Henri Lefebvre saw Marx as an unavoidable, necessary, but insufficient starting poin' , and always insisted on the importance of Hegel to understanding Marx. Metaphilosophy also suggested the significance he ascribed to Nietzsche, in the realm of shadow' through which philosophy seeks to think the world. Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche- or the Realm of the Shadows proposes that the modern world is, at the same time, Hegelian in terms of the state, Marxist in terms of the social and society and Nietzschean in terms of civilisation and its values. As early as 1939, Lefebvre had pioneered a French reading of Nietzsche that rejected the philosophe' s appropriation by fascists, bringing out the tragic implications of Nietzsch' s proclamation that God is dea' long before this approach was followed by such later writers as Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze. Forty years later, in the last of his philosophical writings, Lefebvre juxtaposed the contributions of the three great thinkers, in a text tha' s themes remain surprisingly relevant today.
