I. On the Method of Ideology Critique

Hegel assumed that there is a kind of reason that governs beyond individual human beings. While reflection can only manifest itself in the thinking of concrete individuals, it is through this reflection that we recognize that the development of society's freedom is a condition for the higher unfolding of individual freedom. In this way, it would be possible to overcome the opposition between different individual rationalities.¹

However, human history took a different, unreasonable, and questionable path. Marx therefore asked why the discomfort felt and thought regarding the state of modern society had not led to change, or, in Marxist terms, how theory and practice could be brought together. He reached the understandable conclusion that it is of no use for people to interpret, theorize, and rationalize everything that is going wrong: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various interpreted, but the point is to changeit."² Only then can our discomfort, our desires, and our interpretations be put into action. Then our theories would prove themselves—or not; in any case, our theories would enter into a dialogue with practice, and a shared process of negotiation could take place once again, so that Hegel's vision of a moral homecoming and gathering of the human spirit would finally come to pass. Furthermore, an understanding of how our social structures come into being and how they shape us would prevent social theorizing from splintering into many different interpretations, leaving us irreconcilably divided by our respective worldviews. The utopia of Hegel-Marxism is the recovery of that comprehensive epistemic and practical access that we still possess today for smaller, microsociological phenomena. While we may not immediately and perfectly understand the dynamics of a game night with friends, we can figure them out together, and it would never occur to us to fall into mutually unintelligible specialized disciplines like economics, political science, psychology, and so on. We should look at large social macrostructures in a similar way.

Lukács, one of the most important representatives of Hegel-Marxism, therefore pins great hopes on the "dialectical consideration of totality," calling it "the only method capable of intellectually reproducing and grasping reality."³ And so, in matters of morality, everything would also fall into place on its own:  

But since this ultimate goal does not stand over against the process as an abstract ideal, but rather resides within the concrete moment as a moment of truth and reality—as the concrete meaning of the stage currently reached—its recognition is precisely the recognition of the direction that the tendencies directed toward the whole (unconsciously) take; the direction that is called upon, in the given moment, to concretely determine the right action from the standpoint and in the interest of the overall process, the liberation of the proletariat.⁴  

Lukács hopes that by viewing social and historical processes, people will perceive themselves as the protagonists of these processes, in order to then consciously and consistently steer them toward their goal. This way of thinking is still quite widespread; contemporary philosopher Rahel Jaeggi simply expresses it more soberly when she notes regarding ideology critique: "From the orientation toward contradictions and crises, the criterion of 'malfunctioning' emerges as the criterion for epistemic and normative falsity"⁵. Critique highlights the contradictions between different norms and between norms and reality; it shows how these contradictions arise from the contradictory nature of the capitalist mode of production. It is also expected that the various existing norms diverge from one's own goals because they misunderstand society and, consequently, themselves. The dialectical method, or ideology critique, resolves separate moments back into the totality, into the process of becoming. One therefore expects to have an advantage—something that the other person would also realize for themselves once society was explained to them:  

Insofar as, for example, [...] the contradictions between the natural-law norms of equality and social reality can only be resolved through a new principle of economic and social organization, the concepts of freedom and equality change [...] toward a fuller or more comprehensive understanding.⁶

Where does the confidence in knowing what is right come from? For Lukács, having the right knowledge and the right goals is not a question of character or effort. It is a sociological question:  

[W]hen a historical situation exists in which the correct understanding of society becomes an immediate condition for a class's self-assertion in struggle, when for this class its self-knowledge simultaneously means a correct understanding of the whole of society [...] the unity of theory and practice [...] becomes possible.⁷

Because one possesses the correct knowledge, one also has insight into why one possesses the correct knowledge—which is quite practical. The potential circularity of such an argument will not be discussed further here.  

