Nihilism and Nazism: On Rauschning’s The Revolution of Nihilism
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Nolen Gertz
Abstract
This article is an investigation into Hermann Rauschning’s 1939 book The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West in which he claims that the Nazis should be viewed, not as driven by ideology, but as driven by nihilism. According to Rauschning, who was himself a former official in the Nazi Party, the Nazis had no goal or purpose other than to seek destruction for the sake of destruction, and thus were nihilists. As this view goes against both the standard understanding of Nazism (as driven by racist and nationalist ideologies) and of nihilism (as individualistic rather than political), this paper first investigates Rauschning’s arguments and then compares them against the analysis of Nazism offered by Hannah Arendt. Contrary to Rauschning, Arendt argues that Nazism was driven by a very specific racial ideology and she thus warns against viewing the Nazis as nihilists. By comparing and contrasting the arguments of Rauschning and of Arendt, this paper concludes by offering a better understanding of Nazism and of nihilism.
References
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© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction: The History of Nihilism Special Issue
- Research Articles
- The “Lords of Life” and Emerson’s View of the Human Condition
- The Cosmological Significance of Modern Nihilism
- Nihilism and Nazism: On Rauschning’s The Revolution of Nihilism
- Heidegger and Dostoevsky on European Nihilism
- Dionysus versus the Crucified: Thinking the Death of God with Heidegger, Girard, and Bataille
- “The Laughter of Ecstasy Doesn’t Laugh”—Bataille on the Divinity of Nothing
- Blanchot at the Limits of Nihilism
- Between the History of Nihilism and the Nihilism of History
- The Question of Nihilism in the Philosophy of Ivan Urbančič
- The Will to Nothingness: A Nietzschean Concept
- God’s Nothingness: On the Persistence of the Negative in Meister Eckhart
- Obereit’s Nihilism: Inventing or Diagnosing a Social Sickness?
- Spontaneous Order and the History of Nihilism
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction: The History of Nihilism Special Issue
- Research Articles
- The “Lords of Life” and Emerson’s View of the Human Condition
- The Cosmological Significance of Modern Nihilism
- Nihilism and Nazism: On Rauschning’s The Revolution of Nihilism
- Heidegger and Dostoevsky on European Nihilism
- Dionysus versus the Crucified: Thinking the Death of God with Heidegger, Girard, and Bataille
- “The Laughter of Ecstasy Doesn’t Laugh”—Bataille on the Divinity of Nothing
- Blanchot at the Limits of Nihilism
- Between the History of Nihilism and the Nihilism of History
- The Question of Nihilism in the Philosophy of Ivan Urbančič
- The Will to Nothingness: A Nietzschean Concept
- God’s Nothingness: On the Persistence of the Negative in Meister Eckhart
- Obereit’s Nihilism: Inventing or Diagnosing a Social Sickness?
- Spontaneous Order and the History of Nihilism
