Totalitarians of Western Philosophy
Running through some of the most beloved texts in Western political philosophy. They are loved for their ingenuity and beauty. But they are respected and believed for their screeching authoritarianism. You might see episodes on...Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau. Hegel, Nietzsche, Zizek, Pettit, etc.
Totalitarians of Western Philosophy
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Mess at the Heart of Left and Right
Rousseau, with his concept of the 'general will,' moves us fundamentally toward the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, which depend on collective identities: on the left, classes, on the right, nations; on both, from time to time, races. He states amazingly clearly the very worst idea in the history of philosophy: total submission to authority is the very definition of freedom: a thought furnished by Rousseau to Kant and Habermas.
At one point I attribute the turn to romanticism to 'Foucault.' I definitely meant 'Rousseau.'