truth.” Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (New York: de Gruyter, 1967) 8, Abt., 3 bd., 296; See also “The Struggle between Science and Wisdom,” in: Philosophy and Truth: Selections From Nietzsche’s Notebooks o f the Early 1870s (trans. and ed., Daniel Breazeal), (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1979). Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, 2 Vols. (Pfullingen: Neske,1961); Michael Haar, “Heidegger and the Nietzschean 'Physiology of Art’,” Exceedingly Nietzsche: Aspects o f Contemporary Nietzsche - Interpretations, eds., David F. Krell & David Wood (New York: Routledge, 1988), 13-30. Mario M ontuori, Socrates, Physiology o f a M yth (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1981). In Thomas M ann’s Notebooks he called Doctor Faustus “the book on Nietzsche.” David E. Cooper, Authenticity and Learning: Nietzsche’s Educational Philosophy (Boston: Routledge & Keagan Paul, 1983). Tejera Victorino, Nietzsche and Greek Thought (Boston: M. Antink Nijhoff, 1987). Justus Buchler, Nature and Judgment (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955); Metaphysics o f Natural Complexes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966); “Probing the Idea of N ature,” Process Studies, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1978), 157-168.

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Hayden White, “Nietzsche: The Poetic Defense of History in the Metaphorical Mode,” Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 331-374, Thomas M ann, Nietzsche’s Philosophy in the Light o f Contemporary Events (Washington D.C: The Library of Congress, 1947). Carl L. Becker reached the same point sixty years after Nietzsche. Becker, The Heavenly City o f the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932), 14. Yonina Garber-Talmon, “The Concept of Time in Primitive M yths,” Iyyun (In Hebrew), Vol. 2, No. 4 (1951) 2 0 1 - 2 1 4 ; see also Claude Levi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of M yth,” Structural Anthropology (trans. C. Jacobson & B. G. Schoeff), (New York: Basic Books, 1963); Bronislaw Malinowski, “Myth in Primitive Psychology,” Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (Boston, MA: Beacon Press; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1948). Bernhard AbrahamVan Groningen, In the Grip o f the Past (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1953); William K. H. Guthrie, In the Beginning (London: Methuen, 1957). John B. Burry, A History o f Greece to the Death o f Alexander (London: Macmillan, 1972). Heidegger suggested only one concept of time, see: “Who is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra,” David B. Allison, ed., The N ew Nietzsche (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1985), 65-79. Harry A. Wolfson, The Philosophy o f Spinoza (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), 358. William James, The Varieties o f Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: M odern Library, 1929). Joseph Bernhart, “Meister Eckhart und Nietzsche,” Blatter fur Deutsche Philosophic. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Philosophischen Gesellschaft, hrsg. Von Hugo Fischer, 3, Bd., Heft 4 (Berlin, 1930), 404-425. Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe: Essai sur I’absurde (Paris: Gallimard, 1942). Douglas Burnham, Reading Nietzsche: an Analysis o f Beyond G ood and Evil (Stocksfield: Acumen, 2007); Peter Berkowitz, Nietzsche, The F.thics o f an Immortalist (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); Philippa Foot, “Nietzsche: The Revaluation of Values,” Nietzsche: A Collection o f Critical Essays, ed., Robert C. Solomon (Indiana: Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980), 156-168; Kathrine P. Parsons, “Nietzsche and Moral Changes,” op. cit., 169-193; John R. Dionne, Pascal et Nietzsche (New York: B. Franklin, 1965), 11-23. Michael F. Duffy &c Willard Mittelman, “Nietzsche’s Attitudes toward the Jews,” Journal o f the History o f Ideas, Vol. XLIX, No. 1 (1988), 301-317. Jacob Golomb, Nietzsche’s Enticing Psychology o f Power (Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1989) Michael Allen Gillespie & Tracy B. Strong, eds., Nietzsche’s N ew Seas Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics and Politics (Chicago: Chicago of University Press); Curtis Cate, Friedrich Nietzsche (London: Hutchinson, 2002), 51-141. Allan Megill, Prophets o f Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Deridda (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 301-317. Following Richard Schacht I accept his definition of nihilism as “the doctrine that

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there is and can be no such thing as “tru th ” where reality is concerned . . . (or) the doctrine that axiological principles have no objective basis in reality.” See: R. Schacht, “Nietzsche and Nihilism,” Nietzsche: A Collection o f Critical Essays, ed., Robert C. Solomon (Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 1980), 30. See also Arthur D anto’s definition: “An essentially chaotic reality . . . (there) is neither order nor purpose, things nor facts, nothing there whatever to which our beliefs can correspond” See: Arthur Danto, op. cit.y 33. See especially: Freny Mistry, “The Overcoming of Metaphysics and Nihilism,” Nietzsche and Buddhism: Prolegomenon to a Comparative Study (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), 19-50. Albert Camus, The Rebel (New York: Vintage Books, 1956), 65-66. On this point, see: Tracy B. Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics o f Transfiguration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975). Caudia Crawford, “Nietzsche’s Mnemotechnics, the Theory of Ressentiment, and the Psychical Apparatus,” Nietzscbe-Studien, Band 14 (1985), 281-297. Karl Lowith, “The Historical Background of European Nihilism,” Nature, History and Existentialism (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 3-17. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, 2 Vols. (Pfullingen: Gunther Neske, 1961); Arthur Danto, op. cit.\ Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles (trans. Barbara Harlow), (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979). Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 87. Stephen Houlgate, Hegel, Nietzsche and the Criticism o f Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Gianni Vattimo, ed., La Secularisation de la pensee (trans. Charles Alunni), (Paris: Seuil, 1986). Jean Granier, Le Probleme de la verite dans la philosophie de Nietzsche (Paris: Seuil, 1966). Nathan Rotenstreich, “Alienation, Transformation of a Concept,"Proceedings o f the Israel Academy o f Sciences and Humanities, Vol. I, N o. 6 (1967), 1-13. [Hebrew] Danto, op. cit., 30. Ofelia Schutte, Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche W ithout Masks (Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 1984), 50. Stanley Rosen, Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), 1-27; Gillian Rose, Dialectic o f Nihilism: Post-Structuralism and Law (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 131-207. K.J. Ansell-Pearson, “Nietzsche’s Overcoming of Kant and Metaphysics: From Tragedy to Nihilism,” Nietzsche-Studien, Band, 16 (1987), 310-339. Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe: Essay sur V A bsurde (Paris: Gallimard, 1942). Joseph Bernhart, “Meister Eckhart und Nietzsche,” Blatter fur Deutsche Philosophie 3 (no. 4,1930). Kaufmann, op. cit.y 153. I accept Robert C. Solomon’s assumption that “The themes of nihilism and the will to power . . . function together as the key poles of Nietzsche’s thought.” But I don’t agree with his conclusion that nihilism is the problem to which the will to

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power is the answer. See R. C. Solomon, “Nietzsche, Nihilism and M orality,” Nietzsche: A Collection o f Critical Essays, 203. See also Gilles Deleuze’s argu­ ment: “Nihil in "nihilism’ means negation as quality of the will to power,” Deleuze. Nietzsche and Philosophy (trans. Hugh Tomlinson), (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 143. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, II (trans. E. F. J. Payne), (New York: Dover, 1969). For the psychological dimension of the will to power, see Jacob Golomb, Nietzsche’s Psychology o f Power (Iowa: Iowa University Press, 1989). On this point see Werner Stegmaier, “Darwin, Darwinismus, Nietzsche. Zum Problem Der Evolution,"Nietzsche-Studien, Band 16 (1987), 264-287. For another point of view, see John Stambough, The Problem o f Time in Nietzsche (London: Bucknell University Press, 1987). For other interpretations see also: Ivan Soil, “Reflections on Recurrence: A ReExamination of Nietzsche’s Doctrine, Die Ewige Wiederkehr Des Gleichen,” Nietzsche: A Collection o f Critical Essays, 322-342; Arnold Zuboff, “Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence,” op. c/’r., 343-357; Bcrnd Magnus, Nietzsche Existential Imperative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978). Yirmiyahu Yovel, “Nietzsche and Spinoza: amor fati and amor dei,” Nietzsche as Affirmative Thinker, ed., Yirmiyahu Yovel (Dordrecht: M artinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986), 183-203. See my “The Role of M yth in History: Nietzsche and Georges Sorel,” Religion, Ideology and Nationalism in Europe and America (Jerusalem: The Historical Society of Israel and the Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1986), 119-140. On the politicization of these concepts, see my “Nietzsche and Ernst Junger: From Nihilism to Totalitarianism,” History o f European Ideas, Vol. 11 (1989), 751-758. A letter to Lou Salome, September 16, 1882.

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See especially Ernst Cassirer, “Judaism and the Modern Political M yths,” Symbol, Myth, and Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 233-241. Georges Sorel, Reflexions sur la Violence (Paris: M. Riviere, 1910), 46. Adrian Lyttelton, The Seizure o f Power: Fascism in Italy 1919-1929 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973), 368-370, 385-386; Gian Biagio Furiozzi, “Sorel e PItalia: Bibliografia ragionata,” Annali della Facolta di Scienze Politiche di Perugia (1968-1970), 119-178; Ugo Piscopo, “I futuristi e Sorel,” Volume collectif, Georges Sorel: Studi e ricerche (Firenze: L.S. Olschki, 1975), 5-7. James H. Meisel, The Genesis o f Georges Sorel (Ann Arbor: George W ahr, 1951), 13. The Birth o f Tragedy was translated into French only in 1901, and the first arti­ cles on Nietzsche in French appeared in 1891-1892. Bianquis saw in Sorel “Nietzschean imperialism”: Geneviev Bianquis, Nietzsche en France (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1929), chap. 8; Jacques Le Rider, Nietzsche en France: De la fin du X IX e siecle au temps present (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999), 88-93,192, 200; William D. Williams, Nietzsche and the French (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952); George Goriely, Le Pluralisme dramatique de Georges Sorel (Paris:

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Riviere,1962), 54-55; John L. Stanley, The Sociology o f Virtue: The Political and Social Theories o f Georges Sorel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 53-54; Felix Ludger Rossignol, Pour connaitre la pensee de Georges Sorel (Paris: Bordas, 1948), 52. On Sorel’s attitude to Nietzsche, see: Georges Sorel, Reflexions sur la violence (Paris: Riviere, 1908), 355-356; Sorel, “Preface,” in: Servero Merlino, Formes et essence du socialisme (Paris, 1898); and in the following reviews: Pacheu, “Du positivisme au mysticisme,” Revue generate de critique et de bibliographie (Feb. 1906), 30; George Valois, “L*Homme qui vient Philosophic de l’autorite,” Revue Generate de Critique et de Bibliographie (Decem. 1906), 435. Paolo Pastori, Rivoluzione e continuita in Proudhon e Sorel (Roma: Giuffre, 1980); Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, L'ldee generate de la revolution au X IX e siecle (Paris, 1867). On the political thought of Proudhon, see: Alan Ritter, The Political Thought o f Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969). Sorel, Reflexions. 331. Ibid., 256. Ibid., 355. Ibid., 356. See also: Irving Louis Horowitz, Radicalism and the Rrevolt Against Reason (New York: Humanities Press, 1963), 153. Reflexions, 357. Ibid., 358. Ibid., 224. Jacques Juliard 8c Shlomo Sand, eds., Georges Sorel en son temps (Paris: Seuil,

1985). 15 16

17

18

19 20 21 22 23

Cahiers Georges Sorel, 1-5, Societe d’£tudes Soreliennes (Paris: Societe d’£tudes Soreliennes 1983-88). Michel Charzat, Gorges Sorel et la Revolution au X X e siecle (Paris: Hachette,1977). Shlomo Sand, L*Illusion du Politique, Sorel et le debat intellectuel 1900 (Paris: La Decouverte, 1985). Jean-Paul Sartre, “Preface”, in Frantz Fanon, Les damnes de la terre (Paris: F. Maspero, 1961); M ark Antliff, Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilization o f Myth, Art, and Culture in France, 1909-1939 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). See especially: James H. Meisel, op. cit.; Irving L. Horowitz, op. cit.; John L. Stanley, op. cit.; Richard Humphrey, Georges Sorel: Prophet without Honour (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Universiy Press, 1951); Jeremy R. Jennings, Georges Sorel, The Character and Development o f his Thought, Foreword by T. Zeldin (London: Macmillan, 1985); Philippe Riviale, Mythe et Violence: autour de Georges Sorel: avec des texts de Vhum anite nouvelle, 1898-1903 (Paris: Harmattan, 2003). Jules Levey, The Sorelian Syndicalists: Edouard Berth, Georges Valois, and Hubert Lagardelle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967). Paul Delesalle, “Georges Sorel,” Humanite (September 1,1922). Georges Valois, “Georges Sorel,” Action Franfaise (September 4,1922). Julien Benda, The Great Betrayal (London: G. Routledge 8c Sons, Ltd., 1928), 72; Gean Wanner, Georges Sorel et la decadence (Lausanne: Roth 8c Cie, 1943). H. Stuart Hughes, “Georges Sorel’s Search for reality,” Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation o f European Social Thought 1890-1930 (New York:

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24

25 26

27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

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Vintage Books, 1958), 162; Georges Sorel: Una biografia intellettuale. Socialismo e liberalismo nella Francia della Belle epoque (Milano: Unicopli, 1997). Paul Delesalle, “Bibliographic Sorelienne,” International Review for Social History, IV (1939), 463-487; “Bibliographic des etudes sur Sorel”’, Cahiers G. Sorel I-V (Societe d’£tudes Soreliennes, 1983-1988). Benedeto Croce, La philosophie de Jean-Baptiste Vico (trans. H. Buriot-Darsiles & G. Bourgian), (Paris, 1913), 263-64, 266, 312. David Ohana, “The ‘Anti-intellectual’ Intellectuals as Political M ythmakers,” in: Zeev Sternhell, ed., The Intellectual Revolt Against Liberal Democracy 1870-1945 (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1996), 87-104; John Stanley, From Georges Sorel - Essays in Socialism and Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press) Georges Sorel, Contribution a I’etude profane de la Bible (Paris: A. Ghio, 1889). John L. Stanley, The Sociology o f Virtue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); James H. Meisel, The Genesis o f Georges Sorel (Ann Arbor: George Wahr, 1951), 50. Sorel, Contribution, 92. Sorel, Le proces de Socrate (Paris: Alcan, 1889). Sorel, Reflexions, 247. Sorel, Le proces, 176. Sorel, la ruine du monde antique (Paris: Riviere, 1901), 113. Ibid., 132. Ibid., 39. Sorel, Le systeme historique de Renan (Paris: G. Jacques, 1902), 484. Ibid., 336. Sorel, Reflexions, 33. Ibid., 33. Sorel, Materiaux d ’une theorie du proletariat (Paris: Riviere, 1919), 313. Sorel, La ruine, 312. Ibid., 25-32. Sorel, Le systeme, 35. Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse o f History (HL), (trans. Adrian Collins), (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1949), Introduction. Nietzsche, The Birth o f Tragedy (GT), (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), sec. 23. Thomas M ann, Nietzsche’s Philosophy in the Light o f Contemporary Events (Washington: The Library of Congress, 1947), 1. Stanley, The Sociology o f Virtue, 26-55. Sorel, Le proces, 205. Sorel, Reflexions, 19. Leo Strauss, X enophon’s Socrates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), 11-113. Sorel, Le proces, 87-101. Sorel, Reflexions, 354-355. Ibid., 356. Ibid., 54. Ibid., 364. Ibid., 365.

