Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Hitler—a poet, a philosopher, and a politician—each profoundly understood the seductive attraction of evil. All three made clear, candid pronouncements on the depiction of evil in idealized garb. Underneath the superficial and Hitler appearances of contradiction, we find in their writings uncanny insight into the human essence behind the masks of convention and hypocrisy.

Claire Ortiz Hill puts together the pieces of the puzzle of evil, like fragments of a mosaic, from the images and insights found in writings of Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Hitler. The chief works examined are Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil and Spleen of Paris, Nietzsche’s Daybreak, Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Genealogy of Morals, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Claire Ortiz Hill is a religious hermit with the Archdiocese of Paris and an independent scholar.

Claire Ortiz Hill, The Roots and Flowers of Evil in Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Hitler, ISBN: 0-8126-9586-0, $19.57, 288 pages

Read the short presentation of this book by the Nietzsche Circle

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