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1 4 2 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 2to have recourse to any substantive consideration, to any consideration ofwhat man’s nature, his natural perfection, requires.” 97 In practice, Rousseau’s“actualization of the ideal” means that the “transcendent natural right” isabsorbed into history, as further reflected by Hegel’s identification between“the rational and the real.” 98 But if for Hegel the actualization of the bestregime results with necessity from an inherent rationality of the historicalprocess that culminates with modernity, for Nietzsche, with whom beginsthe third wave of modernity, historicism arrives at its ultimate, nihilisticconclusions. Nietzsche insists that the belief in “historical progress” or the“intrinsic meaning” of history is groundless. Instead, the fully developed historicalconsciousness arrives at the conclusion that there is nothing beyondthe chaotic multiplicity of “human creative acts” that form “those horizonswithin which specific cultures [are] possible.” 99 In practical terms, this meansthat there are no other “standards” for evaluating “choices,” except those“of a purely subjective character.” 100 “Modern man” is completely trappedin the historicist cave, the “oblivion of eternity” being “the price which” he“has to pay…for attempting to be” the “absolute sovereign…of nature” andto “conquer chance.” 101 “The realization” that not God or truth, but simplyorganic weakness or strength, represents “the true origin of all ideals,” opensthe horizon of “a radically new kind of project”: “the transvaluation of allvalues.” 102 Nietzsche redefines the traditional notions of good and bad as“all that heightens the feeling of power” and “all that proceeds from weakness,”respectively. 103 But beyond Nietzsche’s project, the modern age, failingto deliver on its initial promises of terrestrial happiness, displaces insteadall former consoling illusions, leaving us face to face with the unmitigatedtruth of our condition. For the sake of intellectual honesty, Nietzsche wantsus to openly confront this terrible new revelation. In this sense, according toStrauss, if early modern atheism was based on hedonism and therefore soughtto liberate man from the terror that religion inspired, Nietzsche’s atheism, tothe contrary, based on intellectual honesty, seeks to liberate man from the97Ibid.98Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?,” 53.99Strauss, “Three Waves,” 95–96.100Strauss, Natural Right and History, 18.101Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?,” 57.102Strauss, “Three Waves,” 96.103Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,1968), 115.