The Intellectual Foundations of the Holocaust

Thomas Hobbes Life in a state of nature was a “war of all against all” in which each person tries to take that belonging to the other. Thus the life of the individual is “nasty, brutish, and short.” People thus surrender their sovereignty to a king in return for security.

John Locke Man has natural rights, including the rights of life, liberty and property. The social contract, then, is one in which people surrender their sovereignty to a government, giving it the authority to rule, in return for the protection of these natural rights. If government fails to secure these rights, in essence breaching the contract, the people have the right to rebel and take back their sovereignty.

Jefferson “We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Madame de Stael “Romanticism”

Johan Wolfgang von Goethe

According to Mosse: The University of Wisconsin The term Volk translated as people, nation, tribe, race, men. Volk is a kind of transcendental “essence” or “innermost nature” of a people.

The Volk amplified Romanticism as an alternative to modernity “The Jew in Germany would come to represent all things modern.” (Mosse 17).

Johan Herder

Hegel

Friedrich Nietzsche

Charles Darwin Life is a struggle for limited resources

Herbert Spencer

Artur Schopenhauer Philosophy of Will

Joseph-Artur Comte de Gobineau Gobineau and Racial Policies

Houston Stewart Chamberlin