{"id":2120857,"date":"2023-12-10T05:33:02","date_gmt":"2023-12-10T10:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-bumpy-road-from-rousseau-to-revolution\/"},"modified":"2023-12-10T05:38:43","modified_gmt":"2023-12-10T10:38:43","slug":"the-bumpy-road-from-rousseau-to-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-bumpy-road-from-rousseau-to-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"From Rousseau to Revolution: A Rocky Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-bumpy-road-from-rousseau-to-revolution%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2120857&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>Tyranny and\u2062 Revolution: Rousseau to \u200cHeidegger<\/h2>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Contrary to the\u2062 expectations that might be raised by its main title, along with the cover portrait of Napoleon on \u200bhorseback, this \u200dis not chiefly a book about either tyrants or\u2063 violent revolutionaries. Rather, it forms the third part of a trilogy, of which the first volume discussed tyranny in the history\u2063 of political thought from antiquity to early modernity, and the second offered\u200d a history of\u2064 tyranny from ancient times to the present. In this book, Newell, currently a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/prominent-professor-takes-down-virtue-signaling-seth-rogen-gets-canceled-hard\/\" title=\"Prominent Professor Takes Down \u2018Virtue Signaling\u2019 Seth Rogen, Gets Canceled Hard\">visiting professor<\/a> \u2063at\u200b the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education \u2064at the University of Florida, returns to the\u200d level of philosophy. He \u2062traces the &#8220;Philosophy of Freedom&#8221; initiated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a reaction against the perceived meaninglessness of &#8220;bourgeois&#8221; life, and then developed, and radicalized, by his German successors, notably Georg W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h3>The Philosophy of Freedom<\/h3>\n<p>While Newell sees the ultimate influence\u2064 of \u200cthis philosophy, once transformed\u2063 by Hegel\u2019s three\u200d major successors, as problematic\u2014even, indeed, helping to inspire Communist and Nazi tyrannies in the 20th century, along with radical movements\u200b like\u200c Russian nationalism and Iranian jihadism today\u2014he \u2062observes at its core a necessary corrective to the excesses of today\u2019s bourgeois individualism and cultural philistinism, which might offer a needed pathway back to the greatness of classical Greek thought\u2064 and culture, \u200band to the sense of individual and communal &#8220;wholeness&#8221; \u2062that today\u2019s liberal polities\u200b are felt to lack.<\/p>\n<h3>Rousseau&#8217;s\u200d Reaction<\/h3>\n<p>As Newell\u200c recounts, \u200cin the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/exclusive-arizona-attorney-general-condemns-biden-administrations-warning-label-on-constitution-declaration\/\" title=\"EXCLUSIVE: Arizona Attorney General Condemns Biden Administration\u2019s Warning Label On Constitution, Declaration\">late 18th century<\/a>\u2064 Rousseau initiated\u2063 a reaction against the teachings of the\u2062 great liberal political philosophers (most notably Thomas Hobbes and John Locke). He argued that their doctrines, which derived the standards of\u2064 political legitimacy from a hypothetical &#8220;state of nature&#8221; prior to the establishment of government, while aimed at securing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/what-conservatism-must-conserve\/\" title=\"What Conservatism Must Conserve\">human beings<\/a>\u2019 inalienable rights, generated a dichotomy both \u2062within and among \u200chuman beings, between\u2062 individual and community, and between our longing for a lost natural freedom \u2063and the need to obey the commands of government for the sake\u2064 of our security.<\/p>\n<h3>The Influence of Kant<\/h3>\n<p>But while Rousseau saw the human problem as only incompletely\u200c soluble, his presentation\u2062 of it encouraged subsequent thinkers to undertake more radical and comprehensive resolutions. The most influential of these in the late 18th century was\u2062 Immanuel Kant, who endeavored to elevate human dignity, in the face of modern science\u2019s removal of meaning from nature, by teaching an ethic of duty, through which, by obeying the moral command of pure reason\u2014the &#8220;categorical imperative&#8221;\u2014we transcend the natural world entirely, to enter the &#8220;noumenal&#8221; realm\u2064 (a kind of replacement for the &#8220;Ideas&#8221; depicted by Plato\u2019s Socrates)\u2063 of genuine reality.<\/p>\n<h3>Hegel&#8217;s Historical Progression<\/h3>\n<p>A far more profound challenge to Hegel\u2019s &#8220;end of history&#8221;\u2064 thesis was posed by Nietzsche, who in one of his earliest essays argued that \u200bsuch an end,\u200b far\u2062 from resolving \u200bthe human problem, would obliterate our distinctive humanity. \u200bUnlike Marx, Nietzsche, as\u200b Newell observes, was concerned with the restoration of genuine liberal education, for its effect in promoting a meaningful life. But while that\u200c concern was one that he shared as well with Plato \u200cand Aristotle, as a historicist Nietzsche could not espouse a return\u200c to the classical understanding \u200bof the right ordering of\u2062 the human\u2064 soul as the goal of education. Instead, &#8220;Nietzsche \u2062identifies our \u2062capacity for wholeness entirely with our historical dynamism \u200dand experiences.&#8221; This led him to undertake \u200da \u200dmassive project for reconstructing human life on the \u2063basis \u2062of anti-Platonic and hence (as he understood it) of \u200banti-Christian principles, grounded on the thought that life must be\u2062 understood not as \u200cPlatonic or Christian eros (for wisdom or for God), but\u200b rather as Will to \u2064Power.