"But Rousseau — to what did he really want to return? Rousseau, this first modern man, idealist and rabble in one person — one who needed moral "dignity" to be able to stand his own sight, sick with unbridled vanity and unbridled self-contempt. This miscarriage, couched on the threshold of modern times, also wanted a "return to nature"; to ask this once more, to what did Rousseau want to return? I still hate Rousseau in the French Revolution: it is the world-historical expression of this duality of idealist and rabble. The bloody farce which became an aspect of the Revolution, its "immorality," is of little concern to me: what I hate is its Rousseauan morality — the so-called "truths" of the Revolution through which it still works and attracts everything shallow and mediocre. The doctrine of equality! There is no more poisonous poison anywhere: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, whereas it really is the termination of justice. "Equal to the equal, unequal to the unequal" — that would be the true slogan of justice; and also its corollary: "Never make equal what is unequal." That this doctrine of equality was surrounded by such gruesome and bloody events, that has given this "modern idea" par excellence a kind of glory and fiery aura so that the Revolution as a spectacle has seduced even the noblest spirits."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1889), translator Walter Kauffman
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/French_Revolution
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
French Revolution
59 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by French Revolution →
Related Quotes
"Since the outbreak of the French Revolution, the world has been moving with ever increasing speed towards a new confl…"
"You can lock the door upon them, but they burst open their shaky lattices and call out over the house-tops so that me…"
"Louis XVI, after confessing that despotism was useless, even to make men happy by compulsion, appealed to the nation …"
"It was the French and not the American Revolution that set the world on fire, and it was consequently from the course…"
"[T]wo parties diametrically opposed by their system and their plan for the public administration... I am ready to bel…"
"The grandeur of the Revolution in the eyes of those who had witnessed it, or had received its tradition from actors i…"
"Since the great French Revolution all colour has been gradually dying out of the male costume, until we have got redu…"
"The French had shown themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very sh…"
"What was done in France was a wild attempt to methodize anarchy; to perpetuate and fix disorder. That it was a foul, …"
"The essential result of the French revolution was to establish the doctrine of popular sovereignty as the foundation …"