Critique, Metacritique, and Making the (World of) Difference
Domenico Losurdo on the Paradoxes of Nietzsche Reception
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6427152 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matt Sharpe (0000-0002-8165-5775, Associate Professor, School of Philosophy, Faculty of Theology and Philosophy, Australian Catholic University Australia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 95-120 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Historical Materialism (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1465-4466 • E-ISSN: 1569-206X |
| Publisher | Brill (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1163/1569206x-bja10074 |
| OpenAlex | W4409204671 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 7 |
This essay addresses Losurdo’s response to the metaquestion of why, if Nietzsche was an avowed aristocratic radical, he can continue to be received as a liberal or even a democratic thinker, whose appropriation by the far right sparks outrage (Section 1). This essay considers what I take to be the key idea underlying Losurdo’s Nietzsche’s ‘theoretical surplus’ (Section 2), which allows Losurdo both to explain the attraction of many broadly on the non-socialist Left to Nietzsche, and to show that this attraction is nevertheless mistaken, hermeneutically, as well as leading them into inescapable proximity with radically reactionary modes of social thought. Having introduced the distinction (Section 3), I will apply it to a rich section of Dawn (Section 4) and show the work it can do, before showing the distance it allows us to re-establish between Nietzsche and a progressive thinker he admired (and whom the author is presently working on), namely Voltaire (Section 5
Epistemology · Sociology · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |