The second, and in my view more powerful, criticism of universal
recognition comes from the Right that was profoundly
concerned with the leveling effects of the French Revolution's
commitment to human equality. This Right found its most brilliant
spokesman in the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose
views were in some respects anticipated by that great observer of
democratic societies, Alexis de Tocqueville. Nietzsche believed
that modern democracy represented not the self-mastery of
former slaves, but the unconditional victory of the slave and a
kind of slavish morality. The typical citizen of a liberal democracy
was a "last man" who, schooled by the founders of modern liberalism,
gave up prideful belief in his or her own superior worth in
favor of comfortable self-preservation. Liberal democracy produced
"men without chests," composed of desire and reason but
lacking thymos, clever at finding new ways to satisfy a host of petty
wants through the calculation of long-term self-interest. The last
man had no desire to be recognized as greater than others, and
without such desire no excellence or achievement was possible.
Content with his happiness and unable to feel any sense of shame
for being unable to rise above those wants, the last man ceased to
be human