Domenico Losurdo’s Nietzsche: Content and Context

Abstract Domenico Losurdo’s Nietzsche, the Aristocratic Rebel was a pioneering work in contextualising Nietzsche’s thought. Placing the content of his writings in the context of nineteenth-century politics and political theory, Losurdo corrected many errors in previous scholarship. He presents a more accurate account of Nietzsche’s early anti-Jewish proclivities and his later ambivalence toward Jews and Jewry. He also rectifies the misguided notion that Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth was responsible for her brother’s reputation as a precursor of Nazism. But Losurdo’s exclusive focus on politics and political theory leads him to faulty accounts of Nietzsche’s views. Losurdo ignores many of the books that were most important for Nietzsche and assembles a context based on several works that Nietzsche had not read. What emerges is an incomplete, one-sided image of Nietzsche that is unable to fully explain Nietzsche’s conceptual universe. This underplays Nietzsche’s nuanced stance on social, political, and scientific issues of his times.