Nietzsche, Extermination, and the Hermeneutics of Innocence
Year: 2025
Type: article
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.
Source: Historical Materialism
Author: Ishay Landa
Institution: Open University of Israel
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4409142997