How is the divergence of other theories explained? They, too, are classified sociologically, but here an attempt is made to derive their failure from their concrete situation and thus to understand it. In better cases, a materialism that can be described as more "lifeworldly" is used to reconstruct what kind of subjectivity (and thus theory) arises from specific concrete practices, which in turn are derived from general material conditions. In worse cases, materialism degenerates into "X only says that because it is in their objective interest." The question of the legitimacy of all this shall not be discussed here. However, I would like to draw attention to how this positions itself within a discourse: On the one hand, it explains internally why others have a different opinion, while latently suggesting they would actually have the same opinion as oneself. On the other hand, it offers a new form of identification externally: "You have held a different opinion until now, doing your best within the framework of your structural possibilities; but with us, you will become the perfected version of yourself."

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II. Lukács: Nietzsche as a Philosopher of Imperialism

But how do ideology critics approach Nietzsche? They seem to have a real problem or concern with him. Lukács, Adorno, Holz, Losurdo—they keep returning to him, sometimes dismissively, sometimes appreciatively. They all seem to share the need to categorize Nietzsche. Where does this urge come from? It is striking that they differ so widely in their assessments.  

For Lukács, the situation is quite clear: Nietzsche, whom he describes as the "founder of the irrationalism of the imperialist period,"⁸ wrote in his works "a continuous polemic against Marxism, against socialism."⁹ He dismisses the acknowledged fact that Nietzsche was little to barely familiar with Marxism with this objection: "Philosophers instinctively know what they have to defend and where the enemy stands. They instinctively feel the 'dangerous' tendencies of their time and attempt to combat them philosophically."¹⁰ According to Nietzsche, this is done in an original way. While the bourgeoisie had previously tried to defend the development of capitalism by referring to a narrative of progress, this became untenable by the end of the 19th century:  

This change manifests itself above all in a complacent [...] relativism, pessimism, nihilism, etc., which, however—in the case of honest intellectuals—often turns into sincere despair and a resulting rebellious mood (messianism, etc.).¹¹

Nietzsche is said to be the most dazzling representative of this change. Furthermore, Nietzsche's "social mandate" consists of creating an ethic for the ruling class of capitalism, which, in the face of the growing power of the proletariat, had to appear increasingly reactionary rather than progressive. Hence Nietzsche's moral relativism, his biologism, his fatalism, his mythology of history—they are all parts of an apology for the imperialist bourgeoisie.¹² In this function, Lukács sees the center, the unifying principle of Nietzsche's philosophy; from here, he intends to trace an underlying system in Nietzsche.¹³ He goes so far as to claim that the eternal recurrence stems from the need "that becoming must not produce anything new (in relation to capitalist society), lest it be unfaithful to its function in Nietzsche's system."¹⁴

The method and content of this Nietzsche interpretation are reductio ad absurdum and require no criticism. It is a pity about the more comprehensible criticism of Nietzsche that Lukács himself lets slip away. For example, there is Nietzsche's mythologizing thinking about history,¹⁵which a representative of historical materialism could have criticized in a much more revealing way. The often-neglected political character of Nietzsche's philosophy could have been highlighted, especially from a Marxist perspective—but Lukács likely played into the hands of the opponents of such a reading by executing it so vulgarly.

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III. Holz: Nietzsche as a Rebellious "Young Bourgeois"

Holz is quite different, although he also sets out to critique ideology. And the approach of his interpretation turns out to be quite similar: "Nietzsche's rebellion is that of the disillusioned and disoriented young bourgeois in an inhumane society."¹⁶ But from this same approach, he takes a completely different direction. Nietzsche is not disillusioned here in the sense of a cruel cynicism of oppression, but rather "what makes him significant is the radical consistency with which he brings the sickness of the time to an outbreak and suffers through it."¹⁷  He understands Nietzsche as someone who suffers sincerely from the capitalist deformation of culture, but who cannot explain this suffering. Thus, he can pose the question of whether Nietzsche should be assigned to fascism or emancipation in terms of the history of ideas in a more nuanced way. He criticizes Lukács¹⁸ and yet admits that the question must be asked as to how Nietzsche's work could be so defenseless against its appropriation.¹⁹

