Losurdo’s Nietzsche, The Aristocratic Rebel: A Critical Balance Sheet of Its Reception

Abstract In Nietzsche, The Aristocratic Rebel , Domenico Losurdo presents a Hegelian-Marxist account of the German philosopher. Losurdo discusses the dialectical stages of Nietzsche’s thinking as a kind of phenomenology of free spirits, where the various phases and transformations of Nietzsche’s intellectual career are marked out from his young Wagnerite phase towards his project of ‘aristocratic radicalism’. Losurdo’s intellectual biography is not a mere chronology of events, but a philosophical-historical reconstruction of how Nietzsche’s thought transformed in the context of the Second Reich, developing into a more consistent reactionary project over time. While this paper serves as a general introduction to Losurdo’s method and presentation of Nietzsche’s philosophical career, it also discusses the relevance of the book in a time of resurgent neo-fascism. The paper finally addresses the revealing character of the book’s immediate reception in broader Anglophone academic and intellectual circles.