Book: The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism

In 2004, Princeton University Press published Richard Wolin's "The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism":

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7705.html

From the publisher's description: "In this intellectual genealogy of the postmodern spirit, Richard Wolin shows that postmodernism's infatuation with fascism has been widespread and not incidental. He calls into question postmodernism's claim to have inherited the mantle of the left – and suggests that postmodern thought has long been smitten with the opposite end of the political spectrum.

"In probing chapters on C.G. Jung, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot, Wolin discovers an unsettling commonality: during the 1930s, these thinkers leaned to the right and were tainted by a proverbial 'fascination with fascism.' Frustrated by democracy's shortcomings, they were seduced by fascism's grandiose promises of political regeneration. The dictatorships in Italy and Germany promised redemption from the uncertainties of political liberalism. [...]

"Postmodernism's origins among the profascist literati of the 1930s reveal a dark political patrimony. The unspoken affinities between Counter-Enlightenment and postmodernism constitute the guiding thread of Wolin's suggestive narrative. In their mutual hostility toward reason and democracy, postmodernists and the advocates of Counter-Enlightenment betray a telltale strategic alliance – they cohabit the fraught terrain where far left and far right intersect."

Reviews: "The Seduction of Unreason is a wide-ranging yet subtle consideration of the intellectual's abiding fascination with absolutism, and as such it is a perceptive, compelling and invaluable document." (John Banville, "The Irish Times")

The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):

http://books.google.com/books?id=4H4BeyiYBuEC&printsec=frontcover

Richard Wolin is Distinguished Professor of History at CUNY.