I.

In a 1784 essay, Immanuel Kant makes a case for the merits of what he called humanity’s “asocial qualities.” He writes: “Nature should … be thanked for fostering social incompatibility, enviously competitive vanity, and insatiable desires for possession or even power. Without these desires, all man’s excellent natural capacities would never be roused to develop.” Other philosophers have made similar observations. Friedrich Nietzsche, in his attempt to overturn traditional notions of morality, called upon human beings to actively pursue power and strength: “What is good?” he asks in The Antichrist. “Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself.” Nietzsche also calls upon his readers to seek “Not contentedness but more power; not peace but war; not virtue but fitness.” In The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli argues that leaders should focus on the acquisition and maintenance of power—even if they must abandon traditional moral constraints to do so.

Healthy societies provide the institutional framework necessary for people to exercise their “asocial qualities” without violating the rights or freedoms of anyone else. Unlike Nietzsche or Machiavelli, Kant cautioned against discarding moral constraints in the pursuit of power. Kant’s categorical imperative holds that certain moral requirements are universally applicable to all people at all times. Kant demanded that rational agents treat each other as ends in themselves, rather than means to other ends. While Kant believed that rulers should be bound by the categorical imperative just like anyone else, Machiavelli argued that they should be free to transgress certain moral rules in order to retain power. Nietzsche was intensely critical of Kantian morality, arguing that it was an echo of Christian “slave morality” that impedes the progress toward human greatness and the emergence of the Übermensch.

However, Kant shared Nietzsche’s conviction that a life of struggle is essential for human development. “Man wishes to live comfortably and pleasantly,” Kant wrote, “but nature intends that he should abandon idleness and inactive self-sufficiency and plunge instead into labour and hardships, so that he may by his own adroitness find means of liberating himself from them in turn.” While people want comfort and security, they also want struggle and discord. This is an overlooked theme of Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, which emphasises the “struggle for recognition” as a central driver of history. Although liberal democracy provides universal recognition to citizens—which is why Fukuyama argues that it is the most sustainable form of government—he has long suspected that institutionalised equality and pluralism would fail to satisfy the need for struggle among many people.

“Is there not a side of the human personality,” Fukuyama asks, “that deliberately seeks out struggle, danger, risk, and daring, and will this side not remain unfulfilled by the ‘peace and prosperity’ of contemporary liberal democracy?” Recall Kant’s acknowledgment of our “enviously competitive vanity” and “insatiable desires for possession or even power.” Fukuyama contrasts two different types of recognition that people demand, based on the Greek concept of “thymos,” which is roughly translated as “spiritedness” and concerned with a person’s self-conception as a being with moral worth. Fukuyama distinguishes between isothymia and megalothymia—the former refers to the desire to be treated equally, while the latter refers to a desire to be recognised as superior.

Some forms of recognition-driven politics operate squarely within the isothymotic parameters of liberal democracy, as they involve groups demanding equal rights and dignity under the law. The Civil Rights movement is the best example of this form of politics, as leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. demanded universal recognition for all—not power over others. But the pursuit of recognition can also be megalothymotic—when one group demands special privileges on the basis of race, religion, or some other exclusive tribal characteristic. This is a central feature of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, which explicitly calls for the elevation of some citizens and the marginalisation of others. A clear example is Trump’s January executive order which attempted to overturn the clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which grants citizenship to anyone born on American soil. While these Americans are legal citizens of the United States under the Constitution, the Trump administration does not regard them as equal to other citizens.

In 1992, Fukuyama described Trump as a person driven by megalothymotic desire who was able to fulfil that desire in a relatively benign way—by becoming a celebrity businessman. But Fukuyama explained the risk of megalothymia in politics. “It is clear that megalothymia is a highly problematic passion for political life,” he writes, “for if recognition of one’s superiority by another person is satisfying, it stands to reason that recognition by all people will be more satisfying still.” This is why Fukuyama observes that megalothymia is what fuels the “tyrannical ambition of a Caesar or a Stalin.” The only way to check these megalothymotic ambitions in politics is through the rule of law and strong democratic institutions—such as the separation of powers in the United States government. The American Founders understood the importance of checking tyrannical ambition. As James Madison explains in Federalist No. 51:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

This is why Madison argues that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition” in the form of separate but co-equal branches of government that would submit to the legitimate authority of the others while jealously guarding their own power. But as we have seen over the past six months, this formula is far from foolproof. Congress has repeatedly surrendered its power to Trump since his second term began. It has allowed him to impose economically destructive and chaotic tariffs unilaterally, under the ridiculous rationale that trade deficits represent a national emergency. It refused to stop him as he destroyed entire agencies created by Congress, such as USAID. Just last week, Congress allowed Trump to cancel US$9 billion in spending it had already approved. Many Republicans had deep concerns about Trump’s signature piece of legislation—a deficit-exploding tax bill that will throw millions of people off Medicaid in exchange for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans. But they went along with it, despite its unpopularity among voters.

It’s no mystery why members of Congress have surrendered to Trump—he is a vindictive authoritarian who will try to destroy their political careers if they defy him. This is what Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie recently discovered when he opposed Trump’s decision to join Israel’s military campaign in Iran. Trump immediately responded by announcing that he would support a primary challenger to Massie and declaring that “MAGA doesn’t want him.” Trump rules his party by fear, and he has built a cult of personality that makes it extremely difficult for members of Congress to resist his demands.