Nietzsche, Extermination, and the Hermeneutics of Innocence

Abstract This essay advances a critique of what Domenico Losurdo aptly titled ‘the hermeneutics of innocence’ that characterises much of Nietzsche scholarship. Nietzsche is considered fundamentally unconnected to fascism and to the Shoah, or, at most, to be untenably related to them by way of an insidious and superficial hijacking of his ideas. Taking such interpretations to task, this paper underlines the centrality of exterminatory thought and rhetoric in Nietzsche. It addresses some of the key arguments and stratagems employed by Nietzsche’s defenders and concludes with a methodological observation on how to read Nietzsche, focusing on the problem of style and on esotericism.