Domenico Losurdo Quotes

One thing is clear: One cannot understand the Nazi vocabulary adequately if one only looks at Germany. What is the "blood disgrace" of which 'Mein Kampf' warns – as we have seen – if not the "miscegenation" that is condemned also by the proponents of 'White Supremacy'? Even the key term of Nazi-ideology 'subhuman [Untermensch]' is a translation of the American 'Under Man'!

. . . 'science' was now called on to sanction and sanctify existing social relations. According to Malthus, it was wholly desirable that political economy be 'taught to the common people.' Thanks to it, the poor would understand that they must attribute the cause of their privations to Mother Nature or their own improvidence.

To know how to say no to modern excitement was also the condition for the autonomous construction of one's own personality. He that 'does not want to be part of the masses' and did not want to be 'factory goods' was to pay great heed. Certainly, to '"give style" to one's character is a great and rare art', which required an effort of self-discipline from which 'the weak characters with no power over themselves' flinched back. And here Nietzsche appealed to the youth: 'Always continue to become what you are - educator and moulder of yourself'.
To achieve this result, it was necessary never to lose sight of the 'true liberation of life', and to swim against the stream rather than chase blindly and recklessly after the ruling ideologies and myths of an age ruled not 'by living human beings, but instead by publicly opining pseudo-human beings'. No doubt this appeal was part of a reactionary critique of modernity, but that in no way detracted from the charm of this lesson in living and this appeal for autonomy of judgement.