The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism [Illustrated] (Hardcover)

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Review
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

Product Description
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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First Sentence
IN HONOR of the Enlightenment the eighteenth century was commonly known as the century of lumiere, or light. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover

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4 Reviews 5 star:  (1) 4 star:  (1) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:  (2) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 3.2 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   2 of 2 people found the following review helpful: 4.0 out of 5 stars A vital and well-written study., 4 Jan 2007 By  D'log - See all my reviews 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. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   13 of 34 people found the following review helpful: 2.0 out of 5 stars Attacks postmodernism to promote 'the American way', 24 Jul 2004 By  William Podmore (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    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 his 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! Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   1 of 11 people found the following review helpful: 2.0 out of 5 stars Correction, 26 Jul 2004 By  William Podmore (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    Sorry, of Chantal Mouffe, I should have written 'her publisher Verso', not 'his publisher Verso'. Please amend if possible; thank you. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 4 customer reviews...		Ad feedback   Most Recent Customer Reviews 5.0 out of 5 stars Eye-opening study of some major thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries Wolin's masterly monograph "The Seduction of Unreason" constitutes a major contribution to contemporary intellectual history. Read more Published 21 months ago by Andreas Umland Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews › See all 4 customer reviews...

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