<\/p>\n<h3>Heidegger&#8217;s Influence<\/h3>\n<p>With Heidegger, it would appear that \u200bthe &#8220;Philosophy \u200cof Freedom,&#8221; and possibly philosophy itself, has\u2063 ended. Nonetheless, Newell concludes by denying the desirability of dismissing \u200dthat\u2064 movement in favor of a soulless liberalism \u2064expressed by Thomas \u2063Hobbes, or in its most decadent contemporary form by the dogmatic egalitarian-moral libertarian Harvard philosophy professor John Rawls.\u2064 Still,\u2063 Newell rightly defends liberalism in its broader \u200dsense (as expressed, say, \u200cby John Locke, David Hume, and Thomas Jefferson) against\u2064 its reduction to mere \u200dmaterialism and individualism. And he observes\u200d that liberalism today\u2063 can still be enriched by the cultural legacy of the Philosophy\u200c of Freedom, including \u200d&#8221;its veneration for ancient culture&#8221; and for the formative influence of great art, music, and literature.<\/p>\n<h3>Conclusion<\/h3>\n<p><em>Tyranny and Revolution<\/em> is a fine\u200b work of scholarship. My one major criticism would \u200cbe that Newell too readily accepts the historicist premise\u200b that because <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/redefining-conservatism-to-remake-america\/\" title=\"Redefining Conservatism To Remake America\">modern natural science<\/a> has apparently refuted the cosmology with \u200cwhich classical philosophy was tied, a return \u200cto classical principles is impossible. While \u200bhe\u2063 cites Leo Strauss\u2019s\u200c remark that classical philosophy\u2063 was inextricably tied to a teleological view of the universe that reason can no longer support,\u2063 Newell\u200d seems unaware of  <\/p>\n<h2> How did Nietzsche&#8217;s views on\u2062 education\u200b differ from those of Rousseau and Kant?<\/h2>\n<p><span>  Well as with Rousseau and Kant, \u2062Nietzsche\u200c differed from \u2062these thinkers in maintaining that\u200c education\u200d would \u2063succeed in this only by reinvigorating the passionate\u200d life\u2064\u200d \u200b(\u200bthe &#8220;will to power&#8221;\u200b,\u200b as\u200d he termed it) for the sake of individual self-realization, rather\u200c than in\u200b overcoming the\u200b passions \u200bin \u2063the pursuit of rational enlightenment.\u2063 Thus, Nietzsche was left\u2063 with no choice but to idealize those individuals and\u2064 communities that had\u2062 done so most completely and creatively\u2014a \u2062company that, \u200din his own time, seemed to consist of \u200bartists more than philosophers or politicians.<\/p>\n<h3>Heidegger&#8217;s\u200d Existentialism<\/h3>\n<p>Heidegger\u2064, Nietzsche&#8217;s\u200b ambitious German successor, held a solution where both philosophers had failed: a &#8220;return&#8221; to \u200dthe genuinely classical way of \u200dlife. This was imagined\u200b as a collective endeavor \u200bby which\u200b Dasein (human existence) would recover its original sense of &#8220;being&#8221; \u2064(which\u200b had, over\u200b time\u200b\u200b, been lost). This\u2062 special &#8220;event&#8221; was eventually seen\u2062\u2062 to mean a\u2062 reconstruction of the Western philosophical canon\u2014not by resurrecting \u200cPlato or Aristotle, \u2063Scholasticism, Descartes \u200bor Kant, Hegel or Marx, but \u200crather by rediscovering \u2063original Greek \u2064ways of thinking and being; and, in \u2062particular,\u2064 by recognizing the distinctively Greek outlook on\u200c life as\u200d both individual and communal, cyclical\u2062 as\u2064 well as repetitive,\u200b tragic as well as comic, religious as well as political, \u2063all\u200b\u200b at the same\u2062 time.<\/p>\n<h3>A New Possibility<\/h3>\n<p>Thus, as Newell argues, \u2064Rousseau and his \u200bsuccessors \u2062offered a reaction \u200cagainst the modern individualist \u200dand mechanistic worldview. They\u200d highlighted the importance of community, the need \u2063for moral \u2063duty, the \u200dpower\u200b of passion and self-realization, and the search for \u200cmeaning and authenticity. While their ideas may have\u200b been\u2062 interpreted\u200b in\u200b ways that led to tyranny\u2062 and revolution, at their core, they contain\u200c valuable insights that could contribute \u2064to a more balanced and meaningful understanding of human life.<\/p>\n<p>In addressing\u2062 the shortcomings of today&#8217;s\u200d liberal societies, which are often criticized for their \u2062focus \u200con individualism \u2062and consumerism, the philosophy of \u200dRousseau to Heidegger reminds\u2062 us\u2063 of \u2062the 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\u2063 and authentic \u200cexistence.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, \u2062the journey from Rousseau to \u2063Heidegger takes us on a philosophical\u200b exploration of the human condition, offering \u200dalternative perspectives on \u200dthe nature of freedom,\u2062 the significance of community, \u200cand\u2062 the pursuit of \u200ca meaningful life. Whether one\u200c agrees or disagrees with the conclusions drawn\u2064 by these philosophers, their ideas challenge us to question the status quo and \u200bto imagine \u2063new possibilities for individual and communal flourishing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite its misleading title and cover portrait of Napoleon, this book isn&#8217;t solely focused on tyrants or violent revolutionaries. Instead, it completes a trilogy that explores the history of political thought, with the first volume delving into the topic of tyranny<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1388,"featured_media":2120858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2120857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2120857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2120857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2120857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2120858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2120857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2120857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2120857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}