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Ibid., 433-34. Ibid., 319. Ibid., 357. Ibid., 323. In the historical investigation made by Nietzsche in the Genealogy o f Morals (1887) he claimed that class hierarchy determines the hierarchy of values. The nobleman is interpreted as “noble spirit” , “man of virtue”, in other words “good”, while the “vile”, the “vulgar” and the “base” were perceived as “bad.” Using four philologic examples, Nietzsche examined the etymology of words for instance, in German the word schlicht (simple) became schlecht (bad). Sorel, Reflexions, 224. Humphrey, Sorel, Prophet W ithout H onor, 148. Sorel, "L’ancienne et la nouvelle metaphysique," £re Nouvelle (1894), 203. Ibid., 72. Sorel, Reflexions, 180. Homer, The Odyssey, trans. with introduction Richard Lattimore (New York: Harper and Row, 1977). Sorel, Reflexions, 180. Ibid., 46. Ibid., 177-179. Ibid., 176. In the English translation of the book, Nisbet and Stanley explain that the idea of progress legitimates the historical regime, in this case the political rule of the bour­ geoisie. It can be added that the political rule of the bourgeoisie also sets in authority the bourgeois-harmonic mentality of sanctifying the existing order. See The Illusions o f Progress (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), v-viii, ix-xxxix; Fabien Desmeaux, Uidee de progres dans Voeuvre de Georges Sorel: signification et controverses (Lille: Universite de Lille, 2000). Sorel, “£tude sur Vico,” Devenir Social, 2, no. 7 (October 1896). Thomas Godard & Max Harold Fisch, eds., The N ew Sceience o f Giambattista Vico (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1986). Sorel, Reflexions, 129. Jack J. Roth, The Cult o f Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 129. Sorel, Reflexions, 129. Ibid., 39. Ibid., 182. George Howard Cole, Socialist Thought: The Forerunners 1789-1850 (London: Macmillan, 1955). Sorel, Reflexions, 55. John L. Stanley named it “virtue”, while Jack Roth sees the “heroes’ society” as his own paradigm. Stanley, op. cit.\ Roth, op. cit. Pierre Andrew, Notre Maitre,M. Sorel(Paris: Grasset, 1953), 239-68; Willy Gianinazzi, Naissance du mythe modeme: Georges Sorel et lacrise de la pensee savante (1889-1914), (Paris: Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2006). Henri Bergson, L 'tvo lu tio n creatrice (Paris: P.U.F., 1962). Another point of view, see: Shlomo Sand, “Quelques remarques sur Sorel critique de devolution crea­ trice,” Cahiers G. Sorely I (1983), 109-124.

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85 86 87 88 89

90

91 92 93 94 95

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109

110

177

In a letter to G. Maire from 1912, see: Bergson, £crite$ et Paroles, II. Sorel, Reflexions, 54, 360, 371. Sorel, “L’ancienne et la nouvelle metaphysique,” 72. Zeev Stemhell, M ario Sznajder, Maia Asheri, Naissance de Videologie fasciste (Paris: Fayard, 1989). Among other interpretations, see: Daniella Andreatta, Tra m ito e scienza: la revisione del marxismo nel pensiero politico di Georges Sorel e di Enrico Leone (Padova: Cleup, 1999); Maximilien Rubel, “Georges Sorel et Pachevement de I’oeuvre de Karl M arx,” Cahiers G. Sorel', / (1983), 9-37. In 1902 Sorel wrote the introduction to: Fernand Pelloutier, Histoire des bourses du travail (Paris: Gordon and Breach), 27-67. See also: Jacques Julliard, Fernand Pelloutier et les origines du Syndicalisme d'action directe (Paris: Seuil, 1971). Sorel, La Decomposition du Marxisme (Paris: M. Riviere, 1908), 5. See for example: Claude Willard, Le Mouvement socialiste en France (1893-1905). Les guesdistes (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1965). Stanley, The Sociology o f Virtue, 105-106. Serge Hughes, “Labriola and the Deviationist Marxism of Croce and Sorel,” The Fall and Rise o f M odem Italy (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 37-59. See also: David D. Roberts, The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism (Chapel Hill: University of N orth Carolina Press, 1979); Edmund E. Jacobitti, “Labriola, Croce and Italian M arxism,” Journal o f the History o f Ideas, 36, No. 2 (1975), 297-318. Reflexions, 120. lbid.y 48. Ibid., 118; Pietro Barbieri La filosofia della violenza in Georges Sorel (Milano: Editrice Nuovi Autori, 1986). Ibid., 120. Ibid., 161. Ibid., 47; Arthur Redding, Raids O n Human Consciousness (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998). Ibid., SO. Ibid., 46. Frank E. Manuel & Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 755. Jack J. Roth, The Cult o f Violence, 266. Reflexions, 388. A. Pezzotti, “Un parti syndicaliste en Italie,” Mouvement socialiste (March 13, 1911), 185. Agostino Lanzillo, Giomale d'Italia 2. Allan Bullock, Malcolm Bradbury & James McFarlane, eds., “The Double Image,” Modernism 1890-1930 (N. Y.: Penguin, 1976), 58-70; M athew Affron &CM ark Antliff, “Art and Fascist ideology in France and Italy: an Introduction,” in: M. Affron & M. Antliff, eds., Fascist Visions,Art and Ideology in France and Italy (New Jersey: Princeton, 1997), 3-25. As Giovanni Papini said: “Marinetti obliged a large part of the somnolent and rheumatic Italian bourgeoisie to interest itself in new problems of art and litera­ ture, and to enter into violent contact with the researches of the new European spirit.” Giovanni Papini, Passato Remoto (Firenze: Ponte alle Grazie, 1994), 263.

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111 One can agree with Benedetto Croce’s statement that “the ideological origins of Fascism can be found in Futurism”. Benedetto Croce, La Stampa, May 15,1924. 112 Renzo De Felice, “Ideologies,”in: Pontus Hulten, ed., Futurismo a Futurismi (Milano: Gruppo editoriale Fabbri, 1986), 488-492; see also, idem, The Structure For modernity: Nationalism, Futurism, and Fascism (London: Praeger, 2003). 113 1 accept Bradbury and McFarlane definition to modernism: “the coming of a new era of height aesthetic self-consciousness and non- representationalism, in which art turns from realism and humanistic representation towards style, technique and spatial form in pursuit of a deeper penetration of life.” In: “The Name and N ature of Modernism,” op. cit., 25; They also defined: “Modernism is less a style than a search for style,” op. cit., 29; see also: Irving Howe’s definition: “Modernism doesn’t establish a prevalent style of its own: or if it does, it denies itself, thereby ceasing to be modern.” In: “Introduction to the idea of the M odern,” Irving Howe, ed., Literary Modernism (Greenwood, Conn.: Fawcett, 1967), 13; Baudelaire wrote on “the sensation of newness”; and Rimbaud declared: “II faut etre absolument moderne” ; and Harold Rosenberg called it “tradition of the new”. O n Modernity and Modernization see: Daniel Bell, The Comming o f PostIndustrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973); Anthony Giddens, “Classical Social Theory and the Origins of Modern Sociology,” American Journal of Sociology, 81 (1976), 703-729; Jurgen Habermas, “Modernity vs. PostModernity,” N ew German Critique, 22 (Winter 1981), 3-14; Reinhard Bendix, “Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered,” Comparative Studies in Society and Flistory, 9 (1967), 292-346; Samuel N. Eisenstadt, Modernization: Protest and Change (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966); David E. Apter, The Politics o f Modernization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965); Henry A. Turner, Jr., “Fascism and Modernisation,” in: Henry A. Turner, ed,. Reappraisals o f Fascism (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), 117-140; Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 114 Quoted in Bullock, op. cit., 70; Emillio Gentille, The struggle for modernity: nationalism, futurism and fascism (Westport: Praeger, 2002). 115 George L. Mosse, “The Political Culture of Italian Futurism: A General Perspective,” Journal o f Contemporary History, Vol. 25 (1990); R. S. Sharkey & S. R. Dombroski., “Revolution, Myth and Mythical Politics: The Futurist Solution,” Journal o f European Studies, 6 ,4 (1976), 232-245. 116 Adrian Lyttelton, The Seizure o f Power: Fascism in Italy 1919-1929 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), 368-70, 385-6. 117 Fillipo Tomaso Marinetti, “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism,” Umbro Apollonio, ed., Futurist Manifestos (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973), 19-23. 118 Encyclopedia o f World A rt, Vol. XI (McGraw Hill Co., 1959-1967), 706-715; David Emilio, Futurismo, dadaismo e avanguardia romena: contaminazioni fra culture europee (1909-1930), (Torino: L’Harmattan, 2006). 119 Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balia, Gino Severini, “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting,” Futurist Manifestos, 27-30. 120 Boccioni, C arra’, Russolo, Balia, Severini, “The Exhibitors to the Public,” op. cit., 45-50. 121 Fillipo Tommaso Marinetti, “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, “ op. cit., 19-24.

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122 Ibid. 123 See for example: Carra, “Manifesto sula pittura di suoni, rumori, odori,” Drudi Gambillo & Fiori Teresa, eds., Archivi del Futurismo (Roma: De Luca [1958-62]), 73-76; Marjorie Perloff, The futurist movement: avant-garde, avant guerrt and the language o f rupture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Luigy Russolo, Vita e Operedi un Futurista (Milano: Skira 2006). 124 Boccioni, Pittura scultura futuriste (Milano, 1914), 185-86. 125 “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting,” op. cit. 126 Piet Mondrian, Plastic and Pure Plastic Art (New York: W ittenborn and Company, 1951), 51. 127 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the spiritual in A rt (New York: G. W ittenborn, 1963), 29. 128 Umberto Boccioni, Pittura scultura futuriste (Millano: Skira, 2006), 198. 129 “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting,” op. cit. 130 “The Exhibitors to the Public,” op. cit.; Roberto Salasno, Trittico futurista: Buzzi, Marinetti, Settimelli (Roma: Bulzoni, 2006). 131 Boccioni, Lacerba, I, M arch 15, 1913, 52. 132 “The Exhibitors to the Public,” op. cit. 133 Boccioni, Estetica a arte futurist (Milano: Balcone, 1946), 155. 134 Marinetti, “Destruction of Syntax, Imagination without Strings, Words in freedom,” Futurist Manifestos, 95-106. 135 Carlo.M. Cipolla, The Fontana Economic History o f Europe, The Industrial R evo lu tio n ^ ol. III (London: Fontana Books, 1973). 136 KarlG. Puntos Hulten, The Machine (New York: Museum of M odem Art, 1968); Fortunato Depero, Vestetica della macchina: da Balia al futurismo torinese (Milano: Mazzota, 2004). 137 Par Bergnam, “l’esthetique de la vitesse, origines et premiere manifestation,” Presence de F.T. Marinetti, Actes du Colloque International tenu a I ’UNESCO (L’Aage d'H om m e, 1982), 13-25; William Valerio, Boccioni’s Fist: Italian Futurism and the Construction o f Fascist Modernism (Ph.D. dissertation), (Yale University, 1996). 138 Boccioni, Les Peintres Futuristes Italiens (Paris, 1912). 139 Marinetti, “A’L’automobile de course,” in: Zbigniew Folejewaski, Futurism and Its Place in the Development o f Modern Poetry, A Comparative Study and Anthology (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1980), 154-155. 140 Marinetti, “ La M ort tient le volant,” La Ville Chamelle (Paris: Sansot, 1908). 141 Marinetti, “Multiplied M an and the Reign of the M achine,” M arinetti, Selected Writings (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972), 90-93. 142 Marinetti, “Geometric and Mechanical Splendor and the Numerical Sensibility,” op. cit., 97-103. 143 Marinetti, “Multiplied M an,” ibid. 144 Marinetti, “The New Religion - Morality of Speed,” ibid., 94-96. 145 Marinetti, “Multiplied M an,” ibid., 921. 146 Marinetti in lecture to the Lyceum Club in March 1912. 147 Marinetti, “Against Past-loving Venice,” Selected Writings, 55-59. 148 Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (New York: Praeger,1960), 124. 149 Cited in Banham, ibid.

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150 Boccioni, “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture,” Futurist Manifestos, 51-65. 151 Sant ‘Elia, “Messaggio,” Rivista Tecnica, 7 (1956). 152 Bruno Zevi, Architecture as Space (Joseph A. Barry, ed.), (New York: Horizon Press, 1957.) 153 Manfredo Tafuri, Theories and History o f Architecture (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 31. 154 Sant ‘Elia, “Messaggio,” op. cit. 155 M artin Buber, “Introduction,” in: Bruno Zevi, op. cit. 156 Sant ‘Elia, “Manifesto of Futurist Architecture,” Futurist Manifestos, 160-172. 157 Tafuri, op. cit., 32. 158 Sant ‘Elia, “Messaggio,” op. cit. 159 Enrico Crispolti, “Sant’Elia Antonio,” Futurismo a Futurismi, 571-72, 160 Ibid. 161 Noi Futurismo, Vol. I (Milano, 1920), 30-31. 162 Marinetti, “Speech at Trieste,” M arch 1909, in: I Manifesti del Futurismo, Vol. I (Florence: Lacerba, 1914), 39-40. 163 Christina J. Taylor, Futurism; Politics, Painting and Performance (Ann Arbor: U.M.I. Research Press, 1979), 8-9. 164 Adrian Lyttelton, op. cit., 368. 165 Cited in Linda Landis, “Futurists in W ar,” Anne Coffin Hanson, ed., The Futurist Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 60; Luca Somigli, Legitimizig the Artist: Manifesto Writing and European Modernism, 1885-1915 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003). 166 Marinetti, Zang Tumb Tuuum , Adrianopoli ottobre 1912, Parole in Liberta’ (Milan: Poesia, 1914). 167 Landis, op. cit., 61. 168 Lacerba, August 15, 1914; Walter L. Adamson, “Modernism and Fascism: The Politics of Culture in Italy, 1903-1922,” The American Historical Review 95, 2 (April 1990), 359-390; idem, “The Impact of WWI on Italian Political Culture,” Aviel Roshhwald & Richard Stites, eds., European Culture in the Great War, The Arts, Entertainment and Propaganda, 1914-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1999), 308-329. 169 See for example: Claudio G. Segre\ Italo Ballo: A Fascist Life (Berkeley: California University Press, 1987.) 170 James Joll, Three Intellectuals in Politics (New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), 169-70. 171 Landis, op. cit., 65; Willard Bohn, ed., Italian Futurist Poetry (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2005). 172 Herbert George Wells, The War in the Air (1907). 173 Marinetti, “Beyond Communism,” op. cit., 148; Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization o f Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); idem, “The Conquest of Modernity: From Modernist Nationalism to Fascism,” Modernism/Modernity 1,3 (1994), 55-87. 174 Walter Benjamin, “The W ork of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Illuminations (New York: Schocken, 1968), 217-252. 175 Emilio Gentile, “La Politica di M arinetti,” Storia Contemporanea VII, N r. 3 (September 1974), 415; Pierre Gaudibert, “A propos de futurisme et fascisme ou

