ABSTRACT
The chapter will examine Heidegger's conception of “spiritual fascism”: Heidegger believed that the essence of modernism for Nietzsche was the dominance of nihilism, which had three manifestations: the supremacy of science and technology, work as a universal existential style and the recognition of existential nihilism as a normal condition. The chapter will prepare the ground for Heidegger's conception of “spiritual fascism” through pointing out a particular direction of Nietzsche's interpretation which has been subdued over the years: although the concept of “the aesthetic education of humanity” had already been formulated by Schiller, Kant, Schelling and Schopenhauer. The principal innovations of the intellectual trend under discussion were the interweaving of the existential experience, the aesthetic conception and the political dimension as complementary manifestations of the Community of Experience. The Nietzscheanism of the radical Right and the anesthetization of the moral principles prepared the ground for a spiritual conception of fascism which materialized in Heidegger's metaphysics and politics.
