Philosophy and Politics at the Precipice: Time and Tyranny in the Works of Alexandre Kojève

Citation preview

Philosophy and Politics at the Precipice

Philosophy and Politics at the Precipice maintains that political philosopher Alexandre Kojève (1901–68) has been both famously misunderstood and famous for being misunderstood. Kojève was famously understood by interpreters for seeing an “end of history” (an end that would display universal free democracies and even freer markets) as critical to his thought. He became famously misunderstood when interpreters, at the end of the twentieth century, placed such an end at the center of his thought. This book reads Kojève again – as a thinker of time, not its end. It presents Kojève as a philosopher and precisely as a time phenomenologist, rather than as a New Age guru. The book shows how Kojève’s time is inherently political, and indeed tyrannical, for being about his understanding of human relation. However, Kojève’s views on time and tyranny prove his undoing for making rule impossible because of what the book terms the “time-tyrant problem.” Kojève’s entire political corpus is best understood as an attempt to rectify this problem. So understood, Philosophy and Politics at the Precipice provides fresh perspective on the true nature of Kojèvian irony, Kojève’s aims in the Strauss– Kojève exchange, and how Kojève at his best captures a philosophical, phenomenological time, one that marks some of the most dynamic and unique events of the twentieth century. Headlines have largely erased the notion that history has ended. Philosophy and Politics at the Precipice, on the other hand, provides the philosophical justification for arguing that the end of the last millennium was not an end and that, for his view of time, Kojève remains a thinker for the times ahead. Gary M. Kelly is an attorney and political scientist. He has advised over twentyfive developing countries on behalf of multilateral institutions. He has taught political economy and theory and in the United States, Eurasia, and North Africa. His recent research and writing includes work on Kojève, Rousseau, and Gilson.

Philosophy and Politics at the Precipice Time and Tyranny in the Works of Alexandre Kojève

Gary M. Kelly



First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of Gary M. Kelly to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-412-86541-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-10474-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear



To the memory of my parents, Ferdinand and Lucille Kelly

Contents Preface Acknowledgments By Way of Introduction 1

Man, Time, and a Man in His Times on the Precipice On Meeting Kojève The Double Dare from a Modern’s Modern

2

Kojèvian Time Phenomenology and the Time-Tyrant Problem The Nature and Importance of Time Phenomenology Self-Worth and the Origin of Kojèvian Time Kojève’s Time as Related to Space The Story of Master-Tyrant and Slave as Seen in Kojève’s Time Phenomenology Kojève’s Time-Tyrant Dilemma Kojève’s Time-Tyrant Problem in the Context of Kojève’s Philosophy Sparing the Double Dare from Double Talk: The Plausibility of Kojève’s Reading of Time into Tyranny

3

Time Phenomenology In and On Kojève Reenter Kojève’s Time Temptations in Reading Kojève: Timeliness and the End of Time A Kitchen in Sokolniki: Contours of the Present Human Time The Either/Or of the Time-Tyrant Problem The Legacy of the Time-Tyrant Dilemma: A Kojèvian “Politics” Based on Universality

Kojève’s Samurai The Struggle for Possession of the Universal: The Time-Tyrant Problem as the Fulcrum of the Strauss–Kojève Exchange 4

The Attempt of Kojève’s Thinkers to Resolve the Time-Tyrant Problem The Importance of Kojèvian Ideas In a Manner of Speaking: Kojèvian Circularity – the Script of the Dual, the Instantaneous, and the Total Speaking Of and About Master-Tyrants: Kojève’s “Top Down” and “Bottom Up” Response Audition One: Revelation and the Kojèvian Wise Man Audition Two: The Philosopher’s Role in Dialectic and the Conundrum of Kojèvian Desire in Human Time Kojève’s Nuclear Culture of Two and the Strauss Critique of Homogeneity Kojève’s Escape from the Time-Tyrant Dilemma: A Renege of the Double Dare Through Encounters with Nature

5

In the Shadow of War Wartime and Evolution in Kojève’s Corpus The Turn in Kojève’s Outline Droit as Time Proceeds Practical Implications of Kojève’s Turn in the Outline

6

As Sand-Patties Become Sand Castles The Move Toward a Master-Tyrant at Work Kojève’s Broad Understanding of the Political Through the Jurisprudential Kojève’s Noble and Ignoble Political Animals

7

Kojève’s Return to Conventional Politics – at an Unconventional Time Of Kojève’s Time First, Of Kojève’s Times Second A Reprise: Inside-Out Time Phenomenology in the Post-War Kojève Politics Beyond Desire for Desire: Time and Kojèvian Authority Instructions to the Chief and the Conundrum of Implementation in the “Germ” of the End State The Time of the Introduction Reexamined: A Bifurcated Present to Match a Bifurcated Master-Tyrant

Of Wise Men Reconsidered and Reread: The Strauss–Kojève Exchange as a Final Futile Attempt to Pair the Master-Tyrant with a Thinker Bibliography Primary Sources Secondary Sources Index

Preface Alexandre Kojève, whose thought is central to this book, first secured my attention for his lack of standing among my academic priorities. The second week of January, 1996, what I knew of Kojève’s work, in the form of portions of Kojève’s Introduction to the Reading of Hegel as translated by James Nichols, lay at the bottom of a crate in a warehouse at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, bound for shipment abroad. The volume was spanking new and unwrapped. Atop my Kojève were my true priorities: dog-eared, underlined, and earmarked volumes of Plato, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, along with some commentaries chiefly by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey. This intended portable library was to brace me for the graduate school comprehensive exams that surely awaited me on return from an international assignment. As happens, the library’s portability was severely compromised by one of those “snowstorms of the century” New York seems to experience once every three winters or so. Hence, storage at JFK. My destination: Tbilisi, Georgia. There I was to spend a year as a legal advisor to the Schevardnadze government, courtesy of American foreign assistance. I did not receive my crate until after my first Georgian winter. But not to worry, as among Plato, Hobbes, and the rest of the snow-stranded crew, Kojève was the least of my concerns, and not just because I doubted that he would be the target of an examiner’s inquiry. Quite beyond that, my Kojève in 1996 was the Kojève of many, the Kojève given to us by Francis Fukuyama in his The End of History and the Last Man. That work at least suggested that we take the possibility of an end of history seriously as an end climaxing in what seemed to some liberal democracy, if not even more liberal markets. And omens seemed with me on my mission. While lunching at the canteen of the United States Embassy in Tbilisi, a colleague tapped me on the shoulder with the long-awaited news: “Gary, your things are outside.” And the outside meant not the street, but on the muddy, thawing front lawn of the Embassy – my several crates right under Old Glory and the gray sky of a late March day. I could hardly have a more solid ratification of the mindset of that era, my crate of

Western thought under the protective shadow of Pax Americana. And Fukuyama seemed that rarest of bestselling authors: a messenger of time’s end who, for this end, begged to be forgotten for being right. There was, I thought, both a nobility in that – and a call to action. Things would take care of themselves, with philosophies spun to be put aside. Spring, civic participation, free markets, and human rights beckoned in the delightful early April air of Tbilisi. And, save spring, I was to be an agent for all of them. The Kojève presented by James Nichols would have to wait for another season, and quite a different country. In the middle of 1997, my still as yet unread Kojève was again on the road. Next destination: Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. This would be a much tougher proving ground for me – and for Fukuyama. The Economist paper of the day termed Turkmenistan the most secretive and authoritarian regime in the world, save that perennial winner and still champion in this category, North Korea. In July, 1997, my portable library was on its way by plane to Turkmenistan, the most presidential and least republican of the presidential republics of the former Soviet Union. During my 1997–99 stay in Ashgabat, I was candidly advised that my residence would be searched, possibly on several occasions, without my authorization. In this, the most state-ist of the former Soviet regimes, the likes of Plato and Aristotle, to say nothing of those demons to the old Leninist order, Hobbes and Locke, sat placidly on my shelves seemingly undisturbed, perhaps objects of curiosity but not objection. But the contents of the wastebasket seemed frequently to have been disturbed. What my uninvited guests were after, of course, was any writing of mine that could be construed as offensive to the carefully crafted image of their president, the wily yet fiercely authoritarian Saparmurat Niyazov. For those who have yet to visit, Ashagabat, with its near lunar surface featuring a fervent revolutionary republican Iran just over the horizon, had a way of prompting reconsideration of omens past read and supposedly understood. And so my presence there forced this rethinking of an omen, that snowstorm that had kept me from Kojève eighteen months earlier. It was in Ashgabat that I finally cracked open the Nichols presentation of parts of Kojève’s Introduction. I was especially taken with the compact majesty of Kojève’s “A Note on Eternity, Time, and the Concept,” in which Kojève analyzed developments not with a view of the end of time, but quite during time and from the perspective of the timeless and eternal. Upon such a reading, the end of history delivered by Fukuyama’s Kojève seemed a bit like a New York snowstorm. Both were ballyhooed as unique and very momentous. Yet, a bit like the falling sky of

Chicken Little, both seemed too commonplace to be regarded as exceptional. Indeed, in fairness, Fukuyama’s then-final pages suggest that we know not when the end comes and, when we do, the knowing may be a privileged few. Whatever they do, these parting words severely call into question the advertised Kojèvian claim that, whatever else the end would be, the end would be universal as to all and homogeneous as to each relating to each. And if the Ashgabat experience gave rise to questioning an end of history, my stint in the land of Niyazov surely gave rise to the skepticism as to the end of tyrants as prognosticated in The End of History. Fukuyama’s tyrants were vanishing, making us in the triumphant West so many Ahabs chasing fewer and fewer great white whales. My Ashgabat experience told me to navigate in different waters for tyrants, more in search of great white sharks who dominate and devour by stealth and cunning, rather than girth and scale. Despite complications, my library remained intact and I soon had my doctorate, having defended my views on Kojève. But I also had a springboard for further travel in developing countries and the ability to observe contemporary post-Cold War tyranny by stealth in its many variations. After all, we are told that great white sharks are best observed from a position of proximity. As work proceeded on this text, it became ever more clear that a voracious tyranny by stealth in many of the world’s small corners is far more common than new epochal revelers might have suspected. Assertions of tyrannical power occurred far from Europe’s battlefields. The outline for many of my ideas was largely begun in draft form in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, capital city to a highly authoritarian regime that at the time served as America’s doorstep to the Afghan war in the fall of 2001. Looking out the window of my Tashkent study while attempting to write on Kojève, I actually did see what today might be taken for the closest near-contemporary version of Napoleon on horseback on his way to Jena,1 which is to say, the staff car of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as he was apparently being whisked to a top-security briefing. But the reality is that Secretary Rumsfeld was not on his way to battle a tyrant but to find common cause with one. Yet, stealth authoritarianism also has a benign side. As I was putting the finishing touches on the Kojève of my dissertation in 2003, officials in Hanoi reminded me of the nimbleness of centralized control during the SARS outbreak that hit their country. And I suppose that viewing my work as a kind of intellectual travelogue ended in that tiniest yet most restive of places in the Mediterranean Basin, Tunis, Tunisia. There, as I commenced work on the text after publisher comments in 2013, I did so against an audial backdrop blending morning calls to prayer with the chants of youthful voices in constructive civil protest at trolley stops during rush hour. That seeming

cacophony turns out to have been among the most constructive outcomes of the Arab Spring, one preventing relapse into authoritarianism. While my 1997–2005 travels informed me that authoritarianism was far from gone, and my 2013 sojourn that it is immensely hard to eradicate, it became clear that the times send different messages. My travels encompassed the discrete and effective authoritarianism of Vietnam and the plodding calculated inefficiency of the stone-faced tyranny of Lukaschenko’s Belarus. It became clear that tyranny assumed different guises and pitches. Yet, something united tyrants. Enter the philosophy in political philosophy, whereby a philosophic coordinate such as time might explain and perturb us. Tyranny and the times thus afforded me no respite. Falling walls such as those in Berlin with seemingly joyous consequences still yield debris, as the world saw on September 11, 2001. As long as authoritarians and tyrants remain in the picture, Kojève reminds us that it may be helpful to bring along philosophy as our companion in dealing with them.

Note 1

Kojève, “Hegel, Marx et christianisme,” Critique, 362–63, 363n; Delacampagne, Le philosophe et le tyran: Histoire d’une illusion, 121–22. Jena and Napoleon will be discussed, absent the horse, in Chapter 3 infra.

Acknowledgments This is a book about time, tyranny, and what a man named Kojève thought of their relation. This matter has occupied a large measure of my professional life since at least 1999. But, as with all acknowledgments, this one begins with the subtext that no man is an island. I am in considerable debt to sources, both the institutional and the idiosyncratic. Belonging to the former are, unquestionably, the staff of the General Research Division of the New York Public Library. All were unfailingly patient and informative, especially during the concluding phases of preparing this book. But in any craft, and writing is surely one, learning by osmosis is also critical. Many thanks to my fellow authors and aspiring authors and roommates in the Wertheim Study and Sochi Noma Room of the Library for sharing their plans and challenges, and engaging in the bold task of committing them to paper for all to see. I was – and am – honored to labor in their presence. While blood may be thicker than water, the fraternity and sorority of ink is pretty binding too. And then there are the human sources that are deliberately in resistance to the institutional. These come from what might be very loosely termed as close to “field research” as the eccentric subdiscipline of political philosophy will allow. Here I speak of my experiences living and working under regimes that were and remain authoritarian, dictatorial, and tyrannical in the Kojèvian sense, experiences largely concurrent with the early and intermediate stages of developing this book, from 1997 to 2014. My best efforts at writing in those years were undertaken in the wee hours. But encounters with citizens of such regimes filled the broad middle of my day. I thank that loosely assembled coterie of shopkeepers, landlords, civic gadflies, housekeepers, drivers, market hucksters, hawkers, and bartenders who made my stays memorable and informative while in their countries. But in equal measure I encountered traffic police, soldiers, security guards, and countless civil servants,

both great and petty, in the company of all manner of consorts and goons, who maintained these regimes. Mostly I am grateful that ordinary citizens stepped out of the shadow and that officials and their retinue intriguingly if only occasionally stepped out of role. Unwitting revelation is often the most wonderful form of giving. And my interactions reminded me that while tyranny only occasionally rests on overt and easy collaboration between ruled and ruler, it surely depends on a peculiar form of collective action. But then there is Kojève in theory as well as in practice. Here I wish to thank Bill Baumgarth, Chuck Butterworth, Michael Davis, Victor Gourevitch, Boris Groys, Rob Howse, Richard Velkley, and Merold Westphal for commenting on various drafts of my manuscripts and/or the overall project of reconsidering Kojève. Sometimes provocative, sometimes constructive, in the best moments their remarks were both, to a more than sufficient degree to move the work forward. The mixture of candor and encouragement is indeed the best elixir, and they spared me the curse of receiving faint and feigned praises. Stages of editorial assistance happily accompanied the evolution of my ideas. I wish to thank Robert Clark for advising what should be possible, Julie Kirsch for what would not be, and Mary Curtis for stating what must be. Yes, some degree of dialectical thinking can be helpful with editors. But that aside, as almost always, the decisive finalist wins the prize, the outcome of which is what the reader will soon engage. Lack of familiarity as well as familiarity make contributions any enterprise. I wish to thank Stas Rabinovitch, a kind of custodian of Kojève’s native Russian, for determining how my English wore on eyes and ears that were not native. Conversely, I thank Chris Utter whose great familiarity with academic publishing taught me the complexities of assembling a book in today’s publishing environment. Finally, while I obviously had no shortage of help on how I should engage the subject and write, there was always one person who reminded me of why I should do so. That person was my longstanding editorial assistant, Kelly Scott. Once one enters Kojève, one cannot help but become a bit Kojèvian. And that means not only giving an account of places, but also of the times. And indeed the times were as varied as the places as this book was assembled in mind and spirit. There were times of delight and doubt, persistence and perplexity. Kelly almost always delivered what I felt I needed to write, and invariably delivered what I in fact did need. She also knows the work as well as any of the aforementioned, and her abiding presence contributed considerably to such accessibility as the work has. This especially is meant to encourage the reader. So without further ado.…

By Way of Introduction The word tyranny has a strained and strange fit in the political lexicon of the twenty-first century. As objects of current analysis and concern, the West has placed the watch on tyrannies in the hands of improvising crisis managers, persons of state, political scientists, or, most notably, all three. These are the Blairs, Kouchers, Kissingers, and shades thereof, who may regard tyrannies as aberrations to be classified, rolled back, or tidied up, vestiges of the gigantic struggles that now appear resolved in the century just passed.1 All that may seem fairly consonant with recent events. Something has indeed changed and we turn to a compass for understanding. Neither psychology’s explanations for since-fallen mega-tyrannies, nor history’s lessons that coupled mass political participation with respect for individual rights, can explain today’s democratically installed tyrants. Those significant disciplines are committed, at base, to the analysis of particular events from which generalizations may, or may not, follow. Perhaps it is time to reach into something more architectonic and targeted at the level of guiding principles than either psychology or history, to give an accounting of tyranny. That something may be philosophy. Philosophy goes to work irrespective of whether history’s or psychology’s particulars are analyzed, and spends its energies on the seemingly intractable, the perennial, and the timeless. In the period spanning the later 1980s through much of the 1990s, one Francis Fukuyama certainly believed so. In his watershed The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama spent much time chronicling the apparent demise of tyrannies. And he did so in a philosophic sense. The End of History’s initial pages are spent articulating a universally applicable, all-purpose history and its final pages describing history’s conclusion as a universal and homogeneous state, a state in which each present would partake, acknowledging each other through the all of a political regime that is liberal and democratic in the broadest sense. Fukuyama places the end of time at the core of his view of world events –

and Alexandre Kojève, the renowned and eccentric interpreter of Hegel,2 dead center in his book for purportedly making the end of history the core of his thought. Indeed, it is practically axiomatic that whenever Fukuyama mentions Kojève, so, too, he mentions the “end of history,” a knack other writers have since had virtually without exception in presenting Kojève. Equally telling, the end depicted in The End of History is prefaced with an exhaustive accounting of world events, universal for encompassing a cast that would be the envy of Cecil B. DeMille, encompassing political aesthetic Gandhi as well as hospitality magnate Leona Helmsley, and homogenous for its “anyone who was anyone” quality exemplifying political democracy and economic liberalism, the flowering of Fukuyama’s understanding of the Enlightenment, finally crafted and MADE IN AMERICA. The “all’s well that ends well” quality, with America leading the rest of the world into the sunset, had what journalists called “legs.” With tyrannies toppling in the East, well past the Danube and the Vistula and nearly to the Volga, so, too, might time seem to have ended. In large years, we search for chroniclers, even philosophers, as 1789 brought us Burke, 1917 Reed, and perhaps 1989 Fukuyama, with Kojève as his appropriate Continental sidekick. This book is dedicated to the proposition that, were we to reduce the demand for Kojève to the emblematic WANTED poster of the old West, Kojève’s views of time are – to political science and the world it studies – worth far more alive than dead. And if nothing else, Fukuyama’s headlines-driven reading of Hegel and Kojève lead us to question whether we should leap from the times to the end of time without the intervening factor: time itself.3 This book will read Kojève’s political corpus, starting, but by no means concluding, with Kojève’s seminal pre-war Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. It will understand Kojève as, if not primarily a political philosopher, more exactly a philosopher whose views lead to fundamental questions of politics. But why waste an exalted something like philosophy on exploring tyranny, perhaps the lowliest of human conditions? Kojève’s answer is because tyranny is neither a regime, nor even a social condition. Rather, for Kojève, tyranny is the human condition. As such, tyranny ties politics to philosophy. Kojève argues that tyranny is coextensive and inseparable from his particular accounting of human time. Before Kojève, degradation, deceit, and sheer terror were viewed as instruments to maintain tyrants, and to create an unbridgeable gap between the tyrant and the tyrannized. But Kojève means to say much more. In speaking of tyranny as not so much a political regime but a philosophical condition, Kojève means to define the chasm between tyrant and tyrannized on the basis of a phenomenology of time, which is

to say how the human being experiences time. As the title of this book suggests, Kojèvian time, rather than its end, is the central and indispensable theme needed to understand and explain Kojève, both his politics and his philosophy, linked in what he will call a phenomenology of time. In so doing, this book will maintain that, consistent with Kojève’s view that philosophy and politics travel together, tyrants remain intractable and perennial, not as noisome inconveniences and misfits at the end of history, but rather as timeless in the Kojèvian sense, as the residue of flaws in Kojève’s time phenomenology. Specifically, this book will posit that Kojève’s view of time gives rise to an insupportable paradox: the very same time phenomenology that explains tyrants, those leaders of Kojève’s societies, makes them timeless and non-relational, thus undermining any social order. As this book will show, the Kojèvian time that hosts the tyrannized cannot host the tyrant. Philosophy and politics, time and tyrants, the fellow travelers that Kojève means to make inseparable, prove, in fact, incompatible. This book will further argue that this dilemma, and not that of a purported end of history, constitutes the abiding preoccupation of the broad swath of Kojève’s corpus, a corpus that, in places, sees him clearly trying to reconcile philosophy with the need for a plausible social order. To study Kojève the philosopher is to study Kojève the time phenomenologist, in the element of time, tyrants very much in tow. And if anything, the headlines of the seemingly euphoric 1990s proved fickle. How we experience time caught The End of History in a whiplash. By the middle of that decade, it was literally possible to secure a copy of The End of History in paperback at a bookstore, only to see at the newsstand across the street headlines from Bosnia-Herzegovina suggesting something quite the contrary.4 No sooner did a happy end for the West appear in sight than Europe had a problem in its backyard. The roundups, the mass exhumations, the exposure of walking emaciated corpses behind barbed wire – all the trappings of the theretofore concealed thuggery of the Milosevic regime – again touched the raw nerve of a Europe purportedly conditioned never to forget that tyranny could crop up anywhere. But, as is often the case, old habits are hard to break, even on a European continent advertised as newly united and the supposed burial ground of the two terrific tyrannies of the last century. But not to worry, went some thinking in the exuberance of the early 1990s. Such tyrannies as existed then seemed to us historical artifacts that would soon pass, vestiges of mega-tyrannies past in such backwaters as remote Central and Southeast Asia, Cuba, and perennially troubled and impoverished West Africa. A combination of the hard realities of globalization on one hand, and the American