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plus generalement d’avant-garde et politique,’* ed. Giovanni Lista, Marinetti et le Futurisme, Cabiers des avant-gardes, L ’Age d ’H om m e (Lausanne: L’Age d ’Homme, cop. 1977), 113-115; Gian Battista Nazzaro, “Pideologie marinettienne et le fascisme,” op. cit., 122-128, “Notes sur les materiaux concernant les rapports entre futurisme et fascisme,” op. cit., 138-158; Laura Malvano, “Futurisme et fascisme: dynamique de rapports inegaux,” op. cit., 162-171; Gunter Berghaus, Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909-1944 (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1996). 176 Stephen Kern, The Culture o f Space and Time 1880-1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). 177 Karl-Hein Bohrer, Die Asthetik des Schreckens: Die pessimistische Romantik und Ernst Jiinger friihwerk (Miinchen: Hanser, 1978). 178 Arnim Mohler, “Der Faschistische Stil,” Yon rechts gesehen (Stuttgart, 1974). C h apter T h ree

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Thomas Nevin, Ernst Jiinger an d Germany, Into the Abyss, 1914-1945 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997). Ernst Jiinger, Afrikanische Spiele (Hamburg: Hanseatische veriagsanstalt, 1936), 46-47; Marcus P. Bullock, The Violent Eye, Ernst Jiinger Visions and Revisions on the European Right (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 1992). Jiinger, In Stahlgewittem, 24th ed. (Berlin: Mittler, 1942), 1. John P. Stern, Ernst Jiinger - Writer o f our Time (Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1953), 9. Jiinger, der kam pfals inneres Erlebnis (Berlin: Mittler, 1922); Das Waldchen 125 - Eine Chronik aus den Grabenkampfen 1918 (Berlin: Mittler, 1925); Feuer und Blut - Ein Kleiner Ausschnitt aus der grossen Schlacht (Magdeburg: Stahlhelm Verlag, 1929). Jiinger, Der Arbeiter - Herrschaft und Gestalt (Hamburg: Hanseatische verlagsanstalt, 1932). Jiinger, A u fd en Marmorklippen (Erlenbach-Ziirich: E. Rentsch, 1942). Jiinger, Garten und Strassen (Berlin: E.S. Mittler & Sohn, 1942); Elliot Y. Neaman, A Dubious Past, Ernst Jiinger and the Politics o f Literature After Nazism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 139,189. Jiinger, Der Friede (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlaganstalt, 1945). Jiinger, Heliopolis - Riickblick a u f eine Stadt (Tubingen: Heliopolis-Verlag, 1949). Jiinger, Strahlungen (Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1951). Stern, op. cit., 16; Julien Hervier, The Details o f Time: Conversation with Ernst Jiinger (trans. Joachim Neugroschel), (New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1995), 67-134. William K. Pfeiler, War and the German M ind - The Testimony o f Men o f Fiction Who Fought at the Front (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941). Stanley Rosen, Nihilism - A Philosophical Essay (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969); John N orr, “German Social Theory and the Hidden Face of Technology,” European Journal o f Sociology, 15 (1974), 315; Michael Zimmerman, “The Thorn in Heidegger’s Side - The Question of National Socialism,” The Philosophical Forum, XX, No. 4 (1989), 326-365; Jean Michel Palmier, Les Merits Politiques de Heidegger (Paris: Editions de PHerne, 1968), 267-278.

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15 Jiinger, In Stahlfewittern, 100-126. 16 Paul Fussel, The Great War and M odem Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975). 17 Walter Struve, Elites Against Democracy - Leadership Ideals in Bourgeois Political Thought in Germany, 1890-1933 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1973), 378. 18 Hans P. Schwarz, Die konservative Anarchist - Politik und Zeitkritik Ernst Jiingers (Freiburg: Rombach, 1962), 69. 19 Jiinger, In Stahlfewittern, ix. 20 Ibid., 44. 21 Ibid., 197. 22 Ibid., 173-176. 23 Special issues on Jiinger, Magazine litteraire, 130 (November 1977); N ew German Critique, 59 (Spring-Summer 1993). 24 Pfeiler, op. cit., 109. 25 Jiinger, Der Kam pfals inneres Erlebnis, 107. 26 Ibid., 82. 27 Ernst von Salomon, Die Gedcheten (Berlin, 1930). 28 Jiinger, Der K am pf als inneres Erlebnis, 30. 29 D. Eckart, Ein Vemdchtnis, ed., A. Rosenberg (Miinchen, 1935), 11. 30 Jiinger, Der K am pfals inneres Erlebnis, 54. 31 Jiinger, ed., Der K am pf um das Reich (Essen: W. Kamp, 1931), 9. 32 Jiinger, Der Kam pfals inneres Erlebnis, 7. 33 Ibid., S. 34 Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, Vol. 2: Male Bodies - Psychoanalysing the White Terror (trans. E. Carter 8c C. Turner), (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987),

185. 35 Jiinger, Der Kam pfals inneres Erlebnis, 53. 36 Theweleit, Male Fantasies, 185. 37 George Steiner, “Introduction,” in: Jiinger, On the Marble Cliffs (trans, S. Hood), (New York: Penguin Books, 1970), 7. 38 Ibid., 8. 39 Walter Benjamin, “Theories of German Fascism - On the Collection of Essays War and W arriors,” ed. Ernst Jiinger, N ew German Critique, 17 (Spring 1979), 120-128; Alexander Hillach, “The Aesthetics of Politics - W. Benjamin’s ‘Theories of German Fascism,’” N ew German Critique, 17 (Spring 1979), 99-119. 40 J. Benjamin 8c Anson Rabinbach, “Foreword,” in: Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, xxiii. 41 Jiinger, Der K am pf als inneres Erlebnis, 8-9. 42 Ibid., 103-104. 43 Ibid., 29. 44 Jiinger, “preface,” in: Der K am pf und das Reich, 8. 45 Jiinger, Der K am pf als inneres Erlebnis, 64-65. 46 Ibid., 8. 47 Eulenberg E. Dwinger, A u f halbem Wege (Stuttgart: I. Engelhorns, 1922), 257-258. 48 Jiinger, “Ober den Schmerz,” in: Werke, V, Essays 1 ,183.

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Theweleit, op. cit., 35. Jiinger, Feuer und Blut, 84-85. Ibid., 20 Ibid., 75. Ibid., 81. Jiinger, “ Ober den Schmerz,” op. cit., 171. Michael E. Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Confrontation With Modernity Technology, Politics, A rt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 57. Jiinger, Feuer und Blut, 156. Jiinger, Der K am pfals inneres Elrebnis, 63. Ibid., 23.

59 JfaT/., 116. 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

Ibid. Jiinger, In Stahlfewittem, 237. Jiinger, Fewer wmf B/wf, 226-273. Jiinger, Der K am pf als inneres Erlebnis, 38, 4 5 ,4 6 , 47. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 57. Ibid., 76. Jiinger,”Feuer und Bewegung,” in: Werke, V, Essays 1 ,112. Ibid., 106. Jiinger, Der k am pf als inneres Erlebnis, 37. Ibid., 63. Ibid., 24-25. Robert L. Waite, Vanguard o f Nazism - T6e Free Corps M ovement in Postwar Germany, 1918-1923 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952). Theweleit, Male Fantasies: Women, Floods, Bodies, History, Vol. I (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 221. Theweleit, Male Fantasies, II, 8. Michel Leiris, M anhood - A Journey from Childhood into the Fierce Order o f Virility (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1963); Georges Bataille, “The Psychological Structure of Fascism,” N ew German Critique, 16 (Winter 1979), 64-89. Benjamin and Rabinbach, “Foreword,” op. cit., xiii. Theweleit, Male Fantasies, I, 206. Struve, op. cit., 40. Hillach, op. cit., 115. Jiinger, “Vorwort,” in: Friedrich-Georg Jiinger, DerAufmarch des Nationalismus (Leipzig: Der Aufmarsch Verlagsgesellschaft, 1926), 11. Die Standarte, M ay 20, 1925. Jiinger, Der K am pf als inneres Arlebnis, 77. Ibid., 53-54, Jiinger, “Die totale Mobilmachung,” in: Werke, V, Essays I, 130. Ibid., 126-129. Palmier, op. cit., 199-202. Walter Benjamin, in his article “Theories of German Fascism” (1930), wrote the theory about aesthetics of politics six years before his well-known essay on the Italian Futurism: “The W ork of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility”.

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Jiinger, “Die totale Mobilmachung,” op. cit.} 129. Jiinger, ed., Krieg und Krieger (Berlin: Junker und Diinnhaupt, 1930). Jiinger, “Ober die Gefahr,” in: Widerstand, 3 (1931), 67. Jiinger, Das abenteuerlicbe Herz (Berlin, 1929); Das Antlitz des Weltkrieges Fronterlebnis deautscher Soldaten (Berlin: Neufeld & Henius, 1931); Die verdnderte Welt (Breslau: W. G. Korn, 1933). 92 Karl H. Bohrer, Die Asthetik des Schrekrens - Die pessemistische Romantik und Ernst Jungers Friihu/erk (Miinchen: Hanser, 1978), 325-335. 93 Jiinger, “tJber der Schmerz,” op. c it.,188. 94 Ibid, 193. 95 It is fascinating to compare Bohrer* s attitude to Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), 168. 96 Bohrer, op. cit. 97 Zimmerman, op. cit., 53. 98 Stern, op. cit., 38. 99 Jiinger, Kam pfals inneres Erlebnis, 53-54. 100 Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism — Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 77. 101 Jiinger, Kampfals inneres Arlebnis, 107. 102 Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 157-158. 103 Stern, op. cit., 11. 104 Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 90. 105 Ibid., op. cit., 274. 106 Norr, op. cit., 312. 107 Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 183. 108 Jiinger, “Feuer und Bewegung,” in: Werke I; see also: Patrick Wright, Tank: The Progress o f a Monstrous War Machine (New York: Viking, 2002). 109 Jiinger, Feuer und Blut, 84. 110 Ibid., 81. 111 Herf, op. cit., 1-2. 112 Arinin Mohler, Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland, 1918-1932 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972). 113 Jiinger, “Das Ziel entscheidet,” Arminius, 8, No. 32 (1927), 5. 114 Jiinger, “Nationalismus und Moderns Leben,” Arminius, 8 (1927), 4-6. 115 N orr, op. cit., 316; Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 88 116 Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 80. 117 Ibid., 38-39. 118 Norr, op. cit., 317. 119 Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 88. 120 Ibid., 39. 121 Ibid., 147-148. 122 Ibid., 160. 123 Ibid., 313. 124 Ibid., 153. 125 Ibid., 155. 126 Ibid., 89. 127 Rosen, op. cit., 116. 128 Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 91.

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Jiinger, “Grossstadt und Land,” Deutsches Volkstum, 8 (1926), 579-580. Ibid, 581. Jiinger, uN ationalism s und Modernes Leben,” op. cit., 6. Jiinger, “Nation und Luftfarht,” Vormarsch, 1 (1927-1928), 314. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 171. Schwarz, op. c i t 84-85. Zimmerman, op. cit., 57-65. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 181-182. Karl O. Paetel, ed., Ernst Jiinger in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1962), 51. Gerhard Loose, Ernst Jiinger - Gestalt und Werk (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1957), 120. Bohrer, op. cit., 476. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 119. Ibid., 121. Ibid., 133. Ibid., 38. Jiinger, “Schliesst Euch Zusammen,” Die Standarte (1925), 224-225. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 13, 45, 201. Struve, op. cit., 385. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 74, 88. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 34. Julien Hervier, Deux Individus Contre L ’Histoire - Drieu La Rochelle, Ernst Jiinger (Paris: Klincksieck, 1978), 304. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 90. Ibid., 34. Henry S. Hughes, Oswald Spengler - A Critical Estimate (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953); Georg Lukacs, Die Zerstorung der V em unft, Band II (Neuwied am Rhein: Luchterhand, 1962), 138-152; Oswald Spengler, Preussentum und Sozialismus (Miinchen: C. H. Beck, 1919). W. H. Sokel, “‘The ‘Postmodernism’ of Ernst Jiinger in his Proto-Fascist Stage,” N ew German Critique, 59 (Spring-Summer 1993), 33-40. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 212. Ibid., 96. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 226. Ibid., 101. Georg Lukacs, The Destruction o f Reason (trans. P. Palmier), (London: Merlin, 1981), 528. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 2 vols. (Miinchen: Oskar Beck, 1923). Lukacs, op. cit., 451-471. Ibid., 529. Ludwig Klages, Vow Kosmogonischen Eros (Miinchen: G. Miiller, 1926), 79. Spengler, op. cit. Zimmerman, op. cit., 61. Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 283.

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168 Karl Jaspers, Psychologie der Weltansckauungen (Berlin: J. Springer, 1922). 169 Lukacs, 530. 170 Jiinger, “Le Travailleur - entretien avec Ernst Jiinger,” recorded by Frederic de Towarnicki, in: Michel Haar ed., Martin Heidegger (Paris: L’Herne, 1983), 147, 148. 171 Wilhelm Dilthey, Collected Work (Leipzig-Berlin: Teubner, 1914), VIII, 225. 172 Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 213-214. 173 Struve, op. cit., 410; Rosen, op. cit., 115. 174 Stern, op. cit., 55. 175 Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 314. 176 Alferd Baumler, Nietzsche, der Philosoph und Politiker (Leipzig: P. Reclam, jun, 1931). 177 Baumler, Der Mythos vom Orient und Occident (Miinchen: Beck, 1926), XC. 178 Palmier, op, cit., 196 179 Heidegger, Zur Seinsfrage (Frankfurt, 1956). This article was published in Freundschaftliche Begegnungen, Festschrift fur Ernst Jiinger zum , 60 (Frankfurt 1955). 180 Jean Pierre Faye, “Heidegger et la Revolution,” Meditations, 3 (Autumn, 1961), 151-159; Pierre Bourdieu, L ’ontologie Politique de Martin Heidegger (Paris: Editions de Minuit); Karl Lowith, “Les implications politiques de la philosophie de l’existence chez Heidegger,” Les temps modemes, II (November, 1946), 343-360; Richard Rorty, “Taking Philosophy Seriously,” The N ew Republic (April 11, 1988J; Richard Wolin, “Recherches recentes sur la relation de M artin Heidegger au National Socialism,” Les Temps Modemes, 42 (October 1987), 56-85; Victor Farias, Heidegger et le Nazism (trans. M. Benarroch & J. B. Grasset), (Paris: Verdier, 1987); Michael E. Zimmerman, “The Thorn in Heidegger’s Side - The Question of National Socialism,” op. cit. 181 Heidegger, “The Rectorate 1933-1934 - Facts and Thoughts” (trans. K. Harries), The Review o f Metaphysics, 38, No. 3 (March, 1985), 484. 182 Palmier, op. cit., 179. 183 Ibid., 195. 184 Heidegger, “The Rectorate,” op. cit., 473. 185 G. Nicholson, “The Politics of Heidegger’s Rectoral Address,” Man and World, 20(1987), 171-187. 186 Heidegger, Grundbegriffe (Summer Semester, 1941), ed. P. Jaeger, 1981,18. 187 Schneeberger, Nachlese zu Heidegger - Dokumente zu seinem Leben und Denken (Bern: S.N, 1961), 156. 188 Heidegger, Holderlins Hymnen *Germanien’ und *Der Rhein* (Winter Semester, 1934-1935), ed. S. Ziegler, Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt and Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1980). 189 Heidegger, Z ur Seinsfrage, 10. 190 Ibid., 11. 191 Ibid., 17. 192 Palmier, op. cit., 232-247. 193 Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, 114. 194 Albert Camus, L ’H om m e Revolte (Paris: Gallimard, 1951). 195 Jiinger, “Untergangoder neue Ordnung?,” Deutsches Volkstum, 15 (1929), 415. 196 Die Standarte, November 1,1925.

