“The Biopolitics of Souls: Racism, Nazism, and Plato” by Simona Forti: Summary and Critique

Introduction: “The Biopolitics of Souls: Racism, Nazism, and Plato” by Simona Forti

Table of Contents

“The Biopolitics of Souls: Racism, Nazism, and Plato” by Simona Forti first appeared in 2006 in the journal Political Theory (Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 9–32), published by Sage Publications. In this landmark essay, Forti critically intervenes in the field of political philosophy and literary theory by challenging the reductive, evolutionist view of Nazi biopolitics as merely a pathological outgrowth of biological determinism. Instead, she exposes a deeper philosophical lineage of Nazi racial theory rooted not in Darwin but in the Western metaphysical tradition—particularly Platonism. By tracing how Nazi ideologues appropriated Plato’s ideas of form, soul, and the ideal state, Forti reveals how metaphysical conceptions of the body-soul unity were harnessed to construct an “ideal race,” contributing to the totalitarian enterprise of life management and extermination. She argues that the Platonic notion of the soul’s embodiment was twisted into a metaphysics of racial purity, producing a “morphological racism” that operated as both myth and political program. This essay is crucial in literary theory and continental thought because it demands a more nuanced reckoning with the philosophical complicity in modern biopolitical regimes and interrogates the unsettling continuity between revered philosophical traditions and fascist ideologies. Rather than condemning Plato or idealism wholesale, Forti encourages a critical deconstruction of their mobilization in totalitarian contexts, enriching contemporary debates on race, metaphysics, and political identity.

Summary of “The Biopolitics of Souls: Racism, Nazism, and Plato” by Simona Forti

🔍 Challenging the Biological Determinism of Nazism

Forti contests the dominant view that Nazi racism was merely a “depravity of biologism” and rooted only in Darwinian evolutionism.
She argues that this “positivist, materialist, and evolutionist picture” is too simplistic and overlooks a more complex ideological tradition (Forti, 2006, p. 9).

Quotation: “Race is not always, or simply, identified with a biological and genetic heritage” (p. 10).

🧬 Morphological Racism vs. Evolutionary Racism

Forti introduces the concept of “morphological racism”, which draws from metaphysical ideas of form rather than biology.
Unlike social Darwinism, this racism is based on “a metaphysics of form”, particularly from Plato, making it more dangerous in its spiritual and philosophical grounding (p. 12).

Quotation: “This kind of racism cannot be considered a simple depravity of biologism… It presents itself as the authentic heir of that ‘metaphysics of form'” (p. 10).

🧠 The Platonic Legacy in Nazi Thought

Nazi thinkers like Rosenberg and Gunther reinterpreted Plato’s idealism to justify racial purification and soul-body unity.
Plato’s idea of Kalokagathia (unity of the good and the beautiful) was weaponized to justify selection and extermination based on external appearance.

Quotation: “The soul is race seen from the inside; race is the soul seen from the outside” (Rosenberg, quoted on p. 15).

🏛️ Plato as the Alleged Guardian of the Race

Hans F. K. Gunther’s Platon als Hüter des Lebens (Plato as Guardian of Life) portrays Plato as an early advocate of eugenic principles.

Plato’s Republic, Laws, and Statesman were read as manuals of racial selection, focusing on Auslese (selection) to maintain purity (p. 19).
Quotation: “Only men of pure blood should philosophize!” (Gunther, quoted on p. 30).

🧬 Biopolitics as the Power Over Life and Death

Forti develops Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics—the management of populations through life sciences.

In Nazi ideology, biopolitics transforms into a “metaphysics of purification”, where race becomes the site of truth and identity (p. 11).
Quotation: “Through racism, power can deal with a population as a mixture of races… it can fragment, create caesurae in the biological continuum” (p. 12).

🌀 Soul-Body Unity and the Idea of the “Type”

Nazi thinkers believed that the soul and body should perfectly correspond to a racial type or ideal form.

