ideologues picked from these and other Counter-Enlightenment thinkers whatever they found useful – as they did with the thinkers of the Enlightenment. In both cases they were able to draw on powerful currents of anti-liberal thought. The argument advanced by some members of the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School, which says that Nazism was a logical development of Enlightenment thinking, is much overstated; but there is more than a grain of truth in it. 39
An academic cliché has it that the Nazis were extreme Romantics who exalted emotion over reason. However, the idea that Nazism was a hyperbolic version of the Romantic Movement is at best an oversimplification. What the Nazis owed to the Romantics was a belief also shared by many Enlightenment thinkers – the idea that society had once been an organic whole and could be so again at some time in the future. Romantic thinkers had different ideas about where this organic society existed – some looked to medieval Christendom, others to ancient Greece, still others to faraway countries of which they knew nothing. Wherever they thought they had found it, their vision of society was a chimera. No society has ever been a harmonious whole, and with its suspicion of conflict and diversity the idea of organic community is always liable to be used against minorities. There is a clear link between integral nationalism of this Romantic kind and Nazism. While the Nazis celebrated conflict, they believed that the
Volk
– the people – was a seamless whole that fell from unity only when corrupted by alien minorities. The peoples of the world were not equals, and the hierarchy that should exist among them could be secured only by force. But within the German
Volk
there would be a condition of perfect harmony. 40
The belief that society should be an organic whole is far from beingonly a Romantic idea, however. The fantasy of seamless community is as much a feature of Enlightenment thinking as of the Counter-Enlightenment. Like Fichte and other German thinkers of the nationalist Right, Marx condemned trade and disparaged individualism. Like the Romantics he condemned the division of labour as inhuman. Like them he looked to the remote past for a society in which humanity was not alienated or repressed. He found it in a prehistoric condition of ‘primitive communism’, which he believed had once been universal (but of which no trace has ever been found). No less than the thinkers of the Counter-Enlightenment, Marx promoted a myth of organic community.
If Enlightenment thinkers shared some of the worst ideas of the Counter-Enlightenment, the Counter-Enlightenment contained much that was at odds with Nazi ideology. Consider Herder and de Maistre. Each rejected the Enlightenment project but neither was in any sense a proto-Nazi. Herder never accepted any kind of hierarchy among cultures or races (as some key Enlightenment thinkers did). On the contrary he affirmed that there are many cultures, each in some way unique, which cannot be ranked on a single scale of value. De Maistre would have been horrified by the Nazis’ atheism and by their doctrines of racial superiority. At the most important points, Nazi ideology and Counter-Enlightenment thought are opposed.
A connection can be traced between Nazi ideology and Nietzsche, but it is with Nietzsche in his role as an Enlightenment thinker. The genealogy that traces Nazism back to Nietzsche is suspect, if only because it was promoted by his Nazi sister, Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche (1846–1935) – who looked after Nietzsche in his last years and whose funeral Hitler attended. Even so there are points of affinity, and they are found in the areas where Nietzsche is closest to the Enlightenment. Nietzsche was a lifelong admirer of Voltaire – the celebrated Enlightenment rationalist – and like Voltaire he despised Rousseau’s exaltation of emotion over reason. While Nietzsche appears as a Romantic in a popular stereotype, he was in fact a
An academic cliché has it that the Nazis were extreme Romantics who exalted emotion over reason. However, the idea that Nazism was a hyperbolic version of the Romantic Movement is at best an oversimplification. What the Nazis owed to the Romantics was a belief also shared by many Enlightenment thinkers – the idea that society had once been an organic whole and could be so again at some time in the future. Romantic thinkers had different ideas about where this organic society existed – some looked to medieval Christendom, others to ancient Greece, still others to faraway countries of which they knew nothing. Wherever they thought they had found it, their vision of society was a chimera. No society has ever been a harmonious whole, and with its suspicion of conflict and diversity the idea of organic community is always liable to be used against minorities. There is a clear link between integral nationalism of this Romantic kind and Nazism. While the Nazis celebrated conflict, they believed that the
Volk
– the people – was a seamless whole that fell from unity only when corrupted by alien minorities. The peoples of the world were not equals, and the hierarchy that should exist among them could be secured only by force. But within the German
Volk
there would be a condition of perfect harmony. 40
The belief that society should be an organic whole is far from beingonly a Romantic idea, however. The fantasy of seamless community is as much a feature of Enlightenment thinking as of the Counter-Enlightenment. Like Fichte and other German thinkers of the nationalist Right, Marx condemned trade and disparaged individualism. Like the Romantics he condemned the division of labour as inhuman. Like them he looked to the remote past for a society in which humanity was not alienated or repressed. He found it in a prehistoric condition of ‘primitive communism’, which he believed had once been universal (but of which no trace has ever been found). No less than the thinkers of the Counter-Enlightenment, Marx promoted a myth of organic community.
If Enlightenment thinkers shared some of the worst ideas of the Counter-Enlightenment, the Counter-Enlightenment contained much that was at odds with Nazi ideology. Consider Herder and de Maistre. Each rejected the Enlightenment project but neither was in any sense a proto-Nazi. Herder never accepted any kind of hierarchy among cultures or races (as some key Enlightenment thinkers did). On the contrary he affirmed that there are many cultures, each in some way unique, which cannot be ranked on a single scale of value. De Maistre would have been horrified by the Nazis’ atheism and by their doctrines of racial superiority. At the most important points, Nazi ideology and Counter-Enlightenment thought are opposed.
A connection can be traced between Nazi ideology and Nietzsche, but it is with Nietzsche in his role as an Enlightenment thinker. The genealogy that traces Nazism back to Nietzsche is suspect, if only because it was promoted by his Nazi sister, Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche (1846–1935) – who looked after Nietzsche in his last years and whose funeral Hitler attended. Even so there are points of affinity, and they are found in the areas where Nietzsche is closest to the Enlightenment. Nietzsche was a lifelong admirer of Voltaire – the celebrated Enlightenment rationalist – and like Voltaire he despised Rousseau’s exaltation of emotion over reason. While Nietzsche appears as a Romantic in a popular stereotype, he was in fact a
Similar Books
