Fifteen years ago, revelations about the political misdeeds of Martin Heidegger and Paul de Man sent shock waves throughout European and North American intellectual circles. Ever since, postmodernism has been haunted by the specter of a compromised past. In this intellectual genealogy of the postmodern spirit, Richard Wolin shows that postmodernism's infatuation with fascism has been widespread and not incidental. He calls into question postmodernism's claim to have inherited the mantle of the left - and suggests that postmodern thought has long been smitten with the opposite end of the political spectrum. In probing chapters on C. G. Jung, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot, Wolin discovers an unsettling commonality: during the 1930s, these thinkers leaned to the right and were tainted by a proverbial "fascination with fascism." Frustrated by democracy's shortcomings, they were seduced by fascism's grandiose promises of political regeneration. The dictatorships in Italy and Germany promised redemption from the uncertainties of political liberalism. But, from the beginning, there could be no doubting their brutal methods of racism, violence, and imperial conquest. Postmodernism's origins among the profascist literati of the 1930s reveal a dark political patrimony. The unspoken affinities between Counter-Enlightenment and postmodernism constitute the guiding thread of Wolin's suggestive narrative. In their mutual hostility toward reason and democracy, postmodernists and the advocates of Counter-Enlightenment betray a telltale strategic alliance - they cohabit the fraught terrain where far left and far right intersect. Those who take Wolin's conclusions to heart will never view the history of modern thought in quite the same way.
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The Seduction of Unreason is a wide-ranging yet subtle consideration of the intellectual's abiding fascination with absolutism, and as such it is a perceptive, compelling and invaluable document. His indignation at the folly and perversity of so many major European thinkers is wholly justified and peculiarly invigorating. -- John Banville The Irish Times [A] lively, learned, and wide-ranging work... Wolin's subjects have exercised a remarkable impact on certain academic and cultural fields in the U.S. in the last several decades. Choice For anyone who has passed through the academic humanities in the last quarter-century and has been exposed to the dubious legacy of postmodernism, The Seduction of Unreason is an indispensable book. It is another important installment in what has become one of the major intellectual enterprises of our time: Richard Wolin's principled defense of liberalism against its most sophisticated enemies. -- Adam Kirsch New York Sun In this impressive book Wolin does for the Left what Bloom did for the Right; he makes a powerful case for a return to moral seriousness. -- Daniel P. Murphy Magill's Literary Annual 2005 The topic of Richard Wolin's book is the nexus between postmodernism and politics... Wolin's book raises the right questions at the right time. He forces us to think critically about the deepest philosophical underpinnings of our moral and political ideals. We simply cannot rest content with an unmeasured assault on reason. y Wallace,"Ethics
From the Back Cover
"Richard Wolin's superb book is urgent reading for those who would toss the Enlightenment out with Descartes. In this tour d'horizon, as deep as it iswide, Wolin refuses to be impressed by the glamour of extremity. He shines light into many dark corners where intellectual fraud, self-deception, and hauteur passed for liberty during a murderous century. Talk about genealogy! Unreason will never be the same."--Todd Gitlin, Columbia University, author of The Twilight of Common Dreams
"Richard Wolin demonstrates conclusively that contempt for liberalism and parliamentary government, whether it comes from the right or the left, whether it is anti-modern or postmodern, is very bad politics. His learned and provocative 'genealogy' of contemporary anti-Americanism should cause deep anxiety among its intellectual purveyors in Europe and here at hometoo."--Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study
"I recommend this powerful critique with great enthusiasm. It is that infrequent book that is of enduring scholarly significance while deserving of a broad readership outside the academy. It also offers American readers insights into French and German mentalities at a time of transatlantic irritations."--Jeffrey Herf, University of Maryland
"This is a wide-ranging and hard-hitting critique of postmodern thinking--especially of its political limitations and failures--based on broad reading and straight thinking. The author adds relevance to his critique of thinkers by juxtaposing those thinkers with interesting accounts of contemporary European politics."--Jerrold Seigel, New York University
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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IN HONOR of the Enlightenment the eighteenth century was commonly known as the century of lumiere, or light. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
IN HONOR of the Enlightenment the eighteenth century was commonly known as the century of lumiere, or light. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By Stokie Dave
Format:Hardcover
A vital work of intellectual archeology, and one that deeply illuminates the present crisis of the left and its (increasingly few remaining) heavyweight intellectuals. Very well-written, a pleasure to read. Researched in meticulous depth, and with an excellent eye for telling quotations. I found almost no mis-steps in the scholarship, and was pleased that Wolin limited his claims strictly to those that could be backed up by hard evidence. My only quibble is that chapters are somewhat compartmentalised, and the overarching structure only really becomes visible toward the end of the book.
