Mutiny on board modernity: Heidegger, Sorel and other fascist intellectuals

Abstract

Zeev Sternhell and Hans Sluga show that fascism and Nazism were part of an early twentieth‐century intellectual rebellion against universalism, liberalism, and Enlightenment rationalism. Western technology, values, and political institutions were seen as outmoded, but instead of wanting to return to the traditions of the past, as conservatives wished, these intellectuals thought that fascism could transcend modernity. Sorel, Heidegger, and other fascist modernists offered different radical solutions to what was conceived of as the decadence of liberal Western civilization. It remains an open question whether the discontent with modernity is an intellectual construction or a result of actual defects in modern life itself.