Anthony Ludovici


Anthony Mario Ludovici MBE was a British philosopher, sociologist, social critic and polyglot. He is known as a proponent of aristocracy and an anti-egalitarianism, and in the early 20th century was a leading British conservative author. He wrote on subjects including art, metaphysics, politics, economics, religion, the differences between the sexes and races, health, and eugenics.
Ludovici began his career as an artist, painting and illustrating books. He was private secretary to sculptor Auguste Rodin for several months in 1906. He later wrote over 30 books, and translating many others.

Early life

Ludovici was born in London, England on 8 January 1882 to Albert Ludovici, and Marie Cals. Ludovici's father and grandfather, Albert Ludovici, Sr., were both artists. He was of Basque, French, German and Italian ancestry. He was educated privately, in England and abroad but chiefly by his mother. As a young student he became friends with Harry Guy Radcliffe Drew, whom he met at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Years later he befriended Drew's young daughters Dorothy and Joyce. He married Elsie Finnimore Buckley on 20 March 1920, and they first lived at 35 Central Hill, Upper Norwood in South London. He spent several years in Germany where he studied Nietzsche's writings in the original German. He was fluent in several languages.
During the year 1906, Ludovici was private secretary to the sculptor Auguste Rodin, and as such had a close association with him. He later wrote of his personal experiences of Rodin's personality and art, as well as his own opinions, in articles first appearing in the Cornhill Magazine from 1923, and in 1926 published in a book Personal Reminiscences of Auguste Rodin. He began lecturing on art, politics, religion, and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, about whom he wrote Who is to be Master of the World?: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and Nietzsche: His Life and Works. Nietzsche scholar William Mackintire Salter called Nietzsche: His Life and Works "the well-nigh perfect short manual" on Nietzsche. According to Steven Aschheim, his 1911 Nietzsche and Art was "a unique attempt to write a Nietzschean history of art in terms of rising aristocratic and decadent-democratic epochs". This was the year of the first Parliament Act 1911, cutting back the power of the House of Lords. It also marks a watershed or change in Ludovici's writing, to a more overt political line, which would only sharpen over the next 25 years.
During World War I he joined the New Army as a translator, and then served as an artillery officer at Armentières and the Somme, where he described himself as "a miserable and vermin-ridden trench-rat", and then in the Intelligence Staff at the War Office, where after two years of service he rose to head of his department. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire, which he immediately returned because he felt that it was too easily attainable and held by too many people. He attained the rank of Captain during World War I., He was subsequently called 'Captain' as a nickname.
After the war, he became a student of Dr. Oscar Levy, editor of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, the first translation of Nietzsche's works in English. Ludovici contributed several volumes.
Ludovici came across the Alexander Technique in 1925 and said he had lessons in 'deportment' over a period of four years with F.M. Alexander.

Writing

Ludovici's writing was varied, and took traditional conservative stances on social issues. Liberalism, socialism, Marxism, Christianity, feminism, multiculturalism, the modern culture of consumerism and revolt against tradition constituted Ludovici's main areas of attack.
He wrote "I have long been an opponent and critic of Christianity, democracy, and anarchy in art and literature. I am particularly opposed to 'Abstract Art,' which I trace to Whistler's heretical doctrines of art and chiefly to his denial that the subject matters, his assimilation of the graphic arts and music, and his insistence on the superior importance of the composition and colour-harmony of a picture, over its representational content." He was an early critic of Jacob Epstein, attacking him in The New Age, to which he contributed as an art critic before the Great War.
In his A Defence of Aristocracy, Ludovici defends aristocracy against government in popular control. In The False Assumptions of "Democracy", he attacked the democratic idea and the liberal attitude in general, as being unnatural. A Defence of Conservatism defends tradition as being tied to survival.
For Ludovici, egalitarianism was a denial of the innate biological differences between individuals, the sexes and races. He criticized what he saw as the sentimental coddling of the mediocre and botched. His articles were a regular feature of the New Pioneer, a far-right journal controlled by Viscount Lymington and closely linked to the British People's Party. Ludovici repeatedly warned of the dangers of miscegenation and defended incest as an appropriate response to racial mixing, arguing that society should act 'to break down the barriers now preventing the mating of close relatives' as it was the only way to cause 'a purification of our stock.'.

Views

Ludovici's views were nationalist and traditionalist, and he supported eugenics. He argued that heredity influences group values and national and racial characteristics.

Later life

He was on the Selection Committee of the Right Book Club, with Norman Thwaites, Trevor Blakemore, Collinson Owen and W. A. Foyle.
After the Second World War, Ludovici fell into obscurity. In 1936, he had written enthusiastically about Adolf Hitler, whom he had met personally that year, along with many other high-ranking Nazi leaders. He was critical of the effect of Jews on the history of England, writing a work under the pseudonym Cobbett, The Jews, and the Jews in England.
Ludovici was dismissed from his intelligence work on 14 August 1940 and his house was subsequently raided allegedly due to his membership of the political group The Right Club. On Friday 8 October 1940, Ludovici was interviewed at Scotland Yard, and then released.
From 1955 until 1969 Ludovici wrote a series of articles in the monthly journal The South African Observer. Topics under his analysis included The Essentials of Good Government in a series of 20 monthly parts, and Public Opinion in England in a similar series.

Works

Non-fiction

Compilations
Autobiography
The Confessions of an Anti-Feminist: The Autobiography of Anthony M. Ludovici, Day, John V., San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2018.

Fiction