“soft power” to determine cultural norms that holds sway over so much of the Third World’s young population on the other, the thinking went, would absorb, cleanse, and fill these cavities. Yet, armed with The End of History in hand, fresh events compelled us to take a harder look – and face the possibility of cognitive dissonance. Populist authoritarianism again came to the fore in the Caribbean with the rise of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and its progeny in Ecuador, thus threatening to undo one and one half decades of real progress toward democracy and free enterprise in South America. A more virulent form of ethnicity, concurrent with the travails of the Balkans, occurred in Rwanda, where Hutu violence against Tutsis established tyranny of a majority by extermination, featuring physical dismemberment that would have caused Dr. Guillotine to shudder. And then there is the institutionalized tyranny of the world’s most populous country, placing a blanket on Tiananmen, recalling the drab efficiency of mass-scale authoritarianism in the twentieth century, and preventing any claim to 1989 as a rout for the freedom sweepstakes. Subtle and raw, spontaneous in the streets and structured through institutions, the fact is that all characteristics of tyranny have reasserted themselves since 1989 and done so in a variety of ways. The diversity of circumstances suggests that any end, let alone one claiming authority for being universal and homogeneous, is far from in sight. The early part of the millennium still had us chasing headlines at the expense of philosophy. Our bookshops, websites, and chattering classes looked for tyranny accordingly. Out with books trumpeting a new dawn for liberal democracy and the end of tyranny, in with sober accounts that even democratic regimes need not bring tolerance and concern for protecting the dignity and security of the individual, breathing new life into Madison’s description of tyranny as a condition – the “tyranny of the majority.”5 It is an admonition that seems particularly fresh as we exit the convenient authoritarianism of Mubarak’s Egypt and peer around the corner from Tahir Square and what awaits. Just as suddenly as Kojève the philosopher disappeared, it now seems as if this philosophic Kojève, the Kojève of time and tyrants rather than of happy endings, again might be apposite, after a hibernation of many years, as subsequent evidence of new tyrannical challenges keeps mounting. Characteristics of tyranny have reasserted themselves and the diversity of circumstances suggests that any end, let alone one claiming authority for being universal and homogeneous, is far from in sight. Fukuyama has long since abandoned the headlines as justification for an end of history, and indeed distanced himself from such a hallmark, understood as an

end in itself. Still, sober political scientists continue to congregate and measure the headlines against the yardstick created by The End of History, inevitably becoming enmeshed in the cacophony of messages from headlines, shredding any pretense to theme, let alone one standing on universality and homogeneity.6 Yet, the potency of the end of history as an idea bequeathed circa 1989 remains. One has only to look to the Second Inaugural Address of President George W. Bush for a clue and perhaps an answer: the trumpeting of democracy and markets makes the end a stand-alone, a one-of-a-kind appeal that addresses sentiments for destiny and Messianism. And the latter controls an understanding of the former. Once the end is fixed, that which precedes in time, even a time propelled by destiny, is subsumed in it. In short, once the end is profiled, it permits one to catapult time itself. But once Messianism and a proclaimed end are in the display window, they might undo themselves and thereby restore, for careful consideration, time itself. If by tyranny one means rule through the repression of some by others, or even non-consensual rule, the America of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries seems to have set itself to the task of its eradication. World War I, often viewed as America’s “coming out” party in foreign affairs, was broadcast as “the war to end all wars” and overthrew dynastic, authoritarian regimes strewn from the shores of the North Sea to the Bosporus. And so the theme has continued into the recent American intervention in Iraq. “Regime change” has served as the code for the elimination of an obstinate and inconvenient tyrant. The rhetoric helped to secure domestic political support for military engagement, even as international audiences found the expedition more appealing and less adventurous as a campaign to cleanse parts of a volatile region of weapons of mass destruction. Even in the face of new realities that came to the fore as of about 8:45 am EST on September 11, 2001, the public seemed to have lost appetite for apocalyptic confrontation and the Messianism that goes with it. Fukuyama may have become America’s most historical of political scientists. But America also spawned, in nearly the same generation, that most political of historians. As Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., maintained professed allegiance to the trend of liberal democracy and market capitalism seemingly engulfing the world, he strenuously maintained that, on the home front, assimilation, that great cultural compression machine dispatching the past in favor of an American present and future, was threatened. Schlesinger advocated assimilation’s refurbishment through trappings that philosophy has always assigned time – robust exchange, union through historically derived common purpose, and, especially important for Kojève as we will soon see, demonstrated commitment to ideals through action.7 America’s exceptionalism was quite unexceptional in

demanding that time, not its end, provided the means to mastery of knowledge of self and selves. The repudiation of the end has one value: it forces us to focus first not on the times, but on what we had leapfrogged in exploring Kojève’s alleged end of time: an understanding of Kojèvian time itself and Kojève’s philosophic view of time as phenomenology. And a view of Kojève the philosopher means a view of Kojève the political philosopher, for his time and tyrants travel together. Cast loose from a Kojèvian end and the profile of Kojève as new age guru, we are left with something far richer: Kojève the philosopher, with a view of politics. Yet, with richness comes complexity. This position is especially compelling for three reasons, less to do with headlines than with transcending themes that at once inhere in a philosophic view of time and explain them. One is the phenomenon of pop technology. And this goes quite beyond the association of technology with such tyrannical favorites as torture, mass incarceration, and manipulation of public opinion as instruments of terror and control. That is stuff for the headlines. Rather, a closer consideration of technology scrutinizes its effect on time itself, or on a perception of time. Our digital societies demand that we live in “real time,” expressing the intimate relation of time to self as both the holding pen and the resource making human activity possible. Our vernacular here has an analogue to what we will term the “Kojèvian Real” in which the activity proceeding from the connection between self and situation implicates tyranny and is, in fact, a kind of Kojèvian time. And this philosophic view translates into familiar headlines. The breath of Kojève’s connection of activity, time, and tyranny, to circumscribe nothing less than the human, resonates with a down-home, “anyone can own one,” American flavor of technology as exemplified by Steve Jobs and the link of the product to the human. Those humans, known to Kojève as tyrants with tools, come front and center, prepared to infiltrate our real time. Yet, today’s technologies have a chameleon-like quality. Add a dash of the right software program and a little color coordination, and one can tweak a technical economic program designed to forecast a regime’s cotton harvest into a propaganda extravaganza – anyone can be a Riefenstahl, and even Ashgabat’s soccer stadium can seem like the Nuremburg of the 1930s, Central Asian style, resplendent in celebration of a leader presented as generous and caring. In short, the proliferation of technology is as likely to join tyrant to ruled as to effect an explicit separation for purposes of oppression. Technology in support of tyranny makes Kojève relevant, technology offering a kind of electronic “mirror, mirror on the wall” that reinforces the tyrant. A second, less obvious reason supporting the link of time to tyrants is the

famously hypothesized demise of the nation-state. This poses a curious challenge for Kojève’s thought. The nation-state and the entire cultural and social fabrics that encrust it were, as the vessel of Hegelian freedom, emblematic of time itself. Yet now the nation-state may in fact make its last stand under the auspices of the world’s tyrannies. This is because globalization from on high and the explosion of nongovernmental organizations at the grassroots level have put several liberal Western states in a vise. These states may have become too small to solve multinational problems and too large to alleviate local ones, as one adage of the euphoric 1990s went. It may take the iron fist in the velvet glove of a tyranny to keep nation-states viable as an idea. If tyrants and time were at an end, one might argue that tyrants hitch their wagons to the nation-state, a tired political instrument that has seen better days. Yet, no one in the Kremlin seems to have relayed the view of the nation-state as merely an end game strategy to Mr. Putin, nor has Al-Qaeda seemed to have effectively relayed the message to its younger and more demonstrative sibling, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Both seem to view the nation-state as a very real instrument of political authority in time, not at its end. The former seems intent on the resurrection of Slavic identity based on the reconstitution of nation-states united by common cultural interest and ethnic identity in western Eurasia; and, not to be undone, the latter seems intent on bringing about the revival of something resembling a medieval caliphate, within the conspicuous framework of a nation-state. Meantime, the most significant threat to both movements is not the dominant American model celebrated in the exuberant 1990s but rather the European Union, whose “Ode to Joy” best captured in melodic form the universality and homogeneity proffered as a solution to the world’s ills. The nation-state, whether understood as an instrument of power that Metternich might have appreciated, or hatched from a perverted reading of the Koran, is alive and well – and the incubator for troublesome tyrants of many stripes. Whatever the changes to its forms and justifications, that nation-state remains the single most significant actor advancing, and frustrating, the aspirations of its people, whether as vessels for progressive movement or as repositories of reaction. Yet, the varied use of nation-states as habitats for tyrants prompts the question of whether there is a philosophical coordinate that might explain such diversity. Kojève, this book will maintain, urges that it is time for a phenomenological view of time. A third current trend accounts for the coexistence of the first two, and explains why we should be fascinated by the paradox offered by them. That

paradox is that both technology and the nation-state remain factors, having adjusted with the times, yet inform a philosophic view of time itself. This carries over to the third trend, one trumpeted in the euphoric 1990s. This is the death of ideologies, those pillars of the terrific tyrannies of the last century. As we will soon see, Kojève proposes a less grandiose, yet more useful, view of the relation of thought to act. Ideas, tailored to acts, need not be so grandiose. And, for Kojève, ideas rather than ideologies have a way of making tyrants flexible and nimble, characteristics that will prove invaluable as Kojève refines his views on the relation of time to tyranny in his post-war corpus. And again, in carefully examining Kojève’s views of time, one somehow more easily finds the times. Rather than resting on ideology, present-day tyrannies rest on an appeal to traditional religious and cultural ties, local resentments against superpowers real and imagined, present and past, and perhaps, above all, on the ability to fashion a cult of personality fueling and fueled by a media frenzy. The last enables the tyrant to at least buy the image of legitimacy, even beneficence. Kojève’s Hegelian Jena, the Napoleonic victory that he evokes as a mark of the end of time, is no longer necessary to create l’homme d’état, whereby the man personified the nation-state. Now, the nationstate rather dissolves into the man. Louis XIV’s Hall of Mirrors is no match for the splendor of satellite dishes in the capital cities of the Third World that each night mix international and local news broadcasts, thereby lending more than an air of respectability to the deeds of local authoritarians. Ideology takes the back seat as far more a tool than an end. The third trend in which personal image trumps ideology is not limited to Asia and its traditional political cultures of personality. In the last several years, this trend has worked its way west. “Media oligarchs” are said to have controlled elections in at least marginally western Russia and in fact secured themselves election in decidedly western Italy. This is not to say, of course, that Putin, or even Berlusconi for that matter, are both to be regarded as tyrants. It is, rather, to suggest that media and technology have brought us new tools for securing legitimacy, even the image of beneficence, through exposure as statesmen. Interestingly, both Italy and Russia have in the relatively recent past featured tyrannies on the Right and the Left respectively at a time when ideology mattered. All of which leads to the hypothesis that technologies may have replaced the nation-state and ideology in bonding ruler to ruled in a way that might have fascinated Kojève and especially the classical tyrants, such as Xenophon’s Hiero, on whom he commented. How does the demise of grand ideology lead to the link of tyrants and time? The dominance of technology and personality over ideology and the nation-state

brings us to Leo Strauss and his complaint that Kojève’s time phenomenology disrupts the eternal order, the orbit of philosophy as properly understood.8 Strauss is far less concerned with the siren song of Kojève’s eschatology, and far more with the protection of that most strenuous of temporal activities, philosophy. Kojève’s time phenomenology consumes itself by yielding a timeless and non-relational leader in the tyrant; such is the true irony of a time purporting to deliver the political and quintessentially human. This critique suggests the organization of this book. One might see discussion proceeding as to the question of whether Kojève as a philosopher, whose thought has explicit political consequences for pairing time and tyranny, can thereby become a political philosopher. This means a thinker explaining the conditions for rule and a plausible political society. Thereby making Kojève more ordinary as a political scientist? Hardly. This book aims to make Kojève less an object of study, and more the subject of writing, speech, action, and thought. It is against this backdrop that the publisher of this book urged that I provide a “road map” of my work. I welcome the opportunity with a single caveat: before setting the road map, it is best to explore current road conditions in Kojèvian scholarship. My work hopefully advances the view that it is a conversation, the conversation between Kojèvian time and tyrants, prominent among whom were some of Kojève’s most known contemporaries, that supported his persistent and rambunctious writing, speech, and, above all, thought and action as a subject. By comparison, a good bit of existing road conditions directs us in skillful and detailed fashion down a path fully anticipated, if not fully known: the DEAD END that is history’s end. By this I mean a tendency to stress what some may take as Kojève’s “final word” as his only word. This approach is not without advantages. It offers some depth, and a sense of profundity. And it even offers some of the best of Hitchcockian presentation, suspense without the surprise. But a number of unanswered questions remain, such as the relation of Kojève’s Outline of a Phenomenology of Right to the rest of his political corpus, and the reconciliation of the theme of Kojèvian irony to his very vivid and practical writings after World War II. My roadmap will endeavor not to sacrifice Kojève’s unique and enticing breath of interest to the question of depth. Chapter by chapter, it proceeds as follows: •

Chapter 1: Man, Time and a Man in His Times on the Precipice – The subtext of the chapter addresses the question: “Why read Kojève?” It will put aside the Kojève of the “end of history,” and will introduce the idea that

•

•

•

a correct reading of Kojève as a philosopher of time will place today’s headlines in context. The chapter will carefully analyze the seminal statement in Kojève’s pre-war Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: “… Man is Time, and Time is Man.” The chapter will present Kojève as borrowing on elements of Hegel and Heidegger, earning Kojève a unique place in modern political philosophy. Chapter 2: Kojèvian Time Phenomenology and the Time-Tyrant Problem – Having placed Kojève in his time, this chapter will then take up Kojève and time, and Kojève who, as a philosopher, is specifically a phenomenologist of time. The chapter will discuss the nature of time phenomenology, and the centrality of the desire for desire as crucial to what Kojève understands as human time. The chapter will detail how Kojève as time phenomenologist sees desire for desire as both leading to tyranny as the predominant social and political condition, and how this dynamic leads to a phenomenological separation between the tyrant-as-ruler and the ruled. The book will term this Kojève’s “time-tyrant problem,” a dilemma rooted in Kojève’s pre-war Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. The chapter will show how the heart of the dilemma is non-relation between ruler and ruled, which expresses an underlying condition of timelessness. Chapter 3: Time Phenomenology In and On Kojève – The core of Kojève’s thought having been set forth in Chapters 1 and 2, this chapter contrasts the prevalent view of Kojève as a philosopher of the end of time with the more correct view that Kojève is a phenomenologist of time. The chapter will carefully analyze the few Kojève remarks on the “end of history” to show how context and Kojève’s view of textual analysis really support the view that he is describing not a temporal end state, but rather the condition of timelessness and the time-tyrant problem. Kojève’s end state is often associated with universality and homogeneity, as at the end of time each citizen is said to recognize each other through the all of the end state. The chapter will conclude by presenting the famous exchange between Kojève and Leo Strauss over Xenophon’s Hiero in On Tyranny. It will show how their differences concerning universality relate to timelessness and the timetyrant dilemma. It will demonstrate how Strauss engages Kojève in order to defend a centerpiece of Straussian thought, the theologico-political problem, so that Straussian philosophers, not Kojèvian tyrants, lay claim to the universal, eternal, and timeless. Chapter 4: Attempt of Kojève’s Thinkers to Resolve the Time-Tyrant Problem – As the preceding chapter concerned time and universality, this chapter will concern time and homogeneity. The chapter will discuss

•

•

Kojèvian proof by historical verification as outlined in the Introduction, whereby acts based on desire for desire, on one hand, and ideas, on the other, ratify each other in Kojèvian human time. The chapter will maintain that such a process might be a means to avoid the non-relation and timelessness of Kojèvian tyrants by bringing ideas associated with their acts into human time through discourse. It will argue that the core of Kojèvian homogeneity is the relation of the tyrant to a thinker who might accomplish this task. The chapter will review the fitness of three types of Kojèvian thinkers for this task: the philosopher, the wise man, and the intellectual mediator. It will argue that all fail under Kojèvian time phenomenology to resolve the time-tyrant problem. The chapter will conclude by returning to the Strauss–Kojève exchange. It will show that Strauss’s strident defense of his view of the philosopher and philosophy is more precisely understood as a concerted effort to undermine Kojèvian homogeneity, the parity of desirous of desire acts and ideas, of tyrants and thinkers, respectively. Chapter 5: In the Shadow of War: The Beginning of Kojève’s Answer to the Time-Tyrant Problem – In contrast to the preceding chapters emphasizing actors and thinkers, this chapter will demonstrate through Kojève’s wartime Outline of a Phenomenology of Right how ideas themselves, rather than tyrannical actors, might move time, thereby obviating the time-tyrant problem. In the main, the chapter will show how the force of the idea of justice, free of the desire for desire and tyrannical acts, moves in time and how the collision of ideas of justice both influences and sustains a social order. The chapter will demonstrate how equity, Kojève’s refined version of justice, is far less about a Kojèvian temporal end state, and far more a reflection of a combination of ideas of justice very much in time. This said, the chapter will conclude by offering the observation that perhaps the Outline is less about the full replacement of the desire for desire and tyrannical actors, and more about parallel political and juridical tracks in ordering society, such that even tyrants manipulate ideas of justice to sustain the social order. Chapter 6: As Sand Patties Become Sand Castles: Enter Kojève’s Bourgeois Tyrant – Chapter 5 maintained that the wartime Outline posed the view that Kojève might avoid the time-tyrant problem with a social order dominated by ideas rather than acting tyrants. Chapter 6 will discuss the type of ruler compatible with this view. The chapter will argue that Kojève presents such a ruler in the person of the bourgeois side of the tyrant in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” his response to Strauss. The chapter will further maintain that while the tyrant of the Introduction was a fighter and making time for

•

action on desire for desire, Kojève’s bourgeois in the tyrant uses time strategically, rather than making it. Kojève’s post-war idea of time for the taking has the bourgeois tyrant act on ideas, not from desire for desire, but because the ideas themselves are good and useful. The chapter will trace the origin of the tyrant’s bourgeois side to the bourgeois idea of justice in the Outline emphasizing the exchange of idea for act. Having introduced the bourgeois in the tyrant, the question is how this then can be reconciled to the fighting, desirous of desire aspect of the tyrant Kojève initially presents in the Introduction. In so doing, this chapter will conclude with the view that Kojève is asking, as might any political philosopher, about the precise conditions for rule. Chapter 7: Kojève’s Return to Conventional Politics – at an Unconventional Time – Consistent with the preceding observation that Kojève is far less an apocalyptic prophet than a political philosopher concerned with the conditions for rule, this chapter will more carefully examine Kojève’s postIntroduction political corpus. It will do so considering The Notion of Authority and Kojève’s Outline of a Doctrine of French Policy, two works heretofore seen as only remotely related. Analysis will demonstrate that The Notion creates a leadership type called the Chief that is the precursor of the bourgeois tyrant in “Tyranny and Wisdom.” Specifically, it will demonstrate that, for the Chief, time is that within which action occurs, rather than desirous of desire human action itself. The chapter will argue that The Notion has a key objective: avoidance of implausible rule and the timetyrant problem. The chapter will continue by arguing that Kojève’s Doctrine evidences the Chief as a ruler in practice. This set forth, the chapter will ask whether there is any aspect of Kojève’s time phenomenology that can accommodate both the desirous of desire future of the insatiable fighting tyrant of the Introduction and the working projectoriented bourgeois future of “Tyranny and Wisdom.” The chapter will answer yes, linking the former to the idea of a temporal present and the latter to the historical present, both initially set forth in the Introduction. The chapter will elaborate that the former requires a suspension from time by the Kojèvian wise man to develop historical perspective, while the latter demands action in time best forged by the Kojèvian intellectual mediator. The chapter will conclude by viewing the Strauss–Kojève exchange as the apogee of this issue, with very significant parts of the exchange entailing both Kojève’s attempt to make Strauss himself a wise man and intellectual mediator in service of the warrior and bourgeois aspects of tyrants, and the Strauss defense of his idea of philosophy in vigorous opposition to this

Kojèvian solution to the time-tyrant problem. The book will thus end by showing that, throughout his political corpus, Kojève is a thinker occupied with the conditions for rule, most notably those related to his views of time. Phrased differently, the organization of this book proceeds in rough chronological order referencing the major philosophic, and therefore the major political, works of Kojève. This said, this book will return to three flashpoints of the Kojève corpus: the Introduction, the Outline of a Phenomenology of Right, and “Tyranny and Wisdom.” Each is appropriate, for the first is easily Kojève’s most philosophic, the second arguably his most original, and the third perhaps his most current and known, at least in Anglo-American political thought. In brief, the above roadmap intends to take us to a Kojève at his most profound, his most original, and his most conspicuous actually dealing with and in time. There is no need for the embellishments of a misunderstood eschatology to make Kojève worth considering and reading. Intriguingly, we will see that it is on the plane of time that Kojève is most profound, most original, and most dangerous, both to others and to himself, for linking time to tyrants. Admittedly, the above roadmap will steer us from putting history to rest and more toward replenishment of the validating maxim: “the rest is history.” This is perhaps the greatest gift that Kojève as thinking and acting subject can make to that exercise he viewed as quintessentially modern: that of philosophy.

Notes 1

2

3

Disposition of tyranny has been implicated in the discussion of the posited end of time. Compare Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, xi, xiii, 39–51 with Derrida, Spectres de Marx, 37. See text in Chapters 1 and 2 infra. Commentary on Kojève’s influence on Hegelian scholarship ranges from characterizing Kojève as exhibiting the classical standard in Hegelian interpretation to the preponderance of opinion that Kojève is innovative, even radical, in interpreting Hegel (compare Bloom, “Editor’s Introduction,” Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, viii; Goldford, “Kojève’s Reading of Hegel,” International Philosophical Quarterly, 276 emphasizing Kojève’s Hegelian scholarship with Roth, Knowing and History: Appropriations of Hegel in Twentieth-Century France, 96; Descombes, Le Même et l’autre: Quarante Cinq Ans de la Philosophie Française, 25, Kelly, Hegel’s Retreat from Eleusis, 31, 53 emphasizing Kojève’s originality). IRH, 95. The text as proceeds will contain repeated reference to and quotations from certain core Kojève texts, among them the Introduction, On Tyranny, and Outline of a Phenomenology of Right. Respectively, these will be abbreviated: IRH as to those portions of the Introduction in the English translation of James Nichols, Jr. (ILH as to the original French), OT, and OPR in the English translation of Bryan-Paul Frost and Robert Howse. In the interests of a balanced visual presentation and minimizing distraction, references to these core texts will be directly in the text, using parentheses and abbreviations following an initial footnote identifying the abbreviation. Abbreviation

4 5 6

7 8

of other works will be explained as presented. To this date, even the most general commentary on Kojève terms the end of history as central to his thought. Mehlman, The Columbia University of Twentieth Century French Thought, 555. Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, 26, 56, 61; Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, John Jay, The Federalist Papers, No. 10, 83. Compare Fukuyama, “After Neoconservatism,” The New York Times Magazine, February, 19, 2006, 65; Mead, “The Return of Geopolitics,” Foreign Affairs, 69–79 (further qualifying Fukuyama and diluting the force of an end of history as currently understood) with “World Politics Twenty-Five Years after History” Panel at the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 29, 2014, Washington, DC. Compare Schlesinger, The Disuniting of America, 13, 24–26 with Schlesinger, The Cycles of American History, 10, 19. OT, 208–09. There will be frequent citation of Kojève’s collaborative effort in commenting with Leo Strauss on Xenophon’s Hiero in On Tyranny.