He explains this ambivalence of Nietzsche's actual philosophy and its reception by the fact that he understood nothing of political economy and the "mechanisms of modernity." This creates the image of a lonely fighter. Nietzsche could no longer refer back to Hegel's axiom "The true is the whole" because, in the absence of historical materialism, he lacked the method to understand social phenomena as a continuous, becoming whole:  

A world experienced as having disintegrated into disparate elements no longer provided a basis for the integration of relativized truths. These could only be understood as deceptions, and no longer as moments of a historical whole.²⁰  

Therefore, the retreat to the individual and their own emancipation was the line of defense Nietzsche had to adopt to face the demands of modernity. With this caveat, however, Holz also acknowledges Nietzsche's "diagnostic" and utopian achievements:  

Nietzsche imagines a human society in which people are freed from the compulsion to work to satisfy their basic needs, and instead unfold and elevate themselves through the serious play and playful seriousness of art.²¹

Holz presents an interesting interpretation of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo as an Epicurean utopia:  

[H]ere he speaks of a utopia of physical happiness, the fulfillment of which could only be experienced by a generation of humans with the highest sensitivity, of a unity of ethics and aesthetics […][,] the freedom to achieve the optimal conditions for one's physical well-being, and thus the freedom to be oneself as a biological being.²²

However, Holz further laments Nietzsche's lack of political-economic knowledge, which he argues leads to subsequent errors. He claims that Nietzsche—"trapped in the notion of the mode of production as a power relationship"—could only conceive of what was just described "as the realm of an elite few"²³ :

His utopian momentum was not enough to envision a near future in which basic human needs could be met through technical means rather than slavery.²⁴

Without placing Nietzsche himself in the proximity of National Socialism, as Lukács does, Holz nonetheless accuses Nietzsche of being open or defenseless against all manner of interpretations:

For all his clarity of vision and his instinct for symptoms and connections, his cultural-critical ideas were bound to remain impressionistic and, in their synthesis and interpretation, subject to ideological distortion.²⁵

Holz turns Nietzsche into an untimely precursor to Marx;²⁶ Nietzsche was a diagnostician, whereas Marx was already a therapist.²⁷ All the concessions Holz makes to Nietzsche serve to categorize him within Marxism and make him useful there. Holz does not want to hear anything of Nietzsche's own explanatory approaches:  

Nietzsche never questioned the reasons for hypocrisy—unless one considers the reduction to resentment or the will to power of the weak as a causal explanation.²⁸  

It may sound like praise when Holz credits Nietzsche with having pushed to the absolute limits of what was possible for bourgeois philosophy.²⁹ It is precisely in this context that one understands why Holz interprets Nietzsche’s intellectual path as a desperate act of self-sacrifice, one that the history of philosophy must—with great reverence—simply pass by.³⁰

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IV. The World as Chaos or Unity?

Admittedly, both Lukács and Holz have attempted to relativize Nietzsche and integrate him into their respective concepts of history in very different ways. Both accuse him of relativism and particularism—Lukács mockingly, Holz regretfully. Nietzsche himself, however, views his lack of reference to unity, his particularism, as an achievement:  

That no one is held responsible anymore, that the nature of being cannot be traced back to a causa prima, that the world is not a unity, neither as a sensorium nor as "spirit," this is the great liberation, – only with this is the innocence of becoming restored.³¹  

And this is by no means merely an abstract consideration; it shapes Nietzsche's engagement with very concrete matters:  

"Exploitation" does not belong to a corrupt or imperfect society: it belongs to the essence of the living, as a fundamental organic function; it is a consequence of the actual will to power, which is precisely the will of life.³²  

For Nietzsche, the world is fundamentally disparate, and it is not a flaw to be corrected if people find themselves in their own respective worlds during their encounters; for him, there can be no such thing as recognition.  

