Nietzsche's critique of Cartesian subjectivity sets the stage for a critique of the kind of Enlightened politics that this subjectivity makes possible. Nietzsche articulates this political critique as an attack on Rousseau. Rousseau's politics assumes that individual Cartesian subjects who exist peacefully and harmoniously in the state of nature will eventually join together via a social contract. His thought contains at its very heart the same conception of human subjectivity that Nietzsche attempted to reject with Descartes.
Nietzsche's critique of Rousseau's politics thus reads as an extension of the critique of Cartesian subjectivity we have covered in the last video.
Nietzsche does not directly challenge specific terms from Rousseau's political thought such as "general will" or "social contract." Rather, he mounts a more characteristically Nietzschean attack on Rousseau's political thought, attacking Rousseau at the level of fundamental ideas and first principles. Nietzsche is interested not so much in what Rousseau believes but in what Rousseau represents, and Nietzsche sees Rousseau as a symbol of the kind of politics that he most reviles: liberal, parliamentarian, democratic politics. Nietzsche writes in the Gay Science:
"We are not by any means "liberal"; we do not work for "progress"; we do not need to plug up our ears against the sirens who in the market place sing of the future: their song about "equal rights," "a free society," "no more masters and no servants" has no allure for us. We simply do not consider it desirable that a realm of justice and concord should be established on earth (because it would certainly be the realm of the deepest leveling and chinoiserie); we are delighted with all who love, as we do, danger, war, and adventures, who refuse to compromise, to be captured, reconciled, and castrated; we count ourselves among conquerors; we think about the necessity for new orders, also for a new slavery--for every strengthening and enhancement of the human type also involves a new kind of enslavement."
Nietzsche does not explicitly mention Rousseau here, but in this passage, he outlines and rejects every component of the Enlightened politics for which Rousseau symbolically stands in Nietzsche's writing: liberalism, progress, equal rights and freedom. Some of these--notably the concepts of equal rights and freedom--are indeed important components of Rousseau's political thought, and derive from his idea of the social contract. Others, such as liberalism, are extrapolations which Nietzsche makes when he establishes Rousseau as the grounding point of modern politics. In any case, it is clear that Nietzsche is offering a concept of politics which is dramatically at odds with Rousseau's egalitarian political scheme. "Danger," "war" and "conquering" certainly have no place in a Rousseauian political system, except perhaps as symbols of the unjust political structure which will be overcome when man is finally removed from his chains and permitted to enter into just political arrangements. And "slavery," which Nietzsche extols as an institution that can strengthen and enhance humanity, is the perfect antithesis of Rousseau's political project, which seeks to render individuals free in a profound new sense through the establishment of a just political order.
It would seem, then, that in place of Rousseau's egalitarian politics, with its goal of freedom for all individuals, Nietzsche favors an agonistic or conflict-based model of human political behavior. This is hardly surprising when we recall that the political system which Nietzsche most respected was that of the ancient Greeks. As one commentator puts it, "the theory of conquest...presupposes neither the gradual evolution of pre-political institutions nor a fundamental agreement in the visions of men."
Script
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