1 Man, Time, and a Man in His Times on the Precipice

On Meeting Kojève If the Preface and By Way of Introduction set forth the way in which the times lead one to write of Kojève, the first two chapters of this book will show that Kojève’s idea of time explains why, and how, to read him. Kojève was an eminent interpreter of Hegel, whose work commanded attention in Kojève’s Europe, a bloodied and rehabilitating continent of the midtwentieth century. This book is therefore not uncommon, as the interpretation of an interpreter. Like many books of this genre, it will set itself apart from other interpretations, arguing that Kojève was famously misinterpreted. But this book means to say something further. It will say that not only was Kojève famously misinterpreted; it will contend that Kojève became famous in being misinterpreted. That is to say, the book will contend that Kojève is misinterpreted on a point that is so rudimentary that we have missed his main contribution to political thought. In particular, this book will contend that Kojève is not fundamentally a philosopher of time’s end, but rather that Kojève is, at root, a philosopher of time, and the possibilities for politics in time. Having drawn this distinction from other work on Kojève, one commences now by doing something almost all enthusiasts of Kojève seek to do, whatever their interpretation. This is to examine the man before examining the thinker, for the circumstances of Kojève’s life were so compelling as to make him both a man and a thinker on a precipice. However, this precipice is not that of time’s end, but rather, as this book will contend, that of time’s poignancy. To see this most easily, let us meet Kojève first, then read him. Nationalism, immigration, alternating and possibly conflicting allegiances. All of these features have entered into our public discourse in the West in 2016–

17, and indeed dominated electoral politics. And all three are key aspects of the personal profile of Kojève. To introduce the person before the thinker, Alexandre Kojève was at core an émigré from what was becoming an increasingly totalitarian country. Kojève admires the social cohesion of the totalitarian state governing this country, despite that such state purveys a diabolical scientific collectivism. At the same time, émigré Kojève’s newfound country has a cherished tradition of republicanism, individual freedom, and open political participation, a situation that makes those interested in the émigré’s admiration of totalitarianism focus on that even more closely. Kojève’s sojourn between these two societies would be intriguing enough. Yet, a second totalitarian state, and still a third country, looms large in Kojève’s life story as well. The émigré’s new home is slowly and deviously the object of guns, tanks, and planes manned and aimed at Kojève’s newfound home by this third country, a traditionally hostile rival. This pending aggressor has a recent history of hostility to its neighbors and rigid internal political control. Both qualities reinforce the expansionist and racist ideology of this second totalitarian power. Kojève becomes known for his views, expressed in lectures. They attract a group of admirers. Not surprisingly, those views center on both what this émigré admires in his former country and what he loathes as a possibility for his new one under threat. The above formulation in meeting Kojève the person, whose ideas include desire, bullies, unremitting danger, and conquest, is both brief and stark. Yet, to know Kojève is to make the stark and vivid the historic – and the philosophic. For with Kojève, it is only through time, and philosophy, that one knows anything fully and truly. Émigré Kojève’s native country is the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin. His adopted country is the France of the Third Republic in the 1930s, with all the hope and sense of foreboding it inspired. The pending aggressor and the second totalitarian country is Hitler’s Nazi Germany. But who is this émigré to excite such interest and admiration? The edginess of the time suggests that the person of Kojève could be a rabble-rouser, or a publicity hound, of which there were a bunch in Kojève’s Paris. Kojève is of another kind. Nationalism, immigration, alternating and possibly conflicting allegiances … all three profile Kojève against his times. But what made Kojève project, think, write, and act, was his idea of time. To truly meet Kojève, one must meet Kojève the philosopher and time, that which reveals philosophy. If his times showed tyrants ruling totalitarian states all about, Kojève’s time, philosophically understood, is about tyranny, and a tyranny that is

unrelenting. The rest, for Kojève, is indeed history, the history of a repetition of such essentials as fundamental to the human condition. In particular, the Kojèvian philosopher is one who is “ready … for the newly constituted reality,” as such reality is a social product of actions on ideas, which resulting social product in turn produces yet new ideas (IRH, 85, 184–85). The Kojèvian philosopher is not just affected by the confluence of Nazi Germany, the Stalinist Soviet Union, and republican France. The philosopher sees possible ideas ensuing from their confluence. In a bold stipulation, Kojève suggests that the expansionist tyrannical states about France epitomize that which makes man human, the desire for desire of an other or others. In this instance, the reality of that philosophic desire is the historical circumstance of an armed and avenging German state desiring acknowledgment through authority imposed by force, and a revolutionary Soviet Union doing much the same. According to Kojève, the idea of desire for desire, the desire for acknowledgment from an other or others, propels the story of humankind, leaving a succession of conflicts between humans who, as humans, desire the desire of others so much as to risk life, even to fight to the death, to secure acknowledgment of the value of self. The rest of this chapter will use the term “desire for desire” in that sense. The chapter also employs a second term, that of “the fight,” as a general marker for the battles that ensue in the quest for acknowledgment. The result of this conflict is a continuing pattern of victorious Masters and subservient Slaves.1 Master, Slave, and the fight are famously presented in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and vividly interpreted in Kojève’s lectures, entitled Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. The Masters compose humankind’s tyrants, who win the fight, their human desire for desire prevailing over an animal fear of death. The vanquished Slave on the other hand is the loser of the fight and has the desire for desire overcome by both the Master and the fear of death. Spared in the fight, work and works for the Master are the lot of the Slave. Dreaded Nazi Germany represents the reality of the tyrant propelling time, the desire for desire. Yet, in fairness to the fullest Kojève, there is the story of the Soviet Union and republican France, the countries that Kojève admires and seeks to defend respectively, and what they represented to him beyond the Nazi menace. These latter two nations represent the idea of a universal and homogeneous state, that which, Kojève very gingerly contends, ends the parade of tyrants, desire for desire, and the human story.2 For Kojève, the French Revolution and its extension through a universal and homogeneous state means that each

individual, as a citizen, is acknowledged through a comprehensive state entity, thereby evidencing universality. This state of universality is, in turn, itself acknowledged by each citizen of the state, thereby making for homogeneity. Given this, the human story of desire for desire, and Masters with their tyrannies, are at an end. Yet, before stamping Kojève as a philosopher of the end of history, we are wise to take counsel in Kojève’s life as a philosopher. Despite impending Armageddon, Kojève hardly bid his adopted Paris an all’s well that ends well. Making his mark as a philosopher, Kojève distinguished himself from the grabbers for headlines and the headline grabbers, for whom tyrants and proclaimed end states were grist for chit-chat in the café society of the Paris of the late 1930s. The desire for desire and revanchisme, pretenders to a universal and homogeneous state, both Nazi and Soviet, and assuredly tyrants – all of these topics worked their way into the Tuesday morning headlines of Parisian newspapers following Kojève’s Monday lectures at the Sorbonne.3 And Kojève delighted in their discussion. But he steered well clear of both doomsday and triumphalism, when circumstances would have dictated otherwise. Among the things that distinguish Kojève’s philosophical task of defining man from the rantings of louts and the publicity hounds are that Kojève actually eschewed the headlines and the sensationalism of time’s end. This is not insignificant. In 1938–39, as Kojève’s lectures gave a tour de force of Western philosophic thought, his adopted France braced for a showdown with Hitler on the issue of Czechoslovakia.4 Indeed, if Kojève were to have sought publicity, this would have been an excellent time to have defined man as a tyrant. Yet, despite the Wehrmacht’s looming presence on the banks of the Rhine and Stalin’s cagy indifference to the fate of the West, he did not. Kojève could have plainly defined man as desire for desire. And, contrary to the rantings of the German propaganda machine and the centrality of revanchisme to its message, he did not. Kojève could have defined man as a being that is always risking. Despite some gargantuan risks assumed by Hitler in defiance of his best soldiers and diplomats, Kojève did not. What then did Kojève do?

The Double Dare from a Modern’s Modern The Double Dare…

Appropriate to a thinker who professed the great and close interplay of act and idea, what Kojève did was signaled by what he said. Kojève, whose lectures established his most provocative themes in great detail, did not spare the force or the drama of brevity in answering the fundamental philosophic question: who is man? Kojève says simply and repeatedly: “… Man is Time, and Time is Man.”5 These twin observations, analyzed separately and studied collectively, represent Kojève’s double dare. The dare is most immediately evident considering Kojève’s audience. It was precisely an audience that might be thought to reject a claim linking time and man to tyrants. But intellectual Paris flocked to Kojève’s lectures. Quite appropriately, Kojève presented the Introduction to an anxious audience of scholars and thinkers that was half on bended ear for wisdom, half on bended knee from reverence. The brilliant but supine included luminaries as diverse as Merleau-Ponty in metaphysics, Queneau in letters, Bataille in critical thought, and Lacan in social science, all of whom would reinvigorate the tradition of the salon in what would be the Atomic Age and define France’s intellectual discourse for more than a generation.6 And none were devotees of Hitler. Did they sense something of Kojève that we have missed? This book will contend that they did. It will set forth that Kojève has been as bold philosophically as politically – if not more so. Specifically, while Kojève’s accounting of time brings us the dull thud of tyrants, his phenomenology of time eventually consigns tyrants to a state of implausible timelessness. We are, in the end, different from Hitler – or, more accurately, he from us. This book will set forth a total understanding of Kojève’s political corpus that examines Kojève’s attempted correction of a problem created by his time phenomenology, the paradox of making tyrants central yet irrelevant to the human condition for being timeless. In brief, Kojève’s tyrants, after having embodied the desire for desire in the fight, thereafter have no continued viability in Kojève’s time phenomenology, for being timeless and non-relational. In setting this forth, this book will demonstrate a Kojève whose message of time was admittedly obscured by his times. Indeed, a sense of the momentousness of the occasion, urgency, and action were clearly attributes of Kojève’s times. And Kojève responded to them. He never held a conventional teaching position. The walking embodiment of the interplay of act and idea, Kojève spent the 1940s navigating breezily between being a philosopher and a man of action, first as a clandestine guerilla in times of war whose dossier included both passing information to the Resistance, and larger-than-life defiance of Nazi authorities in France through inciting Soviet prisoners of war pressed into forced labor to desertion. From the morass of post-

war Europe, Kojève opted for life as a dedicated civil servant and policy-maker laying the foundation for an integrated Europe in the subsequent peace.7 Indeed, ever the non-academic, Kojève never wrote the Introduction, what is surely his seminal work. Quite appropriately, Kojève spoke the Introduction to the anxious audience identified above. Kojève was their mirror and reflected their diverse interests and talents. In fact, Kojève became the first advertisement for what would become a unique French post-war product: the philosopher-celebrity always in the middle of the action, yet somehow apart from it. As will be outlined, the motif of reflecting and being reflected is not only a key element of Kojève as philosopher-celebrity, but of Kojèvian philosophy as well. Kojève’s elaborations on this plain-sounding double dare are equally important. In stating “… Man is Time, and Time is Man,” Kojève distinguishes himself from a social scene naturally riveted by events. Kojève does more. He suggests in his double dare that human identity with temporality encompasses man’s deeds in the fight, and their cultural residue, history, as ordinarily understood. But Kojève’s notion of time is even more fundamental. To be sure, Kojève’s double dare says that it is in reflecting on the times that one can learn man; but it moreover says that the only way to learn man is to learn time, for time is all that man is. Kojève was certainly politically brave. He signaled the dull thud of the Wehrmacht lurching west, jackboots marching to the monotonous tune of desire for desire. He also claimed that Hitler embodied something fundamentally human, though by no means admirable. In the double dare, we see the verve of Kojève the fighter, and the word actor, whether charming the German occupier to escape execution, or confronting the bookish Sorbonne with lectures that were, on first impression, animated performances. But we also see the cunning of Kojève, not only as the dashing fifth columnist in war or the plodding prescient bureaucrat in peace, but also as philosopher and interpreter of Hegel, demonstrating his astuteness and care, as well as passion.8 As such, Kojève might be thought of as a kind of philosophic estuary, the depth of which might be attributed to his astute yet bold negotiation of the confluence of two giant tributaries of modern thought: Hegel and Heidegger. Kojève’s challenge as an interpreter is to combine both influences in such a way that the dare is double: at first ratifying the modern view that man can conquer nature, then transcending it with the view that it is only in asserting the desire for desire over the natural fear of death that the individual becomes human. This evidences astuteness, yet portrays a boldness. “Man is Time” – here Kojève inalterably insinuates man into the philosophic variable of temporality. “Time is Man” – here Kojève conclusively defines the agenda for a free-ranging philosophy, an

agenda that is only the temporal. The double dare first draws us outside to confront the environment in the most expansive way, then pulls us back to define the most intimate aspect of the human. Bold though Kojève was in the face of Hitler’s Wehrmacht, he did not formulate his double dare without significant philosophic ammunition. A diagram of the philosophic syntax of both of Kojève’s bold statements captures the varied philosophic pedigree of the double dare. In the first part of the double dare, “Man is Time,” Kojève draws on Hegel, the thinker he so explicitly and exhaustively explicates in the Introduction. For Kojève, both man and time are in operation against nature. Nature, for Kojève, is just the “given” in an environment against which man acts, an environment to be exploited to effect change. Kojève notes: “Space is Nature, the unconscious natural World,” and a kind of romper room for animals featuring only birth, desire, consumption, and death.9 Thus, to Kojève, Hegel’s time is a bench, or a chair, or, as Kojève states in his Introduction, a table (IRH, 34). This means that man becomes human in making time through effort, the effort of work to make the table, or the effort of a fight to force that work. This fight will prove critical, for it will yield a tyrant in the manner of a victor and force work from the vanquished in the fight. Therefore, all in time stems from the fight and tyrants. Time and tyrants are thus linked in defining the human. Kojève defines the human as the active, the active of work and the seminal fight, so as to generate time, so as to alter space, as illustrated by Kojève’s metaphor of a workbench. And here, Kojève’s Hegel is not far off: Hegel says that to know man is to know the story of man, as “in world history is the actuality of mind in its whole compass of internality and externality alike,” mind being the peculiarly human aspect of reason.10 Hegel’s “externality” is easy enough to see in the Kojèvian world, with space or nature being dominated by man, a fulfillment of the modern model.11 In so daring, Kojève extends as well as fulfills. Kojève interprets Hegel such that nature is not only the familiar physical impediment, or object of Baconian science; nature is also static in contrast to man’s actions (IRH, 133), an implacable philosophic opposite to the human. Time is opposition to nature. “Man is Time.” In the second part of the double dare, Kojève states: “Time is Man.” Here, Kojève reverses the predicate nominatives to great philosophic effect, moving inward to a profound view of man. Kojève prefaces his double dare and reversal of predicate nominatives, expressing a view of humans in the world and providing philosophic syntax: “Man is in Time, and Time does not exist outside of Man” (IRH, 133). Time thus more than evidences man; it is inherent in man.12 Finally, as if the influence of Heidegger were not clear enough, Kojève

emphasizes that time, history, reveals being (ILH, 366). In recalling Heidegger, what Kojève does not say is as important as what he does. Retention of the “is” as the center of both faces of the double dare, with the corresponding dismissal of nature as fundamental to being in the human, is a Heideggerian hallmark.13 Kojève’s formulations are not “Man is by nature X” but rather “Man is Time, and Time is Man.” The second part of the dare extends Heidegger – nature will not be an interloper in defining the human. What is more, Kojève’s transposition from “Man is Time” to “Time is Man” bears another Heideggerian characteristic. Heidegger argues that philosophy should investigate how man exists in and through time. Most famously, he maintains that concern with being is most acute in the face of death, the realization of mortality; Kojève seizes on man’s realization of this mortality in the fight as critical to becoming human.14 Put more simply, man’s confrontation with death means no time, no man, thus reinforcing the second half of the double dare: “Time is Man.” Very broadly, if, for Kojève, Hegel raises time as a key stage for the human, Kojève is more inclined to borrow from and adapt Heidegger to signal time’s deep philosophic significance. Time is not Being for Heidegger. Rather, time expresses the how of such being or “being-in-the-world,” a reference that most certainly includes the social. Heidegger says this how to be “is time itself, not in time.”15 As Kojève borrows Heidegger to extend Hegel in getting at the significance of time as to man’s inner development, so, too, Kojève borrows Hegel to extend Heidegger. For Kojève, since “Man is Time” through action, time defines not only Heidegger’s how, but also the what of man: “Time is Man.” The exact identity of man and time invests man with the weightiest ontological responsibility: that of determining who man is, absent the intervening standard of nature. Kojève notes that in activity, in work and the fight, man “is a being that continues to be itself without remaining the same” (IRH, 232). Doing is therefore being. Actors and thinkers are not just the best audience for the double dare; they are the only human one. To whom is Kojève’s double dare directed? Kojève’s indebtedness to Heidegger helps answer the question. In the most Kojèvian sense, it is directed to those who “Being revealed,” (IRH, 171), humans, which is to say to actors, workers and fighters, and thinkers. Kojève’s indebtedness to Hegel thus gives us a politics of relation from action in space, the crafting of works, the waging of fights; his indebtedness to Heidegger bespeaks the connection of those activities to the core of human beings, and being human. In the rough sense, Kojève thus gives us politics via Hegel and a large dose of philosophy via Heidegger.

But does Kojève deliver a political philosophy? A review of Kojève as presented in scholarly commentary leans heavily on politics, and is scant on philosophy. Ever the man of action accompanied by thought, Kojève died during France’s notorious Spring of 1968, not in the shadows of a Parisian barricade, but in a conference hall attempting to bring a reasoned unity to the European economic order.16 Discussion has tended to suggest that the Introduction be leavened with an understanding of Kojève’s shorter and more explicit political writings on contemporary questions, with a view to ascertaining Kojève’s political leanings as a “Marxist” or “left Hegelian.”17 Even when he is at his most reflective and interpretive, as in his engagement with Leo Strauss as to Xenophon’s Hiero,18 both sympathizers of Strauss and those of Kojève have tended to see the exchange as a no-holds-barred period piece from the Cold War.19 Above all, as suggested in By Way of Introduction to this book, the political Kojève, the philosopher-celebrity for the moment as the actor in all moments, is joined to Kojève the prophet of the end of time. And even popularly acclaimed analyses of Kojève’s end state see him not advertising so much an end but a politically discernible beginning, the beginning of the universality of Western liberalism.20 There was, after all, a seamless fit in the 1990s among Pax Post Sovietica as a harbinger of world peace, a greater degree of prosperity and Kojève’s posited end of history. The overall point is that, as Kojève summons us to look at events, the tendency has been to focus exclusively on those events in analyzing and evaluating Kojève. Political life, it seems, cannot escape Kojève, even as Kojève prognosticates political death. Cumulatively, scholarly commentary has yielded a corpus this book will term the “mainstream reading” of Kojève. This mainstream Kojève has tended to view events from the “outside in,” starting with the world of fights and works, the world to which Kojève, after all, beckons us. And, in fairness, this appeals to that aspect of Kojève who interprets Hegel, for whom the actual of events is the real.21 In short, the politics in the political philosophy of Kojève has been seen to prevail. By way of comparison, this book will attempt to underline the “philosophy” in Kojève’s political philosophy. It will do so in maintaining that it is Kojève’s view of time that links his politics of relation to philosophy, especially as to what the book will call a Master-tyrant,22 whose relation with time lies at the heart of Kojève’s argument and his greatest challenge. In maintaining that the heart of Kojève is a view of time, we might start with the surface of events, precisely the stage on which the mainstream readers of Kojève would have us look. As it turns out, ends of history have their own cannibalizing effects. Those contemplating the headlines of the late 1990s to the present are as likely to see in the purported

end of history what are really timely symptoms of Kojève’s time – mayhem, repression, and struggle, from the Revolutionary Guards in the streets of Tehran to the cyber warfare against Baltic states. Those feasting on the mainstream reading might be observed saying, as did Gertrude Stein, “there is no there there” in considering history’s end.23 This just leads back to the core of Kojève’s philosophy and the need to excavate from the mainstream reading of Kojève24 to reach the core of Kojève, the philosopher of time. The end of history having seen its heyday, our discussion aims to again find the philosopher in Kojève. And we might do so by considering Kojève’s double dare against the work of other philosophers.

… from a Modern’s Modern We must reach back before Hegel to show the audacity of the double dare. If Kojève is an estuary borrowing on waters Hegelian and Heideggerian, we are best reminded that the deepest of estuaries are defined by tectonic shifts, in this case, in the fault lines that go to the question of the identity of man and society. In contrast to the mainstream reading of Kojève, which derives its energy from events rather than a cohesive view of human nature,25 political philosophy has normally spoken of politics as discrete, exceptional. Whatever their considerable differences, ancient and modern political philosophers largely concerned themselves with demonstrating how a social environment such as the polis or a given set of circumstances, such as a horrid state of nature, enhanced or affected the human condition. Both the ancients and moderns referenced man against the standard of nature. The ancients tended to look at nature as a point of aspiration that set the high bar for evolution to the fullest in humanity. Such features as the use of reason and the practice of social life in advancing uniquely human ends figured prominently in their analyses. If nature set the high bar for the ancients, the moderns used nature as a springboard. They saw mankind as naturally contentious, competitive, and violent. These tendencies were channeled to lead man to a better condition through such conventional devices as social contracts providing the basis for a stable political community. Whether through the high bar or the springboard, both ancients and moderns used nature to serve up politics and humanity in one dose. Hence, political philosophy was, at best, a branch of philosophy concerning itself with the uniquely human when referenced against nature. In contrast, Kojève’s double dare places man in relation to time, and the

pairing is, as we have seen, mutually exclusive as to nature, and other factors. In discarding nature as the high bar of the ancients and the springboard of the moderns, Kojève rejects ancient and modern tradition. But how does this replacement of nature with time relate to the double dare and an understanding that Kojève ventures even beyond the moderns? The answer lies in an understanding of what Kojève terms the “Real,” for Kojève draws the self to the environment in the first move of the double dare, the move outward, the move that embodies “Man is Time.” When we think of an idea conforming to a situation we encounter, we think of that idea as “realistic,” or having bearing on our experience. But when Kojève uses the term Real, he has more than demonstrative value in mind. Rather, the Kojèvian Real is the intersection of man and nature, or space, to produce Kojève’s time. The Kojèvian Real thus has probative as well as demonstrative value. Referencing “Man is Time, Time is Man,” we note the common “is” that brokers both faces of the double dare. For Kojève, both philosopher and philosopher-celebrity, nothing human simply is; it rather “is,” as the product of action. The Kojèvian Real bespeaks the intersection of man and nature to effect change, whether in the realm of the fight or that of work. Because all human events must fall within Kojève’s view of time, Kojève is not simply claiming that events corroborate his position, in the manner we claim when we say an idea or a philosophy is “realistic.” Rather, he is saying that there is no human event that one may consider or contemplate outside of this time. More simply, there is no Real outside of action, change, something we might put crudely as “becoming.” The Kojèvian Real is best thought of as that over which man exercises a phenomenological “Midas touch” to alter that which is given. Kojève will claim that for this exclusivity, his philosophy of time accounts for all conditions, all ingredients in the natural, spatial environment in which man becomes human through the fight and work. The actor, human for action, and the acted upon, the “given” in space that offers the actor resistance, are in the Real, a Real played out as human effort is applied against those ingredients in space. This Real marks our modern’s modern, showing why Kojève transcends the modern tradition.26 Here, one might contrast the Kojèvian Real with the Realpolitik of that prince of modernity, Machiavelli. Machiavelli held that skillful manipulation of the springboard of nature might empower rulers to channel passions to promote civic stability. Yet, as even the conclusion of The Prince attests, there is a gap between the springboard of nature and the conventional, that which channels the natural into political institutions. Machiavelli deems this margin of error “fortune,” which might be

thought of as accounting for the difference between modest conventional capabilities to reform and an overpowering nature as men remain true to their nature, “obstinate in their modes.”27 But the gap is grounded in some understanding of “nature.” Recalling the metaphor of political philosophy as based on tectonic plates with fault lines marking the relation of man and society, Machiavelli famously phrases his view of political topography in the Dedicatory Letter to The Prince, relying on the “nature” of peoples, princes, and places high and low, but especially low, to derive the topography of modern political philosophy.28 Yet, he rests his view on “nature” nonetheless. In transcending modernity, Kojève will have nothing of either “nature” or “fortune,” as the prince of modernity knows them. As noted, nature for Kojève is mere space, an invitation to the next human actor to effect change through work and the fight, thereby making time. In fact, as the “given” prior to the next transforming action, nature is static. Therefore, in Kojève’s terms, nature is by definition opposed to the human, for human nature effects changes in the given.29 Kojève puts man in control. Kojève has no place for Machiavellian “fortune.” In Kojèvian time, nature never gets out of hand; time means that it is controlled, changed. Therefore, Kojève’s Real of all that should happen is happening in the fight and work. There is no need to account for error, as, in Kojèvian time, there is no error. The Introduction proclaims: “Truth (= revealed Reality)” (IRH, 177). Kojève’s “Real” is not wishful thinking. Nor is it the position that everything that is supposed to happen is happening or will happen. Rather, any event that is happening has its roots in that which preceded it: “actualized” events are wrought by tyrants informed by the “concrete given situation” (OT, 139, 165), guiding and guided by history as it unfolds. Machiavelli’s nature could get unruly. And for that unruliness, the best that Machiavelli’s moderns manage is mastery. Yet, as with the ancients, man is unique referenced against nature, unique for this mastery in modern thinking. In contrast, Kojève transcends the moderns by the double dare’s claim to an exclusive relation between man and time, leaving nature as not only mastered, but as an incidental prop in defining the human. Recalling Kojève’s audacity, Kojève first pulls man outward to the panorama of space, the natural environment. He makes man nature’s master through fights and works, expressed as “Man is Time.” But Kojève’s double dare, for all its audacity, wrenches us inward. Kojève is pronounced as a modern for having man transcend nature; Kojève is the modern’s modern for taking us beyond nature, for leaving us with man and man’s handiwork, time, alone. “Time is Man.”