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Stites, op. c it.,150. Rougle, ‘“ Express’ - The Future According to Gastev,” in: Kleberg & Stites, Utopia, 258-268. K. Johansson, Alexej Gastev - Proletarian Bard o f the Machine Age (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1983). Jullien de La Mettrie, Man a Machine (La Salle: Open Court, 1961); Lewis Mumford, The M yth o f the Machine - The Pentagone o f Power (New York: Harcourt, 1970). Karel Capek, “R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots),” in: Arthur O. Lewis, ed., O f Men and Machines (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1963). Ernst Toller, Which World - Which Way? (London: S. Low and M arston, 1931), 114-116. P. Carden, “The Case for the Future - The Life and W ork of Alexei Gastev,” cited in Stites, op. cit., 155. Fitzpatrick, op. cit., 9 6 ,1 4 6 -4 7 ,1 5 3 . S. Lieberstein, “Technology, W ork, and Sociology in the U.S.S.R. - The N.O.T. Movement,” Technology and Culture, 16 (January 1975), 52-53. John Kenneth Galbraith, The N ew Industrial State (London: H. Hamilton, 1967). Bailes, op. cit., 44. Bailes, Stalin and Revolution from Above - The Formation o f the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1928-1934, Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1971. Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin, 69. Ibid., 337. Spengler, Politische Schriften (Miinchen: Beck, 1933), 99. Bailes, op. cit., 265. Ibid., 410-412; Steven T. Usdin, Engineering Communism: H ow Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded The Soviet Silicon Valley (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). Thomas M ann, “Deutschland und die Deutschen,” in: Hermann Kunzke, ed., Thomas Mann - Essays, Band 2, Politik (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1977), 294. Gerd Hortleder, Das Gesellschaftsbild des Ingenieurs - Zum politischen verhalten du technischen Intelligenz in Deutschland (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), 51-58. Maier, “Between Taylorism and Technocracy,” op. cit., Karl H. Ludwig, Technik und Inginieure im Dritten Reich (Diisseldorf: Droste, 1974), 25-27. Fritz .K. Ringer, The Decline o f the German Mandarins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969). Theodore W. Adorno, Jargon der Eigentlichkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1964). Herf, op. cit., 152-188. Ernst Kapp. Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik (Braunschweig, 1877). Ernst Mayer, Technik und Kultur (Berlin, 1906), 23-24. Ibid., 50-51. Ulrich Wendt, Die Technik als Kulturmacht (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1906). Max Eyth, Lebendige Krdfte (Berlin: J. Springer, 1904), 15. J. Schenk, Die Begriffe "Wirtschaft und Technik” und ihre Bendeutungfur die Ingenierausbildung (Breslau, 1912), 36.

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83 Gottfried Feder, Das Manifest zur Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft des Geldes (Munchen: F. Eher, 1919). 84 Feder, K am pf gegen Hochfinanz. 85 Technik und Kultur, 24 (1933), 93-100. 86 Franz Neumann, Behemoth - The Structure and Practice o f National Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944), 229. 87 Peter Schwerber, Nationalsozialismus und Technik - Die Geistigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung (Munchen: F. Eher, 1930), 18. 88 Ibid., 6. 89 Adolf Hitler, Mein K am pf (Boston: Houghton, 1939), 318. 90 Eberhard Jacket, Hitler’s World View - A Blueprint for Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 90. 91 Joseph Goebbels, Techik (March 1939), 105-106, cited by Herf, op. cit., 196. 92 Goebbels, Reden, Heidelberg Stadthalle, July 7,1943. 93 Ludwig, op. cit.y 123. 94 Ibid, 111. 95 Fritz Todt, “Tradition und Reaction,” Zeitschrift des Vereines des deutschen Ingenieure, 78 (1934), 1047. 96 Deutsche Technik, 5 (1937), 204. 97 Albert Speer, Technik und Macht (Berlin: Vom Herausgeber fur die Taschenbuchausg, 1981); Thomas Zeller, Driving Germany: The Landscape o f the German Autobahn, 1930-1970 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007). 98 Ludwig, op. c i t 172. 99 Deutsche Technik (August-September 1941), 2. 100 Anson G. Rabinbach, “The Aesthetics of Production in the Third Reich,” Journal o f Contemporary History, 11 (1976), 43. 101 Anatol von Hubbenet, ed., Das Taschenbuck Shonheit der Arbeit (Berlin: Verlag der Deutschen Arbeitsfront, 1938), 17; for other implications of Nazi technol­ ogy, see: Joseph Farrel, The SS Brotherhood o f the Bell: N A S A ’s Nazis, JFK and Majic-12 (Kempton, Illinois: Adventures Unlimited Press, 2006); Dennis Piskiewicz, The N azi Rocketeers: Dreams o f Space amd Crimes o f War (Westport: Praeger, 1995). 102 Seigfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1947); Andreas Huyssen, “The Vamp and the Machine - Technology and Sexuality in Fritz Lang’s M etropolis,” New German Critique, 24-25 (1981-1982), 221. 103 Galbraith, op. cit., 19. 104 Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology - Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977), 13. 105 Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), 134. 106 Marry W. Shelley, “Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus,” in: Peter Fairclough, ed., Three Gothic Novels (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968). 107 Winner, op. cit., 306-316. 108 Benjamin, op. cit., 60.; see also: Loren R. Graham, The Ghost o f the Executed Engineer: Technology and The Fall o f the Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 109 Marshall McLuhan, “Myth and Mass M edia,” Daedalus (Myth and Mythmaking), 88, No. 2 (Spring 1959), 339-348.

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110 Sorel, Reflexions, 202; see also: Jeffrey T. Schnapp, Building Fascism, Communism, Liberal Democracy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).

Bibliography Friedrich Nietzsche Books of Nietzsche All Nietzsche’s quotations are given in the translations of Walter Kaufmann in the following books: Beyond Good and Evil (JGB) New York: 1966. O n the Genealogy o f Morals (GM) Ecce hom o (EH), New York: 1969. The Gay Science (FW) New York: 1974. The Birth o f Tragedy (GT) New York: 1967. The Will to Power (WM) New York: 1968. Nietzsche’s quotations from: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Za), Twilight o f the Idols (GD), The Antichrist (AC) are taken from: Kaufmann, W., ed., The Portable Nietzsche, New York: 1949. The Use and Abuse o f History (HL), (trans. Adrian Collins), New York: 1949.

Articles of Nietzsche “On Truth and Falsity in an Extra-Moral Sense” (OTF), Early Greek Philosophy and Other Essays (trans. M. A. Miigge), The Complete Works o f Nietzsche, ed., O. Levi, Vol. II, New York: 1964. See also: Vol. VII, The Wanderer and His Shadow (WS), {Human, All Too Human II), (trans. P. V. Cohen.), Daybreak (M), (trans. R. J. Hollingdale), Cambridge: 1982. The numbers in parantheses refer to aphorisms and to sections in the above-mentioned books.

Books on Nietzsche Abrams, M. H., Natural Supematuralism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, New York: 1971 Alderman, H., Nietzsche’s G ift, Athens: 1977. Allison, D. B., ed., The N ew Nietzsche, Cambridge, MA: 1977. Assoun, L P., Freud et Nietzsche, Paris: 1980. Bambach, C., Heidegger’s Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism and the Greeks, Ithaca, 2003. Baroni, C., Nietzsche educateur - de Vhomme au surhomme, Paris: 1961. Bergman, P., Nietzsche - The Last Antipolitical German, Indiana: 1987. Berkowitz, P., Nietzsche, The Ethics o f an Immortalist, Cambridge, MA: 1995.

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Bianquis, G., Nietzsche en France, Paris: 1929. Beginster, B., The Affirmation o f Life; Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism, Cambridge, MA: 2006. Burnham, D., Reading Nietzsche: An Analysis o f Beyond Good and Evil, Stocksfield: 2007. Conway, D., Nietzsche’s “O n the genealogy o f morals”: a reader’s guide, Continuum: 2007. Cooper, D. E., Authenticity and Learning: Nietzsche’s Educational Philosophy, London: 1983 Copleston, F., Friedrich Nietzsche - Philosopher o f Culture, New York: 1975. Dannhauser, W. J., Nietzsche’s View o f Socrates, Cornell: 1974. Danto, A., Nietzsche as Philosopher, New York: Macmillan, 1965. de Man, P., Allegories o f Reading - Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, New Haven: 1979. Derrida, J., £perons-Les Styles de Nietzsche, Paris: 1978. ------, Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles (trans. Barbara Harlow), Chicago: 1979. Detwiler, B., Nietzsche and the Politics o f Aristocratic Radicalism, Chicago: 1990. Dionne, J. R., Pascal et Nietzsche, New York: 1965. Deleuze, G., Nietzsche and Philosophy (trans. Hugh Tomlinson), New York: Columbia 1983. Eden, R., Political Leadership and Nihilism - A Study o f Weber and Nietzsche, Tampa: 1983. Fischer, H., Nietzsche Apostata, Leipzig: 1931. Gillespie, A. & B. Strong, eds., Nietzsche’s N ew Seas - Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics, Chicago: 1988. Gillespie, M. A., Nihilism before Nietzsche, Chicago: 1995. Golomb, J., Nietzsche’s Psychology o f Power, Iowa: 1989. Granier, J., Le Probleme de la verite dans la philosophie de Nietzsche, Paris: 1966. H atab, L., Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence, Washington: 1978. Heidegger, M ., Nietzsche, 2 vols., Pfullingen: 1961. Heller, E., The Importance o f Nietzsche - Ten Essays, Chicago: 1988. Hill, R. K., Nietzsche: A Guide for the Perplexed, London, New York: 2007. Hollinrake, R., Nietzsche, Wagner, and the Philosophy o f Pessimism, London: 1982. Houlgate, S., Hegel, Nietzsche and the Criticism o f Metaphysics, Cambridge: 1986. Jaspers, K., Nietzsche and Christianity (trans. E. H. Ashton), Chicago: 1961. Kaufmann, W., Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, Princeton: 1950. Kelly, E. ed., N ew Essays on Socrates, Lanham: 1984. Kofman, S., Nietzsche et la metaphore, Paris: 1972. Krell, D. F. &c D. Wood, eds., Exceedingly Nietzsche - Aspects o f Contemporary Nietzsche Interpretation, London: 1988. Kuhn, E., Friedrich Nietzsches Philosophie des europaischen Nihilismus, Berlin: 1922Love, F. R., Young Nietzsche and the Wagnerian Experience, Chapel Hill: 1963. Magnus, B., Nietzsche Existential Imperative, Indiana: 1978. Mann, T., Nietzsche’s Philosophy in the Light o f Contemporary Events, Washington D.C.: 1947. Mattei, J. F., Nietzsche et le temps des nihilismes, Paris: 2005. Megill, A., Prophets o f Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Deridda, Berkeley: 1987. Montuori, M., Socrates, Physiology o f a M yth, Amsterdam: 1981.

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Nehamas, A., Nietzsche - Life as Literature, Cambridge, MA: 1985. O ’Flaherty, V. J., T. F. Sellner 8c R. M. Helm, Studies in Nietzsche and the JudaeoChristian Tradition, London: 1985. O ’Flaherty, V. J., T. F. Sellner 8c R. M. Helm, Studies in Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition, N orth Carolina: 1979. Oldemeyer, E., Leben und Technik : lebensphilosophische Positionen von Nietzsche zu Plessner, Munchen: 2007. Prosman, A. A. A., Geloven na Nietzsche: Nietzsches nihilisme in de spiegel van de theologie, Zoetermeer: 2007. Ridley, A., Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Nietzsche on A rt, New York: 2007. Schacht, R., Nietzsche, London: 1983. Schmidt, H. J., Nietzsche und Sokrates: Philologische Untersuchungen Z u Nietzsche’s Sokratesbildy Meisenheim: 1969. Schutte, O.; Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche W ithout Masks, Chicago: 1984. Silk, M. S. 8c Stem, J. P., Nietzsche on Tragedy, Cambridge: 1981 Simmel, G., Schopenhauer und Nietzsche - Em Vortragszyklus, Leipzig: 1907. Solomon, R. C., Nietzsche: A Collection o f Critical Essays, Indiana: 1980. Stambaugh, J., The Problem o f Time in Nietzsche (trans J. F. Humphrey), London:

1987. Strong, T. B., Friedrich Nietzsche and The Politics o f Transfiguration, Berkeley: 1975. Tejera, V., Nietzsche and Greek Thought, Dordrecht: 1987. Von Vacano, D., The Art o f Power: Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and the Making o f Aesthetic Political Theory, Lanham: 2007. W arren, M., Nietzsche and Political Thought, Cambridge: 1988. Wilcox, J. T., Truth and Value in Nietzsche - A Study o f His Metaethics and Epistemology, Ann Arbor: 1974. William, W. D., Nietzsche and the French, Oxford: 1952. Wistrich, R., Laboratory for World Destruction: Germans and Jews in Central Europe, Jerusalem: 2007. Yovel, Y., ed., Nietzsche as Affirmative Thinker, Dordrecht: 1986.

Georges Sorel Books of Sorel Contribution a Vetude profane de la Bible, Paris: 1889. Le Proces de Socrate, Paris: 1889. La Ruine du monde antique, Paris: 1901. Essai sur Veglise et Vetat, Paris: 1902. Introduction a L'economie m odem e, Paris: 1902. Saggi di critica del marxismo, Palermo: 1902. Le Systeme historique de Renan, Paris: 1905. Insegnamenti sociale della economia contemporanea, Palermo: 1906. La Decomposition du marxisme, Paris: 1908. Les Illusions du progres, Paris: 1908. Reflexions sur la violence, Paris: 1908. La Revolution Dreyfusienne, Paris: 1909. De Vutilite du pragmatisme, Paris: 1921.

