Abstract

In his book The Destruction of Reason, Georg Lukács declared the Jewish sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz to be a forerunner of National-Socialist race theory. Although Gumplowicz's philosophy of history undoubtedly features social-Darwinism and a certain category of “race,” for obvious reasons he could not approve of the central element of contemporary and subsequent German race-theories: AntiSemitism. But rather than resolutely opposing Jew-hatred, Gumplowicz rationalized the everlasting persecution of the Jews and favoured a strong affirmation of Jewish assimilation as an effective antidote. As little space as the theory of anti-Semitism takes up in Gumplowicz's works, as much it seems to be the key to discover the motives of this resigned Enlightener and former civic-nationalist revolutionary.