In this brilliant book, Lukacs shows how Nazism attacked reason and science. Irrationalism mirrors reaction's contempt for science and its indulgence in superstition and myth.
He writes, "the subject-matter which now presents itself to us is Germany's path to Hitler in the sphere of philosophy. That is to say, we mean to show how this concrete path is reflected in philosophy, and how philosophical formulations, as an intellectual mirroring of Germany's concrete development towards Hitler, helped to speed up the process."
Lukacs shows how irrationalism was born in German feudal absolutism's reaction to the French revolution of 1789. He studies the idealist irrationalism of Friedrich Schelling, Soren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer and, in particular, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche said, "The need is for a new reign of terror." He called for `a daring master race', for `the great man' and for great wars. "There will be wars the like of which have never been seen on earth before." He praised `the beast of prey, the magnificent blond beast in greedy search of spoils and conquest'.
Lukacs examines and criticises German sociology in the imperialist period (Max Weber, Karl Mannheim and Carl Schmitt), social Darwinism and racial theory from Joseph Gobineau to Houston Chamberlain, and vitalism in imperial Germany (Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Simmel, Oswald Spengler, Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers). He shows how their ideas were either no barrier to Nazism (Weber, Mannheim, Dilthey, Simmel and Jaspers) or actually paved the way for fascism (Schmitt, Gobineau, Chamberlain, Spengler and Heidegger).
Lukacs shows how Nazism took over the whole legacy of irrationalism. Irrationalism is always an ideology of militant reaction; it is all about combating Marxism, dialectical and historical materialism.