The “Type” becomes an archetype—the embodiment of racial and spiritual truth. Those who don’t match it are soulless (Seelenlos) or formless (Gestaltlos) (pp. 20–21).
Quotation: “Race is… a Platonic idea that gives shape and brings order to the chaotic world of appearances” (p. 18).

🔥 The Jew as the Anti-Type and Simulacrum

Jews were portrayed not just as biologically inferior but as lacking a soul altogether, mere simulacra of humanity.

This dehumanization provided ontological justification for their extermination: “These dead bodies… have always been dead bodies” (p. 24).
Quotation: “He has no soul or form of his own; his body is not part of the Idea” (p. 23).

🛡️ Platonic Thought and the Justification of Killing

The Nazi appropriation of Plato turned his vision of the good society into a program of eugenic purification.

Elimination of the unfit was recast as a moral duty: “Measured against the total psycho-physical ideal, whatever appears to be bad must be eliminated” (p. 20).
Quotation: “Plato encourages us not to feel any pity in killing a soul which is naturally bad and incorrigible” (p. 20).

🕊️ Reclaiming Philosophy: Forti’s Critical Call

Forti does not claim Plato was totalitarian but insists on facing the ambivalences within the Western philosophical tradition.

The essay urges philosophers to “think against ourselves” and resist the temptation of idealist mythologies that can be co-opted by power.
Quotation: “We must avoid any comforting view… aspects of our tradition have been taken to extremes… and actually used by totalitarianism” (p. 26).

Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “The Biopolitics of Souls: Racism, Nazism, and Plato” by Simona Forti

Term / Concept	Explanation	Example from the Article
Biopolitics	A mode of governance that regulates populations through control over life processes such as birth, health, illness, and death.	Nazi ideology is presented as a biopolitical regime that “invests life through and through” and justifies killing in the name of protecting life.
Metaphysics of Form	A philosophical tradition emphasizing ideal, non-material forms (especially from Plato) as the highest and most real truths.	Nazi racial thinking appeals to classical Platonism to justify the idea that the soul has a true “form” reflected in bodily features.
Morphological Racism	A type of racism based not on genetics but on idealized physical and spiritual forms, emphasizing the appearance of inner essence.	Rosenberg argues that race is the outer shape of the soul; this metaphysical racism goes beyond biological determinism.
Evolutionist (Biological) Racism	A racist ideology rooted in Darwinian evolution, heredity, and scientific classification of humans into biological groups.	Forti contrasts this with morphological racism, citing Vacher de Lapouge as an example of evolutionist race theory.
Totalitarianism	A political system seeking complete control over both public life and individual consciousness, including the body and soul.	Forti argues that Nazi totalitarianism aimed to form not just obedience but internal racial conformity through myth and selection.
Platonism	The philosophical view that ideal Forms (Ideas) are the ultimate reality, with human life judged by its approximation to these ideals.	Nazi thinkers like Gunther interpreted Plato’s Republic as advocating for racial selection and political eugenics.
Seelenlos / Gestaltlos	“Soulless” / “Formless” — Nazi metaphysical terms used to mark those whose bodies supposedly lack inner racial or spiritual identity.	Jews are described as mimetic simulacra, appearing human but lacking a soul, and thus excluded from humanity.
Kalokagathia	Ancient Greek concept uniting beauty (kalos) and goodness (agathos) as signs of true inner virtue.	Nazi thinkers claimed this unity of beauty and virtue as a racial goal: physical purity indicated moral and spiritual worth.
Weltanschauung	A comprehensive worldview or ideological vision used to interpret human life and society.	Rosenberg framed National Socialism as a “Weltanschauung” where race served as the basis for myth, identity, and politics.
Eugenics / Racial Selection (Auslese)	The selective breeding of humans to enhance desirable traits and eliminate undesired ones.	Gunther interpreted Plato’s ideas on breeding and education as early eugenics aimed at racial purification.
Simulacrum	An empty imitation or appearance that lacks true essence or connection to reality.	Jews were accused of being simulacra—appearing human but lacking racial soul—justifying their dehumanization.
Type / Archetype (Typus)	A fixed ideal form or model which individuals are expected to embody physically and spiritually.	The “Nordic Type” was held as the archetype of true humanity; those who deviated were considered degenerate or impure.
Mythical Time / Dream Image	A concept of myth as timeless truth rather than historical narrative; myths are used to create identity and project ideal futures.	Rosenberg claimed Germany must “dream its own dreams” and become a modern incarnation of ancient Greece through mythic identity.