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Articles of Sorel “Essai sur la philosophie de Proudhon,” Revue philosophique, XXVI, 3 (juin 1892), 622-638; XXXIV (juillet 1892), 41-68. “A divers correspondants (1895-1922),” in M. Charzat, ed., Georges Sorel, 325-350. “Les theories de M. Durkheim,” Le Devenir social, I, no. 1, 2 (avril, mai 1895), 1-26, 148-180. “Le Bon-Psychologiedesfoules,” Le Devenir social, 1,6 (November 1895), 765-770. “£tude sur Vico,” Le Devenir social, II, 9 (octobre 1896), 785-817; 10 (novembre 1896), 906-941; 11 (decembre 1896), 1013-1046. “L’avenir socialiste des syndicats,” L'Humanite-nouvelle, II, 9 (mars 1898), 294-307 et 10 (avril-mai 1898), 432-445. “L’fithique du socialisme,” Revue de metaphysique et morale, VII (mai 1899), 280-301. “Le Bon - La Psychologie du socialisme,” Retrue international de sociologie, VII, 2 (fevrier 1899), 155. “Lc Socialismc et la Revolution fran^aise,” Le Pays de France, I, 4 (avril 1889), 220-228. “Essai sur la philosophie de Proudhon,” Revue Philosophique, XXXIII (June 1892), 622-638; XXXIV (July 1892), 41-68. “L’ancienne et la nouvelle metaphysique,” L ’fcre nouvelle (mars, avril, mai, juin 1894), 51-87,180-205, 329-351, 461-482. “Les Theories penales de M. M. Durkheim et Tarde,” Archivio di Psichiatria e Scienze Penali, 16 (1895), 212-288; “Preface,” in: Antonio Labriola, Essais sur la conception materialiste de Phistoire, Paris: 1897,1-20. “La crisi del socialismo scientifico,” Critica sociale, VIII, 9 (mai 1, 1898), 134-138. “II vangelo, la chiesa e il socialismo,” Revista critica del Socialismo, 1 (April-May 1899), 295-304. “Socialismo e democrazia: Conclusione sulla faccenda Dreyfus,” Rivista critica del socialismo, 1 (November-December 1899), 874, 965-969. “ Les Dissensions de la social-democratie allemande a propos des ecrits de M. Bernstein,” Revue Politique et Parlementaire (July 1900). “Preface,” in: F. Pelloutier, Histoire des Bourses du travail, Paris: 1902, 27-67. “Preface,” in: G. Castex, La Douleur physique, Paris: 1905, iii. “Le syndicalisme revolutionnaire,” Le Mouvement socialiste, XVII (1905), 265-280; “Conclusions aux ‘Enseignements sociaux de Peconomie moderne’,” i b i d XVI (1905), 289-299. “Jean Jacques Rousseau,” Le Mouvement socialiste (Juin 1907), 507-532. “Socialistes antiparlementaires,” V A ction fran$aise (August 22,1909), 1-2. “Le mystere de la Charite de Jeanne d’Arc de Charles Peguy,” V A ction frangaise (April 14, 1910); “Le reveil de l’ame fran^aise,” L ’Action frangaise (April 14, 1910), 1-2; Sorel to Croce, Sept. 22, 1914, 51; Sorel to Berth, Sept. 11, 1914, in: Andreu, Notre maitre, appendix X, 333-335; Sorel to Missiroli, Oct. 24, Nov. 1 0 ,1 9 1 4 ,1 3 0 ,1 3 6 ; Sorel to Croce, Sept. 22, 1914, 51. “Lenine d’apres Gorki,” Revue communiste, 2 (January 1921), 401-413. “De l’£glise et de l’fitat,” Cahiers de la quinzaine, 3, no. 3 (1909), 4, 29, 55. “Urbain Gohier,” Vlndependance, II, 21 (January 1, 1910), 305-320.

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“Preface,” in: V, Griffuelhes and L. Niel, Les Objectifs de nos luttes de classe, Paris: 1909, 5-9. “ Le reveil de 1’ame fran^aise,” U Action frangaise (April 14,1910), 1-2.; “Socialistes antiparlementaires,” V A ction franqaise (August 22, 1909), 1-2. Urbain CJohier,” Llndependance, II, 21 (January 1,1910), 305-320. “Trois problemes,” VIndependence, 2 (December 1 and 15, 1911), 221-240, 261-279. “ L’abandon de la revanche,” L'Independance, I, 3 (April 1,1911), 71-92; “Quelques pretentions juives,” L'Independance, III, 29 (May 1,1911), 217-236; 30 (May 15, 1911), 277-295; 31 Ju n e 1,1911), 317-336. “Preface,” in: F. Pelloutier, L ’Histoire des bourses du travail, Paris: 1912, 27-67. “Preface pour Colajnni,” in: Materiaux d*une theorie du proletariat, Paris: 1919,175-200; “La Science et la morale,” in: Questions de morale, Paris: 1900, 1-25. “La Chine,” La Revue communiste, I (1920), 434. “Le travail dans la Grece ancienne,” La Revue communiste, I (1920), 221. “Bertrand Russell in Russia,” II resto del Carlino (July 8, 1921). “Lettere di Georges Sorel a B. Croce,” La Critica, XXVI (1928), 108; “Lettres a M ario Missiroli,” in: Da Proudhon a Lenin e UEuropa sotto la tormenta Rome: 1974, 449. “Lettere di Georges Sorel a B. Croce,” La Critica, XXVI (1928); “Lettres a “Ultime meditazioni,” Nuova antologia, LXIII, 1361 (December 1,1928), 289-307; “Lettere di Giorgio Sorel a Uberto Lagardelle,” in: Educazione fascista, XI (1933), 238-243; “Le patriotisme actuel en France,” in: U Am itie Charles Peguy, no. 6 (1949), 10-13. “Aper^u sur les utopies, les soviets et le droit nouveau,” introduction par N. Mclnnes, in: Les Cahiers de Vlnstitut de science economique appliquee, serie S, V, 121 (January 1962), 81-112. G. B. Furiozzi, “Giorgio Sorel e la ‘Rivista critica del socialismo’,” II Pensiero politico, no. 1 (1971), 89-98. “Lettres k M ario Missiroli,” in: Da Proudhon a Lenin e UEuropa sotta la tormenta, Rome: 1974. “Is There a Utopia in M arxism?” in: J. L. Stanley, From Georges Sorel - Essays in Socialism and Philosophy, New York: 1976,136. “The Ethics of Socialism,” in: J. L. Stanley, From Georges Sorel: Essays in Socialism and Philosophy, New York: 1976, 110. “Legrain - Degenerescence sociale et alcoolisme,” Le Devenir social, I, 6 “Preface,” in: S. Merlino, Formes et essence du socialisme, Paris: 1898. Sorel, “Lenine d’apres Gorki,” La Revue communiste, II, 11 (January 1922).

Books on Sorel Andreatta, D., Tra mito e scienza: la revisione del marxismo nel pensiero politico di Georges Sorel e di Enrico Leone, Padova: 1999. Andreu, P., Notre maitref M. Sorel, Paris: Grasset, 1953. [Idem, Georges Sorel - Entre le noir et le rouge, Paris: 1982]. Angel, P., Essais sur Georges Sorel, Paris: 1937. Antliff, M., Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilization o f Myth, Art, and Culture in Frances 1909-1939, Durham: 2007. Ascoli, M., Georges Sorel, Paris: 1921.

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Barbieri, P., La filosofia della violenza in Georges Sorel, Milano: 1986. Charzat, M ., Georges Sorel et la Revolution au XX e siecle, Paris: 1977. ------, ed., Georges Sorel, Paris: 1986. Curtis, M., Three against the Third Republic: Sorel, Barres and Maurras, Princeton: 1959. Desmeaux, F., V idee de progres dans Voeuvre de Georges Sorel: signification et controversesy Lille: 2000. Furiozzi, G. B., Sorel e l’Itaiia9 Messina: 1975. Freund, M ., Georges Sorel; der revolutionare Konservatismus, Frankfurt an Mein: 1972. Gervasoni, M., Georges Sorel: una biografia intellettuale: socialismo e liberalismo nella Francia della Belle epoque, Milano: 1997. Giacalone-Monaco, T., Pareto e Sorel, 2 vols., Padua: 1960. Gianinazzi, W., Naissance du mythe modeme: Georges Sorel et la crise de la pensee savante (1889-1914)y Paris: 2006. Godard, T. B. 8c Fisch, M. H ., The N ew Sceince o f Giambattista Vico, Cornell: 1986. Goriely, G., Le Pluralisme dramatique de Georges Sorel, Paris: 1962. Horowitz, I. L., Radicalism and the Revolt against Reason, New York: 1963. Humphrey, R., Georges Sorel: Prophet without Honour, Cambridge: 1951. Jennings, J. R., Georges Sorel: The Character and Development o f His Thought, London: 1985. Juliard, J., 8c Sand S., eds., Georges Sorel en son temps, Paris: 1985. Lacasta Zabalza, J. I., Georges Sorel en su tiempo, 1847-1922: el conductor de herejtas, Madrid: 1994. Lasserre, P., Georges Sorel, theoricien de Vimperialisme, Paris: 1928. Levey, J., The Sorelian Syndicalists: Edouard Berth, Georges Valois, and Hubert Lagardelle, New York: 1967. Meisel, J. H., The Genesis o f Georges Sorel, Ann Arbor, Michigan: 1951 Mohler, A., Georges Sorel: Erzvater der konservativen Revolution; eine Einfuhrung; m it etnem Nachwort von Karlheinz Weissmann. Bad Vilbel: 2000. Petrucci, Valentino., Socialismo aristocratico: saggio su Georges Sorel, Napoli: 1984. Pirou, G., Georges Sorel, Paris: 1927. Redding A. F., Raids O n Human Consciousness: Writing, Anarchism, and Violence, Columbia: 1998. Riviale, p., Mythe et violence: autour de Georges Sorel: avec des textes de L'humanite nouvelle, 1898-1903, Paris: 2003. Rossignol, F., Pour connaitre la pensee de Georges Sorel, Paris: 1948. Roth, J. J., The Cult o f Violence: Sorel and the Sorelians, Berkeley: 1980. Sand, S., L ’lllusion du Politique, Sorel et le debat intellectuel 1900, Paris: 1985. Sartre, V., Georges Sorel, elites syndicalistes et revolution proletarienne, Paris: 1937. Scalzo, D. S., Combattere a vita il mito della produzione in Georges Sorel, Urbino: 2003. Stanley, J. L., From Georges Sorel - Essays in Socialism and Philosophy, New York: 1976. ------, The Sociology o f Virtue: The Political and Social Theories o f Georges Sorel, Berkeley: 1981. ------, ed., From Georges Sorel, Vol. 2, Hermeneutics and The Sciences; (trans. John 8c Charlotte Stanley), New Brunswick: 1990. Steil, A., Die imaginare Revolte: Untersuchungem zur faschistischen Ideologie und ihrer theoretschen vor, Marburg: 1984.

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Stokkom, B. V., Georges Sorel: de ontnuchtering van de Verlichting, Zeist: 1990. Variot, J., Propos de Georges Sorel, Paris: 1935. Vernon, R., Commitment and Change: Georges Sorel and the Idea o f Revolution, Toronto: 1978* Versluis, A., The N ew Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and The Intellectual Origins o f M odem Totalitarianism, Oxford: 2006. Wanner, J., Georges Sorel et la decadence, Lausanne: 1943. Yves, G., Georges Sorel, 1847-1922: serviteur desinteresse du proletariat, Paris: 2001.

Italian Futurism Futurism Exhibition Catalogues Paris. Bernheim-Jeune & Cie, Les peintres futuristes italiens (February 1912). London. Sackville Gallery, Exhibition o f works o f the Italian futurist Painters (March 1912). Berlin. Der Sturm, Zweite Ausstellung - Die Futuristen, U. Boccioni, C. D. Carrel, L. Russolo, G. Severini (April-May 1912). Brussels. Galerie George Giroux, Les peintres futuristes italiens (May - June 1912). (Travelling Exhibition). Geselschaft zur Forderung modemer Kunst m.b.H. Kunstlerische Leitung - Zeitschrift Der Sturm, Die Futuristen, U. Boccioni, C. D. Carrel, L. Russolo, G. Severini (1912-1913). London. Marlborough Gallery, The Futurist Painter Severini Exhibits His Latest Works (April 1913). Rotterdam. Rotterdamsche Kunstkring, Les peintres et les sculpteurs futuristes italiens (May-June 1913). Berlin. Der Sturm, Sechzehnte Ausstellung - Gemalde and Zeichnungen des Futuristen Gino Severini (June-August 1913). Berlin. Der Sturm, Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon (September-November 1913). London. The Dore Galleries, Post-Impressionist and Futurist Exhibition (October 1913-January 1914). Florence. Galleria Gonnelli, Esposizione di pittura futurista di *Lacerba” (November 1913-January 1914). Florence. Galleria Gonnelli, Esposizione di scultura futurista del pittore e scultore futurista U. Boccioni (March-April 1914). Rome. Galleria Futurista. Direttore G. Sprovieri, Esposizione di scultura futurista del pittore e sculture futurista - U. Boccioni (December 1913). Rome. Galleria Futurista. Direttore G. Sprovieri, Esposizione di pittura futurista Boccioni, Carra’, Russolo, Balia, Severini, Soffici (February-March 1914). London. The Dore Galleries, Exhibition o f the Works o f the Italian Futurist Painters (April-May 1914). Naples. Galleria Futurista. Direttore G. Sprovieri, Prima esposizione di pittura futur­ ista - Boccioni, Carrel, Russolo, Balia, Severini (May-June 1914). San Francisco, Panama-Pacific International Exposition (Summer 1915). Rome. Sala d’Arte A. Angelelli, Esposizione fu Balia e Balia futurista (December 1915). Milan. Galleria Centrale d ’Arte. Palazzo Cova, Boccioni - pittore e scultore futurista U. Boccioni (December 1961-January 1917). Milan. Galleria Chini, Mostra personate del pittore futurista Carlo Carrel (December 1917-January 1918). Venezia. Palazzo Grassi, Futurismo e Futurismi (1986).

