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Liberalism and Its Discontents:

Waller R. Newell’s Tyranny and
Revolution: Rousseau
to Heidegger
John Boersma
Apr 3
Today’s political discourse is rife with the prognosis that liberalism is in trouble,
evidenced by the rise of anti-liberal and post-liberal thought, each of which
maintains that a politics based on material self-interest is incapable of providing the
meaning and nobility necessary for its own maintenance.  Waller Newell’s Tyranny
and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger  makes clear that this sentiment is not the
exclusive preserve of the twenty-first century but is nearly as old as liberalism itself. 
Newell’s book provides an overview of a strain of thought he terms the German
Philosophy of Freedom, which paradoxically both contributed to the rise of the
liberal state (in the thought of Georg Friedrich Hegel) and reacted against the
emergence of liberal politics (in the writings of Hegel’s successors).  Tracing this
school from its incipient beginnings in Rousseau’s thoughts through Hegel, Marx,
Nietzsche, and Heidegger, Waller Newell posits that the unifying thread that holds
these thinkers together is their commitment to restore a classical conception of
human existence, one that is rooted in devotion to community and virtue in the face
of the dreary utilitarianism of Enlightenment philosophy.  Newell’s book presents a
timely and brilliant analysis of the origins of the most trenchant critiques of
liberalism raised today.

Newell points out that while each of the thinkers surveyed in the book looked to
different representations of ancient Greek culture and politics for inspiration—for
example, while Hegel looked to the Greeks of Periclean and democratic Athens,
Nietzsche and Heidegger both looked to the Homeric age—each recognized that a
straightforward return to classical antiquity was impossible.  As Newell notes, these
philosophers shared the belief that the triumph of modern physics, which shattered
the belief in a unified, stable, and permanent cosmos, rendered any return
impossible.  In light of the Enlightenment “discovery” that the human mind has no
intrinsic connection with the rest of nature, Waller Newell posits that the theorists of
the Philosophy of Freedom view “the time-bound realm of historical change” as a
new source of unity.  By grounding human existence in history these thinkers sought
to re-capture the Greek heritage and tradition of freedom.

Newell begins in Chapter One by exploring Rousseau’s critique of bourgeois life

found in the First Discourse  and Emile.  Newell brings to the surface the way in
which Rousseau saw bourgeois life as a “bastardized half-way house” between the
authentic life of natural man and the authentic life of the citizen.   As Newell rightly
points out, Rousseau’s project is marked by an attempt to help humanity recover its
natural authenticity by finding and drawing out various “approximations of the
natural life in  the civilized world,” through the austerity of the social contract and
the General Will, the romantic sociality of family life, or the life of the solitary
dreamer, who stands outside of society due to his natural and authentic existence. 
Newell provides a superb and succinct overview of Rousseau’s project, but our
author’s most insightful observation—and this is key to Rousseau’s contribution to
the German Philosophy of Freedom—is the divide Rousseau places between nature
and freedom within man.  While nature prescribes man’s instincts, man is free to
choose whether to act on those instincts.  As a result, for Rousseau, man’s freedom
lies in the capacity of the will to resist nature.  At bottom, man is characterized by a
dualism that may be alleviated, but never resolved, by civil society.

In the second chapter, Newell explains the manner by which Hegel resolved this
dualism in Rousseau’s thought by subsuming it within a greater whole of the
“teleological progress of history.”  Transposing human happiness and wholeness
from the state of nature to history’s completion, Hegel resolves the dualism of
freedom and nature—as well as the other dualisms that characterize Rousseau’s
thought—through the dialectical progress of history.  Newell provides an
illuminating interpretation of the Phenomenology of Spirit  that explores Hegel’s
understanding of the intellectual and political situation of his time.  He analyzes the
political implications of Hegel’s historical dialectics, explaining how man’s alienation
from nature and his “growing desire to master it through scientific knowledge” is,
through the historical process, reconciled with his sense of “unity with [his] fellow
human beings and nature,” culminating in an “organic communitarianism” premised
on shared liberal rights.  At the same time, Newell reminds us that Hegel’s historical
dialectic is “outwardly violent”—indeed, Hegel famously describes history as a
“slaughter-bench” of ambition and domination.  On this basis, Newell suggests that
Hegel means to remind us that man’s drive for “absolute freedom” will result in
violence and terror. One is left wondering, therefore, whether Newell views Hegel’s
historical dialectic as culminating in “organic communitarianism” or violence and
terror.  Perhaps Hegel’s thought manifests a dualism of its own.

In the remaining two thirds of the book, Newell turns to what he terms the “assaults
on the Hegelian Middle” by Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger. 
Each of these three thinkers believed Hegel’s historical dialecticism brought about a
determinism that stripped human beings of their creative capacity, and each thought
it necessary to “take back man’s creative powers” in different ways.  Newell’s
treatment of Marx is, comparatively, the shortest.  However, despite its brevity,
Newell’s succinct analysis brings to the fore the relevant themes that identify and
clarify Marx’s contribution to the Philosophy of Freedom.  He points out that Marx
emphasized the capacity of human beings to master nature so that they might bring
about “sheer collective freedom.”  Through this process, the alienation brought
about by capitalism would give way to a renewed sense of “species-being” or
communality.  In short, man’s creative capacity—whether by natural evolutionary
forces or revolution—would bring about a transformation that would see the
“withering away of political authority and inequality.”

The third and fourth chapters of Newell’s book are devoted to Nietzsche and
Heidegger, respectively.  In the third chapter, Newell shows that while Nietzsche’s
philosophy is future-oriented, he nevertheless rejects Hegel’s progressiveegH
account of history.  In his synopsis and overview of The Birth of Tragedy, On the
Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life, and Beyond Good and Evil, Newell
provides a vivid account of Nietzsche’s desire for a politics that goes beyond liberal
rationalism to something altogether new.  As Newell presents it, Nietzsche saw the
Hegelian belief in the end of history as preventing man from embracing this new
politics.  This same theme is extended in Newell’s excellent chapter on Heidegger,
which makes clear the extent to which Heidegger sought to bring man face-to-face
with his temporality, so that he might be open to new (political) possibilities.  
Newell makes it clear that Heidegger’s radical philosophic project (particularly his
early work) is inseparable from his politics and his ill-fated involvement with German
National Socialism.

Overall, Newell has provided a masterful summary of the German Philosophy of

Freedom and, in the process, clarified some very difficult texts.  Newell vividly
illustrates that after Hegel, the German Philosophy of Freedom has had a tendency
towards immoderation that can result in terrible political violence.  At the same
time, he is sympathetic to the view that liberalism has not provided an entirely
satisfactory account of human nature, psychology, and reason, and he delicately
suggests that the Philosophy of Freedom is worthy of study not only because of its
rich analysis of man’s passion for honor, glory, and civic spiritedness, but also
because of its connection to high art and culture.  Ultimately, Newell presents the
Philosophy of Freedom as a dangerous quest for nobility in the face of a liberalism
that at times tends towards ignoble or reductive consequences.

Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger

By Waller R. Newell
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022; 372pp