Destruction of Reason [Hardcover]

Georg Lukacs (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Hungarian (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 865 pages
• Publisher: Merlin Pr; First UK edition. edition (November 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0850362474
• ISBN-13: 978-0850362473
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,849,272 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliance, April 21, 2005

By 

GB - See all my reviews

This review is from: Destruction of Reason (Hardcover)

This is a brilliant intellectual history of the philosophical positions and movements that in a way fermented to produce National Socialism. Rare erudition, wonderful stylizations, Lukasc is an amazing writer and an amazing mind. Sometimes his Leninist sympathies intrude, but for those interested in what led up to National Socialism in the field of philosophy, this text is amazingly well written and well researched. If you are interested in the history of German philosophy, to the point of being interested in minor thinkers, then this is worth reading. Ultimately, this is a book about Irrationalism, and how its various intellectual versions led to ''Hitlerism''. Read it in tandem with Hitler and Aesthetics ... another excellent book (not by GL though). The Epilogue is really interesting ... as he predicts that unlike Germany, which was interested in giving philosophical justifications to its irrationalism, the USA would , in confronting the USSR in the Cold War, unabashedly accept and exhibit its irrational interests in raw power. It's everywhere today.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant critique of fascism's hatred of reason and science, June 8, 2010

By 

William Podmore (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Destruction of Reason (Hardcover)

In this brilliant book, Lukacs shows how Nazism attacked reason and science. Irrationalism mirrors reaction's contempt for science and its indulgence in superstition and myth.

He writes, "the subject-matter which now presents itself to us is Germany's path to Hitler in the sphere of philosophy. That is to say, we mean to show how this concrete path is reflected in philosophy, and how philosophical formulations, as an intellectual mirroring of Germany's concrete development towards Hitler, helped to speed up the process."

Lukacs shows how irrationalism was born in German feudal absolutism's reaction to the French revolution of 1789. He studies the idealist irrationalism of Friedrich Schelling, Soren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer and, in particular, Friedrich Nietzsche.

Nietzsche said, "The need is for a new reign of terror." He called for `a daring master race', for `the great man' and for great wars. "There will be wars the like of which have never been seen on earth before." He praised `the beast of prey, the magnificent blond beast in greedy search of spoils and conquest'.

Lukacs examines and criticises German sociology in the imperialist period (Max Weber, Karl Mannheim and Carl Schmitt), social Darwinism and racial theory from Joseph Gobineau to Houston Chamberlain, and vitalism in imperial Germany (Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Simmel, Oswald Spengler, Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers). He shows how their ideas were either no barrier to Nazism (Weber, Mannheim, Dilthey, Simmel and Jaspers) or actually paved the way for fascism (Schmitt, Gobineau, Chamberlain, Spengler and Heidegger).

Lukacs shows how Nazism took over the whole legacy of irrationalism. Irrationalism is always an ideology of militant reaction; it is all about combating Marxism, dialectical and historical materialism.