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Books of the Futurists Apollonio, U., Futurist Manifestos, London: 1973. Boccioni, U., Opera Completa, Foligno: 1927. ------Pittura scultura futuriste (dinamismo plastico), Milano: 1914. Bragaglia, A. G., Fotodinamismo futurista, Rome: 1913. Carra, C. D., “Da Cezanne A Noi Futuristi,” Lacerba, 15, V (1915). ------, Guerrapittura, Milano: 1915. ------, Pittura metafisica, Florence: 1919. ------yArdengo, Soffici, Rome: 1922. ------, La mia vita, Rome: 1943. ------, Ii rinnovamento delie arti in Italia, Milano: 1945. ------, Aroldo Bonzagni - N ote di Aldo Carpi, Bologna: 1961. Caruso, L., ed., Manifesti, proclami, interventi e documents teorici del futurismo 1904-1944, Firenze: 1980. Controspazio. Mensile di architettura e urbanistica diretto da Paolo Portoghesi, Anno III, no. 4-5 (april - may 1971). Flint, R.W., ed., Marinetti - Selected Writings, New York: 1972. Folejewski, Z., Futurism and Its Place in the Development o f M odem Poetry - A Comparative Study and Anthology, Ottawa: 1980. Hanson, A. C., The Futurist Imagination, New Haven: 1983. Kirby, M., Futurist Performance, New York: 1971. Lista,G., ed.,Futurisme-Manifestes9Proclamation$> Lausanne: 1973. ------, ed., Marinetti et le Futurisme - £tudes, documents,iconographie,Lausanne: 1977. Marchi. V., Architettura futurista, Foligno: 1924. ------, La stirpe, Rome: 1928. Marinetti, F.T., La conquete des etoiles, Paris: 1902. ------, Destruction, Paris: 1904. ------, La momie sanglante, Milano: 1904. ------, D'Annunzio intimey Milano: 1904. ------, Le roi Bombance, Paris: 1905. ------, La ville chamelle, Paris: 1908. ------, Les dieux s fen vont, d'Annunzio reste, Paris: 1908. ------, Mafarka le futuriste, Paris: 1910. ------, Poupees electriques, Paris: 1909. ------, Le futurisme, Paris: 1911. ------, Le monoplan du pape, Paris: 1912. ------, La bataille de Tripoli, Milano: 1912. ------, “Zang Tumb Tuuum Adianopoli Ottobre 1912,” Parole inlibertd, Milano: 1914. ------, Les mots en liberte futuristes, Milano: 1919. ------, ed., / poefi futuristi con una proclama di F.T. Marinetti e uno studio sul verso Libero di Paolo Buzzi, Milano: 1912. ------, ed., I manifesti del futurismo, Florence: 1914. ------, // tamburo di fuoco, Milano: 1922. ------, Appendix to A. Beltramelli, L ’Uomo N uovo, Milano: 1923. ------, ed., Futurismo e fascismo, Foligno: 1924.

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201

------ , ed., N ot futurists. Teorie essenziali e cbiarificazioni, Milano: 1917. ------ , ed., Marinetti e il futurismo, Rome: 1929. ------ , ed., Gunter Berghaus, Critical Writings (trans. Doug Thompson), New York: 2006. Papini, G., II mio futurismo, Florence: 1914. ------ , L'esperienza futurista, Florence: 1919. ------ , Ardengo Soffici, Milano: 1933. ------ , Passato Remoto> Florence: 1948. Pratella, F.B., Musica futurista per orchestra - Riduzione per pianoforte, Bologna: 1912. Settimelli, E., Marinetti - Vuomo e Vartista, Milano: 1921. Severini, G., Du cubisme au classicisme, Paris: 1921. ------ , Ragionamenti sulle arti figurative, Milano: 1936. ------ , Tutta la vita di un pittore, Milano: 1946. Soffici, A., II caso Medardo Rosso, Firenze: 1909. Soffici, A., Cubismo e oltre, Firenze: 1913. ------ yGiomale di bordo, Firenze: 1915.

Books on the Italian Futurists Achilli, T., Teatro e futurismo, Bari: 2005. Andreoli-deVillers, J. P., Futurism and the Arts, Toronto: 1975. Apollinaire, G., Anecdotiques, Paris: 1926. Bellonzoni, F., II divisionismo nella pittura italiana, Milano: 1967. Balia, G., Balia futurista: uno spertmentalista del x x secolo, Roma: 2006. Boccioni, U., Boccioni: pittore, scultore, futurista, Millano: 2006. Bohn, W., The other futurism : futurist activity in Venice, Padua and Verona, Toronto: 2004. ------, Italian Futurist Poetry, Toronto: 2005. Berghaus, G., Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909-1944, Oxford: 1996. Bergman, P., Modemolatria et " Simultaneita”, Uppsala: 1962. Bru, S., Marthens G., The Invention o f politics in the European avant-garde (1906-1940), New York: 2006. Cammarota, M ., Futurismo: bibliografia di 500 scrittori italiani, Millano: 2006. Clough, R. T., Futurism - The Story o f A M odem Art Movement: A N ew Appraisal, Connecticut: 1961. Coquiot, G., Cubistes, futuristes, passeistes, Paris: 1914. David, E.j Futurismo, dadaismo e avanguardia romena: contaminazioni fra culture europee (1909-1930)yTorino: 2006. De Maria, L., ed., Marinetti - Teoria E Invenzione Futurista, Milano: 1968. De Felice R., ed., Futurismo - cultura e politica, Torino: 1988. Delaunay, R., Du cubisme a Vart abstrait, Paris: 1957. dell’Arco, M. F., Balia - Ricostruzione Futurista delVUniverso, Rome: 1968. Depero, F., Uestetica della macchina : da Balia al futurismo torinese, Milano: 2004. Drudi, G. & T. Fiori, eds., Archivi del Futurismo, Rome: I, 1958; II, 1962. Fagiolo, M. & D. Fonti, Gino Severini, Milano: 1982. Flora, F., Dal Romanticismo al Futurismo, Milano: 1925.

202

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gentille, E., The Sacralization o f Politics in Fascist Italy, Cambridge: 1996. ------, The Struggle for Modernity: Nationalism, Futurism and Fascism, Westport: 2002 . Haftman, W., Painting in the Twentieth Century, New York: 1934. Hayden, D., Building suburbia: green fields and urban growth, 1820-2000, New York: 2004. Hulten, K. G. P., The Machine, New York: 1968. Lista, G., Balia, Modena: 1982. Maffina, G. F., Luigi Russolo e Varte dei sumori, Torino: 1978. ------, L fopera grafica di Luigi Russolo, Varese: 1977. Marcade, J. C., ed., Presence de F.T. Marinetti - Actes du Colloque International tenu a U U NESC O , Lausanne: 1982. M artin, M. M ., Futurist A rt and Theory 1909-1915, New York: 1978. Menna, F., Prampolini, Rome: 1967. Pagani, S., La pittura lombarda delia scapigliatiura, Milano: 1955. Perloff, M., The Futurist Movement: Avant-Garde, Avant Guerr, and the language o f Rupture, Chicago: 2003. Pierre, J., Futurism and Dadaism, London: 1969. Ragusa, O., Mallarme in Italy - Literary Influence and Critical Response, New York: 1957. Russolo, L.,Vita e opere di un futurista, Milano: 2006. Rye, JMFuturism, London: 1972. Salasno, R., Trittico Futurista : Buzzi, Marinetti, Settimelli, Roma: 2006. Samuel, H. B., Modernities, London: 1914. Scrivo, L., Sintesi del Futurismo, Rome: 1968. Somigli, L.} Legitimizig the Artist: Manifesto 'Writing and European Modernism, 1885-1915, Toronto: 2003. Taylor, J. C., Futurism - Politics, Painting and Performance, New York: 1979. Tisdall, C. 8c A., Bozzolla, Futurism, London: 1977. Tafuri, M., Theories and History o f Architecture, New York: 1976. Vaccari, W., Vita e tumulti di F.T. Marinetti, Milano: 1959. Valerio, W. R., BoccionVs Fist: Italian Futurism and the Construction o f Fascist Modernism (Ph.D dissertaion), Yale: 1996. Valsecchi, M ., U. Boccioni, Venice: 1950.

Articles on the Italian Futurists Adamson,W. L., “Modernism and Fascism: The Politics of Culture in Italy, 1903-1922,” The American Historical Review 95, 2 (April 1990), 359-390. ------, “The Impact of WWI on Italian Political Culture,” Aviel Roshhwald, Richard Stites, ed., European Culture in the Great War, The Arts, Entertainment and Propaganda, 1914-1918, Cambridge: 1999, 308-329. Allard R., “Au salon d’automme de Paris,” U A rt Libre, II, no. 12 (Novembre 1910), 441-443. Affron, A. 6c Antliff, M ., “Art and Fascist ideology in France and Italy: an Introduction,” in: M. Affron 8c M. Antliff, eds., Fascist Visions, A rt and Ideology in France and Italy, New Jersey: 1997, 3-25. Bergman, P., “L’esthetique de la vitesse, origines et premiere manifestation,” in: Marcade J. C., ed., Presence de F. T. Marinetti - Actes du Colloque International tenu d U U NESC O , 13-25.

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203

Blumenkranz, N., “Une Poetique de L’heroisme, l’esthetique de M arinetti,” in: Presence de Marinetti, 49-60. Bullock, A., “The Double Image,” in: M. Bradbury 8c J. McFarlane, eds., Modernism 1890-1930, England: 1976, 58-70. Clavel G., “Depero’s Plastic Theatre,” in: H. Rischbieter, ed., Art and the Stage in the Twentieth Century, New York: 1968. Craig, G., “The Artists of the Theatre of the Future,” The Mask (May-June 1908). Crispolti, E., “Sant’Elia Antonio,” in: P. Hulten, ed., Futurismo e Futurismi, Venezia 1986, 571-572. ------ ,”Notes sur les materiaux concernant les rapports entre futurisme et fascisme,” in: Lista G., ed., Marinetti et le Futurisme - Etudes, documents, iconographie, Lausanne: 1977,138-158. De Felice, R., “Ideologia,” in: Hulten, ed., Futurismo e Futurismi, 488-492. D uranty, E., “Notes sur Part,” Realisme, no. 1 (1856). Flint, R. W., “Introduction,” in: M arinetti-Selected Writings, New York: 1971,3-36. Gaudibert, P., “A propos de futurisme et fascisme ou plus generalement d ’avant-garde et politique,” in: Lista, ed., Marinetti el la Futurisme, 113-115. Gentile, E., “La politica di M arinetti,” Storia Contemporanea, VII, no. 3 (September 1974). ------ , “II Futurismo e la politics,” in: R. De Felice, ed., Futurismo, Cultura e Politica fascista, Roma: 1975. ------, “The Conquest of Modernity: From Modernist Nationalism to Fascism,” Modernism/Modernity 1,3 (1994), 55-87. G ordon, M., “The Italian Futurists,” Theatre Magazine (September 1925). Toll, J., F. T. “Marinetti - Futurism and Fascism,” in: Three Intellectuals in Politics, New York: 1961. Kirby, E. T., “Futurism and the Theatre of the Future,” in: E. T. Kirby, ed., Total Theatre, New York: 1969, XVI-XXI. Landis, L., “Futurists in W ar,” in: A. C. Hanson, The Futurist Imagination, New Haven: 1983. Lyons, C.R., “Gordon Craig’s Concept of the Actor,” Educational Theatre Journal (October 1964), 258-269. M alvano L., “ Futurisme et fascisme - dynamique de rapports inegaux,” in: G. Lista, ed., Marinetti et le Futurisme, Laussane: 1977,162-171. Mosse, G. L., “The Political Culture of Italian Futurism - A General Perspective,” Journal o f Contemporary History, XXV (1990), 253-268. Nazzaro, G. B., “L’ideologie marinettienne et le fascisme,” in: Lista, ed., Marinetti et le Futurisme, 122-128. Portoghesi, P., “ II linguaggio di Sant’Elia,” Controspazio. Mensile di architettura e urbanistica diretto da Paolo Portoghesi, Anno III, no. 4 -5 (april-may 1971), 27-45. Sharkey, S. R. & Dombroski, R.S., “Revolution, Myth and Mythical Politics: The Futurist Solution,” Journal o f European Studies, 6, 4 (1976), 232-245.

Ernst Jiinger Books of Ernst Jiinger In Stahlgewittem, Berlin: 1920. Der K am pf als inneres Erlebnis, Berlin: 1922. Das Waldchen 125, Berlin: 1925.

204

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Feuer and Blut, Magdeburg: 1929 Aufmarsch des Nationalismus, Berlin: 1926. ed., Der Kampf urn das Reich, Essen: 1929. Das Abenteurliche Flerz, Berlin: 1929. Der Arbeiter, Hamburg: 1932. Die veranderte Welt, Breslau: 1933. Matter and Steine, Hamburg: 1934. Afrikanische Spiele, Hamburg: 1936. A u f den Marmorklippen, Erlenbach-Ziirich: 1942. Garten und Strassen, Berlin: 1942. Der Friede, Hamburg: 1945. Heliopolis-Ruckblick aufaine Stadt, Tubingen: 1949. Strahlungen, Stuttgart: 1951. Werke, Bd. 1-10, Stuttgart: 1960-1965. Slimtlicbe Werke, Bd. 1-18, Stuttgart: 1978-1983

Articles of Jiinger wSchliesst Euch Zusammen,” Die Standarte (1925). “Vorwort,” in: F. G. Jiinger Der Aufmarsch des Nationalismus, Leipzig: 1926. “Grosstadt and Land,” Deutsches Volkstum, 8 (1926). aDas Ziel entscheidet,” Arminius 8, no. 32 (1927). “Nation und Luftfahrt,” Vormarsch, 1 (1927-1928). “Untergang oder neue Ordnung,” Deutsches Volkstum, 15 (1929). “Die Geburt des Nationalismus aus dem Krieg,” Deutsches Volkstum, 11 (1929). “Feuer and Bewegung,” in: Werke, V, Essays I, ed., Krieg and Krieger, Berlin: 1930. “Die totale Mobilmachung,” in: Krieg and Krieger. “Uber die Gefahr,” Widerstand, 3 [(1931]).

Books on Jiinger Becher, H., Ernst Jiinger - Mensch Und Werk, Warendorf: 1949. Brauniger, W., “Ich woolte nicht danebestehen”: Lebensentwiirfe von Alfred Baumler bis Ernst Jiinger, Graz: 2006. Bohrer, K. H., Die Asthetik des Schreckens - Die pessimistische Romantik Und Ernst Jungers Friihwerk, Munchen: 1978. Bullock, M., Tfce Violent Eye: Ernst Jungers Visions and Revisions on The European Right, Detroit: 1992. Brock, E., Das Weltbild Ernst Jiinger - Darstellung and Deutung, Zurich: 1945. Decombis, M ., Jiinger, U hom m e et Voeuvre jusqu’en 1936, Paris: 1943. Fussel, P., The Great War and M odem M emory, New York: 1975. des Coudres, H. P., Bibliographie der Werke Ernst Jiinger, ed. E. L. Hauswedell, Stuttgart: 1970; revised edition by Horst Miihleisen, 1995. Dorsch, N. & M. Kampmann, eds., “Auswahlbibliographie zu Ernst Jiinger,” Text + Kritik, “Ernst Jiinger,” 105-106 (Januar 1990), 155-164. Durst, D., Ernst Jiinger: Politik, Mythos, Kunst, Berlin, New York: 2004. Evard, J.L., Ernst Jiinger, autorite et domination, Paris: 2004. Hafkesbring, H., Unknown Germany - An Inner Chronicle o f the First World War Based on Letters and Diaries, New Haven: 1948.

