INTRODUCTION: ENLIGHTENMENT AND REVOLUTION

The writings of the period 1878–82 contain a set of coherent and instructive insights into the realities and dilemmas of modern social existence. In these writings we find a Nietzsche championing the aims of the Enlightenment, and promoting the cause of a rationalist, critical theory.

It is here that Nietzsche first begins his archaeological excavation of the historical evolution of moral concepts and judgements. Casting off the comforts of Schopenhauerian metaphysics he now supports modern philosophy in its attack on all unexamined authority, whether that authority be religious and metaphysical, moral or political. He supports the Enlightenment, but condemns any attempt to develop a philosophy of revolution out of its challenge to illegitimate authority. An opposition between ‘enlightenment’ and ‘revolution’ is presented in terms of a contrast between Rousseau and Voltaire. For Nietzsche a philosophy of revolution suffers from the delusion that once a social order has been overturned then ‘the proudest temple of fair humanity will at once rise up of its own accord’. The modern theory of revolution is derived from Rousseau's belief that beneath the layers of civilisation there lies buried a natural human goodness; the source of corruption lies not within man, in human nature, but in the institutions of the state and society, and in education.