To elaborate, collectively, the double dare is symmetrical in establishing truth.30 Here we might return to that philosopher-celebrity in residence enrapturing and enraptured by his diverse audience, as noted above. Kojève lived his philosophy in microcosm. There is that which is “revealing” by human actions in the fight and work: “Man is Time.” There was Kojève putting chalk to blackboard at the Sorbonne, acting out his ideas. On the other hand, there is that which is “revealed” by reflection on those actions, the Sorbonne lectures themselves: “Time is Man” (IRH, 169–77). This means Kojève putting on the blackboard the times on which he reflects, whether from meanderings as given by a precocious Queneau or the brief penetrating insight of a brooding Lacan. Kojève became their standard-bearer because he carried Kojèvian truth, in revealing and in being revealed. In this revealing and revealed process, Kojève squeezes nature out of the equation as definitive of man. Whatever revelation shows, it is not foremost nature. Rather than the constant combatant of the moderns, Kojève’s nature is a backdrop, mere space, and a nondescript “given” that conveys no particular content but is rather the proving ground, a point of resistance for the next fight, the next work, the next revelation of the human. Kojève’s status as a modern’s modern31 thus rests on the alliance of man and time in the double dare, an alliance resting on events as they are, on the Real, man revealing and revealed. But has the Real, as that which welds the faces of the double dare, become unhinged from it? Hard as it is to say that Kojève’s Real reveals Kojève, it was yet harder as revealing of itself. Yet, Kojève would reply this merely certifies him as the modern’s modern. Even Machiavelli might have conceded that his age of court intrigues, of the vile and the violent cloaked in the sanctimonious, was based on the uncertainty of dealing with recalcitrant nature. The prince of modernity’s times made his case for looking hard at events as they occurred. And when Machiavelli’s nature and those events may not have coincided, Machiavelli at least had the cushion of “fortune.” The events of Machiavelli’s age were the predicate to a politics of Realpolitik. Conversely, in Kojève’s manmade time, tyrants and time coincide, as the fight is the grist of the Real. Yet, Kojève witnessed the collapse of the tyrannies of his age, making his views hard to accept as revealing. And these were terrific tyrannies that seemed to defy Kojève’s march to the universal and the homogeneous at that, one in the West striving for a selective perverted homogeneity and predicated on the elimination of entire peoples, of whole races, the other in the East appealing to an equally perverse universality of scientific collectivism that in its greatest hour of need was reduced to an appeal to arms in defense of Motherland, anything but the universal. Tyrannies toppling or in intellectual default about him, our modern’s

modern persisted in maintaining their inevitability.32 Both Machiavelli and Kojève appeal to events to justify their views. But arguably the confluence of those events permits but one, Machiavelli, to make the case that one is compelled to read him. In contrast, in what Chapter 2 will elaborate as the true and ultimate irony of Kojève, Master-tyrants defy us to read the double-daring Kojève, timeless, non-relational, and unreal as they are according to him. Kojève is all the more audacious for claiming no need for a margin for error. The modern’s modern states his case with an audacity even exceeding that of the prince of modernity. But the possibility of the Real of time leaving tyrants behind, prompts the question: what makes Kojève so sure of himself? To be sure, Kojève has asserted himself as to being a man of his times as his time is the time of tyrants. But being a man of the times does not make Kojève a philosopher, unless perhaps one is Kojèvian. To get beyond begging the question, we must shift to the inside-out reading of Kojève this book has promised. Kojève’s view of time seems to lie at the core of it. Now we may turn directly to it.

Notes 1 Kojève’s vivid style included capitalization of terms, a vehicle that conveys the system of his thought and emphasis. In selected cases, for major ideas and terms, this book will retain Kojève’s capitalization, notably as to such key terms as “Master,” “Slave,” and “Real.” 2 Kojève’s intellectual biography is chronicled in an authoritative biography. Auffret, Alexandre Kojève: La philosophie, l’Etat, la fin de l’Histoire, especially 369–71, 616. 3 Auffret, 330, 607. 4 Parallels between Kojève’s career and international events as set forth are based on an intellectual biography of Kojève. See Auffret. It also rests on a detailed accounting of European politics of the period in Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940. 5 IRH, 133. See also IRH, 138–39. Kojève demonstrates a strong propensity to italicize words. Unless otherwise indicated, the italics found in the Kojève will be retained, be the source ILH or IRH. When, in quoting Kojève, italics are used that are not employed in original text, they will be noted by using the phrase “emphasis supplied.” 6 Auffret, 330. 7 Auffret, 370–92, 407–17. The most recent Kojève scholarship from America recognizes the Auffret biography as well-researched and authoritative. Nichols, Alexandre Kojève: Wisdom at the End of History, 7. 8 Bloom, “Alexandre Kojève,” Giants and Dwarfs, 269–70. 9 IRH, 158. Just as Kojève posits that space is nature, so, too, is nature ultimately space, that which is given. In general, the text of the Introduction evolves from the view that Kojèvian nature is that which is pristine and untouched by human effort to the view that nature is the given that man confronts before individual effort commences. Thus, Kojève moves from “Nature” to the view that “the given” is “the natural or social World” and that man “transforms the given social and political reality” (compare IRH, 221 with IRH, 222, 237). 10 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 20, 216.

11 12

13

14

15 16 17 18

19

20 21 22

Kojève demonstrates an acute awareness of the implications of his work for science in L’idée du déterminisme dans la physique classique et dans la physique moderne. Hegel, like Aristotle, held that man is unique apart from the animals for the capacity to reason – and added that time was just the exhibition of that reason – or that the real coincided with and was the ideal (Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 10). But, arguably, Hegel’s time enveloped nature without breaking from it – thus yielding the possibility that, while reason in man is uniquely human and this uniqueness is manifest in time, certain aspects of man and nature might coexist under the umbrella of time. That is, while that part of man that is reason makes man unique, other aspects of man might coexist with nature. Time, while assuming a distinct profile for Hegel, remained simply an observable phenomenon for reflecting the human as part of its story. Kojève adamantly refuses to acknowledge that pristine, biological time can be subject to change as can the human time, to be discussed infra (IRH, 145–47). Thus, Kojève’s quarrel with Hegel is not so much over “Man is Time” as with “Time is Man.” Other than in book reviews in pre-war France, Kojève does not speak at any length of Heidegger. The reviews repeatedly feature an emphasis on Heideggerian being and the human as revealed not in nature but in time. Alexandre Kojève, review of Die Existenzphilosophie Martin Heideggers by Alois Fisher. Recherches Philosophiques, 395–96. Heidegger, The Concept of Time, 11E–13E. Kojève’s writings demonstrate a clear sympathy for Heidegger here, and even suggest that Kojève’s reading of Hegel is significantly influenced by Heidegger on the relation of the mortal to the human. Compare Kojève, review of Der verstandene Tod: Eine Untersuchung zu Martin Heideggers Existentialontologie by Adolph Sternberger. Recherches Philosophiques, 400–02 with IRH, 244–46, 252. Heidegger, The Concept of Time, 9E–11E. Auffret, 584–85. Riley, “An Introduction to the Reading of Alexandre Kojève,” Political Theory 9, no.1, 5–6. Kalev Pehme, “Review of Outline of a Phenomenology of Right, by Alexandre Kojève, ed. and trans. Bryan-Paul Frost and Robert Howse,” Interpretation 29, no.3, 299–310. Much of such recent commentary has focused on Strauss rather than Kojève. Thus, such commentary tends to view Kojève as relatively obscure, or to generalize respecting his work, focusing on the end of history. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism, 138–39; Zuckert and Zuckert, The Truth About Leo Strauss, 50, 70. Auffret, 464; Roth, Knowing and History, 126; but see Drury, Alexandre Kojève: The Roots of Postmodern Politics, 144–50. This exchange will be the subject of extended analysis in Chapters 3–4 and Chapter 7 supra. Fukuyama, The End of History, 66–70. Hegel, The Philosophy of History. Nowhere does Kojève use the term “Master-tyrant.” But even the initial parts of Kojève’s Introduction intimate that tyranny is a political regime that coincides with Masters. A view of Kojève’s entire corpus indicates that he eventually comes to use Master in terms of the ruler, tyranny in terms of the resulting political condition. Kojève’s analysis in On Tyranny clearly links Masters to tyranny in his analysis of Xenophon, where he implicates the Hegelian “born Master” in the discussion of tyranny (compare ILH, 98, 105 with OT, 140). In his catalogue of specific historic events in the Introduction, Kojève clearly identifies a tyranny with the imposition of laws without accounting for the particular needs of the ruled. Kojève goes on to elaborate that this means laws without the intervening action of the ruled advancing their particular interests (ILH, 96, 98). In the trans-epochal, philosophic sense, Kojève’s tyranny thus means the imposition of a standing universal on the world without engagement of particulars. The notion of imposition figures heavily in Kojève’s definition of tyranny in On Tyranny. See discussion in text infra. Rather than viewing the term “Master” and “tyrant” or “tyranny” interchangeably, Kojève appears to want to suggest that mastery is the element that commences human time, where tyranny is the resulting political condition from it.

23

24

25 26 27 28 29

30 31

32

As this chapter will demonstrate infra, this view of tyranny may be reconciled with and be a key part of Kojève’s domination by Masters, thereby justifying the appellation Master-tyrant. Examples of the end of history reconsidered, yet still adhering to its importance in Kojève, include Smith, “The ‘End of History,’ or a Portal to the Future: Does Anything Lie Beyond Late Modernity?,” After History? Francis Fukuyama and His Critics, Timothy Burns, ed., 2; von Laue, “From Fukuyama to Reality: A Critical Essay,” After History?, 25. This inclination to preserve the mainstream reading of Kojève, emphasizing the external, risk, the fight, and the end of history, continues. It has led not only to a selective reading of Kojève’s corpus and the Introduction, but to a less than complete reading of even Kojève’s explanations in the footnotes to the Introduction. This selectivity is at the expense of Kojève the philosopher and his view of time in the philosophic sense. Fukuyama, The End of History, 67, 310–11; see the subchapter entitled “Temptations in Reading Kojève: Timeliness and the End of Time” to Chapter 3 infra. Fukuyama, The End of History, xi; Smith, “The ‘End of History,’ or a Portal to the Future,” After History?, 2. In fact, Leo Strauss has highlighted Kojève’s similarity to early moderns Machiavelli and Hobbes (OT, 186). See discussion in Chapter 3 infra. Machiavelli, The Prince, 101. Ibid., 4, 22. Kojève at times links the natural and the given and, at other times, he separates them. At times, the Introduction views the “ ‘natural’ ” as simply that which is given, that which is static and will be changed through the human actions of the fight and work. This “ ‘natural’ ” given, or Sein, can apply to situations or individuals prior to such humanizing actions (ILH, 72, 115, 122, 134). At other times, Kojève seems to distinguish between the given and the natural, limiting the latter as might we in distinguishing the natural and the conventional (IRH, 191, 196). In the former sense, the given is broader than the merely natural, encompassing the conventional given as well. This points to one of the many challenges in reading Kojève: at times he seems to fashion his own lexicon, at others he relies on common usage. See further explanation on Kojèvian terminology infra. Proof of truth will be explored at the outset of Chapter 4. Strauss sees in Kojève a modern in the tradition of Machiavelli and Hobbes, whereas Descombes emphasizes what he understands as a less than fully rational dimension to Kojève emphasizing violence, and the centrality of the fight in Kojèvian thought (compare OT, 185–86, Strauss on Machiavelli, Hobbes with Descombes, 25; Drury, 12–26 on the fight and Kojève’s influence on postmodernity). This emphasis on the inevitability of Master-tyrants continued well after World War II, as Kojève, in his exchange with Strauss, generally treated Master-tyrants as quite alive and well even then. See discussion in Chapters 3 and 7 infra.

2 Kojèvian Time Phenomenology and the Time-Tyrant Problem

The Nature and Importance of Time Phenomenology To restore the philosophy in Kojève’s political philosophy, to move beyond the mainstream, outside-in understanding of Kojève, one must probe behind Kojève’s ornamentation as to the risk, the fight, and works. Action figures are, after all, trifling dolls – unless one explores thoroughly the grounds for their action. To probe Kojève’s time is all the more needed, because the Real summons us to a tentative conclusion. Action may be revealing, but it is only revealed through subsequent thought and speech. If revealed action then is the subject of such thought and speech, philosophy for Kojève is necessarily political. Discussion now turns to the philosophic component providing the basis for Kojève’s politics. In his characteristic manner, Kojève has us look in a most unlikely place. Empirical political science looks to evidence of the successes of tyrannies, or at ideological claims on the superiority of tyranny, or at technologies enabling tyrants to extend their tentacles. All these things have a place in the Kojèvian Real of events. But to support the claim of unrelenting tyranny, Kojève has us turn to time – or more accurately a “phenomenology” of time. By phenomenology, Kojève means how the environment gives rise to experience. He makes clear that space or nature is the irreducible environment for the human or the animal (IRH, 133–38, 155). For Kojève, what captures both the human and the natural is not the political but rather phenomenology, as phenomenology is the study of existence, rather than only the political realm (ILH, 38, 57). Phenomenology to Kojève is how we experience space. The object of this phenomenology is thus time, as, for Kojève, time is the human experience of space.1 As Kojève notes: “human existence in space is …

existence in time or as time” (IRH, 9). Moreover, Kojève’s time phenomenology is about relations within space or nature, and their rearrangement by actors in space pursuant to desire. Kojève’s phenomenology is highly tinged with his interpretation of Hegel and the importance of the Kojèvian Real. Kojève’s phenomenology concerns itself not merely with how events “ ‘appear’ ” but with whether this appearance corresponds to the Real of action on desire for desire (IRH 6, 213–14). Thus phenomenology is intimately tied to Kojève’s extension of the inside-out of desire for desire into fights, works, and human time. What the mainstream, outside-in, reading of Kojève understands as history is thus, phenomenologically speaking, nothing other than the story of man making time in space (IRH, 163, 166). Kojèvian politics is thus subordinate to and most essentially explained through resort to Kojève’s time phenomenology. This phenomenological view elevates time beyond a conventional understanding of the term. Ordinarily, we speak offhand about time as having intervals or duration within which we experience the world, or in terms of relating events to one another sequentially. For Kojève, these elements tell how one might speak of events relating to time. But they tell nothing of phenomenology, of how such events are experienced, of how they are events in the Kojèvian Real. For this, one must reference the only Kojèvian dimension more expansive than time and men themselves – and this dimension is space.

Self-Worth and the Origin of Kojèvian Time Taking our bearings from the double dare, Kojève’s time commences with maninitiated action so as to form the human, on one hand. “Man is Time.” On the other hand, this action is both revealing and revealed in the face of death. “Time is Man.” This attests to the double dare’s legacies in Hegel and Heidegger respectively. This describes exactly Kojève’s time in the fight. Kojève is insistent that the fight both reveals and begins human action as the “ ‘first’ anthropogenetic action,” on one hand, and is revealing as “a fight to the death between two beings” that claim to be human, on the other (IRH, 11). The victor in Kojève’s fight is the Master, or more fully, the Master-tyrant, and the vanquished the Slave.2 As noted, work figures prominently in Kojève’s thought as that which ensues from the fight as the effort and drudgery exacted from the post-fight Slave. “History is the history of the working Slave,” proclaims Kojève (IRH, 20). History is the outward and political manifestation of Kojève’s human story, history being the mainstay of the mainstream reading of Kojève. Yet, Kojève

also clarifies: “[H]uman history is the history of desired Desires” (IRH, 6). Kojève’s outward manifestations are thus rooted in something more fundamental. For this, one has to return to Kojève the philosopher, which is to say Kojève the time phenomenologist and interpreter of Hegel.3 For example, what of the Master-tyrant’s story and that of Kojève’s time? As will be treated in detail shortly, the post-fight Master-tyrant disappears from history. The Master-tyrant’s ratification of, and the absence from, history suggests that Kojève’s history is not, in itself, sufficient as a discipline to render a full accounting of the human, for the fight is only Kojève’s first human act. Rather, Kojève’s time phenomenology brings us this comprehensiveness. This is true if only because Kojève interpreted Hegel, who explored beginnings and ends, and beginnings as ends, as an idea develops out of itself in the world.4 Therefore, to get at the origins of Kojève’s time, to collect the Master-tyrant, we must go back to the nature of Kojève’s time. Kojève sets forth that how time is experienced is through thought, reflection on revealing actions of works and fights, yielding speech and thought, that which is revealed (IRH, 170–71). This means that, for all Kojève’s emphasis on action, and its trappings in fights and works, Kojève’s phenomenology of time begins with the idea of how we experience time. That idea of experience must feature an idea of self. The idea propelling the basis for human action in the fight is an idea of self. Or, phrased more abstractly, to become human, man needs “… an objective reality” that is such that the self, an individual constituent, is valid and “exists not only for itself, but also for realities other than itself ” (IRH, 11). The idea in need of validation of one’s standing as human is an idea about and of self. An objective reality is needed to supplement, to validate, the idea of self-worth through the fight. This self-worth, before the fight, is merely a “ ‘subjective certainty’ ” and not knowledge (IRH, 11). The origin of the animating idea behind Kojève’s time is thus an idea generated within the self as to the value of the self. This human urge for the objective verification of self from an other Kojève terms a particular form of desire, the desire for desire. This desire for desire means, first and foremost, that man desires the inner satisfaction of parity with an other, a parity that is only explored by an inside-out approach that measures the world outside the self against the self.

Kojève’s Time as Related to Space

Since Kojève measures all against the human benchmark of self-worth, he defines all else broadly, as space or nature, the source or proving ground of that self-worth. War, domination, fights, and servitude suggest that Kojèvian politics is the fundamental body of knowledge emanating from the human idea of desire for desire. Yet, Kojève has something much more comprehensive in mind. The desire for desire does not register immediately in the palpably political. Collaboration among Slaves to build a table is not, after all, immediately political, as the Introduction emphasizes (IRH, 16–17). Rather, such work has a more fundamental importance, that which precedes the human, and that which Kojève says will outlast human desire for desire. Work is an event in the natural or spatial realm (IRH, 139–42). Space and time may embody or, better still, reflect the constant opposition of the natural and spatial on one hand, and the human and temporal on the other. But, in this opposition, time and space are not mutually exclusive opposites. Rather, as Kojève makes clear, time needs – is dependent upon – space, just as work in making the table is dependent on wood. This is why it is stated above that Kojève’s phenomenology is thus nothing other than a description of human encounters with space to formulate the Kojèvian Real of works, fights, and their aftermaths (IRH, 140, 170). Kojèvian phenomenology is thus best expressed as our experience of the second, reflective and reflecting, half of the double dare, “Time is Man.” There is no better place to illustrate the hegemony of Kojèvian phenomenology over the political than in Kojève’s accounting of that initial and primarily political act, the fight. Kojève states that “human existence in space is … existence in time or as time.” A focus on exercise of the desire for desire is thus “in” the fight as well as manifest “as” the fight. Or, in short, the experience of the fight must begin with desire for desire. Implicit in Kojève’s phenomenology is parity. This is the human search for the desire of an other human. Each contestant to the fight seeks a like contestant capable of giving the needed desire. This focus on like clearly distinguishes Kojève the time phenomenologist from the exclusively political Kojève, the outside-in reading of whom would argue for the apparent desire of Master-tyrants for domination rather than equipoise. Were the focus exclusively on the external of the contest, Kojèvian space would be filled with indiscriminate struggle. It is not. Indeed, Kojève notes that one must “ ‘provoke’ ” the other to fight to be sure, to have certainty that the other also desires desire (IRH, 13). This desire to provoke is more fundamentally phenomenological rather than political, for it signals that interaction with components in space first begins with the idea of self-worth on which action in space, the fight, is predicated. That idea entails a search for parity, for

acknowledgment, from an equal. The mainstream political Kojève tends to depict the fight as an unrelenting bar room brawl featuring eventual Mastertyrants as bullies and the bullied as Slaves.5 In contrast, Kojève’s reference to provocation in the overall context of the need to secure objective validation suggests deliberation. In fact, the phenomenological Kojève sees in the fight’s combatants less overbearing hotheads and more characters using discretion and calculation, in the manner of the doting, elderly relative of means and standing seeking for the family off-spring a mate who occupies an appropriate place on the social ladder as the correct “match.” The calculation is that of risk-taking in the interest of self-worth through resort to the social.

The Story of Master-Tyrant and Slave as Seen in Kojève’s Time Phenomenology For this risk, this coming out, both combatants are substantially like the affection-starved, heart-on-the-sleeve loner willing to take risk to secure an intimate relationship.6 Here, Kojève goes a bit beyond the calculations of the doting relative. He adds the quality of intimacy. Attesting to the qualities of community yet intimacy that power the desire for desire, Kojève speaks in spatial terms. The combatant “is outside of himself … insofar as the other has not ‘given him back’ to himself by acknowledging him, by revealing that he has recognized him” (IRH, 13). In this search for the intimate, the post-fight Mastertyrant realizes that the Slave is not his equal in affirming the desire for desire, the worth of self, and therefore cannot and has not “ ‘given him back’ to himself.” As Kojève phrases it: On the one hand, the Master is Master only because his Desire was directed not toward a thing, but toward another desire – thus, it was a desire for recognition. On the other, when he has consequently become Master, it is as Master that he must desire to be recognized; and he can be recognized as such only by making the Other his Slave. But the Slave is for him an animal or a thing … The Master, therefore, was on the wrong track. (OT, 19) While the defeated Slave acknowledges the Master-tyrant, the Master-tyrant does not reciprocate, as a matter of existential condition. Specifically, for Kojève, it is not that the Master-tyrant does not so elect. It is that the Mastertyrant cannot. This is because, in Kojève’s schema, “the Slave is not a man” who

can extend acknowledgment (IRH, 46), not an adversary who was worth the fight. The post-fight Master-tyrant thereby rebuffs the Slave, and the Master’s desire for desire from an equal in order to secure “objective” verification of selfworth is frustrated. Spatial imposition of the self on an other is no longer the act of the Master-tyrant after the fight; provocation of a fight is no longer the Master-tyrant’s tactic. The Master-tyrant’s risk and desire for desire are merely death-defying, not space-defiling. Reminiscent of the oft-repeated line attributed to Groucho Marx, the Mastertyrant seeks parity, acknowledgment, from an equal, and, like Groucho, will not deign to accept any association that will have him as a club member along with the vanquished Slave. Phrased otherwise, to alter space, man must change a particular spatial aspect or relation to qualify as an actor in history. In contrast, as Kojève notes, because “risk of life is the same at all times and places,” the motif of the fight, in and of itself as to the Master-tyrant, only produces the rebuff. The post-fight space of the Master-tyrant is thus “identical to itself, it would be Nature and not a human historical World” (IRH, 51, cf. IRH, 29). Indeed, surrounded by such space, Kojève’s post-fight Master-tyrant engages in the non-human action of consumption of an object desired, rather than action to effect or rearrange space pursuant to the human desire for desire (IRH, 24, 228–29). In sum, while human, the post-fight Master-tyrant gains little for assuming a risk and is enveloped in a non-changing space in which objects are merely desired and consumed. Thus, the post-fight Master-tyrant does not act on desire for desire. For this reason, the post-fight Master-tyrant does not act in time. The full impact of this will be explored in much greater detail at the end of this chapter. For now, it suffices to note that the fullest portrayal of the Master-tyrant is thus from Kojève the time phenomenologist, linking desire for desire to action, to impact in space. Kojève’s time phenomenology prevails over and leads to anomalous results in his politics. Perhaps most obviously, Kojèvian time phenomenology dictates precisely the opposite result for the post-fight Slave. The post-fight Slave remains in time, and indeed champions it. In a sense, the fight depresses desire for desire in both the Master-tyrant and the Slave, the former due to the failure to secure the desire of an other and the latter due to being consigned to animal status as the Slave’s instinct for survival prevails. Yet, the telling difference between Master-tyrant and Slave is not political but phenomenological. The post-fight Slave engages space differently and therefore leaves an imprint in time. The Slave, consigned to work for the Master-tyrant after the fight, has a space to refashion all, as the Introduction

notes in conferring on the Slave sole responsibility for the manufacture of history, the rearrangement of space. The Slave does so, whether through the building of grandiose pyramids, the crafting of iambic pentameter or the fashioning of the ever-present Kojèvian table. Yet, a focus on Slave work, as mandated by the political outside-in reading of Kojève, is no more conclusive of the Slave story than is a focus on the Mastertyrant’s success in the fight. Yes, “Man is Time” and work is the human act, as Kojève declares (IRH, 25). But this is only half of Kojève’s double dare. Because “Time is Man,” the Slave must act on an idea to attain the status of human. Kojève depicts such a development in terms of the Slave idea in rearranging space, as the Slave “represses his instincts in relation to an idea … the idea of a Master,” as the Slave “recognizes the human reality and dignity” of the Master (IRH, 48, 50). Initially the Slave’s terror in confronting death in the fight knocks the phenomenological stuffing out of the Slave, by reducing the Slave to animal status because of the Slave’s fear for loss of life and reliance on instinct. Action in space pursuant to the desire for desire is not possible. Terror may initially provide the basis for hero-worship, and a “Stockholm syndrome” dependence on the Master-tyrant. However, in phenomenological terms, work has a power quite unlike the fight for either the Master-tyrant or the Slave: work has the power as an activity to engender and nurture ideas. As Kojève notes: “[I]t is by work, and only by work, that man realizes himself objectively as man” (IRH, 25). Or, as Kojève phrases it, “the terror inspired by the Master is the beginning of wisdom,” as work educates the Slave who “ ‘cultivates’ and ‘sublimates’… instincts by repressing them,” thereby going beyond the animal (IRH, 23–24). Work is the action reflecting the intersection of man and nature to produce the human and therefore the staple of the Kojèvian Real. Work must therefore be accompanied by an idea, an idea that turns the Slave from devotee to the “idea of a Master” to master of the self through refashioning space and thereby affirming the self. This happens as the Slave moves from action on the “idea of a Master” as in the victor of the fight, to the restoration of the Slave’s desire for desire, action in which idea makes for the fully human. Initially, after the fight and in the terror, the Slave experiences value not in the self, but in the space surrounding the Slave, as only that space can confer a work product – thus according dignity to the conquering Master-tyrant – be the product a sturdy table or an enchanting iambic pentameter. The work product attains value from the “dignity” the Slave accords the Master-tyrant, as someone, the only someone, who transcended animal fear in the fight. Gradually, as the terror subsides, in somewhat of a

