From Rousseau to Revolution: A Rocky Journey
Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger
Contrary to the expectations that might be raised by its main title, along with the cover portrait of Napoleon on horseback, this is not chiefly a book about either tyrants or violent revolutionaries. Rather, it forms the third part of a trilogy, of which the first volume discussed tyranny in the history of political thought from antiquity to early modernity, and the second offered a history of tyranny from ancient times to the present. In this book, Newell, currently a visiting professor at the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, returns to the level of philosophy. He traces the “Philosophy of Freedom” initiated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a reaction against the perceived meaninglessness of “bourgeois” life, and then developed, and radicalized, by his German successors, notably Georg W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger.
The Philosophy of Freedom
While Newell sees the ultimate influence of this philosophy, once transformed by Hegel’s three major successors, as problematic—even, indeed, helping to inspire Communist and Nazi tyrannies in the 20th century, along with radical movements like Russian nationalism and Iranian jihadism today—he observes at its core a necessary corrective to the excesses of today’s bourgeois individualism and cultural philistinism, which might offer a needed pathway back to the greatness of classical Greek thought and culture, and to the sense of individual and communal “wholeness” that today’s liberal polities are felt to lack.
Rousseau’s Reaction
As Newell recounts, in the late 18th century Rousseau initiated a reaction against the teachings of the great liberal political philosophers (most notably Thomas Hobbes and John Locke). He argued that their doctrines, which derived the standards of political legitimacy from a hypothetical “state of nature” prior to the establishment of government, while aimed at securing human beings’ inalienable rights, generated a dichotomy both within and among human beings, between individual and community, and between our longing for a lost natural freedom and the need to obey the commands of government for the sake of our security.
The Influence of Kant
But while Rousseau saw the human problem as only incompletely soluble, his presentation of it encouraged subsequent thinkers to undertake more radical and comprehensive resolutions. The most influential of these in the late 18th century was Immanuel Kant, who endeavored to elevate human dignity, in the face of modern science’s removal of meaning from nature, by teaching an ethic of duty, through which, by obeying the moral command of pure reason—the “categorical imperative”—we transcend the natural world entirely, to enter the “noumenal” realm (a kind of replacement for the “Ideas” depicted by Plato’s Socrates) of genuine reality.
Hegel’s Historical Progression
A far more profound challenge to Hegel’s “end of history” thesis was posed by Nietzsche, who in one of his earliest essays argued that such an end, far from resolving the human problem, would obliterate our distinctive humanity. Unlike Marx, Nietzsche, as Newell observes, was concerned with the restoration of genuine liberal education, for its effect in promoting a meaningful life. But while that concern was one that he shared as well with Plato and Aristotle, as a historicist Nietzsche could not espouse a return to the classical understanding of the right ordering of the human soul as the goal of education. Instead, “Nietzsche identifies our capacity for wholeness entirely with our historical dynamism and experiences.” This led him to undertake a massive project for reconstructing human life on the basis of anti-Platonic and hence (as he understood it) of anti-Christian principles, grounded on the thought that life must be understood not as Platonic or Christian eros (for wisdom or for God), but rather as Will to Power.
Heidegger’s Influence
With Heidegger, it would appear that the “Philosophy of Freedom,” and possibly philosophy itself, has ended. Nonetheless, Newell concludes by denying the desirability of dismissing that movement in favor of a soulless liberalism expressed by Thomas Hobbes, or in its most decadent contemporary form by the dogmatic egalitarian-moral libertarian Harvard philosophy professor John Rawls. Still, Newell rightly defends liberalism in its broader sense (as expressed, say, by John Locke, David Hume, and Thomas Jefferson) against its reduction to mere materialism and individualism. And he observes that liberalism today can still be enriched by the cultural legacy of the Philosophy of Freedom, including ”its veneration for ancient culture” and for the formative influence of great art, music, and literature.
Conclusion
Tyranny and Revolution is a fine work of scholarship. My one major criticism would be that Newell too readily accepts the historicist premise that because modern natural science has apparently refuted the cosmology with which classical philosophy was tied, a return to classical principles is impossible. While he cites Leo Strauss’s remark that classical philosophy was inextricably tied to a teleological view of the universe that reason can no longer support, Newell seems unaware of
How did Nietzsche’s views on education differ from those of Rousseau and Kant?
Well as with Rousseau and Kant, Nietzsche differed from these thinkers in maintaining that education would succeed in this only by reinvigorating the passionate life (the “will to power”, as he termed it) for the sake of individual self-realization, rather than in overcoming the passions in the pursuit of rational enlightenment. Thus, Nietzsche was left with no choice but to idealize those individuals and communities that had done so most completely and creatively—a company that, in his own time, seemed to consist of artists more than philosophers or politicians.
Heidegger’s Existentialism
Heidegger, Nietzsche’s ambitious German successor, held a solution where both philosophers had failed: a “return” to the genuinely classical way of life. This was imagined as a collective endeavor by which Dasein (human existence) would recover its original sense of “being” (which had, over time, been lost). This special “event” was eventually seen to mean a reconstruction of the Western philosophical canon—not by resurrecting Plato or Aristotle, Scholasticism, Descartes or Kant, Hegel or Marx, but rather by rediscovering original Greek ways of thinking and being; and, in particular, by recognizing the distinctively Greek outlook on life as both individual and communal, cyclical as well as repetitive, tragic as well as comic, religious as well as political, all at the same time.
A New Possibility
Thus, as Newell argues, Rousseau and his successors offered a reaction against the modern individualist and mechanistic worldview. They highlighted the importance of community, the need for moral duty, the power of passion and self-realization, and the search for meaning and authenticity. While their ideas may have been interpreted in ways that led to tyranny and revolution, at their core, they contain valuable insights that could contribute to a more balanced and meaningful understanding of human life.
In addressing the shortcomings of today’s liberal societies, which are often criticized for their focus on individualism and consumerism, the philosophy of Rousseau to Heidegger reminds us of the importance of community, duty, and self-discovery. It serves as a call to reconsider the meaning of freedom and to strive for a more holistic and authentic existence.
Ultimately, the journey from Rousseau to Heidegger takes us on a philosophical exploration of the human condition, offering alternative perspectives on the nature of freedom, the significance of community, and the pursuit of a meaningful life. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the conclusions drawn by these philosophers, their ideas challenge us to question the status quo and to imagine new possibilities for individual and communal flourishing.
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