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We are familiar with Hegelian-Marxist interpretations of Nietzsche; it would also not be particularly difficult to defend Nietzsche's philosophy against such critiques that intend to establish a connection to unity.³³ However, that would be too convenient at this point. We saw at the beginning that for Hegelian Marxism, the reference to totality is not just one matter among others, but the light under which everything is viewed—it could therefore never reveal itself if it were perhaps illuminating the world incorrectly or incompletely. And the same applies to Nietzsche's particularism.  

A methodologically relevant question such as whether the world is unified or fragmentary should not—not even implicitly—be resolved using one's own method. The fact that Lukács and Holz treat Nietzsche from the outset as if they were right about this point is a fundamental criticism to be leveled against their interpretations.  

This question cannot be answered here; perhaps it can only be negotiated with itself. It could therefore be the case that Nietzsche's philosophy is better situated within the framework of an interpretation by historical materialism than within itself. To give this attempt a better chance, the second part will be dedicated to the more recent Nietzsche interpretation by the Marxist historian Domenico Losurdo.

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To be continued.

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Bibliography

Deleuze, Gilles: Nietzsche and Philosophy. Trans. by Bernd Schwibs. Hamburg 2013: Europäische Verlagsanstalt.

Holz, Hans Heinz: The Adventurous Rebellion. Bourgeois Protest Movements in Philosophy. Stirner, Nietzsche, Sartre, Marcuse, New Left. Neuwied, Darmstadt 1976: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag.

Jaeggi, Rahel: What is Ideology Critique? In: What is Critique? Ed. by: Rahel Jaeggi & Tilo Wesche. Frankfurt a. M. 2009: Suhrkamp Verlag, pp. 266–295.

Lukács, Georg: What is Orthodox Marxism? In: Georg Lukács Works. Early Writings 2. Vol. 2. Neuwied, Berlin 1968: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, pp. 161–518.

Lukács, Georg: The Destruction of Reason. In: Georg Lukács Works. Vol. 9. Neuwied, Berlin

1962: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag.

Marx, Karl: Theses on Feuerbach. In: Marx-Engels-Werke. Vol. 3. 1978 Berlin: Dietz Verlag, pp. 533–535.

Siep, Ludwig: Moral and Ethical Spirit in Hegel's Phenomenology. In: Klaus Vieweg & Wolfgang Welsch: Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. A Cooperative Commentary on a Key Work of Modernity. Frankfurt a. M. 2008: Suhrkamp Verlag, pp. 415–438.

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Footnotes

1: Cf. Siep, Moral and Ethical Spirit in Hegel's Phenomenology, p. 418.

2: Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, p. 535.

3: Lukács, What is Orthodox Marxism?, p. 181.

4: Ibid., p. 197.

5: Jaeggi, What is Ideology Critique?, p. 290.

6: Ibid., p. 288.

7: Lukács, What is Orthodox Marxism?, p. 173.

8: Lukács, The Destruction of Reason, p. 270.

9: Ibid., p. 273.

10: Ibid., p. 274.

11: Ibid., p. 276.

12: Cf. ibid., p. 306 et seq.

13: Cf. ibid., pp. 299 & 336.

14: Cf. ibid., p. 333.

15: Cf. ibid.

16: Holz, The Adventurous Rebellion, p. 32.

17: Ibid.

18: Cf. ibid., pp. 39 f.

19: Cf. ibid.

20: Ibid., p. 84.

21: Ibid., p. 64.

22: Ibid., p. 94.

23: Ibid., p. 92.

24: Ibid.

25: Ibid., p. 93.

26: Cf. ibid., p. 112.

27: Cf. ibid., p. 48.

28: Ibid., p. 47.

29: Cf. ibid., p. 51.

30: Cf. ibid., pp. 112 et seq.

31: Twilight of the Idols, The Four Great Errors, sec. 8.

32: Beyond Good and Evil, aph. 259.

33: Cf. Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy. pp. 13 et seq.