Okay, I am back sooner than I'd thought. I just edited in a long reply, but my browser lost it, so I'm mad as hell. Fuck, I'm not going to do it again, so this will be very short.
The potential despot does not position himself as morally superior. He makes himself the representative of the people. Even after he takes power, he will talk about what he's done for the people and their nation, not for himself. He is fundamentally a populist. For how the tyranny arises from democracy... In democracy, liberty is the good. As the system becomes more and more democratic, the sole good becomes doing as one pleases. Society is divided into socioeconomic classes. There are licentious spendthrifts, who are true democratic men. They lead esthetic lives with no particular goal in mind besides random indulgence and experimentation. There are the successful business men. They are the capitalists; they have the wealth. Then there are the common workers. They perform the necessary tasks to keep society running. These laborers do not make much money or occupy an esteemed rung on the social ladder. Their main concern is sustenance. They have little time to devote to education in the nature of politics or to indulge in the activities they fancy. The spendthrifts will eventually attack the private property of the capitalists. They will attempt to get the workers to support their cause by preaching anarchic liberty as the ultimate good. The businessmen are responsible for holding everyone back from doing as they please, so they should be forced to spread their wealth. Of course, the businessmen wll not stand for this, so they will unite against the multitude. The leader(s) of the people will find themselves threatened by the capitalists, most likely their very lives, so bodyguards will be requested to protect the interests of the people. At this point, a tyranny is close at hand. Soon, they will begin executing and imprisoning the adversaries of the revolutionary regime. This is no problem, though, because enemies of the state are enemies of the people. After all, this state was formed to give the majority what they desire. As you can see, the despot isn't appealing to morality, he is appealing to greed. The democracy I speak of has no solid moral foundation. The only thing of value is the maximization of choice, or the "right" to do whatever one wants. The leader seizes power by using the desire of democratic people for as much freedom as possible(that it wouldn't be good for them is irrelevant because the tyrant is a demagogue and will promise anything to gain their favor). To sum it up, there is social inequality, which leads to strife. The poor are brought around to the idea of taking from the rich, who defend themselves. The leader of the poor requests physical protection from the onslaught of the wealthy. As his power grows, he begins to persecute his enemies.
Some other comments:
Aristotle asserted that men had more teeth than woman. Married twice, he never even bothered to examine his wives teeth to confirm the statement. Anyone who still listens to the Greeks for anything aside mathematics is an uninformed fool.
I don't agree with this at all. Anyone who listens to the ancient Greeks on matters of natural science is an uninformed fool, but, for instance, Aristotle's ethics have stood the test of time. His
philosophy is still highly influential and with good reason. When considering the Nicomachean Ethics, who really gives a damn what he thought about his wife's teeth? Nobody.
I have no quarrel with Kant, except he couldn't write for shit. Nietzche is like Hobbes. A little displacement, a School of One. He has no students, no one continues his work. He's jjust a little speedbumb in philosophical history.
Nietzsche is an enormously influential philospher, especially in Europe.
Heidegger had a Jewish teacher (Husserl) whom he loved and was heavilly pressured by his publisher to remove an introduction by him in his work Being and Time. And you wouldn't rate Husserl over Heidegger? Thats propostrous. Heidegger is just a mere continuation of phenomonlogy, Husserl was the founding proponent, and Heidegger only did such minimal expansion.
Regardless of what you think of either, if you believe that Heidegger was content to live in Husserl's shadow and minimally expand on him, well, that's just crazy. Husserl developed the phenomenological method and Heidegger applied it to ontology. What each of them sought to accomplish is completely different.
Why do you make this assumption that liberalism is counter-opposed to Nietzche? Isn't it most liberals who invoke Idealism and believe in the dissolution of relgion? If anything, I say that Idealism is one of it's cornerstones
Could you rephrase this? I don't understand it.