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eye-opening study of some major thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries
21 Oct 2007
Format:Paperback
Wolin's masterly monograph "The Seduction of Unreason" constitutes a major contribution to contemporary intellectual history. Wolin's study dissects various political implications and current repercussions of the ideas and modes of thinking of Joseph de Maistre, Johann Gottfried Herder, Arthur de Gobineau, Friedrich Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler, Carl Schmitt, Carl Gustav Jung, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Jaques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard. In two "political excursuses," he indicates how the ideas of these and other - partly, highly respected - thinkers who, in one way or another attacked some basic Western values like rationalism and human rights, have via the "Conservative Revolution," and German and French so-called "New Right" gained influence on extremely right-wing parties as well as on mainstream politics. Wolin's usage of the term "fascism" in the book's title, to be sure, could be seen as misleading in so far as only some of the protagonists of his fascinating story were full-blown fascists. Still, his study is a valuable addition not only to the history of ideas, but also to comparative fascist studies in that it presents many illuminating cases illustrating why and how ideas have consequences, in general, and in which way anti-rational and anti-democratic thought can be utilized by fascist movements to justify dictatorship, ethnic cleansing and violence, in particular. The book is thus a valuable addition not only within the fields of cultural studies and history of science, but could also be of use in seminars on extremist politics. It forcefully debunks the idea that the ideational sources of ultra-nationalism and fundamentalism in both the inter- and post-war Europe are solely to be found among marginal scholars and publicists. Wolin's study is eye-opening in that illustrates how some major trends in 20th century mainstream humanities have played the role of, and are, partly, still functioning as, catalysts for the spread and acceptance of radically ascriptive views of human beings, and extremely right-wing ideologies.
20 of 45 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
In this book New York University Professor Richard Wolin digs up postmodernism in order to kill it yet again. Nicholas Fox demolished it in 1993, Paul Gross and Norman Levitt in 1994, and John O'Neill in 1995.
Now Wolin reprises that postmodernism reprised the counter-Enlightenment, concluding banally, "Postmodernism's hostility towards 'reason' and 'truth' is intellectually untenable and politically debilitating."
Postmodernism was just a version of the ancient idealist claim that objective knowledge is impossible. Idealism is a dangerous, reactionary philosophy, whether religious or post-whateverist, because it denies knowledge, reason and truth, and denigrates science, industry, technology, democracy and socialism. It prefers metaphor, myth and magic.
Wolin reminds us that Friedrich Nietzsche was a leading counter-Enlightenment writer, who preached, "The annihilation of the decaying races ... Dominion over the earth as a means of producing a higher type." Naturally, Nietzsche adored the Roman Empire, Alexander the Slayer and Cesare Borgia.
Later, Third Way theorists in the 1930s flirted with fascism. Martin Heidegger was an outright Nazi, and Carl Jung was a Nazi fellow-traveller. After the war, post-structuralists, like Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, and postmodernists like Chantal Mouffe were briefly famous. All worshipped Nietzsche.
But why does Wolin bother with these discredited poseurs? They have no influence now - who reads Heidegger? Who, apart from her publisher Verso, has ever heard of Mouffe?
Wolin's attacks on German and French philosophy chime in with the US state's attacks on 'old Europe'. So Wolin plays up the German and French New Rights, just as Labour plays up the BNP. He obediently links Al Qa'ida with Iraq, and sneers at national liberation struggles, absurdly lumping Fidel Castro with Idi Amin, Mobutu and Duvalier.
Wolin reveals his hostility to democracy when he writes of "the regressive social psychological tendencies displayed by the masses." Finally, he praises the USA's "breathtaking social mobility ... in striking contrast with Derrida's tradition-bound, native Europe."
Recent research has proved that the USA has even less social mobility than Europe's nations, but Wolin, in a postmodernist kind of way, doesn't let mere facts get in the way of capitalist dogma!
Now Wolin reprises that postmodernism reprised the counter-Enlightenment, concluding banally, "Postmodernism's hostility towards 'reason' and 'truth' is intellectually untenable and politically debilitating."
Postmodernism was just a version of the ancient idealist claim that objective knowledge is impossible. Idealism is a dangerous, reactionary philosophy, whether religious or post-whateverist, because it denies knowledge, reason and truth, and denigrates science, industry, technology, democracy and socialism. It prefers metaphor, myth and magic.
Wolin reminds us that Friedrich Nietzsche was a leading counter-Enlightenment writer, who preached, "The annihilation of the decaying races ... Dominion over the earth as a means of producing a higher type." Naturally, Nietzsche adored the Roman Empire, Alexander the Slayer and Cesare Borgia.
Later, Third Way theorists in the 1930s flirted with fascism. Martin Heidegger was an outright Nazi, and Carl Jung was a Nazi fellow-traveller. After the war, post-structuralists, like Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, and postmodernists like Chantal Mouffe were briefly famous. All worshipped Nietzsche.
But why does Wolin bother with these discredited poseurs? They have no influence now - who reads Heidegger? Who, apart from her publisher Verso, has ever heard of Mouffe?
Wolin's attacks on German and French philosophy chime in with the US state's attacks on 'old Europe'. So Wolin plays up the German and French New Rights, just as Labour plays up the BNP. He obediently links Al Qa'ida with Iraq, and sneers at national liberation struggles, absurdly lumping Fidel Castro with Idi Amin, Mobutu and Duvalier.
Wolin reveals his hostility to democracy when he writes of "the regressive social psychological tendencies displayed by the masses." Finally, he praises the USA's "breathtaking social mobility ... in striking contrast with Derrida's tradition-bound, native Europe."
Recent research has proved that the USA has even less social mobility than Europe's nations, but Wolin, in a postmodernist kind of way, doesn't let mere facts get in the way of capitalist dogma!
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