In Republic, Socrates describes the democrat as a sort of patchwork, suggesting that this unruly sort, in which none of the drives are willing to be regulated, will be quite complicated and multi-colored, and even superficially appealing despite being fundamentally of no value. Nietzsche at times echoes this portrayal in his discussion of the European, and gives a somewhat similar picture of those with the historical sense.
Though Socrates passes a harsh judgment on the democrat and describes a far more straightforward ideal for the philosopher-king, the Socrates of the dialogues is quite a chameleon, to say nothing of Plato, who only speaks through others and so speaks with a tremendous multiplicity of voices. It is a commonplace that only a democracy could have produce a Socrates or a Plato, and so it is often thought ironic that Plato was such a harsh critic of democracy. But I often suspect he knew this perfectly well, and that we should be very careful in reading his discussions of democracy.
I've recently been wondering the same thing about Nietzsche. Apparently, Maudemarie Clark believes that Nietzsche was ultimately committed to democracy, and that he even realized this. Such a claim flies in the face of quite a number of very strong statements in Nietzsche's text, but I think there may be something to it. Who had more historical sense than Nietzsche, after all? Did he not frequently emphasize his status as a good European, in a Europe he saw moving inexorably toward democracy? The motley appearance of the democrat or the European bring to mind (no doubt deliberately) the figure of the jester, with whom Nietzsche occasionally identifies (most explicitly in Ecce Homo, in the first section of "Why I am a Destiny" of all places; his consistent sense of humor is surely also notable here).
Nietzsche criticized the excessive historical sense of our times, saying it had produced intellectuals who were able to appreciate any style, however alien, primarily because they had no style of their own. But he also suggested more than once that those who could find a way to master a seemingly overwhelming array of different forces and somehow turn them into a style of their own had the potential to be far greater than even the grand styles of simpler past ages, despite his praise of the tastes of simpler times.
I think I'll stop there, and leave my recent reflections on what it meant for Nietzsche to get beyond good and evil for another time.
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