parallel to the Master-tyrant’s imposition of self in the fight, the Slave imposes the Slave’s work product and presents work other than that commanded by the Master-tyrant. Indeed, Kojève speaks of mere “ ‘consumption’ ” by the Mastertyrant, not of that commanded by the Master, but rather of Slave work product that is a “surplus” and that is “nonnatural” (IRH, 24, 229). The Slave begins to improvise, to innovate, as the education of the self through work takes hold, and the Slave regains a sense of self-worth from doing so. Again, true to the emphasis of Kojève’s time phenomenology on the human experience of space, the key is not the shape or composition of the work product; rather it is the Slave’s attitude in creating it. Specifically, the Slave moves from the “idea of a Master” as the terrorizing victor to the idea of action, of nonnatural “service” to an other. And this leads to the second point demonstrating that time controls Kojève’s politics. Before Kojève indicates that history is the history of the “working Slave,” he proclaims that “human history is the history of desired Desires” (compare IRH, 20 with IRH, 6). An outside-in view of Kojèvian thought has yielded the interpretation that the idea animating the fight, the idea of self-worth and its imposition in the fight, is best described as the human need for “recognition.”7 Typical of the mainstream reading of Kojève emphasizing the outside-in, even the root of recognition is manifest: each combatant in the fight risks life in an entirely visible struggle.8 In fact, man only begins as human with the desire for recognition in the most imprecise sense; it is both more precise and accurate to observe that Kojève’s preferred construction is the desire for desire.9 This is why until this point, this text has generally used the word acknowledgment rather than recognition, despite Kojève’s occasional use of the latter. The core of desire for desire is a desire to know the self. Quite literally, acknowledgment more literally and precisely than recognition conveys agreement upon some knowledge of a person or a thing, such as knowledge of an other who is desired, who can reciprocate as to a knowledge of the desirer’s self-worth. In comparison, yes, the hat-in-hand parliamentarian desiring “the floor” or the provisional member of a world body seeks recognition. But this search is only one-sided and says little of the party from whom recognition is sought. For Kojève, therefore, this says little of politics, as it says little of relation, little about the party recognizing. Thus, again, Kojèvian time phenomenology means action in space among two contestants seeking self-knowledge through parity with an other. In contrast to one-sided recognition, Kojève’s desire for desire signals both mutuality and intimacy. Kojève’s phrasing of the language of desire for desire varies, ranging from impersonal parity in the “Desire of another directed toward

the same object” to front and center emotion in “a Desire directed toward another Desire” (IRH, 6–7). Rather than the language of “recognition,” which Kojève at times rather indifferently links to love or desire (IRH, 6), Kojève employs the language of time phenomenology. This means the language of desire for desire acted out in space. As Kojève states: Now, to desire a Desire is to want to substitute oneself for the value desired by this Desire. For without this substitution, one would desire the value, the desired object, and not the Desire itself. Therefore, to desire the Desire of another is in the final analysis to desire that the value that I am or that I “represent” be the value desired by the other: I want him to “recognize” my value as his value. I want him to “recognize” me as an autonomous value. (IRH, 7) Kojève is perhaps elliptical, but more precise. Note that Kojève tentatively refers to “ ‘recognize’ ” rather than to simply use the words “recognize” or “recognition”; use of the former term is an acknowledgment that explicit political terminology rests upon Kojève’s idea of time phenomenology and the fundamental idea of desire for desire. Here, the language of desire for desire is primary; it explains what Kojève has to say of recognition. Note well Kojève’s spatial imagery here. At stake in the desire for desire is not mere acknowledgment – it is acknowledgment through “substitution,” acknowledgment in the place of something else. In the fight, the victor, the Master-tyrant, substitutes the self for the vanquished and sets the other, the Slave, aside as an object. In this substitution, after the fight and before the rebuff, the Master-tyrant hopes to secure the desire, the recognition, of the other. It is only in employing the language of desire for desire, not that of recognition, that Kojève is true to the challenge offered by the double dare. For Kojève, “human reality is a social reality” and “society is human only as a set of Desires mutually desiring one another as Desires” (IRH, 6). Language about seeking recognition is one-sided; the desire for desire, in comparison, indicates that the desirous and the desired are at parity, that both possess desire. This language is necessarily communal, social, and, as just demonstrated for involving substitution, spatial. This commonality, which differentiates the “society” from the “herd,” as desire for desire is differentiated from desire, is critical to Kojève’s time (IRH, 6); and Kojève will use it to sharply distinguish between Kojèvian time in the human sense as we have described it, and animal time, as will be elaborated very shortly. This aspect of commonality

acknowledges the importance of the environment outside the self as a predicate for action and the first part of the double dare: “Man is Time.” Yet, Kojève’s desire for desire, as communal, implies the means of desire in the interest of intimate ends. In the “substitution” of self for the desire of an other, one leaves the self in the other. The readiest example is the lover who sets aside a claim to an other based on some quality of that other as an object, such as sexual allure or personal dynamism, in favor of something of greater value, obtaining the desire, the love of “me for who I am.” Desire in response to sexual allure or dynamism would be mere desire for Kojève. It would not register as a change in space, for the desirous would just appropriate and devour the desired in order to survive. Instead, the human desire for desire means securing something of greater and more elusive value, the desire of the other, the love of “me for who I am.” Hence, intimacy, confirmation of self-worth by an other, is achieved. For the desirer, this means putting the desired, as one desirous of desire, ahead of other values. It means two parties standing in space, one self desiring the other in the profound sense of putting that self in the other first and foremost – in that space. This spatial invasion means using the other, not in the interests of superficial manipulation, but rather from need for self-worth. Rather, Kojève probes the dynamics of self-doubt and its correlative, self-validation. If community is the means to the goal of intimacy, the problem is that the desire of another is a scarce commodity – and everyone wants it. Bouquets and love notes are thus not common in Kojève’s Real, where the desire for desire is played out – battle axes and heavy artillery are. Nonetheless, a type of intimacy in Kojève is there. For Kojève, the desire in desire for desire must be for, must command, the desire of an other or others. Such command for the desire of the others is a register or, better yet, a way to “impose” desire for desire on an other through the death-defying fight (IRH, 11). We might attribute a genuineness of experience to the intimacy of this imposition. In the parlance of Kojève, the action of overcoming fear in the fight as a Master-tyrant, or overcoming the instinct to consume through Slave work, reveals that one is more than animal, and is human. And, as left in the other to secure that desire of the other, this human dimension is revealed. The how of this revealing-revealed experience is the second part of the double dare: “Time is Man.” And this leads to the third aspect in which Kojèvian time phenomenology prevails over politics. At this point, with desire for desire established as central for Kojève’s time, it may be appropriate to ask whether Kojève’s time is simply a mask, a phenomenological ruse for what is, after all, a more profound statement as to human nature in the manner of the ancients or the moderns: the human, as it turns out, is uniquely reflective, and particularly reflective as to the

presence and value of self, relative to other selves. The answer is that the fundamental Kojève is the phenomenological Kojève relating time and space. Space or nature is simply an existing condition, a given, on which man has not yet acted through fights fought or works wrought to become human. And, indeed, the Introduction reduces this time-space opposition to one between the human and the natural (IRH, 137–39). For Kojève, space is “as it were, the place where things are stopped” (IRH, 137). Put simply, one can only be human in Kojève’s time, or, in Kojève’s view of the human, in time. In that view, space is the mongoose to time as the cobra. This human time is about change, and specifically the change occasioned by the action on the idea of desire for desire against stagnant space. Kojève terms this action resulting from an idea, in contrast to animal responses to a physical thing, the “presence of an absence of reality” (IRH, 5). In contrast with animal desire, which focuses on a physical object, human desire for desire anticipates merely an idea, the desire of an other.10 As Kojève notes, the desire for desire “is directed toward an entity that does not exist and has not existed in the real natural World” (IRH, 134). In this phenomenological conversation and conflict between space and human time, politics pales. The Master-tyrant fights not because space does not provide enough, but because it provides nothing in the form of desire reciprocating desire. The rebuff is thus just a statement of frustration in encountering the desired equal in space. The Master-tyrant discounts what the Master-tyrant has because it is not what he wants – the rebuff means that which the Master-tyrant has is actually what he had, and overcome. Kojève succinctly states that: “Future > Past > Present … is Man in his empirical – that is spatial – integral reality” (IRH, 138). All observations that one might make as to man are thus coextensive with time and man’s confrontation of nature, making man human pursuant to action in space on an idea.11 It is such anticipation which gives Kojèvian human time its future dimension. In emphasizing the future, however, Kojève means to say much more than that man is goal-oriented in the political sense. Rather, as a phenomenologist, Kojève says the future orientation is directed to overcoming obstacles as goals.12 And space poses those obstacles. Specifically, Kojève posits that desire for desire, and thereby time, involves an overcoming of the past through the human, through action on an idea. And the strength of the desire for desire has fundamentally spatial, and then only secondarily psychological, dimensions.13 Action on desire for desire in space is key to attaining self-knowledge; political dominion is only a consequence of the post-fight rebuff. To combine the three factors supporting the phenomenological over the political, the pre-fight Master-tyrant and the post-terror Slave especially, embody

the desire for desire in relating to space. The core of Kojève’s future-oriented human time experience is not domination, but the frustration of not finding the self in an other, the true aspect of desire for desire. The driver of phenomenological desire for desire prevails over political recognition. The latter is merely a residue quickly overcome as the past by the futuristic desire for desire. Thus, for our human acting on “the place where things are stopped” out of desire for desire, Kojève will recognize Gutenberg, but focus on the desirous of desire Gates and beyond.14 As to psychology and human nature, far from being the high bar of the ancients or the springboard of the moderns with which Chapter 1 began, there is no nature in Kojève’s human. But given Kojève’s phenomenology, what of his politics and rule? We have stranded the post-fight Master-tyrant outside time. It is now time to find out what that means, and why it poses Kojève’s central problem. Kojève’s times and even his time phenomenology should, philosophically speaking, usher in his Master-tyrants. But, we are soon to ask, in challenging the double dare, “Does it?”

Kojève’s Time-Tyrant Dilemma This section will demonstrate a fatal flaw in Kojève’s time phenomenology, which is to say his philosophy as to politics. As all Kojèvian time concerns changing relations among constituents in space, this section will demonstrate that the Master-tyrant, as Kojève’s first human and primary political actor, for acting on the desire for desire, for vanquishing in the fight, is outside any understanding Kojève has of time, and is thereby fully non-relational and not political. Tyranny, sometimes viewed as promoting stability for providing central authority, thereby unravels, as do Kojèvian politics.

Kojève’s Master-Tyrant Outside Human Time Were an outside-in reading of Kojève to give an accounting of anything, it would surely be Kojèvian post-fight politics. Yet, from the standpoint of history alone, Kojève speaks in riddles: The Master, then, is the catalyst of the historical, anthropogenetic process. He himself does not actively participate in this process; but without him, without his presence, the process would not be possible.… (IRH, 25; emphasis supplied)

The reference to “presence” attests again to the importance Kojève places on space. Yet, upon reflection on, and considerably after, the Introduction, Kojève notes that the Master-tyrant in space “appears in history only in order to disappear” (OPR, 213). Accordingly, as to the cameo appearance of Mastertyrants in the fight, Master-tyrants are “only the catalysts, so to speak … they engender … movement, but are not affected by it themselves” (IRH, 230; cf. OPR, 212–13). The post-fight Master tyrant, the active “catalyst” of human time, as Kojève says, simply “undergoes History, but does not create it” (IRH, 229). All of this is to remind that Kojève’s is not a phenomenology of space but of time. Accordingly, as the Introduction repeatedly phrases it, the post-fight Master-tyrant is at an “impasse” that is “existential” (IRH, 19, 20, 50). Human time being man, this means an impasse that is atemporal. The fullest extent of the atemporal is utterly unknown to the pre-fight Mastertyrant. The pre-fight Master tyrant is unaware of the consequences of the rebuff; the choice is between victory over the fellow combatant, and physical death which is removal from space entirely (IRH, 14–16). Accordingly, pre-fight risk is quite familiar to the outside-in reading of Kojève.15 But the post-fight Mastertyrant encounters the existential impasse, a life without desire for desire. Death is less physical extinction than a mental state of the presence of space without desire for desire. “Death in the proper sense of the word” is the “awareness” that comes with knowledge that life, participation in space as an animal consumer and propagator, could end. Kojève declares that “Man can die … he can voluntarily face death as a calculated risk on which he has reflected or in full awareness of the imminence of a fatal outcome” (IRH, 255; IRH, 51). Risk of life, through awareness and action thereafter, is, for Kojève, death – it is action in defiance of space, of nature, knowing that one might be only left with space, with nature. Thus, for Kojève, even in such death, space is with us. The victorious Mastertyrant has the fullest “awareness” of the absence of action on desire for desire, which means the fullest awareness of the absence of that perennial Kojèvian antagonist of space, time. Death is thus less a loss of life than an internal condition that will not sustain the Kojèvian human. Referenced against the desire for desire, nature, or space, is mort as mort is nature, that which is timeless.16 To be dead is thus to be alone with an idea, the desire for desire, on which one cannot act in space. But is the post-fight Master-tyrant even in space?

Kojève’s Master-Tyrant Outside Animal Time

“Man who is Time also disappears in spatial Nature. For this Nature survives Time” (IRH, 158). In short, man cannot exist in space only. “Man is Time” is the first half of the double dare. As to the disappearing Master-tyrant17 that makes this Slave world possible, it is not inaccurate to compare the search for the Master-tyrant to a manhunt that begins at a crime scene – that is to say, a crime scene in Kojèvian space that leaves some traces as to what happened.18 The crime is what Kojève calls the disappearance of man. And what Kojève says as to space cannot be separated from Kojèvian politics. Indeed, Kojève does acknowledge non-human activity. However, as we have seen, Kojève uses space as the common denominator for distinguishing desire from desire for desire, the non-human or animal from the human. Kojève explains the difference between the animal and the human through examining the relation of desire to that which is in space, the object desired. The animal object of desire for Kojève is outside the control of the desirer.19 There is nothing to do but pursue the object and consume it. To see the connection of the future-oriented animal thrust for present acquisition of the object desired, yet rooted in the past of repetitious consumption and survival, one might reference Kojève’s paradigm for desire in animal time, the desire for a glass of water (IRH, 135). What counts in defining the present is not the longing, the anticipation, but rather the immediacy of the object desired so that its immediacy in space, its physical immediacy, establishes “the presence of a future in the present: of the future act of drinking” (IRH, 134). This future in the present is entirely dependent on the desiring animal directly obtaining the physical object of desire, without interruption. Animal time is biological for this. Kojève’s accounting is grounded in spatial relations, the availability of objects in space to fuel animal desire. As a time phenomenologist linking developments in space to desire, Kojève wants to ensure that the crime scene is as pristine as possible, to infer from spatial relations previous actions on some form of desire. Post-fight space, the motif of objects, their production and consumption, thus relates the story of Kojèvian time phenomenology. And this approach by Kojève, as time phenomenologist referring time against space, gives a superior accounting to the outside-in approach to Kojève, in that it details that the Mastertyrant is no more in animal time than in human time. The outside-in approach, prevalent in mainstream Kojève commentary, tends to focus exclusively on the consuming, devouring behavior of the Master-tyrant, merely inferring animal status from the external behavior of consumption.20 Such mainstream, outside-in accounts either rely on a psychological explanation, or

revert to a description of the Rabelaisian insatiable urge to consume21 of postfight Master-tyrants. And surely Kojève’s times22 fit this description. But not Kojève’s time. Kojève’s time phenomenology leads to the conclusion that the Master-tyrant is also outside animal time. Two points need to be made. First, our common parlance aside, gluttonous and base behaviors are not animal behaviors for Kojève. The desiring animal, including man as animal, is in a cycle of desiring, consuming, being sated, and again desiring (IRH, 4–5). Animal desire is “in the final analysis a function of … desire to … preserve life,” not excess (IRH, 7; EHR, 3: 146; IRH, 138 n28). Hardly opposing nature, this cyclical animal behavior affirms it. Second, seemingly animal behaviors do not equal animal time. Kojève states: But the Slave supplies him with something more than and different from what he desired and ordered, and hence he consumes this surplus (a truly human, “nonnatural” surplus) involuntarily, as if forced: he undergoes a sort of training (or education) by the Slave, if he must do violence to his nature in order to consume what the Slave offers him. (IRH, 229) Animal time implies action on Kojèvian animal desire and space. Regarded thusly, the post-rebuff Master-tyrant does not act as an animal.23 To be in animal time means to act on animal desire. Recalling the easy availability of the object desired, the glass of water, Kojève notes: “To desire is … to act in terms of the present” (IRH, 135). But the passive, force-fed Master-tyrant does not act. The force-feeding Slave inflicts harm, “violence,” to the animal as well as the human nature of the post-fight Master-tyrant.24 Neither animal in production, nor in consumption, at best the Master-tyrant takes the briefest of sojourns in the animal experience, as measured by that wafer of an instant between pure desire and forced consumption.25 Again, closer examination of the spatial configuration of the crime scene in which the post-fight Master-tyrant has done dirty work is in order. Ordering, and especially involuntary consumption, are not the manner of the Kojèvian animal, whose cyclical pattern means that that which is consumed matches that which was desired. Kojève hedges here on the animal status of the Master-tyrant as follows: “if he ‘evolves,’ he evolves only passively, as Nature or an animal species does” (IRH, 229). Hence, one explains Kojève’s careful qualification that the Mastertyrant “ ‘evolves’ ” rather than simply evolves. Indeed, there are strong grounds

for the hedging. The Master-tyrant’s ordering, commanding are hardly the nature of the animal. At this point, it seems as if Kojève’s Master-tyrant is in animal space with its passivity, yet acting as a human for ordering and commanding. In short, Kojève’s Master-tyrant is firmly planted in neither the animal nor the human. It is certainly true that Kojève refers to the easy lifestyle of the post-fight Master-tyrant as “brutish” and this seems to suggest the animal in some respects. However, a closer examination of the spatial environment of the post-rebuff Master-tyrant yields the conclusion that, in referencing “brutish,” Kojève is discussing the non-relational, not the animal. Kojève states: What Desire [i.e., isolated man “before” the Fight, who was alone with Nature and whose desires were directed without detour toward that Nature] did not achieve, the Master [whose desires are directed toward things that have been transformed by the Slave] does achieve. The Master can finish off the thing completely and satisfy himself in Enjoyment. (IRH, 18) And this enjoyment is far from the hand-to-mouth of the animal. Later in the Introduction, Kojève describes what might be termed the life of the post-fight Master-tyrant: “Now, to preserve oneself in Nature without fighting against it is to live in Genus, in Enjoyment. And the enjoyment that one obtains without making any effort is Lust, Pleasure” (IRH, 46). Again, to be without effort is to be without action. And for Kojève, this is to be timeless, outside human and animal time. Rather than suggesting the animal, Kojève’s reference to the “brutish” is to suggest the inhuman, as in effortless and outside human time.26 As with the crime scene, the enjoyed space of the post-fight Master-tyrant supports the inference that the less than fully desirous Master-tyrant not in pursuit neither acts nor desires in Kojèvian animal time, and has abandoned human time. To say that the post-fight Master-tyrant acts as neither human nor animal is to say that the post-fight Master-tyrant is neither. Kojève here reminds us of the emphatic “is” that lies at the core of both sides of the double dare.

Kojève’s Time-Tyrant Problem in the Context of Kojève’s Philosophy The nearly contemporary phrase “crimes against humanity” attests to the profound chasm between Master-tyrants and those they purport to rule. Kojève

the time phenomenologist captures that they are not merely unchanging over time, but timeless, without relation in the Kojèvian sense. Resort to Kojève the time phenomenologist expresses this distance, this remoteness, philosophically. For all Kojève’s emphasis on the event side of his Real, Kojève could well have referred to post-fight Master-tyrants, the reclusive Franco of the 1960s and early 1970s or, as we will soon see, Kojève’s reliable favorite, Napoleon at Elba, to characterize the post-fight Master-tyrant. Kojève does not. It is not that the post-fight Master-tyrant is simply a pathetic “has been,” a combination of those memorable comic strip characters, the desirous of desire bullying Bluto and the tepid desirous mooch, Wimpy. It is rather that this character is, in Kojève’s terms, at an “impasse” that is “existential.” In short, it means that the post-fight Master-tyrant is in an atemporal, timeless, and nonrelational state. Somehow, to say that a Master-tyrant is not human comports with our conventional prejudice against tyranny as social excess and outrageous behavior. An outside-in reading of Kojève supports the inference that post-fight Mastertyrants assume voracious, animal behaviors. Yet, Kojèvian time phenomenology has it that Master-tyrants seek not superiority, but recognition that ends in parity to the end of self-knowledge. For attempting such, they are surely not animal; for failing at such through the post-fight rebuff, they surely do not remain human. This reading gets at the core of the existential impasse and gives us an understanding that the outside-in reading of Master-tyrants cannot. It is that time seems to pass Master-tyrants by, conforming to our idea of passive post-fight Master-tyrants as having innate political conservatism and a strong preference for the status quo. As noted, even advocates of the mainstream reading of Kojève maintain that Master-tyrants remain unchanging over time. But to claim that Master-tyrants are non-relational provides an extra dimension. The comprehensive Kojève, Kojève the time phenomenologist, whose views of time, space, and relation inform risk, the fight, and history, banishes post-fight Mastertyrants from political life altogether. Defendants in the dock at Nuremburg, the efforts of contemporary “truth commissions,” and allegations of tyrannical behavior driven by human rights groups attest to something far graver than just mere conservatism and willingness to protect power. Kojève clearly conceives of the Master-tyrant and the Slave existing in a condition that is more philosophically nuanced than mere domination and subordination. In essence, a detective looking from the inside-out for motivations might conceive of the time-tyrant problem as a sequence of “wrong

track” mistaken identities leading to the Master-tyrant rebuff and a series of “near misses” in the realm of work and consumption. First, the Master-tyrant of the fight and the rebuff finds no counterpart in the Slave worthy to satisfy the Master-tyrant’s desire for desire in human time. Then, the Master-tyrant, as postrebuff consumer, misses the all-too-brief stage in Slave existence in which the Slave is terrified, a fearful animal facing nothingness. Instead, the by now simply desirous, animal-like Master-tyrant encounters a human in process, the Slave acting on an idea of self, in pursuit of validation. In fact, the Master-tyrant accomplishes no joinder in time, either human or animal, with the Slave. Kojève refers to the post-fight Master-tyrant with great discrimination in the philosophical sense. He refers to this Master-tyrant as human only in the parenthetical sense – most literally, with a “(human) identity to himself ” (IRH, 231). This parenthetically “(human)” captures the rebuffing, discerning dissatisfied consumer that is the post-fight Master-tyrant: outside human time yet trying to cope in the desiring-consuming cycle of animal time through the seeming human acts of ordering and commanding, outside both times, neither fish nor fowl. To revert to the analogy of the crime scene, one might think of the Master-tyrant’s desire for desire as both the getaway car that propels the Mastertyrant out of human time through the rebuff and as the stay-behind accomplice removing all traces of animal exertion, animal desire, so that the Master-tyrant is frustrated even in animal consumption. The Introduction’s outside-in readers, in arriving somewhat belatedly at the scene, see no detailed evidence of these evasions of Kojèvian time, only a detached Master-tyrant and the bustle of working Slaves seeking desire for desire through the realm of work, and overcoming the terrifying past. We must infer the absence of the Master-tyrant in human and animal time from the spatial evidence Kojève presents. To examine this, we will do a “fast forward” not to Kojève’s end of time, where the particulars of Kojèvian time phenomenology are subordinated, but rather to human time, the hothouse of the Kojèvian Real, to see if actual events confer on Master-tyrants any vitality. What remains of this chapter will clarify a particular and easy-to-miss sense in which Kojève’s Master-tyrants are outside time, as his thought contends, and then return to the appeal to Kojève’s Real.

