I’ve been fighting the Nietzsche Wars for nearly two decades now. For those of you not familiar with this epochal struggle, the Nietzsche Wars are the deep disagreements between liberal and left scholars about whether Nietzsche should be considered a right-wing conservative, which is how some of us think of him, or a serious left-wing thinker (few people actually think this anymore) or, short of that, a freeingly apolitical or antipolitical or ambiguously political thinker whose insights are useful to the left.

It just occurred to me, however, that all this time we’ve been arguing about the wrong person. The person Team Nietzsche really wants to conscript for its side, and could legitimately conscript, is Heinrich Heine.

Now, before everyone jumps to tell me what I already know—Nietzsche was a great reader and admirer of Heine—let’s remember that Nietzsche loved Heine’s language, his tone, his lightness, his cynicism, his wit. But there was a lot more to Heine than that. He really did want a revolution of plenitude, of material abundance as a precondition of moral and cultural transformation, and really did conceive of that as radical democracy.

Just one of his many thoughts on the matter:

In this, and in many other things, we differ from the men of the revolution. We do not want to be sans-culottes, frugal citizens, paltry presidents: we are founding a democracy of equally magnificent, equally holy, equally blissful gods. You demand simple clothing, abstemious habits, and unspiced pleasures; we, on the other hand, demand nectar and ambrosia, purple robes, sumptuous fragrances, pleasure and luxury, laughing nymph-dance, music and comedies. (On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany)

Heine had that aesthetic disdain for the masses and the grubbiness of democracy that some liberal/left scholars thrill to in Nietzsche. But he also did genuinely believe in revolution and in material plenitude along with a revolution of morals and manners that would elevate everyone and expand the horizon of everyone. That belief in universal elevation and excellence is just not something Nietzsche thrills to at all; far from it.

So, Heine’s your guy!