Abstract

After the Second World War, German intellectuals who opposed the Nazi regime, faced a crisis of consciousness. They were concerned with a critical analysis, which involved every aspect and even the very essence of their culture. In this contribution, I will turn my attention to some segments of this debate on myth, irrationality and nihilism within the field of classical scholarship and history of religions, approaching as samples the correspondence of three scholars, who are representative for three generations before, during and after WWII: the Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann, the Hungarian mythologist Karolyi Kerényi and the Italian mythologist Furio Jesi, theorist and critic of the right-wing culture. In the work and reflection of all these authors, Friedrich Nietzsche will play a key role.