Sparing the Double Dare from Double Talk: The Plausibility of Kojève’s Reading of Time into Tyranny The notion that Master-tyrants are so far removed from the social and even political life that they claim to dominate seems preposterous, especially for a

thinker such as Kojève whose double dare leads us to the Real, the intersection of idea and action. We are clearly more accustomed to attributing tyranny to psychopathology or to environmental circumstances, not to time phenomenology. However, Kojève’s tale is not that of simple psychology. In contrast to Groucho’s discerning psyche, Kojèvian space is the ultimate repository for verification of self-worth. Indeed, the existential impasse of the Master-tyrant has a spatial analogue as the post-fight Master-tyrant “is outside of himself … insofar as the other has not ‘given him back’ to himself by recognizing him, by revealing that he has recognized him” (IRH, 13). This may seem to simply connote psychological attitudes on the part of the Master-tyrant of the fight, until one realizes that Kojève emphasizes that the Master-tyrant spares the Slave, for and only for the presence of the Slave in space, as only in space might desire for desire be accommodated.27 Space and time are thus the fundamental Kojèvian coordinates, far more than psychology. Moreover, Kojève’s emphasis on a non-relational order based on Mastertyrant withdrawal and the terrorizing of Slaves can account for what many might consider modern anomalies. The aggressiveness of pre-fight, would-be Mastertyrants and the ensuing chaos may be acknowledged by Kojèvian and nonKojèvian alike. Yet, only the Kojèvian emphasis on the need for desire from, not superiority over, others may explain aspects of post-fight tyrannies. For example, make work and the slipshod seem hallmarks of a Kojèvian space in which, for the Master-tyrant, the desire for desire is expelled. One need only consider the replacement of Weimar avant garde in the Bauhaus with the kitsch of Hitlerian art or the grim results-oriented closed circle of Soviet science as embodied in the Lysenko affair to demonstrate societies in which the Master-tyrant as consumer merely likes to see a reflection of the self in a stagnant social order. Indeed, reform, Kojève’s overcoming of the past propelled by the drive of the future, does not characterize tyrannies, as Kojève’s Introduction captures in the plight of post-fight societies dominated by indifferent and distanced, which, for Kojève, is to say timeless, Master-tyrants. As will be suggested in Chapter 3, it is time and the timeless non-relational society, not time’s end, that provides the fulcrum for Kojèvian irony. Thus, ironically, it may be precisely the terrific mega-tyrannies of the twentieth century that obscure Kojève’s value in reading current events. The Stalinist Soviet Union and the Nazi Germany that Kojève so accurately depicts have anesthetized us from shock at the proposition that Master-tyrants are outside a given view of human time. Modernity has perhaps taught us to view Master-tyrants from below, as nourished by the execution of efficacious experiments in mass

psychology, or from above, as banal labyrinthine administrative systems of propaganda or mechanisms of extermination or indoctrination efface their personal side. To de-humanize Master-tyrants seems a sign of even nonKojèvian times, and therefore suggests that phenomenology adds nothing special. Might one read Kojève for the problem posed by his time phenomenology and yet profit? There is a sense in which the timelessness of Kojève’s Mastertyrants, the residue of the time-tyrant problem, captures critical dynamics of today’s tyrannies. For example, post-war modern tyrannies often prize modernization, yet reject reform. Conventional views of tyrannies in the decolonizing Third World of the post-war have held them as reactive phenomena best characterized in contrast to regimes that preceded them.28 The application of such analyses to the present Third World would view such tyrannies as a stage of development for countries without democratic traditions, and in recent rebellion against colonial rule. The emphasis would be on their susceptibility to demagogic appeals that view Western-style reform as but a vestige of colonial and indigenous elites. Yet, for the emphasis such analyses place on tyranny as a reactive phenomenon, they cannot clearly explain the paradox of the tyrant’s acceptance of modernity and denial of reform. Kojève can. This is because he places Master-tyrants outside animal, as well as human, time. What do post-fight Master-tyrants command? Animal necessities are not on the menu. Objects of command are not those in the immediate present, those objects craved by Kojèvian animals, as embodied in Kojève’s trusty glass of water. In contrast, such Master-tyrants abandon reform, action being based on the future-driven desire for desire. Instead, rather than strive propelled by the future and reform, today’s Master-tyrants import modernity. They do so by reliance on futuristic goods. This importation of the future, absent reform driven by the desire for desire, is the modernization that empirical political science is at some loss to explain in today’s tyrannies. Modernization would be explained by Kojève as the yearning, the mere desire, of Master-tyrants – from petty despots to authoritarian nation-builders of the magnitude of Peron, Nasser, and Nyerere – to consume the fruits of victory, science, and technology as produced by Slaves. These instruments of modernization are consumed by Master-tyrants outside human time, in the sense that they promote the petrifying of the regime, whether as aspects of the industrial infrastructure or as propaganda. Yet, modernization is also outside animal time. The Master-tyrant commands, imports the future, not to survive, not to reproduce, but to glorify the self in an illusion of the future. Mere modernization suggests consumption, but

consumption in a stagnant order. The consumption of technological trinkets produced by others leads such Master-tyrants to live merely a “life of enjoyment” that characterizes Kojève’s post-fight Master-tyrants, a life that yields neither animal satiation nor recognition from others. Neither squarely in Kojèvian animal nor human time, such Master-tyrants want to neutralize, to detemporize, such tools, be they Aswan Dams or computer chips, in the societies that Master-tyrants govern, lest such tools encourage reform. Yet, such Mastertyrants also reap their purely technological benefits. And, as testaments to modernity only, such instruments atrophy as “white elephants” like the Mastertyrants they serve.29 The plastic Potemkins of today’s Master-tyrants thus support an imported future, appropriate to one who has lost desire for desire and cannot cope with a life of mere desire. The time-tyrant problem also has implications for Slaves. Here, the precision of Kojève’s time phenomenology in depicting how Slave behavior is reflected in the Real of events and ideas is no less striking. Most famously, one need only recall the coincidence of the exponential growth of digital technologies and the collapse of Soviet tyranny in Eastern Europe. If the Master-tyrant is timeless, the Slave is laboring relentlessly to pursue the desire for desire toward freedom. Here, tools of modernity were transformed by those subjugated in the former Soviet Union into tools of reform by action on the desire for desire, action in human time, at the same time absorbing the lessons of human time. This recent development is emblematic of the following “double meaning” of work, a double meaning that captures the reform of work and human time in Kojève as: [O]n the one hand, it forms, transforms the World, humanizes it by making it more adapted to Man; on the other, it transforms, forms, educates man, it humanizes him by bringing him into greater conformity with the idea that he has of himself, an idea that – in the beginning – is only an abstract idea, an ideal. (IRH, 52) Rather than speaking the bland language of civic input, change, and authoritarian feedback, Kojève shows a society in conversation with, and in reflection upon, itself. This is the only truly revolutionary society. Arguably, more than empirical political science, Kojève’s time phenomenology, including the complications and paradoxes of the time-tyrant problem, captures the momentousness of the collapse of the former Soviet Union. It arguably does so in a manner different from, and more comprehensive than, traditional theories of tyranny for showing

how, in embracing modernization yet rejecting reform, Soviet Master-tyrants functioned outside human time, yet are somehow nearly on the cusp of it. Conversely, the Arab Spring demonstrates how those subjugated turned the tools of modernization, quite literally in the palm of one’s hand, into instruments of the desire for desire, into tools of genuine future-oriented reform in the digital age, in the interests of acquiring validation of self-worth in the political arena of world opinion. This chapter began with the observation that the mainstream, outside-in reading of Kojève has undeniable appeal precisely because it calls our attention to events, to the intersection of ideas and actions, which comprise the Kojèvian Real. Yet, as just discussed, the inside-out reading of Kojève, one that focuses on Kojève the time phenomenologist, can yield significant contributions to explaining events, and can do so with precision. Indeed, this capacity is precisely because of the time-tyrant problem, not despite it. Viewing Master-tyrants as timeless in the Kojèvian sense can explain what might otherwise be viewed as contradictory, implausible political and social trends. Thus, we might profit from reading Kojève’s argument, with full awareness of the thorniness of its parts. This is not to dismiss alternate readings of Kojève, even if they downplay Kojève the time phenomenologist and the time-tyrant problem. But can they really elude the Kojève of the double dare? Chapter 3 will treat such readings, and attempt to illustrate that Kojève’s central problem is, again, the time-tyrant problem. Chapter 4 will discuss Kojève’s central problem in terms of his broad views of knowledge. Chapters 5–7 will illustrate how Kojève’s post-Introduction corpus might be integrated and understood as a significant effort to avoid the paradox of the existential impasse of the timelessness of Kojève’s central political actor, the Master-tyrant.

Notes 1 Kojève couches this thinking in terms implicating both modern science and the centrality of Hegel’s time as reforming the subject-object relationship. This occurs in L’idée du déterminisme dans la physique classique et dans la physique moderne. 2 In further support of the use of the term Master-tyrant, Kojève does extend both the terms “Master” and “Slave” for emphasis, making them “Master warrior” and “Slave worker” (ILH, 146). In both cases, Kojève does so to emphasize action, movement in history. Given the link of Masters to tyranny articulated in Kojève’s analysis of Xenophon in On Tyranny, the elaboration Master-tyrant is appropriate and precise. See Chapter 1, note 22 infra. 3 One mainstream account simply relies on an account of the psychology of the Master-tyrant to explain that the Master-tyrant remains fundamentally “unchanging over time,” without elaboration as to the particulars of Kojèvian time phenomenology as will be outlined infra. Fukuyama, The End of History, 193.

4 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 34. Kojève’s understanding of the relation of Hegelian beginnings to ends is explored in a discussion of Hegelian proof by circularity in Chapter 4. 5 Riley, 8–9; Roth, “A Problem of Recognition, Alexandre Kojève and the End of History,” History and Theory, 295. 6 As to whether Kojève’s desire for desire can be reduced to a desire for love has been the subject of interest and nuance, even within Kojève’s corpus. Compare IRH, 243–45 with OT, 198–99. 7 Fukuyama, The End of History, 146–47; Roth, “A Problem of Recognition,” 295–96. 8 Cooper, The End of History: An Essay on Modern Hegelianism, 88–90; Fukuyama, The End of History, 147. And indeed, Kojève alternately refers to the political as revolving around the need for recognition. This is an emphasis which accords with Kojève’s emphasis on the universal and homogeneous state as recognition of each by each through the “all” of such a state (IRH, 11–12, OT, 146). 9 To the extent that the Introduction refers to the desire for recognition, Kojève elaborates that it is more akin to the desire for desire, the need for self-knowledge, as validated by the discovery of an inclination in an other that one has in oneself. It is thus that Kojève refers to “ ‘recognition’ ” rather than recognition in a more ordinary political sense, the latter suggesting the political dominance of one over an other. The dynamic is internal, not political. Thus, even Kojève’s prelude to the fight underlines the intent to establish parity between two contestants, not domination of one over an other. The desire for recognition in the political sense is what occurs “finally,” only after the course of the exchange between the two contestants (IRH, 5–9). As if to emphasize the political nature of Kojève, while James Nichols the translator relays Kojève’s language of desire for desire in his translation of portions of the Introduction, James Nichols the commentator, very much arguing for the mainstream reading of Kojève, refers to the more conspicuously political desire for “prestige” in his recent work on Kojève. Compare IRH, 5–7, 40–41 with Nichols, 24. 10 This raises the issue of whether Kojève acknowledges that one could have action on an idea that is not desire for desire. Commentator Judith Butler sees desire for desire in Hegel emanating from desire and makes little distinction between Hegel and Kojève in this regard (Judith P. Butler, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France, 14, 57–67). In contrast, there appear to be other positions distinguishing desire from desire for desire in Kojève and thereby qualifying the Butler position to various degrees (see e.g., Plamenatz, Man and Society: A Critical Examination of Some Important Political Theories from Machiavelli to Marx, Vol. II, 152–53; Cooper, The End of History, 80–87; Darby, The Feast: Meditations on Politics and Time, 97–98). 11 This concerns that element of the Strauss–Kojève exchange dealing with the identity of or distinction between love and recognition, a distinction one proponent of the mainstream reading of Kojève has held central to, yet unresolved in, the Strauss–Kojève discussion. Compare, OT, 158, Kojève position, with OT, 197, Strauss position; Roth, Knowing and History, 126, identifying this element as one of two significant issues in the exchange. Chapter 3 discusses the question. 12 It is no accident that mainstream accountings of Kojève tend to view Kojève’s future in conventional political terms, emphasizing visionary political leadership. Yet, even Kojève’s more political texts emphasize the primacy of his phenomenological future. Compare, Nichols, 51–54 with La notion de l’authorité 70–72, 160–61 (cited as LNA), see also discussion in Chapter 7. 13 The connection between Master-tyrant psychology and phenomenology is noted by Judith P. Butler who describes the Master-tyrant’s psychological urge for domination as frustrated by a strategy of oppression. Butler, 77. As to the psychological as opposed to phenomenological emphasis see note 3, supra, and Roth, Knowing and History, 109–11. However, a closer look reveals that neither psychology nor strategizing are at the heart of Kojève’s future-oriented scheme of human time. To be human is not to be in the “is” but rather in an elusive “maybe,” a contingency as “the idea of the Future appears in the real present in the form of a Desire directed toward another Desire” (IRH, 134– 35, 139). And this context defies strategizing. Put differently, Kojève’s Future > Past > Present formulation demands constant pursuit of the unattainable in time, the satisfaction of the insatiable

14 15 16 17

18 19

20 21 22

23

24 25

26

desire for desire, at the expense of overcoming that which has existed in time, overcoming and altering space. There is little on which to base either a strategy, or a psychology. See notes 8–9 discussing recognition supra. One mainstream commentator has it that “willingness to risk one’s life in a battle for pure prestige as the most basic human trait.” Fukuyama, The End of History, 148. ILH, 89, 570–72; Cooper, 84–85, 94. In theory, post-fight Master-tyrants could reappear in time by their own devices, but only briefly. Kojève never states that any one Master-tyrant is good for but one fight. In fact, Kojève sees the fight as the life of the Master-tyrant, presumably with the rebuff and involuntary consumption interludes, albeit phenomenologically significant ones. Thus, Kojève, for example, indicates that “the man who behaves as Master will never be satisfied” (IRH, 20). The mastery of post-fight Master-tyrants carries over into a manner of social relations that is person to person, at least among Master-tyrants, and defines such concepts as equality. See Chapter 5 infra. Chapter 7 discusses a context in which the Introduction’s Master-tyrant may return to fights based on revised Kojèvian time phenomenology. Indeed, Kojève was not averse to likening the work of other interpreters of philosophy to detective work. Kojève, “L’action politique des philosophes,” Critique, 41–42. The formula for animal time is thereby Past > Future > Present. EHR, 3: 146. Actually, Kojève seems to distinguish between animal and vegetable life in giving an accounting of biological time, as well as distinguishing human and biological time from a “cosmic” time, which Kojève views as assigning primacy to the present. Ibid.; IRH, 134, 138. For purposes that will be outlined, in discussing Kojève’s political philosophy, the contrast between human and animal time is most apposite. ILH, 55 referred to in Cooper, 94–95; Roth, Knowing and History, 101. See Cooper for emphasis on Master-tyrant consumption, 94, 95, 98; Roth, Knowing and History, 101. Recent mainstream commentary admits from the outset that world events in the 1990s were the driving force behind interest in Kojève’s end of history. Nichols, 2–3. As suggested in By Way of Introduction, the euphoria of the 1990s provided little reason to disinter Master-tyrants. In the spirit of the moment, the world appeared to consign them to yesterday in any event. Kojève states as to post-fight Master-tyrant animal desires, “the Master differs from the animal only in that he satisfies them without effort” (compare IRH, 46 with IRH, 228). Kojève’s “only” looms large, for it is through effort, through the pursuit of the glass of water or the prized desire of an other, that one enters Kojèvian animal or human time. In the Past > Future > Present configuration, the Kojèvian reserve that is animal time, the animal has not a moment to spare to survive; the only acknowledgment the animal gives to the future is in securing a readily attainable and needed object in space that is immediately present, always driven by the desire to survive, the desire to repeat the past (EHR, 3: 146; IRH, 135). Compare IRH, 228 describing the Master-tyrant’s “nature” in pure consumption as animal with IRH, 229 on forced consumption doing violence to the animal nature of the Master-tyrant. For a further discussion of how Kojève might view these passages in the context of the rule of Master-tyrants, see discussion in Chapter 4 infra. The possibility that the Master-tyrant might be outside both human and animal time presents the possibility of the time-tyrant problem as related to Kojève’s broad philosophical interest in the nonexistent. Filoni, Le philosophe du dimanche: La vie et la pensée d’Alexandre Kojève, 76–82. In contrast to the view of the Master-tyrant as a consuming animal advanced by mainstream Kojève commentary, Kojève’s Introduction most accurately states that the Master-tyrant can only live as an animal, but can only die as a human. This is not the same as saying that the Master-tyrant does in fact live as an animal. In fact, since life for Kojève is contingent on action on some form of desire or other, the confrontation with death that is the fight of the Master-tyrant in effect means that the Master-tyrant is dead, dead to the possibility of being either desire or desire for desire. “Time is Man” only when humans are confronted with the possibility of losing both time and man through death. Compare note 21 supra citing Cooper and Roth on ILH, 55 with ILH, 55. Therefore, when Kojève

states that the post-fight Master-tyrant can only live as animal, this does not mean this happens. As actors in time, Kojèvian animals struggle for themselves; they do not enjoy. 27 IRH, 14. For a discussion of psychology in the context of Kojève see notes 3 and 13 with accompanying text supra. 28 Compare Plato, The Republic, 243–45, on movement from democracy to tyranny with Rousseau, The Social Contract, The Basic Political Writings, 192–94 on movement from monarchy to tyranny. 29 That Kojève might have more conspicuously been associated with mega-tyrannies but carries messages for smaller Third World tyrannies is fully consistent with the fulcrum of Kojèvian irony being in time, not the end of time. Kojève’s interest in esoteric writing, which is very much concerned with social relations and impact, evidences this. In fact, even mainstream analyses attest to this aspect of Kojèvian irony, and emphasize its social importance. Nichols, 112–13 n6; Singh, Eros Turannos: Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève Debate on Tyranny, 59, 64.

3 Time Phenomenology In and On Kojève

Reenter Kojève’s Time Kojève demands of his readers, and indeed of himself, that we check his philosophy measured against the Real of works and fights. Chapter 1 indicated that the headlines propelled an outside-in reading of Kojève. Yet, this is different from asking whether the headlines themselves support this mainstream reading, to whom they immediately appeal, or whether the headlines validate our analysis of Kojève the time phenomenologist, whose double dare draws man inward and then, explosively, outward to time. Not so very long ago, the end of time emphasized in the mainstream reading of Kojève’s Introduction seemed plausible. On January 1, 2000, one could be excused for thinking that the end of human time, and the preeminence of animal time, as Kojève saw it, were well in sight. Just two generations removed from the expansion of the “dream factories” of Madison Avenue and ten years after the collapse of worldwide Communism, the Americans of January, 2000, were the consuming animals of Kojève’s vision. They literally were one small black box and a clink thereon away from securing virtually any object of their desire – in no time. For those taken with an outside-in understanding of Kojève, these last three words were literally what Kojève meant – objects of desire – “in no time,” for being at the end of time. Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com was anointed the “Man of the Year” by a quintessentially American publication, as master of processes of mass distribution and production praised by Kojève.1 The greatest crisis on the horizon was a threat to the ability to click and receive at whim and will – “Y2K,” the hypothecated computer meltdown with the coming of the millennium. Yet, our fear gave rise to pause. The passage of time that had been thought to lead to time’s end instead ratified time, and the continued pull of desire for desire. Time, in the sense of Kojèvian human time, still mattered.

This was soon enough confirmed in the most gruesome way. After the scare of Y2K, a more bracing series of events ensured. Renowned and now infamous “intelligence sources” relayed that just during this period of our Y2K jitters, approximately 15–20 men of Middle Eastern origin were reverting to the black box. But they did not do so to fulfill desire. Instead, they reintroduced in a quite visceral sense the desire for desire – or more precisely the desire for attention. Their efforts, of course, culminated in wreaked havoc at various locations on the East Coast of the United States – within about one hour and a half on the morning of September 11, 2001. Reenter Kojève’s human time. The mainstream reading that largely confines Kojève to an end of history implies: what matter the sloppiness of Kojève as an undertaker if history, time, has ended in any event? The problem with this repudiation of the importance of Kojèvian time phenomenology is that it is a little like saying that characters, not plots, make the novel. Of course, character and plot are inextricably linked and interdependent, especially in the novel that is Kojève’s history, a novel in which the character is man. Without plot, or without the time phenomenology to explain the risks in all fights fought and all works wrought, there can be neither character nor history in the large sense (IRH, 38). “[H]uman history is the history of desired Desires” (IRH, 6). Thereby, Kojève indicates that the plot of acting on desire for desire in space both explains and subordinates Kojève’s risking characters, the Slave and even the Master-tyrant. Indeed, Kojève saw new orders coming. As will be elaborated, Kojève’s postIntroduction formulation concerning tyranny precisely accommodates a development only recently acknowledged as a trend by empirical political science. The political order bent on pristine conformity to universal, theological principles and homogeneity deferred by the prospect of reconciliation in the ideal end state – or the afterlife2 – was arguably foreseen decades ago by Kojève. It is a political order in the hands of energetic “citizens” in the service of a remote Master-tyrant, an order that foresees governance based on an “authority”3 that is ethereal. Kojève’s prescience entails that rule and politics are thereby severed. This is to the detriment of accountability to the public and a rights-duties balance inherent in Western liberal regimes. The separation of domination from relation, of rule from politics, is particularly seen in Kojève through an understanding of the time-tyrant dilemma. This will lead us back to action on an idea as the basis for the human, and to exploring two contending explanations of Kojève, both rivaling the reading of

Kojève as time phenomenologist. The first, psychology, has already been discussed. It presents a Kojève in miniature, looking primarily at internal factors. But Kojève’s space demands action transcending the internal, as such action for Kojève is time as captured by time phenomenology, to which psychology is subordinate and derivative. A second presents Kojève at his ostensibly most expansive. This is the favorite of the headline-driven mainstream reading, looking to the broad tug of world events, maintaining that Kojève is the apostle of the end of history, an end that leads neither particularly to scrutiny of his thought, nor to history as he understood it. This chapter will argue that the approach advocated in Chapter 2, an approach aimed at Kojève the time phenomenologist, steers a correct middle course between these two positions. On one hand, it is sympathetic to the first reading that adheres to the view of Master-tyrants as removed, eccentric, and as outlaws. On the other hand, it attributes these characteristics not fundamentally to psychology, but rather to Kojève’s understanding of time and the time-tyrant dilemma. As to the widely known second reading, this chapter will demonstrate that it is timelessness, not the end of time, that is most central to Kojève’s thought.

