Daniel Tutt

Can you believe that it has been over six months of quarantine conditions here in the states? While work and childrearing have been constant distractions during this time, I have managed to have a productive writing and research period, more productive than I normally am in fact. I have published three articles and hosted two serious and organized reading groups.

In January of this year, before the pandemic broke out, I received a book about Nietzsche that had come recommended by a philosopher whom I deeply respect. I ordered a review copy of this book published by Brill and going for over $400!

The book is The Aristocratic Rebel by the late Domenico Losurdo, a philosopher and historian. This book is about the philosopher Nietzsche, one of the most elusive and famed philosophers of all time, and especially of the modern period.

This book is long. It is over 1,000 pages and it is dense with scholarship. It is a biography but much more than that. Each page is dripping with context into Nietzsche’s life and times. Reading the book is like being catapulted to a different time, but a time not too unlike our own.

All of that is to warm you up for a review essay I am proud to share with you about this work published by the Historical Materialism journal. Please read it here and let me know what you think.

Although it is too often the case today that polemics and critiques rarely result in a thoughtful shift in the direction they intend to influence, my hope is that this book results in a shift within the left-Nietzschean community. But I know how deep that commitment is for those apart of it, so I am sober about what is possible. In any case, please enjoy the review essay.