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Herf, J., Reactionary Modernism - Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich, Cambridge: 1984. Hervier, J., Deux Individus Contre L'H istoire- Drieu La Rochelle, Ernst Jiinger, Paris: 1978. ------, The Details o f Time: Conversations with Ernst Jiinger, New York: 1995. Kohl, S., Spuren: Ernst Jiinger und Martin Heidegger: das Walten des Nihilismus und die Ruckkunft der zukutingen, Turmverlag: 1993. Loose, G., Ernst Jiinger - Gestalt Und Werk, Frankfurt: 1957. Lukacs, G., The Destruction o f Reason (trans. P. Palmer), London: 1981. Meyer, M., Ernst Jiinger, Miinchen: 1990. Mohler, A., Von rechts gesehen, Stuttgart: 1974. ------, Die Conservative Revolution in Deutschland, 1918-1932, Darmstadt: 1972. Nebel, G., Ernst Jiinger, Abenteuer des Geistes, Wuppertal: 1949. Neaman, E., A Dubious Past: Ernst Jiinger and The Politics o f Literature After Nazism, Berkeley: 1999. Nevin, T., Ernst Jiinger and Germany: Into The Abyss, 1914-1945, London: 1997. Paetel, O. K„ Ernst Jiinger, Weg and Wirkung, Stuttgart: 1949. Palmier, J. M., Les Merits Politiques de Heidegger, Paris: 1968. Panattoni, R., L ’origine del conflitto: Martin Heidegger, Ernst Jiinger, Carl Schmitt, Padova: 2002. Pfeiler, W. M. K., War and the German Mind - The Testimony o f Men o f Fiction Who Fought at the Front, New York: 1941. Riedel, N., Ernst Jiinger - Bibliographie: wissenschaftliche und essayistische Beitrdge zu seinem Werk 1928, Stuttgart: 2003. Ronnoser, K. G., The Crisis o f Political Direction in the German Resistance to Nazism - Its Nature, Origins and Effects, Chicago: 1958. Rosen, S., Nihilism - A Philosophical Essay, New Haven: 1969. Scheib, R., Die grossen Jagden des Mythos: Ernst Jiinger in Frankreich, Miinchen: 1996. ------, Images d'E m st Jiinger: actes du colloque organise par le Centre de Recherche sur L ’ldentite, Bern: 1996. Schwarz, H. P., Die conservative Anarchist - Politik and Zeitkritik Ernst Jiingers, Freiburg: 1962. Schwilk, H., Ernst Jiinger: ein jahrhundertleben: die Biografie, Miinchen: 2007. Stem, J. P., Ernst Jiinger, A Writer o f Our Time, Cambridge: 1953. Struve, W., Elites Against Democracy - Leadership Ideals in Bourgeois Political Thought in Germany, 1890-1933, New Jersey: 1973. Theweleit, K., Male Fantasies, I, Male Bodies - Psychoanalysing the White Terror, II, Women, floods, bodies, history (trans. E. Carter & C. Turner), Cambridge: 1987. Towarnicki, F. D., Ernst Jiinger: recits d'un passeur de siecle: rencontres et conversa­ tions, Monaco: 2000. Vanoosthuyse, M., Fascime et literature pure: La fabrique d*Emst Jiinger, Marssaille: 2005. Waite, R. G. L., Vanguard o f Nazism - The Free Corps M ovement in Postwar Germany, 1918-1923, Cambridge: MA: 1952. Zimmerman, M. E., Heidegger’s Confrontation With Modernity - Technology, Politics, Art, Indiana: 1990.

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Articles on Jiinger Arendt, H., uThe Afternmath of Nazi Rule,” Commentary, X, 4 (October 1950), 342-353. Aldington, R., “Jiinger or Junker,” (Copse 125), The Referee (April 20, 1930). Allan, W., “New Novel,” The N ew Statesman and Nation (November 1,1947). Ballantyne, J., “With the Storm Troops - A German Officer’s Diary (Storm of Steel),” Daily Telegraph (May 28,1929). Benson, E.M., “Germany at W ar (Storm of Steel),” The Saturday Review o f Literature, New York (December 14,1929). Bentley, E.R., “Literature of the Third Reich,” The Nation (February 6, 1943), 206-208. Benjamin, W., “Theories of German Fascism - On the Collection of Essays, W ar and W arrior,” ed., Ernst Jiinger, N ew German Critique, 17 (Spring 1979), 120-128. Beguin, A., “War and Peace and Ernst Junger,” Transition Forty-Eight, Paris, no. 1 (January 1948). Clair, L., “Ernst Jiinger From Nihilism to Tradition,” Partisan Review, XIV, New York (September-October 1947), 453-465. Gurster-Steinhausen, E., “The Prophet of German Nationalism - Ernst Junger,” Review o f Politics, Notre Dame (April 2, 1945), 199-209. Hervier, J., “Ernst Junger et la question de la modernite,” Kulturpessimismus, revolu­ tion conservatrice et modernite; Revue D'Allemagne, XIV, no. 1 (January- March 1982). Hillach, A., “The Aesthetics of Politics - Walter Benjamin’s Theories of German Fascism,” N ew Garman Critique, 17 (Spring 1979), 99-119. Kahler, E., “Nihilism and the Rule of Technics,” The Menorah Journal, New York (July 1943), 186-188. Kantorowicz, A., “German Nationalist Literature,” The N ew Republic (December 6, 1943), 814-816. Man, K., “The Literary Scene in Germany,” Tomorrow, New York (March 1947). Milch, W. J., “The Development of Ernst Junger - A Study in Post-Fascist Thinking,” The Nineteenth Century and After, London, CXXXIX (January 1946), 35-39. N orr, J., “German Social Theory and the Hidden Face of Technology,” European Journal o f Sociology, XV, no. 2 (1974), 312-336. Ohana, D., “Nietzsche and Ernst Jiinger - From Nihilism to Totalitarianism,” History o f European Ideas, XI (1989), 751-758. Roche, G., “Ingenieurs et modernite sous la Republic de W eimar,” Revue D'Allemagne, XIV, no. 1 (January-March 1982). Silone, 1., “Nihilism,” Review o f Politics (April 1945). Steiner, G., Introduction, in: E. Junger, On the Marble Cliffs (trans. S. Hood), New York: 1970,7-15.

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Apollinaire, G., Les Peintres Cubistes, Paris: 1913. Arendt, H., The Origins o f Totalitarianism, New York: 1951. Arieli, Y., Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology, Cambridge, MA: 1964. Aron, R., The Opium o f the Intellectuals, London: 1957. ------ , Les grandes etapes de la pensee sociologique, Paris: 1967, Augier, M., Cotter Dammerung, Wende und Ende einer Zeit, Buenos Aires: 1950. Ayer, A. J., Language, Truth and Logic, New York: 1952. Baumler, A., Der Mythos vom Orient and Occident, Munchen: 1926. Bailes, K. E., Technology and Society Under Lenin and Stalin - Origins o f the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917-1941, New Jersey: 1978. Banham, R., Theory and Design in the first Machine Age, New York: 1960. Bannour, W., Les Nihilistes russes, Paris: 1975. Bardeche, M., Q u ’est-ce que le fascisme?, Paris: 1961. Barzini, L., & Borghese, S., La meta del mondo vista da unautomobile, Rome: 1908. Bataille, G., Visions o f Excess - Selected Writings, 1927-1939, ed. A. Stoekl, Minneapolis: 1985. Baudelaire, C., Curiosites esthetiques, Paris: 1889. Baum, G., Vem unft and Erkenntnis - Die Philosophie F.H. Jacobis, Bonn: 1969. Becker, C.L., The Heavenly City o f the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, New Haven: 1932. Beiser, C., The Fate o f Reason - German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte, Cambridge, MA: 1987. Bell, D., The Cultural Contradiction o f Capitalism, New York: 1976. Bellonzoni, F., II divisionismo nella pittura italiana, Milano: 1967 Bendersky, J.W., Carl Schmitt - Theorist For the Reich, New Jersey: 1983. Benesch, O. E., Munc, London: 1960. Benjamin,W., Illuminations: Essays and reflections (trans. H. Zohn), New York: 1968. ------, Gesammelte Schriften, ed., Tiedemann-Bartels, Frankfurt am Main: 1972. Berdyaev, N., Dostoevsky - A n Interpretation (trans. D. Attwater), New York: 1934. Bergson, H., Essai sur les donnees tmmediates de la Conscience, Paris: 1889. ------, L Evolution criatrice, Paris: 1907. ------, Introduction to Metaphysics, Indianapolis: 1949. ------, Matter and M emory, London: 1911. ------, The Two Sources o f Morality and Religion, New York: 1935. ------, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion, Paris: 1932. Berlin, I., Vico and Herder, London: 1976. Bellamy, E., Looking Backward, 2000-1887, Boston: 1888. Berth, E., Les Nouveaux aspects du socialisme, Paris: 1908. ------, Les Mefaits des intellectuels, Paris: 1914. Bloch, E., Freiheit and Ordnung - Abriss der Sozialutopien, Hamburg: 1969. Blumenberg, H., Work on Myth (trans. R. M. Wallace), Cambridge, MA: 1985. Boethius, A. M. S., Diogenis Laertii de Clarorum Philosophorum Vitis, Dogmatibus et Apophthegmatibus libri decem ex italicis codicibus nunc primum excussis recensuit C. Gabr. Cobet, Graece et Latine cum indicibus, Paris: 1850. Bogdanov, A., Red Star - the First Bolshevik Utopia, eds. L. Graham & R. Stites (trans. C. Rougle), Bloomington: 1984. Boissier, G., La Fin du paganisme, Paris: 1891. Bonald, J. M., Theorie du Pouvoir Politique et religieux dans la societe, 3 vols, Paris: 1834.

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Bourbonnais, M., Le neo saint-simonisme dans la vie sociale d'aujourd’kui, Paris: 1923. Bradley, J., Muzhik and Muscovite - Urbanization in Late Imperial Russia, Berkeley: 1982. Bourdieu, P., Vontologie Politique de Martin Heidegger, Paris: 1988. Brasillach, R., Oeuvres Completes de Robert Brasillach, Paris: 1964. Brower, D., Training the Nihilists - Education and Radicalism in Tsaris Russia, Ithaca: 1975. Buchler, J., Metaphysics o f Natural Complexes, New York: 1966. ------, Nature and Judgment, New York: 1955. Bunyan, J., The Origin o f Forced-Lobor in the Soviet State 1917-1921 - Documents and Materials, Baltimore: 1967. Burnham, J., The Managerial Revolution, New York: 1941. Burrin, P., La Derive Fasciste, Paris: 1986. Burry, J. B., A History o f Greece to the Death o f Alexander, London: 1972. Buthman, W. C., The Rise o f Integral Nationalism in France, New York: 1939. Butterfield, H., Origins o f M odem Science, New York: 1966. Camus, A., Le Mythe de Sisyphe: Essai sur L'Absurde, Paris: 1942. ------, V H om m e revolte, Paris: 1951. Carl Schmitt nella Stampa Periodica Italiana (1973-1986), ed. Centro Documentazione, Naples: 1986. Carr, E. H., The Bolshevik Revolution, London: 1966. Cassirer, E., The Philosophy o f the Enlightenment, New Jersey: 1951. ------, The M yth o f the State, New Haven: 1946. ------, Das Mythische Denken, in: Philosophieder Symbolischen Formen, Vol. II, Darmstadt: 1973. ------, Symbol, M yth and Culture, New Haven: 1979. Caute, D., Frantz Fanon, London: 1970. Chesneaux, J., The Political and Social Ideas o f Jules Verne, London: 1972 Chytry,J., The Aesthetic State - A Quest in M odem German Thought, Berkeley: 1989. Cipolla, C. M ., The Fontana Economic History o f Europe - The Industrial Revolution, London: 1973. Clark, M*, M odem Italy 1871-1982, London: 1984. Klark, K. & Dobrenko E„ Soviet Culture and Power: a History in Documents, 1917-1953, New Haven: 2007. Cohen, I. B., Revolution in Science, Cambridge, MA: 1985. Conacher, D. P., Euripides Drama - M yth, Theme and Structure, Toronto: 1967. Constant, B., Cours de Politique Constitutionnelle, 2 vols. Paris: 1861. Copleston, F. C., Philosophy in Russia - From Herzen to Lenin and Berdyaev, Indiana: 1986. Copley, F. B., Frederic Winslow Taylor, New York: 1924. Coser, L., The Functions o f Social Conflict, New York: 1956. Croce, B., Historical Materialism and the Economics o f Karl M arx, New York: 1914. ------, Aesthetic, London: 1909. de Benoist, A. & Maschke, eds., Carl Schmitt Stellung in der Rechts und Geisteswissenschaft des 20. Jahrhunderts, Berlin: 1988. De Felice, R., Mussolini it revoluzionario (1883-1920), Turin: 1965, De La Mettrie, J. O., Man a Machine, La Salle: 1961. Delaunay, R., Du Cubisme a Vart abstrait, Paris: 1957.

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Index Adam, Paul, 84 A dorno, Theodor Ludwig, 157 Acschylus, 2 1 -2 2 ,1 8 0 Allemane, Jean, 73 Amar, Jules, 154 Apollo, 21, 23-24, 26, 2 9 ,8 3 A rata, Guilio Ulisse, 87 Arendt, Hannah, 11 Archimedes, 22, 25, 43 Aristotle, 25, 30-31, 49 Augustine, 1 8 ,4 3 Aurelius, M arcus, 4 Ayer, Alfred Jules, 8 Bailes, Kendall, 150 Bakhmetov, Vladimir, 145 Bakunin, M ikhail, 7-8 Balia, Giacomo, 82, 87, 89 Banham, Reyner, 87 Barber, Benjamin, 11 Barbusse, Henri, 58 Bazarov (Fathers and Sons), 6 Bataille, Georges, 114 Baudelaire, Charles, 8, 118, Baumler, Alfred, 131-132 Beardsley, Aubrey, 118 Bell, Daniel, 141-142 Belinsky, Vissarion, 6 Bellamy, Edward, 145-146 Benda, Julien, 58 Benjamin, W alter, 93, 107, 117, 141-142 Bentham, Jeremy, 34 Bergson, Henri, 66, 71-72, 81, 84, 131 Bernier, Jean, 58 Bernstein, Eduard, 58, 72-73, Berth, Edouard, 58 Biely, Andrei, 8 Bloch, Ernst, 9, 141, 143 Blok, Alexander, 8 Boccioni, Umberto, 81-84, 87, 90, 92-93, Bogdanov, Alexsander, 146, 148, 153, 164 Boethius, 4 Bohrer, Karl Heinz, 117-118, 125 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 36, 56, 76, Bourget, Paul, 58 Brandes, Georg, 6 Braque, Georges, 100 Brooks, Mel, 163

Brousse, Paul, 73 Brzezinski, Zbigniew,11, 140 Buber, M artin, 89 Bukharin, Nikolai, 157 Bullock, Allan,78 Burkhardt, Jacob, 19-20 Burnham, James, 143 Burry, John, 29 Carlyle, T hom as, 27

Camus, Albert, 6, 10, 31, 38, 46, 135-136, Canetti, Elias, 114 £apek, Karel, 154 Carra, Carlo, 81, 83, 87, 92 Cavour, Count Camillo Benso di, 67 Chernichevski, Nikolai, 6 Chiattone, M ario, 87 Chikolov, Vladimir, 145 Cicero, 158 Condorcet, marquis de (Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat), 68 Colombo, Luigi, (Fillia), 90 Le Corbusier, (Charles-£douard JeanneretGris), 87, 143 Cortes, Donoso, 5 Cratylus, 4 Croce, Benedetto, 58, 69, 71, 74, 80, 82 Crispolti, Enrico, 89 Dante, Alighieri, 103 Danto, A rthur, 44 Darwin, Charles, 68, 120, 138 David (King), 60, 62 Dovlin, Alferd, 143 De La M ettrie, Julien Offray, 153 Delesalle, Paul, 58 Depero, Fortunato, 87-88 Derrida, Jacques, 128 Descartes, Rene, 42 Deutscher, Isaac, 150 De Gir, Lucio, 101 Deville, Gabriel, 74 Dewey, John, 8 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 130-131 Dionysus, 8, 15, 21-24, 26, 30, 4 7 -4 8 , 83, 92 Diulgheroff, Nicola, 90 Dobrolyubov, Nikolai, 6