Temptations in Reading Kojève: Timeliness and the End of Time Kojève writes: In point of fact, the end of human Time or History – that is, the definitive annihilation of Man properly so-called or of the free and historical Individual – means quite simply the cessation of Action in the full sense of the term. (IRH, 159 n6) The prospect of annihilation is chilling, and then we are numbed from the chill as we realize that, laboring as Slaves of a sort, no sooner are we free, than a purported end of time removes from us that engine of freedom, action. Kojève’s emotional roller coaster does not end with fright and then anesthetics. Kojève proves equally capable of easing and enchanting. On reflection, some years later and in the era of Woodstock and Haight-Ashbury, he notes:

If Man becomes an animal again, his arts, his loves, and his play must also become purely “natural” again. Hence it would have to be admitted that after the end of History, men would construct their edifices and works of art as birds build their nests and spiders spin their webs, would perform musical concerts after the fashion of frogs and cicadas, would play like young animals, and would indulge in love like adult beasts. (IRH, 159 n6) Thus, other than psychology, another way to avoid the time-tyrant problem is to “run the clock out” on Kojèvian human time, which is to focus on the outside-in of Kojève with an emphasis on events. The immediately above cited elaborations rest on Kojève’s contention that Napoleon’s victory in the 1806 battle of Jena ended human time, and, with it, the fight, work, and politics, paving the way for a universal and homogeneous state in which each as citizen, recognizes each, thereby satisfying the desire of each for the desire of others (ILH, 146; IRH, 68– 70). In effect, this position posits: if there was a time-tyrant problem, who now cares? Kojèvian human time is over and Master-tyrants with it. In careening between annihilation and free love, Kojève enraptured scholars. Were the consideration of political philosophers limited to word association, Kojève is indisputably known as that nearly contemporary thinker most associated with the “end of history.” Indeed, a good number of titles and subtitles considering Kojève and cited in the Bibliography to this book contain phraseology explicitly or implicitly implicating the end of history. Some briefly consider when history may have ended;4 others how it ended.5 In any event, none seriously challenges the significance of an end of history to the totality of Kojève’s thought, or elaborates much on the environment at the end of history. It was thought there was no need to. As suggested in By Way of Introduction, the headlines of the 1990s completed this task. As the variety expressed in the quotes above suggests, so beguiling is Kojève on the subject that few, if any, scholars have seriously questioned whether the end of history belongs front and center as the pillar of Kojève’s philosophy. This subchapter will. And it will do so in a way that underlines Kojève’s time, not its end, as the center of his thought. Headlines in the heyday of the export of Western liberalism and democracy in the early 1990s fueled interest in an end of history. But as headlines changed, commentary following them referred to Kojève’s “strange thesis of the end of history” despite steadfastly maintaining its centrality to Kojève’s thought.6 Still other commentary, looking in retrospect at the early 1990s euphoria, seemed to dissociate Kojève from the entire enterprise

of explaining what had transpired.7 The headlines changed, but they did not stop informing dispositions as to Kojève. Diversion from the fancies and vagaries of the times is needed – instead, with a focus on time, or more precisely a careful dissection of the claims for an end of history as central to Kojève’s thought. Broadly considered, the claim raises suspicions. Not one of the lectures comprising Kojève’s Introduction is predominately, or even significantly, concerned with the end of human time. Nor are any of his other works.8 In fact, the most significant statement Kojève makes on the subject is in a long footnote – part of which is the 1968 “Note to the Second Edition”9 of the Introduction. The temporal and spatial significance of Kojève’s footnote reference in bringing us back to Kojève’s time phenomenology will be explored shortly. Footnotes elaborate and expand on ideas presented in the text, or contain elaborating detail. However, with the arguable exception of the crafty Supreme Court justice, or a baseball statistician, it is most unusual for them to convey central ideas independent of those expressed in the text. Kojève proves no exception. What principle in the Introduction’s text controls and most directly relates to “Note to the Second Edition” proclaiming the end of time? The answer is that Kojève’s conclusive statement as to the end of time is not subordinated to a remark about the fullness of humanity, or the uniqueness of the humans, to say little of the triumph of liberal democracy. Rather, it is a footnote to the statement: “Man who is Time also disappears in spatial Nature. For this Nature survives Time” (IRH, 158). This has both importance as to the content and the form of the message of time’s end. As to content, Kojève is, in his footnote as to the end of time, subtracting, not adding. Accordingly, the most precise statement Kojève makes on the subject in the Note crisply terms the end of history a “return to animality.”10 This brief but deliberate reference is in the midst of his review of world affairs. The placement of the reference is a reminder that, in the middle of discussing the times, Kojève is, after all, about time, both human and, in default, animal. The Note changes nothing of the original footnote, which begins with reassuring nonchalance: The disappearance of Man at the end of History, therefore, is not a cosmic catastrophe: the natural World remains what it has been from all eternity. And therefore, it is not a biological catastrophe either: Man remains alive as animal in harmony with Nature or given Being. (IRH, 158 n6)

It is the return to animal time which bridges the gap between fright and enchantment, between human annihilation and animal procreation. In this regard, Kojève may be literally vacuous for his reminder of the inevitability of space, but he is hardly vague, being remarkably true to his time phenomenology.11 Space and desire persist; it is human time and the desire for desire that is temporary. As to form, space is literally the final word. In the Introduction, Kojève identifies Hegel’s Logic as the final word in time, as exemplified in ink raised off paper and the parchment on which it was printed. Material, and, above all, space, communicates as to the end of time (ILH, 410–11, 424–25). Kojève goes so far as to say that, post-Jena, the key work of Hegel is known for its physical, tangible aspects, rather than a studied perspective as to its contents. He graphically depicts the pages of Hegel’s work as venerable parchment in decay, unread for there being no longer a need for ideas, or acts; the Kojèvian Real is over with the end of time (ILH, 393–95). Time over, it is space that tells. As an element in the great res ipsa loquitor of space, the end of history should be spatially prominent. Instead, encrusted in a Note to a footnote, the much celebrated end of history is temporally an afterthought, encased in what is a footnote, spatially an understatement. Under the terms of its own logic, the end of history can hardly be central in Kojève for not being elevated in the text, in space. Instead, what Kojève communicates in space in the Introduction reflects time and the times. In fact, consistent with the spatially relegated status of the end of history proclamation, Kojève’s text, prominent for being above the footnote, indicates that we are in the “germ” of the end state (IRH, 97). In the final analysis, despite twists and turns in the footnote, especially as supplemented by the Note to the Second Edition to the effect that in 1948, we read Kojève to conclude that history definitively ended, only to find that the United States embodied the return to animality “from a certain point of view” and that the United States was only “prefiguring an ‘eternal present’ ” for the world (IRH, 161 n6). In short, nothing in the footnote, including the Note to the Second Edition, suggests a departure from the judgment in the main text that we lie only in the germ of the end state, and that “the State was not yet realized in deed …” (IRH, 97). The footnote, including the lengthy Note, moves from a theoretical conviction as to the end of history, to a practical conviction, one that is severely diluted, largely attributable to the vacuous nature of the “germ” of the end state, Kojève’s controlling textual statement and just leads one back to time and history as it unfolds. This refutes advocates of post-historical irony in Kojève, who see in his

efforts a kind of doom attaching to one who thinks, philosophizes, in an era of animality. The problem with this analysis is that irony in the end state is no more at the ready than philosophy. Both rely on differentiation, nuance, and communication. But, as always, Kojève expresses the qualities of his end state in spatio-temporal terms. This is a state that is universal and homogeneous, or “nonexpandable” and “nontransformable” as he elaborates (IRH, 95). In an infinite sea of nondifferentiation, it is hard to see how irony might take hold. Or, as a pithy Kojève notes, a text at the end of time, as eternal and comprehensive, says nothing new (ILH, 394, 410–11). But Kojève means that his Hegel says something new, and in time. Thus, the fulcrum of Kojèvian irony rests with his philosophy – in and of time, not at its end. For example, an acknowledgment of the irony might be found at a pivotal moment, as when Kojève most directly states as to tyranny: [T]here is tyranny … when a fraction of the citizens … imposes on all other citizens its own ideas and actions, ideas and actions that are guided by an authority which this fraction recognizes spontaneously, but which it has not succeeded in getting the others to recognize; and where this fraction imposes it on those others without “coming to terms” with them, without trying to reach some “compromise” with them, and without taking account of their ideas and desires.… (OT, 145; emphasis supplied) In the context of the focus of On Tyranny, to be discussed in detail at the end of this and subsequent chapters, Kojève appears to give an accounting of the mega tyrannies of his time in such a way that they universalize and homogenize, proselytize and level, in the germ of an end state. The critical actor of history is thus the citizen-henchman, not so much propelled by desire for desire as mesmerized by the shock and awe of Master-tyrants, recognizing not out of desire for validation of self but “spontaneously.” The object of imposition is not the seeking self of the Introduction, but rather an “it,” a nebulous and indeed remote “authority.” There is no similar self from whom the resistant, the oppressed, might have desire for desire. So great is the need to accommodate the time-tyrant dilemma that Kojève revises his definition of tyranny. Kojève’s irony is that his Real gets the better of his time phenomenology;12 the pinnacle of tyranny also demonstrates the Master-tyrant at the margin, the time-tyrant problem occasioned by post-fight rebuff. It is not that the headlines

are unimportant; it is rather that this Real comes at the expense of Kojève’s philosophy. Thus, Kojève is alternately tongue-tied and less than sure-footed in precisely describing the end of time.13 This is entirely consistent with Kojève’s original and intended ambiguity in the Introduction’s text as to the germ of the end state. Even those advocating that Kojève ventures on the path of originality concede that in such case, Kojève is a willing collaborator with Hegel.14 And Kojève, decades removed from the Introduction, strongly suggested that while time was in deceleration, it was more than opportune to prepare ideas, discourse, and philosophy.15 This means a putting of the historical house in order in terms of all thoughts thought, which the post-Introduction Kojève does, the final res ipsa of space looming. There is little irony here, only dedicated attention to craft,16 in the manner of the carpenter fashioning Hegel’s table. What is ironic is that powerful tyrannical politics turns out as implausible politics. It is thus that one explains the allergy that the mainstream readers of Kojève have to his textually controlling remark that we are in the “germ” of the end state.17 Such ambiguity does not make headlines, or sell newspapers – or, for that matter, books. Yet this is Kojève’s spatially and temporally controlling statement of condition. Hence, citizen-henchmen come to the rescue with the pending return to animality, in an amended discourse holding firm to the centrality of tyranny, yet accommodating its changed forms.18 Discourse thus becomes a sustaining characteristic of Kojève’s “germ” of end of time,19 conferring upon it a luster and personality that Kojève’s dull and austere space cannot. Thus, it is citizenhenchmen subservient to a faceless authority that save the day – or what is left of one in the “germ” – for discourse and philosophy. The risk, confrontation, and annihilation suggested in the salad days of the Cold War might surely exhibit an all or nothing quality of the end of history.20 Instead, even in the “germ” of the end state, we will find Kojève’s time phenomenology and with it the time-tyrant dilemma quite emergent and telling.

A Kitchen in Sokolniki: Contours of the Present Human Time Kojève’s “germ” of the end state beckons, yet challenges. Headlines it will not make, more closely resembling careful philosophic scrutiny as to nuances and assumptions, much like the “owl of Minerva” spotted by a Hegel ever watchful as to time. The most casual readers of the Note to the Second Edition, especially

Americans, cannot help but be struck by Kojève’s peculiar historical references to them as “rich Sino-Soviets” and exemplar of the “Sino-Soviet actualization of Robespierrian Bonapartism” (IRH, 160n). If this seems a strange place for the celebration of what the mainstream reading will term a kind of American exceptionalism leading the way in democracy and liberalism for the world, it indeed is. Attesting to the presence of the “germ” of the end state in the Note, Kojève refers carefully and qualifiedly to the end of history as an end “properly so-called” (IRH, 160). What has happened since Jena, Napoleon, and Hegel, is just an “extension in space” of the general end of time, even though events seem to gallop past. Now that he has secured our attention by relating the “germ” of the end state to his most famous footnote pronouncement, Kojève faces the challenge of keeping it. It is not, after all, very exciting to watch Sino-Soviets become richer, as one gorges oneself as an animal. The “germ” is apt to be opaque, ponderous, and precisely not in the manner of headlines. But what if one might encapsulate the challenges of discerning the character of the “germ” end state in terms of Kojève’s time phenomenology, on one hand, and in a familiar headline-gripping Kojèvian theme such as the risk of life and death in the fight, on the other? We might give a crisper profile to the “germ” of the end state, a profile that has so far eluded the mainstream reading. All these themes are combined in an event Western Cold War historians have dubbed “The Kitchen Debate.” The encounter, played against the backdrop of a model American kitchen of the era, occurred in the Moscow neighborhood of Sokolniki of the late 1950s, as then-Vice President Nixon was hosting Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at a much-anticipated American trade fair designed to introduce the benefits of free market societies to the Soviets. Nixon argued strenuously for what has come to be known as America’s consumer-oriented disposable “now” culture, most memorably for the superiority of the American society of the 1950s based on the availability of color television and kitchen appliances. American trade fair host and prominent Soviet visitor exchanged what seemed like impromptu observations about the merits of their respective societies. In answer to Nixon’s argument, Khrushchev trumpeted Soviet supremacy in rocketry and the martial state, “public goods” to advance and indeed expand the model society of the future through the fight of a Mastertyrant, the key to Kojèvian human time.21 Both Nixon and Khrushchev saw life as a pursuit. But while Nixon saw desire, and its fulfillment through the possession of objects, and market mechanisms designed to maximize consumer choices, Khrushchev emphasized the desire for desire and championed a system that yielded but one Soviet washing machine, one type of Soviet house, thus

recognizing the force of a tyrannical proletariat, and movement to the universal and homogeneous. Two things become apparent. First, as time in Kojève is all determinative, a side by side of human and animal time lies at the heart of the “germ” of the end state. The event represented the confrontation between Kojèvian tyrannical human time and the “return to animality” associated with the end of time. The Soviets represented the former, the Americans the latter. In fact, the varying terminologies for the event tell much, Americans fondly recalling “The Kitchen Debate” following the initial appellation “Sokolniki Summit.”22 Words matter. And the predominance of the kitchen reference suggests the essential consumption theme of the return to animality, a theme that only accelerates in American circles as Kojève’s richer Sino-Soviets gorge themselves. Jointly, they might be thought to capsulate the “actualized” ideas of Kojève’s hybrid “germ” of the end state. The Soviets clearly sought to minimize the individual pursuit of objects in Kojèvian animal time and mere desire. They favored Kojèvian human time and the attainment of the desire for desire through identification with the state. What counted for Khrushchev was not the house or the washing machine, but that the Soviet citizen was receiving the Soviet product.23 In an era when “Home Economics” was surely the popular choice of major on many American campuses, Khrushchev upbraided Nixon, intimating that the consuming American housewife was herself a caricature of the consumer circle of desire, poignantly indicating that under capitalism, instruments of culinary convenience made women objects as well.24 Thus, as Kojève might have had it, Khrushchev saw ultimate fulfillment in what Kojève would call the human, in the ability of the product not to satisfy desire but rather the desire for desire, to promote a sense of camaraderie that tied the producing citizen to the consuming citizen in the interest of the Soviet state. As the impromptu debate featured human time and animal time juxtaposed, so, too, did it reflect the time-tyrant problem. The Soviet Master-tyrant did not carry the day against what might be termed today America’s “soft power.” Human time on the wane in the “germ” of the end state, the turning of the tide in the debate was the time-tyrant vulnerability. When desirous of desire Khrushchev tended to reduce the end of competition as conquest, a cagy Nixon parried by offering creature comforts as a pacifying element. The subtext of Nixon’s argument, supported brilliantly by the props of American consumerism, was that, rather than pursuing objects of desire, Master-tyrants order or command them. This, in turn, leads to forced consumption. This is exactly symptomatic of the detached Master-tyrant ordering or commanding the Soviet

refrigerator or house, without the slightest regard for the desires of the ruled. For Kojève, not surprisingly, Nixon captured what Kojève would have taken as the remoteness of the Soviet tyrant, viewing his civic asceticism as irreconcilable with the American society of desire and consumption. Nixon concluded his analysis of the encounter in a manner appropriate to a representative of the Kojèvian “wave of the future” which is literally an allconsuming present, arguing for a strategy to exploit the unfulfilled desires of the Soviets at the expense of the desire for desire, and, as to the tempting arsenal of consumer products in the prolific American market, to “using each at the time and the place” most appropriate.25 In retrospect, Master-tyrant Khrushchev lived up to Nixon’s advance billing. In the manner of the Master-tyrant rebuff, Khrushchev never acknowledged the confrontation at the “Kitchen Debate.” In true Master-tyrant style, he branded his adversary as less than human. He would have dismissed America’s now culture as an excuse for the accumulation of piles of capitalist bric-a-brac. Moreover, he did so using futuristic rhetoric about representing revolutionary forces overcoming the past and what he termed counter-revolutionaries.26 As Kojève’s human time draws to an end, all elements of the time-tyrant problem were on display in the Sokolniki kitchen as a model of American industrial ingenuity. Despite its eschatological cachet, the aftermath of the debate illustrated that the “germ” of the end state says less about the end of time and far more about ambiguities,27 and indeed role reversals during time. John Kennedy ruefully assessed what seemed to him the supplicant nature of Nixon’s “Kitchen Debate” performance, famously remarking in the 1960 campaign: “I would just as soon look at black and white television and be ahead of … [the Soviets] … in rockets.”28 Kennedy’s intent was not conquest, but mere self-defense, an instinct Kojève clearly would have associated with the pre-fight animal despite the Kennedy bravado. Hardly corpulent, consuming animals at the end of Kojèvian time, the post-“Kitchen Debate” America heeded the Kennedy caution as to the Missile Gap, joining the Soviets in an unprecedented arms race arguably based on the instinct for self-preservation of both sides. America resembled more the animal in fear on the verge of Kojèvian human time than the animal of desire at the end of it. Assessing the return to animality, one must ask: which animals? The trend is not toward the end of time foreseen in Kojève’s Note, but rather back to time, and the vitality of the time-tyrant problem. And, as Kojève generally predicted, the post-Sokolniki Soviets followed the Americans. Despite the caricatured, intrepid Master-tyrant Khrushchev, the Soviets embraced mutual assured destruction with the goal of deterrence. In fact, this is quite uncharacteristic of the Introduction’s pre-fight Master-tyrant, whose

desire for desire would “impose itself on the other as the supreme value” and secure self-certitude (IRH, 7). Under Khrushchev, the Soviet Union, representing perhaps the most prominent last gasp of rule by Master-tyrants, agreed not to fight to win, but to deter and not to lose. This again is characteristic of the animal instinct for self-preservation hearkening to aspects of Nixon’s debate appeal.29 Nonetheless, at the same time, the Soviet tyranny went on to challenge, to extend its interests and secure some form of recognition in south Central Asia, in Africa, and in Southeast Asia, as well as to use repression to secure a temporary hold in Central Europe. Neither clearly in human nor in animal time, the Soviet tyranny exemplified the tenuous status of Master-tyrants plagued by the time-tyrant problem. Coming in an era of satellite states and emerging people’s republics, Khrushchev’s predicament might be thought to advance the cause of Beria and the Comintern, if somewhat daintily. The overall point is that the “germ” of the end state seems to accelerate the distance of Master-tyrants from the ruled to a greater degree than before, to the point where citizen-henchmen are necessary. In an irony entirely attributable to time and not its end, all powerful mega tyrannies have a Master-tyrant more removed than ever before. In fact, viewing the “Kitchen Debate” in retrospect, the tide turned when Nixon moved from detergent to nuclear weapons.30 He pitched not so much for animal desire, as the reasonableness of the survival instinct. Mutual assured destruction appealed to the waning desire for desire, yet rejected the street smart of so many adolescents of the era revving up their hot rods prior to a road game of “chicken.”31 In fact, Kojève recognized and lampooned this survival instinct, in ridiculing the double-talking liberal statesman of the age, ever strategizing and, above all, keeping options open (OT, 140). This is symptomatic of the “germ” of the end state, a fusion of both animal fear and the human search for parity among reasoning selves. The former lurches back into time, presenting a less cultivated fearful and frugal animal, the latter moves very much forward beyond desire for desire, to a realized parity, free of the rebuff. Whereas it seemed that Nixon bid us to be both human and animal in the “germ” of the end state, Khrushchev, as a timeless Master-tyrant removed from the people, could be neither. While consuming as an animal, the post-fight Master-tyrant is not in Kojèvian animal time. This Master-tyrant realizes death only as a man (ILH, 55). This ambiguity in the face of death creates its own murkiness, a willingness to die knowing that recognition cannot be secured in doing so. Mutual assured destruction holds the fight as meaningless, yet inevitable or at least necessary. This is the status of the post-rebuff Master-tyrant, who is non-relational and timeless. It is to die in the fashion of that great

advertisement of mutual assured destruction, Dr. Strangelove, with Heideggerian “boots on,” knowing that recognition cannot ensue. Death be not proud in this era of the nuclear holocaust – in the end, the living would envy the dead, were worse to come to worse. Surrounded by this credo of creature comfort, Khrushchev elected survival with the animals and the vision of Nixon. To be timeless is to be alone with an idea on which one cannot act: the idea that death would confer nobility, recognition. True to the politico-philosophical nature of Kojève’s double dare, Kojève adds that the philosophic condition matches the ambiguity of the political. Hegel, Kojève asserts, “is the first one to find an answer … not ‘the answer’ ” (IRH, 94). Nixon’s adroit shadow-boxing, resting on a blend of animal fear and reasonableness, reflects the tentative status of the “germ” of the end state and Hegelian approximations awaiting affirmation by time-ending final acts. Suddenly, we are back in the solid world of Kojèvian time phenomenology, of a world yet to come, of overcoming, and of animal fears that have yet to be overcome. And we are also in a world of timelessness as to post-fight Mastertyrants. The point here is not to dismiss the posited end of Kojèvian time, however imprecise that may be. The point is rather to indicate that such a state is totally derivative of a Kojèvian time phenomenology. That phenomenology cannot be undone by the lure of events and superficial profiles suggesting that an end is almost in sight. Absent such phenomenology, the Kojèvian end is easily a mirage, as the commentary’s fascination with the Kojèvian end of time occasionally suggests. Is Kojève’s modification in On Tyranny to accommodate timeless post-fight Master tyrants merited? No doubt, as the modern’s modern of the double dare, he would point out that time will tell – and has told. This brings us to Kojève’s reading of history, not the history of our choosing as in the Kitchen Debate. Immediately below, we will consider that history in light of Kojèvian time phenomenology and the time-tyrant problem.

The Either/Or of the Time-Tyrant Problem Kojève’s historical problem is the time-tyrant problem. If, as Kojève claims, Master-tyrants are only “catalysts” rather than participants in human time, how can Kojève’s imposing citizens do the bidding of Master-tyrants in human time? Kojève tells us nothing of a meeting between Master-tyrants and these citizen agents. However, he does indicate that the

citizens are “guided by an authority” which the group of such citizens “recognizes spontaneously,” an authority that can be none other than from Master-tyrants “who always in the course of history … arise” (OT, 145, 175). There are only two possibilities for such a liaison: the ascent of the Slave-soonto-be-citizen to Master-tyrant status, or the descent of the Master-tyrant to human time and the world of the Slave, thereby making citizens. To revert to an analogy in Chapter 2, at some times, the Master-tyrant is a fighting Bluto, at others a mooching, consuming Wimpy. A psychology may be devised for either, however primitive or essential that may be.32 But the fundamental issue is time phenomenology – and Kojève’s time phenomenology. Either imposing citizens share the same status as Master-tyrants, in which case they are similarly non-relational and politically implausible. Or they differ from Master-tyrants, in which case movement to the homogeneity necessary to attain the Kojèvian end state cannot be established. Which brings us to that modern Master-tyrant and vanquisher of Mastertyrants, the extraordinary Napoleon at the battle of Jena. As Kojève notes, the descent might only be undertaken by the last Master-tyrant, the “reforming tyrant” whose “revolutionary political action … will realize the universal and homogeneous State” (OT, 175). Concomitant with the Kojèvian double dare, this is to say that Napoleon is phenomenologically, as well as politically, revolutionary.