Contribution of “The Biopolitics of Souls: Racism, Nazism, and Plato” by Simona Forti to Literary Theory/Theories

🧬 Post-Structuralism / Foucaultian Theory

Forti draws extensively on Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics to analyze how power works through the regulation of life, not just discourse or ideology.

She expands Foucault’s thought into the metaphysical realm, showing how Western philosophical concepts like “form,” “soul,” and “ideal type” can become instruments of power.
Quotation: “We need to understand the various implications of the homogenizing tendency of biopolitical strategies” (p. 11).
Forti challenges strictly materialist readings by revealing how Platonic metaphysics was co-opted into totalitarian logic.

🔗 Contribution: Enriches post-structuralism by exposing how metaphysical discourse (not just scientific or material discourse) is entangled in power structures.

🏛️ Critical Theory (Frankfurt School / Ideology Critique)

Forti’s reading aligns with Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of Enlightenment reason, extending it to Platonic idealism as a dangerous site for ideological construction.
She uncovers the ideological use of philosophical universals (the Good, the Soul, the Idea) as a legitimating ground for oppression and extermination.

Quotation: “It is too comforting to believe that totalitarianism… is an aberrant pathology… We must think against ourselves” (p. 26).

🔗 Contribution: Reveals how idealist metaphysics itself can produce ideological violence when repurposed by political regimes.

🧠 Psychoanalytic Theory (Freud/Lacan)

Forti’s concept of morphological racism intersects with Lacanian ideas of the Imaginary and the Simulacrum—especially in how racial identity is visually staged and misrecognized.

The Jew as “Gestaltlos” (formless) or “Seelenlos” (soulless) aligns with psychoanalytic readings of otherness and projection.
Quotation: “The Jew is often… a simulacrum: not the expression of a corrupt soul, but a mere appearance without form” (p. 23).

🔗 Contribution: Offers a psychoanalytic lens to understand how the fantasy of racial form stabilizes identity by excluding the “soulless” Other.

🔥 Political Aesthetics / Biopolitical Literary Theory

Forti extends biopolitical analysis into aesthetics—especially how forms, bodies, and myths become political instruments.
She shows how literature, art, and myth were mobilized to perform the purification and elevation of the racial Type.
Quotation: “Germany must repeat the Greek achievement… to give life to the political body as a work of art” (p. 16).

🔗 Contribution: Unveils how aesthetic ideals of harmony, beauty, and form were made into tools of exclusion and genocide.

⚔️ Postcolonial Theory / Race Theory

Although not framed as postcolonial, Forti critiques Eurocentric philosophical traditions for enabling racial hierarchies and exclusions.
She identifies how Western concepts like “humanitas” and the “Ideal Man” serve racialized exclusions, especially through Plato and later Nazi ideologues.

Quotation: “Not all individuals are born human. One has to be part of true humanity: the Idea, the Soul, and the Type” (p. 23).

🔗 Contribution: Exposes how Western literary and philosophical canons themselves carry racialized assumptions, central to postcolonial critique.

📖 Philosophy and Literature / Canon Critique

Forti provides a deep critique of Plato’s legacy in Western thought, not to condemn Plato, but to show how ambivalent concepts like soul, form, and truth can be refunctioned by authoritarian regimes.

She challenges the safe separation of the literary-philosophical canon from political history.
Quotation: “Plato’s heritage may therefore be picked up… only by Germany, which knows that nobility is an ontological issue” (p. 21).

