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The Philosophy of Life and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of Nazi Biopolitics by Nitzan Lebovic

2016; German Studies Association; Volume: 39; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/gsr.2016.0070

2164-8646

Martin Shuster,

Critical Theory and Philosophy

Reviewed by: The Philosophy of Life and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of Nazi Biopolitics by Nitzan Lebovic Martin Shuster The Philosophy of Life and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of Nazi Biopolitics. By Nitzan Lebovic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp xiii + 301. Cloth $95.00. ISBN: 978-1137342058. On the one hand, conceptions of life undergird radical discourse from Walter Benjamin to Michel Foucault, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Giorgio Agamben, and Roberto Esposito. On the other hand, similar conceptions animated the intense and bloody projects of the Nazi regime, and continue to inform present conservative statist projects. Yet frequently, “little if any attention is given to the shared discursive grounds that are so common to the individuals on both ends of the political map” (3). Nitzan Lebovic’s book ought to be seen as a means for interrogating this common interest in life. It does so through an inquiry into the life and work of Ludwig Klages (1872–1956), the most influential and famous twentieth-century figure of Lebensphilosophie (Philosophy of Life). Lebovic’s book displays a mastery of sources, both published and unpublished, and I am confident it will serve as a resource for decades to come. Indeed, this book is the most synoptic and elaborate study of Klages presently available. Lebovic first elaborates the complex bohemian circle that arose around the poet Stefan George in the 1890s. This circle consisted of Klages, Theodor Lessing, Stefan George, Karl Wolfskehl, Alfred Schuler, Franziska Gräfin zu Reventlow—a feminist who was sometimes Klages’s lover—and others. Where historian George Mosse (Masses and Men, 1980) constructed a direct path from this circle to National Socialism, Lebovic shows that the relationship is not so straightforward—half of the group, was, after all, Jewish. To the extent that the George Circle was involved with a multifaceted and complex critique of modernity, Lebovic demonstrates exactly why and how Klages’s ideas could find resonance with radical thinkers and movements. Indeed, Lebovic—in a palpable improvement on existing scholarship—contextualizes Lebensphilosophie as a total and complex system of thought as opposed to a merely reactionary force responding to a single element in German modernity. Especially crucial is the point that even as Lebensphilosophie led to modern biopolitics, such a path was “not one of direct ideological implementation” (77). Lebensphilosophie first arose as “an aesthetic avant-garde, favoring a pure art of living or living style above any form of politics” (76) and ultimately stressing that all “life is politics and every political act . . . the expression of life” (76–77). In this way, the initial thrust was a “form of apolitics . . . identified with the rebelliousness of a living, nonrepresentative, ur-community” (77). The third chapter forms a bridge to Lebensphilosophie’s eventual politicized transformation by focusing on Klages’s relationship with Walter Benjamin and the Nazi philosopher Alfred Baeumler. They all inherited and engaged with the thought of Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815–1887), a largely forgotten Swiss polymath who left [End Page 389] the University of Basel two decades before Nietzsche’s arrival. Lebovic shows how Bachofen proved essential to these three politically distinct thinkers. Each drew on Bachofen’s “antihistoricism” and “mythical symbolism” (102). Using Bachofen, Klages proposed an opposition to modern historicism while developing an alternate theory of temporality and thereby aesthetics and experience. Baeumler, while using the same source, pursued a philosophy of immediate, political, and fascist action (107–108). Lebovic is right to note—as many do not—that Bachofen references abound in Benjamin’s corpus (91). Yet one can uncover similar motifs in the Jewish sources Benjamin employs, and so a study of the relationship between these two streams in Benjamin’s thought—and likely Jewish thought from this period generally—is still a desideratum. Lebovic also focuses on Klages’s relationship to psychology, especially his rejection of Freudian psychology and his development of characterology: the study of a person’s character based on methods like physiognomy, phrenology, pathognomy, and anthropology. This discussion is particularly notable as it outlines the development of Klages’s philosophy in Jewish circles of characterology (148ff.), once again highlighting the supple and portable nature of Klages’s thought and the...