Friday 17 January 2020

Armin Mohler, “Before History: Some Unsystematic Remarks” (1975)


My translation, rather provisional, of Armin Mohler’s “Devant l’histoire: quelques remarques non-systématiques,” Nouvelle École 27–28 (1975). These few brief theses bear the marks of Mohler’s “nominalism,” his term for his rejection of the “eternally valid” in politics, and of his anti-systematic thought. If you have any critical comments on this translation in particular (but any of my efforts), please do say. These are in part an exercise for me; I'm eager to improve.

The French original can be found at


And a PDF of this translation at


Regarding “nominalism” from Nietzsche to Mohler to Alain de Benoist:


Interview with Armin Mohler (1994)


My translation of an interview with Armin Mohler in Éléments 80 (1994). Of particular interest to the history ideas must be his comments on the applicability of the category “conservative revolution” to France. Mohler’s best known work is his history of the Conservative Revolution in Germany, recently translated into English by F. R. Devlin (2018), which began as a doctoral dissertation in 1949 supervised by Karl Jaspers, and went through many editions over the years.

The French original is available at


And a PDF of this version at


Monday 13 January 2020

Guillaume Faye, “The Clash of World-conceptions” (1993)


My translation of Guillaume Faye’s “Le choc des conceptions du monde,” Vouloir 97–100 (January–March 1993). Faye was a political scientist associated for a time with Alain de Benoist and the semi-legendary nouvelle droite. As this interesting essay shows, Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s rereadings of the philosophical tradition made a great impression on his thought.

The original French text is available at Archives EROE:


A PDF of this version is available here:


Wednesday 8 January 2020

Herrschafts-Gebilde, Schemes of Sovereignty, Structures of Domination


On the Genealogy of Morals, II 17. Nietzsche’s original, 1887:

Ihr Werk ist ein instinktives Formen-schaffen, Formen-aufdrücken, es sind die unfreiwilligsten, unbewusstesten Künstler, die es giebt:—in Kürze steht etwas Neues da, wo sie erscheinen, ein Herrschafts-Gebilde, das lebt, in dem Theile und Funktionen abgegrenzt und bezüglich gemacht sind, in dem Nichts überhaupt Platz findet, dem nicht erst ein „Sinn“ in Hinsicht auf das Ganze eingelegt ist.

Transl. Horace B. Samuel, 1913:

Their work is an instinctive creating and impressing of forms, they are the most involuntary, unconscious artists that there are:—their appearance produces instantaneously a scheme of sovereignty which is live, in which the functions are partitioned and apportioned, in which above all no part is received or finds a place, until pregnant with a “meaning” in regard to the whole.

And transl. Carol Diethe, 1994:

What they do is to create and imprint forms instinctively, they are the most involuntary, unconscious artists there are:—where they appear, soon something new arises, a structure of domination that lives, in which parts and functions are differentiated and related to one another, in which there is absolutely no room for anything that does not first acquire “meaning” with regard to the whole.

Keith Ansell-Pearson, Nietzsche and Political Thought, p. 98, offers “complex of mastery.” Others include “ruling structure” and “domination-formation.”

“[T]he German word Herrschafts-Gebilde,” explains Franz Graf zu Solms-Laubach, “‘forms of domination,’ means both abstract as well as concrete forms of domination” (Nietzsche and Early German and Austrian Sociology [2007], p. 26).

“Structure of domination,” to the modern ear, has a moralistic, condemnatory overtone. Samuel’s “sovereignty” captures more of the rich resonances of the original “Herrschaft.” “Mastery” would do it better, though: Herrschaft and mastery suggests also the craft and virtù of the master or dominus.

Maudemarie Clark in Nietzsche on Ethics and Politics (Oxford, 2015): “As the result of brutish, forcible interaction, the interaction among these primitive humans is no longer simply brute and forced: it has become political” (p. 279). “To the extent that there is a ‘whole,’ there is a foothold for judgments that can be made about […] what is just or fair” (ibid.).

And re. the emergence of unity, Nietzsche, quoted in Ansell-Pearson, p. 97:

All unity is only as organisation and interplay unity: not otherwise than how a human community is a unity: so, opposite of atomistic anarchy; therewith a complex of rule, which signifies One, but is not one.

Tuesday 7 January 2020

Old posts on Nietzsche, mostly

Thematic index of posts from an ole blarg with an embarrassing name. Quotes and notes.


Posts on Nietzsche


F.N.'s story of the origin of the state is a version of the Männerbünde myth so popular with conservative revolutionaries.

http://unterrified.blogspot.com/2019/04/nietzsche-on-origin-of-state.html

F.N. was a pan-Europeanist.

http://unterrified.blogspot.com/2019/03/nietzsche-our-belief-in-virilising-of.html


On Nietzsche and Cioran


Cioran treats the Nietzschean theme of "the problem of Europe" in Écartèlement. The real pessimist, says Evola in Cavalcare, sees even will-to-power as vanitas. Cioran was a real pessimist. For him, Nietzsche's thirst for politics in the Grand Style is symptomatic; but no less so for Nietzsche is a pessimism like Cioran's.

http://unterrified.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-problem-of-europe-in-emil-cioran.html

Polish aristocrat, Piedmontese dandy, Swiss professor or aphorist alla francese, but German? Never!

http://unterrified.blogspot.com/2019/06/cioran-on-style-why-nietzsche-is-not.html


Miscellanea


How unconscious are the artists of the state?

http://unterrified.blogspot.com/2019/04/susan-sontag-on-aestheticised-politics.html

Continuity between Nietzsche, the conservative revolution and the nouvelle driote.

http://unterrified.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-nominalism-of-mohler-and-de-benoist.html

A bit of Cyril Connolly.

http://unterrified.blogspot.com/2019/03/connollys-last-comment.html

Some speculative Nordicist anthropology.

http://unterrified.blogspot.com/2019/04/grnbech-on-teutons.html