The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition

In this masterful work of historical scholarship, Zeev Sternhell, an internationally renowned Israeli political scientist and historian, presents a controversial new view of the origins of fascism, locating them in the eighteenth century with the advent of the Anti-Enlightenment, a far earlier date than most historians. The thinkers belonging to the Anti-Enlightenment (a tradition originally identified by Friedrich Nietzsche) represent a perspective that is anti-rational and anti-intellectual and rejects the principles of natural law. Sternhell asserts that the Anti-Enlightenment is a development separate from the Enlightenment and sees the two traditions as evolving parallel to one another over time. He contends that J.G. Herder, Edmund Burke, and Joseph de Maistre can be connected to the origins of the Anti-Enlightenment and shows how that tradition undermines the very foundations of liberalism, contributing to the development of fascism that culminated in the European catastrophes of the twentieth century.