219

INDEX Dostoyevsky, Fyodor M ikhaylovitch, 5, 7 Dreyfus, Albert, 58, 64, 77 Duchamp, Marcel, 89 Durkheim, Emile, 54, 71 Dwinger, Eulenberg, 110 Eckhart, Meister (Eckhart von Hochheim), 18 Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigoryevich, 152 Einstein, Albert, 84 Engels, Friedrich, 73 Epicurus, 4 Euripides, 23 Faust, 25 Feder, Gottfried, 143, 158-160 Feder (Metropolis), 162 Fedorov, Nikolai, 147 Fernando, Beppre, 90 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 5-6, 43-44 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 4 -5 , 19 Fischer, H ugo,137 Flex, Walter, 104 Ford, Henry, 142-143 Foucault, Michel, 1 1 4,128, 179 Fourrier, Marcel,58 Frank, Leonard, 101 Frank, S., 142 Frankenstein, 163 Freud, Sigmund, 17, 37, 106 Freyer, Hans, 120 Friedrich, Carl, 11, 140 Fromm, Erich, 44 Frunze, Mikhail Vasilyevich, 151 Funin, N.,149 Fussel, Paul, 102 Galbraith, Kenneth, 155, 162 Gastev, Alexi, 153-155 Gauguin, Paul, 79 Ged, Gil, 73 George, Stefan, 129 Goering, Herman, 160 Gerasimov, M ikhail Prokofevich, 148 Gleason, Abbot, 10 Goebbels, Joseph, 105, 159-160, 162-163 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 22, 29, 63, 101, 125 Gorky, M axim, 146 Groningen, Bernhard Abraham Van, 28 Gropius, Walter, 143 Guthrie, William, 28 Haberm as, Jurgen, 128, 141 Halevi, Daniel, 74 Hardensctt, Hcinrich, 141, 143 Hayek, Friedrich, 153 Heckel, Erich, 79 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 4 -5 , 8-9 ,

19-20, 3 5 ,4 1 , 4 3 -4 4 ,4 7 ,4 9 , 54, 73-74, 125, 136 Heidegger, M artin, 9, 101, 118-120, 122, 128, 130, 132-135, 137, 145,162 Heine, Heinrich, 22 Henry, Charles, 84 Heraclitus, 4 ,1 3 1 Herder, Johan Gottlieb, 19, 50 Herf, Jeffrey, 120, 141, 157 Hitler, Adolf, 1, 9 ,1 2 1 , 133, 1 3 5 -1 3 7 ,1 5 8 161,163 Hobbes, Thom as, 38 Holderlin, Friedrich, 22, 134 Hom er, 21, 56-57, 60-61, 64-65, 67 Horkheimer, M ax, 141-142 Hughes, Henry Stuart, 2, 58 Hum e, David, 5 Igor (Frankenstein), 163 Iselin, Issak, 19 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 4-5 James, William, 71 Jaspers, Karl, 130, 133 Jaures, Jean, 73 Jean-Paul, 5 Jerome, Jerome Klapka, 147 Jesus, 22, 62, 67 Joffre, Joseph Jacques Cesaire, 92 Johannet, Rene, 58 Jung, Edgar, 135, 138 Jiinger, Emestal, 99, 101 Jiinger, Ernst, 2,93, 98-139, 162-164 Jiinger, Friedrich Georg, 136 Kafka, Franz, 7 Kaiser, Georg, 143 Kandinsky, Wassily, 82 Kant, Immanuel, 4, 18-20, 22, 24, 32, 35, 42-43, 4 5 ,4 7 , 4 9 ,5 1 ,9 6 , 142 Kapp, Ernst, 157 Karamazov, Ivan (The Brothers Karamazov),

7 Karlof, Boris, 163 Kastner, Erich, 143 Kaufmann, W alter, 13, 40 Kautsky, Karl, 73, 145 Kern, Stephen, 95 Kierkegaard, Seren, 8, 17-18, 25, 133 Kirkpatrick, Jeane, 11 Kirilov (The Possessed), 7 Klages, Ludwig, 129-131 Kleinau, Wilhelm, 136 Koffka, Kurt, 122 Kohler, Wolfgang, 122 Kohl, Helmut, 101 Kolakowski, Leszek, 9 Kollman, Franz, 143 Kracauer, Seigfried, 162

220

INDEX

Kratchnev, P. M ., 154-155 Krieck, Ernst, 132 Krzhizhanovsky, Maximilianovich, 148

Musil, Robert, 7 Mussolini, Benedetto, 10 Murasius, 143

Labriola, Antonio, 74 Lagardelle, Hubert, 58 Lang, Fritz, 125, 162-164, Lang, Thca, 163 Lanzillo, Agostino, 77 Lazarus, 63 Lazco, L. A., 104 Le Bon, Gustave, 59, 71, 76 Leibniz, Gottfried, 5 Leiris, Michel, 114 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 9, 57, 72, 138, 140, 142 ,1 4 7 -149, 151, 155-156 Lessing, Gotthold, Ephraim, 19 Lewis, W yndham, 1 Ley, Robert, 160-161 Locke, John, 38 Loose, Gerhard, 125 Lowith, Karl, 8 Louzon, Robert, 58 Lukacs, Georg, 129, 138 Lunacharsky, Anatoliy Vasilievich, 146 Lyotard, Jean-Franqois, 128 Lyttelton, Adrian, 91

Nechayev, Sergei, 6 -7 Niekisch, Ernst, 100, 136, 138 Nietzsche,Wilhelm Friedrich, 1-2, 5-7 , 9, 13-57, 59-60, 63-6 6 , 68, 70-72, 76, 8 0 -8 1 ,9 2 ,1 0 1 , 111, 116, 120, 125, 128, 132-135, 137, 1 4 1 ,1 6 2 -1 6 4 N itti, Francesco, 11 N olte, Ernst, 128 N orr, John, 137 Novalis, Friedrich Von Hardenberg, 5, 19

M aier, Charles, 157 M ann, Thomas, 25, 28-29, 63, 157 Mantezga, 147 M anuel, Frank, 76 M archi, Virgilio, 89 M arinetti, Filippo Tom m aso, 1-2, 79, 81, 83-87, 90-94, 96, 99, 153 M arx, Karl, 2, 8, 17, 37, 44, 51, 57-59, 71-77, 92, 1 1 2 ,1 2 4 ,1 2 7 Mauclair, Camille, 91 Marcuse, Herbert, 44 M aria (Metropolis ), 162 M atteotti, Giacomo, 7 9 ,1 4 4 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 1, 148, 152 M ayer, Ernst, 157 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 67, 80 McLuhan, M arshal,163 Meinhof. Ulrike, 8 Melnikov, Konstantin, 89 Mendelssohn, Moses, 19 M erlino, Severio, 74 Meyerhold, Vsevolod Emilevich, 141, 155 Michels, Robert, 71 Michael, Georges, 58 Mill, John Stuart, 34 Minerva, 41, 54 Modigliani, Amedeo Clemente, 79 M oloch, 162 M ondrian, Piet, 82 M orasso, M ario, 84 M osca, Gaetano, 71

Oedipus, 21-22 Odysseus, 21 Paetel, Karl, 138 Panaggi, Ivo, 89 Panunzio, Sergio, 58 Pareto, Vilfredo Federico, 59, 71 Parmenides, 4, 45 Pascal, Blaise, 18 Pilnjak, Boris, 149 Plato, 20, 24, 3 0 -3 2 ,4 2 ,4 9 , 54-55, 63-64, 76, 99, 134 ,1 4 7 Plotinus, 43 Peguy, Charles, 71 Pelloutier, Fernand, 73 Persius, 4 Picabia, Francis-Marie, 89 Picasso, Pablo, 100 Poe, Edgar Allan, 118 Poincare, Jules Henri, 71 Poltaev, A., 149 Popper, Karl, 11, 12, 19, 46 Pozzo, Ugo, 90 Prampolini, Enrico, 81, 87, 89 Preobrazhenskii, Evgeni!, 147 Previati, Gaetano, 80 Prometheus, 21-22, 130, 148, 155, 163 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 5, 55 -5 6 , 58, 72-74, 77 Pushkin, Alexander, 152 Radek, Karl, 138 Rauschning, Herm ann, 9-10, 110 Remarque, Erich M aria, 101 Renan, Ernest, 60, 63, 75 Renn, Ludwig, 101 Ribot, Theodule Arm and, 71 Rilke, Rainer, M aria, 135 Rodnykh, A. 145 Rimbaud, Arthur, Jean, 8 R om anov, N ikolay, A lexandrovich, (Csar

Nicholas II), 6 Robespierre, M aximilien Francois, 32 Rommel, Erwin, 99

INDEX Rosen, Stanley, 123, 137 Rosenberg, Alfred, 105, 135 Rossi, Mino, 90 Rossoni, Edmondo, 144 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 38 Russolo, Luigi, 83, 87, 92-93 Salome, Lou, 53 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 4, 8-9, 24-25, 44, 57, 165 Saint-Victor, Richard, 43 Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de Rouvroy, 124, 143-144 Sant’Elia, Antonio, 143-144 Sartoris, Alberto, 90 Scheler, M ax, 130 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm, 19, 22, 96 Schenk, Claus Philipp M aria, 158 Schwerber, Peter, 158 Schiller, Friedrich, 18, 22, 50, 96 Schlegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Karl, 5, 41 Schmit, Carl, 119-120, 135 Schmitt-Rottluff, Karl, 79 Scholem, Gershom, 7 Schopenhauer, A rthur, 5 -7 , 18, 20 -2 1 , 34, 47-48, 50, 52, 96 Schutte, Ofelia, 45 Schwarz, Hans Peter, 102, 124-125 Segantini, Giovanni, 80 Shakespeare, William, 119 Shelley, M ary, 163 Skinner, Ivan Illisch, 44 Simmel, Georg, 130 Speer, Albert, 160-161 Spencer, Herbert, 34-124 Spiro, Herbert, 11 Socrates, 15, 20, 22-26, 32, 55, 58, 61, 63-65, 68-72 Solomon (King), 60 Sophocles, 21-22 Sorel, Georges, 1, 2, 8, 5 5 -7 8 ,1 2 2 , 125, 135, 143-144, 163 Spengler, Oswald, 6 8 ,1 2 0 , 127-131, 135, 137 ,1 4 4 -1 4 5, 156 Spinoza, Baruch (Benedicto de), 1 5 ,4 2 , 49 -5 0 Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich, 11, 138, 140, 143, 156, Stavrogin, Nikolai, 7 Stem, Joseph Peter, 118, 136

Stevenson, Charles, 8 Stirner, M ax, 5 Stites, Richard, 140 Tafuri, M anfredo, 88 Talmon, Jacob Leib, 10-11 Talmon-Gerber, Yonina, 28 Tatlin, Vladimir, 78,141 Taylor, Fredrick Winslow, 141-43, 155 Terragni, Giuseppe, 90 Thielicke, Helm ut, 7 Todt, Fritz, 160-161 Toller, Ernst, 101, 142, 154 Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich, 142 Toynbee, Arnold, 68, 128 Trotsky, Leon, 149-151, 155 Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich, 6, 152 Turgot, Jacques, 68 Turati, Fillipo, 74 Valery, Paul, 162 Valois, Georges, 58 Van den Bruck, A rthur M oeller, 127, 137 Van Gogh, Vincent, 79 Variot, Jean, 58, 77 Verkhovensky, Stephan Trofimovich, 7 Verne, Jules, 8 4 -8 5 ,1 4 5 Vico, Giambattista, 37, 58, 68-69, 71 Virgil, 158 Von Bader, 51 Von H artm ann, Eduard, 71 Von Hum boldt, William Freiherr, 130 Von Ranke, Leopold, 15, 19 Von Salomon, Ernst, 5 Von Strolfnagel, Heinrich, 101 W agner, Richard, 5 -7 , 20, 22, 25 Weihe, Carl, 141 Wells, Herbert George, 145, 148 W endt, Ulrich, 157 Wolff, Christian, 5 Zam yatin, Eugene, 142 Zam yatin, Evgenii, 147, 154 Zarathustra, 15-16, 3 0 ,4 5 , 101,135 Zevi, Bruno, 88 Zimmerman, M ichael, 125 Zweig, Arnold, 101

221

“A provocative and illuminating thesis on Totalitarianism.” Isaiah Berlin “ Ohana has convincingly shown that a complex cultural, ideological and psychological syndrome, linking nihilism to totalitarianism, represented a significant factor in the ‘gathering storm’ which marked the early twentieth century.” „ ,r ...... .. , 1 1 Saul Friedlander, author of The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 “A major contribution to the understanding of the ‘condition humain’.” Yehoshua Arieli, author of Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology “A turning point in the research of European modernity." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung In the turbulent period between 1870 and 1930, the contours on modernity were taking shape, especially the connections between technology, politics and aesthetics. The trilogy The Nihilist Order traces the genealogy of the nihilisttotalitarian syndrome. Until now, nihilism and totalitarianism were considered opposites: one an orderless state of affairs, the other a strict regimented order. On closer scrutiny, however, a surprising affinity can be found between these two concepts that dominated the history of the first half of the twentieth century. Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Sorel, the Italian Futurists, led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and Ernst Junger were characterized by the paradoxical dual purpose of a wish to destroy, coupled with a strong desire to create imposing structures. Here they are seen as creators of a modern political mythology that became a source of inspiration for belligerent ideological camps. This explosive combination of nihilist leanings together with a craving for totalitarianism was an ideal of philosophers, cultural critics, political theorists, engineers, architects and aesthetes long before it materialized in flesh and blood, not only in technology, but also in fascism, Nazism, bolshevism and radical European political movements. When channeled into the political sphere, these aesthetic nihilist ideas paved the way for the rise of totalitarianism. Cover illustrations: Friedrich Nietzsche with sword. Portratals, Kanonier. Sommer 1868. Photography by Ferdinand Henning. Naumburg. Courtesy of Olaf Mokansky. Klassik Stiftung Weimar; Portrait photo, Rocken near Liizen, 15 October 1844-Weimar 25 August 1900, c. 1875. coloured at a later stage. Courtesy ot akgimagesVasap creative. David Ohana teaches Modern European history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He was a visiting fellow at the Centre for European Studies at Harvard University and the first academic director of the Forum for Mediterranean Cultures at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Prof. Ohana’s books include: A Humanist in the Sun: Camus and the Mediterranean Inspiration (2000), The Promethean Passion (2000), The Rage of the Intellectuals (2003).

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