🔗 Contribution: Encourages literary theory to reconsider the ideological uses of canonical philosophy, particularly when tied to purity, order, and hierarchy.

🌀 Deconstruction (Derrida / Nancy / Lacoue-Labarthe)

Forti builds on the deconstructive critiques of identity, myth, and origin, particularly in relation to National Socialist metaphysics.
Like Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe, she sees Nazism not just as political, but as a distorted aesthetic and philosophical project.
Quotation: “Race becomes a phenomenon perceived by our senses as an expression of the soul” (p. 18).

🔗 Contribution: Shows how deconstruction can uncover latent totalitarian structures inside apparently “universal” philosophical ideals.

Examples of Critiques Through “The Biopolitics of Souls: Racism, Nazism, and Plato” by Simona Forti

🎭 Literary Work	📝 Summary	🧠 Critique Using Forti’s Framework

🧬 The Ministry for the Future (Kim Stanley Robinson, 2020)	A speculative climate fiction imagining future global governance responding to climate catastrophe. The novel blends fiction with policy realism and humanitarian crisis scenarios.	Forti’s concept of biopolitics applies directly here: the Ministry manages life and death through population regulation, resource control, and selective sacrifice. It echoes how totalitarian systems justify killing or exclusion in the name of “saving life” (p. 11). The ideal of a single planetary body erases diversity, paralleling the drive for one unified body politic in Nazi metaphysics.

🎭 The Discomfort of Evening (Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, 2020)	A Dutch novel told from the perspective of a young girl in a repressive Christian family. Themes include trauma, bodily disgust, religious guilt, and moral decay.	The novel illustrates the metaphysical connection between the soul and the body, with bodily “impurity” signifying internal evil or spiritual decay—echoing morphological racism (p. 12). The protagonist’s obsession with deformity and decay mirrors Forti’s analysis of Kalokagathia, where inner virtue is judged through outer beauty or health (p. 18).

🪞 Trust (Hernan Diaz, 2022)	A novel composed of multiple conflicting texts, exposing the construction of financial power, legacy, and public myth in early 20th-century America.	This novel reflects Forti’s critique of Weltanschauung—a worldview that justifies domination by turning elite identity into an archetype or myth (p. 15). The constructed biography of a financier mirrors Forti’s insight into mythical Types used to stabilize power while masking underlying manipulation. The public’s belief in an idealized narrative matches how Plato’s forms were abused to justify political purity.

🧛 Lapvona (Ottessa Moshfegh, 2022)	A violent, grotesque tale set in a fictional medieval village where religion, cruelty, and bodily degradation dominate social life.	The novel resonates deeply with Forti’s ideas of soullessness (Seelenlos) and formlessness (Gestaltlos) as categories used to dehumanize those who deviate from normative form (p. 21). Characters considered impure or malformed are excluded from salvation or justice—echoing Nazi typologies where physical deformity symbolized moral corruption. The fascination with physical purity parallels Forti’s reading of racialized metaphysics.

Criticism Against “The Biopolitics of Souls: Racism, Nazism, and Plato” by Simona Forti

⚖️ Overextension of Platonic Responsibility

Some critics may argue that Forti stretches Plato’s metaphysics too far by associating it with the ideological core of Nazism.
While Forti clearly states she does not equate Plato with totalitarianism, the essay still risks conflating appropriation with complicity.

Critics might ask: To what extent is it fair to hold ancient philosophical abstractions accountable for modern political horrors?

📚 Selective Textual Interpretation

Forti relies heavily on Nazi reinterpretations of Plato (especially Gunther and Rosenberg), which may lead to a skewed reading of Plato’s intentions.
Using distorted readings by Nazi ideologues as interpretive foundations can be seen as risky without a stronger philological rebuttal.

Some might argue that Plato’s own political theory is more ambiguous and context-sensitive than Forti allows.

