“Waller Newell, a Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, joined Merion West editor-in-chief emeritus Erich Prince to discuss his book Tyranny and Revolution, which was published last year with Cambridge University Press. In his book, Newell examines how the respective ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger contributed variously to bloodshed, mass murder, and tyranny. As Paul Krause writes in his Merion West review of Tyranny and Revolution, “Newell offers a penetrating close and even sympathetic reading of these philosophers (especially Rousseau). But, in doing so, he also reveals the hate and venom at the core of their beliefs. It was not so much freedom that these men wanted, though they hid behind liberty’s rhetoric. They wanted war with groups of people they regarded as the corrupters of human innocence and happiness.” In their discussion, Professor Newell and Mr. Prince discuss the idea of a given faction in society being viewed as an impediment to realizing utopian visions; how each of these thinkers desired a return to a certain conception of the Greek polis of antiquity; where tyranny is most present in the world today; and the risks of artificial intelligence and enhanced surveillance techniques when they fall into the wrong hands as they pertain to tyranny.”
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Waller Newell: The Characteristics of Tyranny