The roots and flowers of evil in Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Hitler / Claire Ortiz Hill.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Hill, Claire Ortiz.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• Good and evil.
• Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867.
• Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
• Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945.

Physical Description:

xviii, 249 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago, Ill. : Open Court, [2006]

Summary:

• Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Hitler-a poet, a philosopher, and a politician-each profoundly understood the seductive attraction of evil. All three clearly and candidly depicted evil in idealized garb. Underheath superficial appearances of contradiction, we find in their writings uncanny insight into the human essence behind the masks of convention and hypocrisy.
• Claire Ortiz Hill puts together the pieces of the puzzle of evil, like fragments of a mosaic, from the images and insights found in writings of Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Hitler. The chief works examined are Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil and Spleen of Paris, Nietzsche's Daybreak, Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Genealogy of Morals, and Hitler's Mein Kampf.
• Dr. Hill brings the thoughts and words of these three specialists of the soul into juxtaposition with real historical events in which evil is concretely manifested. Out of these depths, she appeals for an effective antidote to evil, which she finds in the achievements of nonviolent movements.

Contents:

• Au Lecteur xiv
• Part 1 From Theory ... 1
• Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Hitler, and Theories 3
• "From a Common Root ..." 8
• The Roots of Moral Values for Nietzsche 10
• Beyond Good and Evil 15
• On Blonde Beasts and Ubermenschen 18
• The Reversal of Values and the Specter of Contradiction 21
• Baudelaire on Bludgeoning the Poor 24
• Born for Evil 26
• For a Race of Masters and Conquerors 28
• The Victory of the "Better and Stronger" 31
• Neither Marx ... 34
• ... nor Jesus 37
• Nietzsche's Theories about Sick People 43
• On Fostering the Strongest and the Healthiest 45
• Hitler's Theories about Idealism in Mein Kampf 47
• The "Idealization" of Humanity 50
• Torpor and Turpitude 52
• The Intoxication of Beauty and Art 58
• The Devil 62
• The Magical Powers of Words 67
• Stripping Truth of Its Authority and Power 72
• Vice, Crime, Beauty 75
• Jung on the Sight of Evil 80
• Guilty of Realism? 81
• Behind the Masks 85
• Jung's Reflections on Hitler, Nazism, and Realism 88
• Part 2 ... To Reality 93
• Making Action the Sister of One's Dreams 95
• Of the Pen and the Sword 96
• Imagining Adolf Eichmann 98
• On Setting Aside Aesthetics 100
• A Soul Powerful in Crime 101
• Awakening Latent Tendencies in Society 103
• Civilization and Its Discontents 105
• Unleashing Pent-up Desires 108
• On the Fulfillment of Long Present Desires 110
• "The Show" by Wilfred Owen 113
• Horror Replaces the Romance of Battle 114
• The "Hidden Power of Evil" Released 116
• Expressing Primitivity, Violence, and Cruelty 118
• The Use of Terror 122
• A Satisfied Torturer 124
• Massacre 128
• Destroying One's Own 130
• Weeding Out People 133
• Cleansing Society by Destroying Useless Lives 134
• Sick, Weak Men 138
• Jung on the Sentiment of Inferiority 142
• Racism and Slaughter 144
• Mass Executions 148
• Extermination 153
• Beyond Good and Evil? 156
• Baudelaire's Meditation on a Corpse 161
• Meditating on Piles of Corpses 163
• Part 3 And from Reality to Theory 171
• From Reality to Theory 174
• What Experience Has Taught Proponents of Nonviolence 175
• Mikhail Gorbachev on Going from Theory to Reality and from Reality to Theory 177
• The Reality of Power in the Nuclear Age 178
• Attacking with the Truth 181
• Sowing the Seeds of One's Own Destruction 182
• Breeding Lilacs Out of Dead Ground 185
• Applying Social Pressure to Revolutionze Social Ideas 186
• Planting Lethal Seeds 188
• Curbing the Power of Evildoers through Nonviolent, Noncooperation with Evil 189
• A Creative Force in the Universe 191
• Limning the True and Ultimate Structure of Reality 193
• Tolstoy on Undermining the Entire Existing Order of the World 194
• Tolstoy on Penetrating the Essence of the Human Soul 196
• Tolstoy and King Contra Nietzsche 198
• Freud on the Impossibility of Eradicating Evil 199
• Freud on Reality and Religion 202
• Gandhi Contra Hitler 203
• The Power of Self-Sacrifice 206
• Hitler on Combating Spiritual Ideas by Violent Means 212
• The Power of the Ascetic Ideal 214
• The Powerless Declare War 215
• Torturing People's Consciences 217.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-231) and index.

ISBN:

0812695860

OCLC:

62728583

Publisher Number:

9780812695861