🧪 Underemphasis on Biological Racism

While Forti offers a compelling case for “morphological racism,” critics may feel she downplays the historical centrality of biological racism in Nazi ideology.
Forti critiques the “positivist-materialist picture” (p. 10), but critics might argue that she swings too far in the opposite direction, potentially underestimating the role of heredity and pseudo-science.

🧭 Philosophical Ambiguity in Defining “Form”

Forti’s use of “form” as both a metaphysical and political concept may appear too ambiguous or elastic.
Critics could argue that “form” functions too abstractly, and lacks the precision needed to convincingly link Platonic theory with Nazi racial ideology.

🔬 Lack of Empirical Historical Detail

The essay is highly philosophical and conceptual, with limited engagement in the broader historical machinery of Nazism or racial policy.

Some scholars may see this as a weakness in historical grounding, especially when engaging with such weighty political topics as genocide and race laws.

🧠 Neglect of Alternative Interpretations of Plato

Forti focuses on Plato’s reception by Nazi thinkers, but doesn’t sufficiently engage with progressive or emancipatory interpretations of Plato.
For example, many modern philosophers and literary theorists read Plato’s work as a critique of tyranny, not a foundation for it.

This omission could suggest an imbalance in theoretical representation.

🧨 Risk of Philosophical Guilt by Association

Despite her disclaimers, Forti’s analysis may be seen as contributing to a “philosophical guilt by association”.
The danger lies in implying that deep structures of Western metaphysics inherently lend themselves to fascism, a view that some see as historically reductionist or philosophically fatalistic.

🛑 Potential for Misuse of Her Argument

Forti’s work is intellectually nuanced, but some critics worry that her argument could be misused to discredit philosophy as a whole.

By exposing how Platonic ideas were exploited by Nazis, non-academic or ideological readers might misread her thesis as an attack on philosophy or classical thought altogether.

Representative Quotations from “The Biopolitics of Souls: Racism, Nazism, and Plato” by Simona Forti with Explanation

🔖 Quotation	🧠 Explanation
🧬 “Race is not always, or simply, identified with a biological and genetic heritage.” (p. 10)	Forti introduces her core argument that Nazi racism involved more than just science or genes — it was deeply metaphysical, involving ideas of form and soul.
🌀 “This kind of racism… presents itself as the authentic heir of that ‘metaphysics of form’ that traces its roots back to classical antiquity, in particular to Plato’s work.” (p. 10)	Forti identifies a shift from Darwinian racism to a more Platonic, idealist racism — where race becomes a spiritual form, not just a genetic trait.
🛡️ “Plato’s heritage may therefore be picked up… only by Germany, which knows that the distinction between noble and non-noble is… an ontological issue.” (p. 21)	She critically discusses how Nazi thinkers appropriated Plato to claim racial superiority as an ontological truth — not just a cultural one.
🎭 “The Jew is often… a simulacrum: not the expression of a corrupt soul, but a mere appearance without form.” (p. 23)	This quote illustrates the Nazi metaphysical justification for genocide — Jews were seen as formless, soulless, non-participants in the Idea of Man.
🏛️ “Only men of pure blood should philosophize!” (Gunther, quoted by Forti, p. 30)	Forti reveals the Nazi distortion of Plato to justify elitist and racialized education, turning philosophy into a tool of eugenics.
📚 “We must avoid any comforting view, recognizing that aspects… of our tradition have been… used by totalitarianism.” (p. 26)	A key self-reflexive moment: Forti challenges readers to confront how Western philosophy has sometimes been complicit in systems of oppression.
🧱 “Beauty and goodness are part of truth once they become real or ‘embodied.’” (p. 18)	This reflects the Nazi misuse of kalokagathia — the ancient Greek ideal of external beauty as a sign of internal virtue — in racial terms.
🔬 “Justice is the health of the ghenos, and attaining the state of health is the expression of the truth of justice.” (p. 20)	Forti exposes how Nazi thinkers redefined justice as biological — a racial hygiene that justifies exclusion a