Friedrich Nietzsche, John Locke, and Immanuel Kant were all influential philosophers for the modern world. Each had different areas of interest and stress, yet each attempted to place humankind within some semblance of cosmicness and asked pertinent questions about the way in which human society interacts. All three were concerned with not only the individual, but with the manner in which the individual interacted with the group, and the resultant tensions that interaction might incur. Of course, no limited study could every hope to exhaustively account for the political and philosophic thought of three such masters. Therefore, this essay will concern itself with the manner in which Locke, Kant, and Nietzsche addressed the issues of free will, the concept of good/evil, the role of authority, the concept of history, and the nature of man.
Free will, or the manner in which individuals are able to act upon their own accord, is often seen as the central philosophical argument of the modern world. Immanuel Kant, who supported republican governments and international organization, believed in the universality of being, but also that "the natural end which all men seek is their own happiness" (Kant 98). However, the idea that the individual is acting purely out of his own tenets is not at all what Kant means. Rather, "it is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will" (Kant 61). Thus, humans act out of a spirit of universality, have some freedom of action, but are really interested more in movement toward their own happiness.
For John Locke, the opposite was true, and that all men are born in a state of perfect freedom in which they may "dispose of their Possessions, and Persona as they think fit, within the bounds of the Law of Nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the Will of any other Man" (Locke 287). In that sense, th...