The Case Study of Napoleon The Descending Napoleon As toppler of Master-tyrants at Jena and creator of at least the “germ” of the universal and homogeneous state, Napoleon is for Kojève the “Creator-Head of the perfect State and Citizen,” and thus first citizen and first individual (IRH, 72–73). Thus, Kojève succinctly sets forth the dynamic of recognition: [T]o the extent that he is recognized as … [truly human] … by others (at the limit, by all others) and that he himself recognizes them in turn (for one can only be truly “recognized” only by a man whom one recognizes oneself). (IRH, 235) Accordingly, one might think that Napoleon would recognize the Slave laborer for the contribution the Slave laborer makes in his milieu of work. But such a

descending Napoleon will be frustrated. The Slave qua laborer cannot be retained in the face of the Master-warrior that is Napoleon. This is because the latter is not, for example, Louis XIV. Only in servicing a Louis XIV can the Slave maintain the double-edged psychology that makes the Slave deliver to the Master-tyrant, by action “in relation to an idea, a nonbiological end … [the] idea that is Work … that creates a nonnatural, technical, humanized World” (compare IRH, 229 with IRH, 42) in providing for an other rather than the self, repressing an instinct for self-preservation and so transforming the Slave environment. Therefore, action on the idea of work by the Slave entails a hard opposition between Slave and Master-tyrant, generating the view that work for a removed Master-tyrant, the Sun King, is counter to the animal instinct for selfpreservation, and advances the human. A Napoleonic descent to the Slave’s side stops that labor, and human time. This simply attests to the time-tyrant problem. Accordingly, Kojève replaces the Slave as the backbone of the French Revolution (IRH, 69). This replacement is therefore neither Master-tyrant nor Slave. We immediately become suspicious. Kojèvian time phenomenology posits that “Man is Time” and that “[M]an is never simply man … but either a Master or Slave …” (IRH, 8). The replacement is thus Kojève’s great neither/nor. This is to say both a Master-tyrant who has no Slaves and a Slave who has no Master-tyrant. This magnificent neither/nor Kojève terms the bourgeois. “The Bourgeois does not work for another. But he does not work for himself, taken as a biological entity, either. He works for himself taken as a “ ‘legal person’,” as a private Property-owner … he works for Capital” (IRH, 65). Kojève claims that the bourgeois is derivative of the Slave (ILH, 143, IRH, 63). But saying this does not make it so. The bourgeois is not in human time,33 for not being driven by the desire for desire. But nor is the bourgeois in animal time, as the bourgeois does not realize a physical object; rather the physical object realizes and consumes the bourgeois. Kojève, for example, suggests repeatedly that the bourgeois is identified through connection to property, the object of bourgeois pursuit (ILH, 188–89; IRH, 64). In effect, the bourgeois becomes a mere idea34 rather than an actor on an idea35 in Kojèvian human time. The Ascending Napoleon Yet, this is only work, albeit the grist of Kojève’s history. Our visceral human, and indeed Kojèvian, reactions are that Napoleon’s bona fides lie on the battlefield of Jena, and with the ascendency of Napoleon in the fight. However, not even the Napoleon of the fight, Napoleon the Master-warrior in ascent, as

Kojève terms him, fares better. Kojève asserts that the Napoleon of Jena is an amalgam of the Master-warrior and the Slave-laborer (ILH, 146). But the problem is that the ascending Napoleon cannot leave all behind; rather as Kojève admits, a Napoleon in ascent must bring with him some of the Slave (ILH, 146). The universal of the law and community then touches the particular remnant of the Slave in final recognition (IRH, 235). That recognition must encompass a part of the former Slave now turned citizen. This ascent is easier asserted than demonstrated. Kojève identifies Napoleon as a “god-Man” (IRH, 73) and repeatedly refers to Napoleon as a god who has appeared and lived among men, the deification of man.36 This is not the Napoleon of ascent. In fact, a kind of refractive effect develops in the rapport between Slavelaborer and Master-warrior Napoleon, with the Slave seeing Napoleon not as equal but as an emblem (ILH, 148). This is to accentuate, to force the appeal of universality of the ideal of Napoleon, not to acknowledge the particularity37 of the Slave. As with the bourgeois of the descent, we are back to the Master-tyrant as an ethereal ideal,38 devoid of desire for desire. Missing in either event is parity and knowledge of self through the desire of an equal,39 attained through fulfillment of the desire for desire. As Kojève concedes, the elimination of desire for desire, the lynchpin of his phenomenology proceeds as follows: In truth, only the Slave “overcomes” his “nature” and finally becomes Citizen. The Master does not change; he dies rather than cease to be Master. The final fight, which transforms the Slave into Citizen, overcomes Mastery in a nondialectical fashion: the Master is simply killed, and he dies as Master. (IRH, 225 n22) Kojève then phrases this nondialectical dynamic actually as demonstrating the implausibility of the ascent and the descent in terms of time: The Slave is obliged to overcome Mastery by a nondialectical overcoming of the Master who obstinately persists in his (human) identity to himself – that is, by annulling him or putting him to death.… It is in and by the final Fight in which the working ex-Slave acts as combatant for the sake of glory alone, that the free Citizen of the universal and homogeneous State is created.

(IRH, 231; emphasis supplied) It is here that we further see the implications of the elimination of Master-tyrants in “nondialectical fashion.” Humans act from desire for desire; animals from desire. Neither acts “for the sake of glory alone,” as humans need that glory to lead to self-validation from an other and animals have no idea of glory.40 Therefore, action for glory merely attests to the condition of timelessness in which the Master-tyrant exists.41 Rather than solve the time-tyrant problem, the proposed end of time just confirms it. Whether attempting ascent or descent, Napoleon must manage the elimination of Master-tyrants in “nondialectical fashion” noted by Kojève. He cannot do so without abandoning the desire for desire of an ascent or taking it on in the manner of a descent. In likening what is a non-dialectical end to a fork in the road, he states: But as Man – that is, as historical (or “ ‘spiritual’ ” or, better, dialectical) being – he never retraces his steps … [T]he animal in [Man], which was on the road to the right could not end up on the road to the left: therefore it had to disappear, and the Man whom it embodied had to die.… (IRH, 251 n36) Non-dialectical elimination thus points no way forward, but simply to the “return to animality” set forth in the Introduction’s Note. A descending Napoleon has no interest in such a descent, and an ascending Napoleon is incompatible with such a return. Napoleon is an asserted amalgam, an awkward mix of the legacy of an oxymoronic fighting Slave-laborer turned annihilating animal at Jena and the law-bearing Olympian commemorated in the cold marble of Les Invalides. In contrast to the emphasis of much commentary on Kojève, the problem is not the end of Kojèvian human time, it is explaining how to get there. Again, reverting to the lesson of the “Kitchen Debate,” the lure of the Kojèvian explanation is found in seeming correspondence to, not departure from, current realities and an ability to enchant by providing a new perspective. But Kojève’s time phenomenology can no more manage the descent of Napoleon into the human time of work and the Slave – or ascent from this – any more than can the brilliant lines and shades of a tableau by Delacroix.

The Legacy of the Time-Tyrant Dilemma: A Kojèvian “Politics”

Based on Universality If the analysis of a temporally implausible Napoleon sounds only like so much rarefied philosophy, one need only reflect on current regimes of the world’s backwaters, including what had been the troika of the “axis of evil” that occupied so much of U.S. foreign policy from 2002 to 2007. Leaders in such marginalized states appear quite content feigning Napoleonic poses, as Kojève’s analysis in On Tyranny makes clear (OT, 169–70). Kojève explains this problem not so much by an end of time, as by the remoteness inherent in the time-tyrant problem, a remoteness that lends itself to posturing, and imitation, imitation being action on an idea, the essence of human time when it bespeaks desire for desire. Much lies at stake here, for the allegation of universality lies at the heart of the mainstream reading’s enthusiasm for Kojève as a prophet as to the end of time. Universality was thought to mean proclamation of the message of liberalism and democracy to geographic corners theretofore resistant, as in Communist bloc states. Universality simply meant uniformity over all regions, all spaces, as it was a message for everyone, about everyone in Kojève’s end state.42 And this idea has takers of a kindred spirit in the academic community. These others are empirical social scientists, with a focus on the observable and the measurable. The externals, and especially territory, that which can be observed, measured, have long been the friendly habitat for empirical analyses of tyrannical phenomena. Twentieth-century totalitarians were basically domination-driven Master-tyrants with better technological toys.43 The empirical social scientist, like the reader of a mainstream Kojève beholding the collapse of the Berlin Wall or regimes toppling in Central Europe with breathtaking alacrity, looks to terra firma, and what Master-tyrants do to it. Yet, the Soviet Union, the former hegemon of the world’s largest land mass, did not explode. It did not collapse of a Jena. Rather, the Soviet Union imploded. In fact, it was not the desire for recognition from anyone that counted, not the drive for territory. Rather, it was the desire for desire from a peer. And as the Kitchen Debate demonstrated, Soviet and even Chinese behavior in the face of a provocative Western containment strategy was only sporadically expansionist,44 much in keeping with mutual assured destruction. Universality is thus for the time phenomenologist not so much a matter of territorial aggrandizement as action on a universal idea to secure the desire of the greatest number. Hence, Kojève writes of citizen-henchmen on behalf of an authority imposing ideas to the maximum extent as core to his definition of tyranny (OT, 145). Reliance on henchmen simply underlines the Master-tyrant of

Kojève’s time phenomenology as Kojève’s great rebuffing elitist.45 Were Kojève to have treated the post-Introduction world of the 1950s–60s as the end of time, he would have assigned little significance to Master-tyrants. To the contrary, as late as the 1950s, Kojève’s Master-tyrants are alive and kicking, as is history. But they are idiosyncratic rather than gargantuan. Kojèvian time phenomenology underlines the need to examine the importance of a cohesive social order based on a certain number of “haves,” political participation based on education and literacy, and, perhaps above all,46 the notion that popular government be rights-based, as a predicate for successful mass mobilization of citizenries.47 Kojève not only sees the rise of tyranny through the instrument of mass opinion,48 he arguably foresees the rise of a gripping jihadism, resting on the universality of law and promised divine authority, played out in the imposition of the law of the Koran in the many back alleys and souqs of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central and South Asia. Modern Mastertyrants are just as removed, non-relational, and absent from history as were their predecessors. But they do their dirty work through imposing “citizens” fueled perhaps by ideas of universality profiled by an ideal of experience outside human time that is afterlife. Those looking to explain a political culture of jihad may never find a perfect philosophical analogue rooted in the direction of Western thought. But Kojève’s proposition of a citizen society directed by aloof rulers bent on the imposition of universal principles and motivated by the promise of deferred homogeneity might be a fair place to start. In this depiction one sees Kojève’s rejoinder to empiricist colleagues: what is so political in your science? Arguably, Kojève’s view of tyranny as inevitable and intractable performs a valuable service in setting forth the case that philosophy may have an equally valid, if not greater, claim to that of empiricists in explaining what might otherwise be thought of as novel, dangerously innovative. Kojève’s time is very apposite to the times. To Kojève’s rejoinder, the empirical social scientist inquires politely of the philosopher and time phenomenologist: if the time-tyrant problem simply stipulates a kind of harsh rule that is debatably political, are we wasting precious philosophical assets describing phenomena just as well depicted by purely empirical political science? In answer, Kojève saw new orders coming. Kojève’s imposing citizen formulation in his analysis in On Tyranny foresees governance based on “authority,” the outerworldly principles of universality proclaimed by Master-tyrants to citizens fueled by the prospect of reconciliation in a homogeneity best deferred as an afterthought in the ideal end state – to a life that is after, in the realm of the universal and homogeneous – or an afterlife.49 Rule

and politics are thereby severed. Whatever universality precisely is for Kojève, it is an idea. Kojève’s Napoleon is like the hambone actor who never quite leaves the stage. Spent actors might nonetheless mesmerize. Citizen-henchmen see to that. Persona becomes idea, an “ism,” as in the “Robespierrian Bonapartism” that Kojève identifies in the Note (IRH, 160 n6). But to remove the person is to remove the desire for desire and the human. This means action outside time (ILH, 144). This means rudderless universality.50 Such universalism in the face of a desire for desire on decline can mean the abattoirs of Place Vendôme or Pol Pot’s never ending Year Zero and annihilation piled upon annihilation, without punctuation in either Kojèvian animal or human time. In fact, Kojève’s ultimate praise for a society based on universality alone occurs in discussion of an example far from the Western tradition, and on an isolated idiosyncratic island at that. If Kojève can escape the time-tyrant problem anywhere, surely it would be there. But will Kojèvian time phenomenology, with its requirements, grant Kojève an island holiday?

Kojève’s Samurai If the universal does not work in time, or at its end, with Napoleon, it is time to consider a third possibility: the operation of the universal in the timeless, parallel to the timeless Master-tyrant. Kojève finds this timeless universal during time in Japan. That universal idea binding Japanese culture is “Snobbery in its pure form,” and its representative is the samurai (IRH, 161 n6). Kojève portrays the samurai culture as that of the aesthetic and the martial, focused on the delicacies of culture and the ferocity of arms. Snobbery becomes the Japanese universal to the extent it embraces the ultimate exclusion, that of self: Thus, in the extreme, every Japanese is in principle capable of committing, from pure snobbery, a perfectly “gratuitous” suicide … which has nothing to do with the risk of life in a Fight waged for the sake of “historical” values that have social or political content. (IRH, 162 n6) In short, Kojève’s Japan epitomizes the society governed by the universal – “every” Japanese owes fealty to the principle of snobbery. Action on the

universal idea of snobbery will be gratuitous – that is, for its own sake, making the universal idea all the more potent. Finally, for acting on this universal, it appears that the Japanese will be outside human time; snobbery renounces the desire for desire, the desire for recognition from an other, which propels Kojèvian human time. Put more plainly, Kojève’s Japan is not a prototype for Kojève’s end of history. It is about the timeless, not the end of time. There is the view that Kojève’s Japan vies with America as a culture representing the end of time.51 However, to view Japan and America as two such final statements attesting to life at the end of Kojèvian human time would be to undermine Kojève’s fundamental and cardinal characterization of the end state as universal and hence monolithic. Additionally, were Kojève to have seriously argued that Japan represents the end of time, he would have had to have completely revised Kojèvian time phenomenology as epitomized by the proposition that “Man is Time,” since a Kojèvian Japan is “specifically human” (IRH, 162 n5). There is no such significant revision. Thus, the samurai lives during time. Kojève says so. He writes: “[Japan] alone has for almost three centuries experienced life at the ‘end of History’ ” (IRH, 161 n6; emphasis supplied). No end of history can last for three centuries – it thereby becomes an “ ‘end of History’.” Similarly, while Kojève clearly identifies the animal time of desiring and consuming as depicted in a “posthistorical” America, he cryptically approaches Japan, referring to it in qualified fashion as “ ‘historical’ ” or “ ‘post-historical’.”52 In short, as human time elsewhere progressed, Japan, like the timeless Master-tyrant, has been during time, albeit outside, it. Precisely what does Japan mean? Kojève’s answer is that Japan is special because it is the one place in the Introduction showing what it is like for the proud, the discerning, the repulsed, to live in an environment of their choosing, according to their tastes. That is to say, not to disappear, not to be “catalysts” in an environment in which they do not participate or are forced to participate, but to live. In a sense, Japan is the story of an entire society of post-rebuff Mastertyrants living on their own terms,53 rather than escaping or eluding an environment. This is the essence of the universality of snobbery. Here, the oxymoronic quality and ironic tone54 in Kojève’s language in describing Japan is not to be missed. Kojève is interested in exploring the uniqueness of Japan, not a final diagram of the end state.55 Hence one finds the irony. That which Kojève attributes to the human, desire for desire, is for Japanese eyes merely “ ‘human’.” Accordingly, the Japanese have no truck with Kojève’s “return to animality”; their society is thus “ ‘post-historical’ ” in the

sense that its departure from the path of human time yielded not animality but its opposite – a discerning snobbery (IRH, 161–62 n6). Hence, the irony is not one of Kojèvian predilection, but of the occasion, the occasion that the time-tyrant dilemma brings. Japan, which assiduously rejects desire for desire, and is therefore timeless precisely for doing so,56 nonetheless has no problem creating a society based on a most antisocial idea that is universal, that of snobbery. Irony may be extrapolated. Kojève’s Japan is a society united by a shunning of society, even of self. Kojève says that the samurai “may oppose himself as a pure ‘form’ to himself and to others taken as ‘content’ of any sort.” Thus, when Kojève speaks of form over content and of samurai suicide in the context of denial of the “ ‘human’ ” and the “ ‘historical’,” he is speaking of Japan’s universal denial of desire for desire, denial of the value of recognition of others (IRH, 162 n6). Teas, flower bouquets, and fierce yet delicate theater – these traditions cope with and resist the simply natural and animal. Kojève seems to associate Japan with a formalism in juxtaposition to the “content” of societies in Kojèvian human time. It most certainly suggests a celebration of the timeless. And, remarkably, this radical inverted universality of self yields a queer kind of homogeneity, one that is radically apolitical. Snobbery entails devotion to the aesthetic – to the exclusion of others and even of aspects of the self that may revolt from the discernment and withdrawal demanded by snobbery. Most particularly, the finesse of Kojève’s Japan does not excuse Kojève from the time-tyrant problem. It rather evidences it in two ways. First, Japan suggests that society can be like the post-fight Master-tyrant, with the idiosyncratic discernment of the rebuff registered as alternating tendencies to luxury and repugnance. Second, the samurai is a remake of the broken Napoleon of the attempted descent. As such, the samurai highlights the time-tyrant problem for eluding it.57 Fundamentally, the problem may be avoided by abandoning Kojèvian time phenomenology with its emphasis on desire for desire. Kojève accomplishes this by casting the samurai as a rehabilitated Napoleon for embodying a culture of self without need for recognition. All of this serves to remind that Kojève is not an inconsistent philosopher, but a philosopher with a consistent problem: that of explaining a political order governed by a Master-tyrant outside human and even animal time as Kojève understands them.58 It is to the Kojèvian universality of the samurai, a universality not based on geography so much as on ideas, that Leo Strauss turns his most earnest and primary attention in evaluating Kojève.

The Struggle for Possession of the Universal: The Time-Tyrant Problem as the Fulcrum of the Strauss–Kojève Exchange Thus far, this book has largely referenced Kojève against Kojève, or Kojève against readers of him with an eye cast primarily on headlines. But suppose another source were found to still more clearly profile Kojève. Suppose one were to locate a fellow intellectual traveler of Kojève, an émigré equal in experience to Kojève. More particularly, suppose that this fellow émigré had experienced revolution, counterrevolution, and tyranny to more or less the same degree as Kojève. Suppose both Kojève and this fellow émigré had partaken in their youth of the immense and profound discussions at the philosophical academy that was post-war Germany in the 1920s. And then suppose the two thereafter had decades on which to reflect on that experience and then exchange views, decades punctuated by the descent of that same Germany into National Socialism, thereby sharpening the appetite of each émigré to speak to the question of tyranny – and the times. Not surprisingly, Kojève’s fellow émigré was, like Kojève, led from study of the times – to reach conclusions as to the timeless. And then suppose that for all this similar experience, Kojève and his fellow émigré derived different conclusions on the meaning time holds for tyranny. Kojève, as noted, holds that time is the making of both men and Master-tyrants. But his fellow émigré adamantly holds that time is man’s undoing, and has precluded man from beholding time’s true evils. Kojève’s fellow émigré and ostensible opposite number was Leo Strauss. And their dialogue was an interpretation of Xenophon’s On Tyranny, occurring within a decade of the fall of Hitler’s Third Reich. Taking place against the backdrop of the Cold War, the Strauss–Kojève engagement has assumed a “war of the worlds” quality. And the Cold War context surely seems to add the aura of a high stakes contest entirely compatible with a hyped struggle for the Kojèvian end of history. The dialogue concerning Xenophon’s On Tyranny spanned a decade running from 1948 with the publication of the Strauss analysis of Xenophon in On Tyranny, its pairing with Kojève’s analysis of Xenophon in “Tyranny and Wisdom” in a French edition in 1954, and, finally, the wide availability of the Strauss critique of Kojève in a “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero” by its inclusion in Strauss’s What Is Political Philosophy in 1959. In short, the dialogue, and the stages of its broadcast, occurred against the backdrop of some of the most chilling and precipitous events of the Cold War: the militant and military atomization of the

Soviet Union, the subjugation of nearly one billion Chinese to a highly authoritarian strain of Marxism-Leninism, bloodbath in Budapest, and, in a comparatively lighter moment, Sputnik. Adherents and critics alike of Leo Strauss have tended to identify and emphasize Strauss–Kojève polarities, treating the dialogue in the manner of a blow by blow between two contestants, as one might score a prize fight.59 The world was on edge, and so were readers of the Strauss–Kojève dialogue. Lending an ear to a thinker allegedly proclaiming the end of history would certainly have been excusable given the hair trigger of nuclear holocaust. But, while a closer look surely does not deny differences, it sees in the dialogue fewer of the ballyhooed polarities and extremes than might be imagined. Commentary characterized the dialogue as a confrontation between Strauss’s ancients and Kojève’s modern perspective. Yet, the discussion was over Xenophon’s Hiero, an ancient work having modern reverberations, as acknowledged early on by Strauss in his analysis of Xenophon, and accepted at the outset of “Tyranny and Wisdom” by modern’s modern Kojève.60 Other commentary has held the dialogue’s central question as revealing two opposing views on the relation of the philosopher to society.61 Yet, Strauss and Kojève clearly agree on the most fundamental point: the need for philosophy to engage society. For his part, Kojève largely agrees with Strauss that the philosophic stands apart from the coarsely political for seeking wisdom (OT, 195). Strauss and Kojève view philosophy as a quest, and a public one at that (compare OT, Kojève, 167 with OT, Strauss, 205). Other commentary has strongly suggested the contrast between a historical approach of Kojève and the position of Strauss.62 However, as will be detailed below, Strauss demonstrates a remarkable penchant for resorting to current events in order to make his points (OT, 188– 89), a tendency that could be read to accommodate the Kojèvian Real. Accordingly, this book will treat the Strauss–Kojève dialogue as less a confrontation, more an exchange. Rather than resting on set piece differences such as ancient versus modern and historical versus the natural and abiding, this book will treat the Strauss–Kojève dialogue as a nuanced interaction between two thinkers of stature with mutual respect, who learn from and react to each other.63 Given such a perspective, adherents to the mainstream reading of Kojève, anticipating the clarion call of the end of history in Kojève’s lines, will be disappointed. And indeed, Kojève disappoints them early. The first three words of Kojève’s address, “Tyranny and Wisdom,” belie the contention that wisdom only occurs at time’s end; in fact, as Kojève suggests, it is concurrent with human time and Master-tyrants. Nor will one find the exchange as exemplar of Kojèvian irony

for conveying thought at the end of time. Kojève remains quite open-ended in his approach. He allows Strauss the last word through the vehicle of the “Restatement.”64 Kojève is thus a craftsman at work in the milieu of Kojèvian human time. For Kojève, the dialogue is thus a stage played out in Kojèvian human time. As we will soon see, Strauss is willing to engage Kojève on his turf. But why? The answer is for Strauss one of determining who or what inhabits the universal. For Strauss, the universal must be inhabited by ideas, not by Kojève’s timeless Master-tyrants. And, in few, if any, Strauss texts is Strauss more adamant in singling out the eternal, the timeless, and in pairing it with the truthful than in the analysis of Xenophon’s On Tyranny. On multiple occasions, the Strauss “Restatement” identifies the “eternal” as the aim of philosophy and defends the classical standard in philosophy as that which he wishes to restore, references that are exceptional for a Strauss text, which is typically concerned with placing works in the context of the history of philosophy.65 It is thus no accident that Strauss vehemently and repeatedly advances a concern for the universality of the “eternal order,” as reflected in the “souls of men” and for “eternal beings” or “ ‘ideas’.”66 Strauss focuses on the “eternal order, or the eternal cause or causes of the whole” (OT, 198). It is ideas, and not Master-tyrants, that Strauss aims to establish – or reestablish – as outside time. To see why Strauss is so vehement in dislodging Master-tyrants from their place in the timeless, one has only to reference Kojève’s “god-Man” against the project of Strauss’s life work. And that life work is what Strauss terms the theologico-political problem, or the tension between philosophic reason and revelation. Notes Strauss: The reawakening of theology … seemed to make it necessary for one to study the extent to which the critique of orthodox – Jewish and Christian – theology deserved to be victorious.… The theologico-political problem has since remained the theme of my studies.67 The intention behind this defense was not to promote a return to religious orthodoxy, but to revive the theologico-political problem in its original meaning and in this way to emphasize the Socratic-Platonic solution to that question. In contrast, for Kojève, it is man who “has become ‘God’ and not a God who has become a Man” (IRH, 96 n8, 167). For Strauss, Kojève’s “god-Man,” revealed, revealing, and the actor on ideas, simply confuses the tension lying at the heart of the vitality of Western ideas,68 the tension of philosophy and revelation.

Thus, Strauss exploits the time-tyrant dilemma in order to accomplish the restoration of ideas to the universal. To see this, it is first essential to survey the text subject to analysis by both Strauss and Kojève, the Hiero of Xenophon. Xenophon’s account is that of an earlier exchange between Simonides, presented as a poet, and Hiero, a former tyrant, concerning the seemingly timeless question of whether the public tyrannical life or the private life offers greater rewards and fewer pains. The first part of Xenophon’s dialogue consists in Hiero’s catalogue of the pains attending the tyrannical life; the second part is largely devoted to Simonides’s rebuttal and the position that the public tyrannical life can yield pleasure. From the outset of the first part, Hiero recounts among the pleasures of the tyrant the basest in terms of longing for and acquiring an object, be the context hunger or sexual longing (OT, 3–8). Nonetheless, in Xenophon’s accounting, toward the middle of the dialogue between Hiero and Simonides, the tyrant Hiero acknowledges the importance of social relations, even as to tyrants. In a poignant moment, Hiero confesses to Simonides remorse at the way tyrants deal with others, a remorse so profound that an anguished Hiero admits that the tyrannical life may assume the extreme form of estrangement from the ruled through the suicide of the tyrant (OT, 15). The second half of Xenophon’s Hiero is then devoted to an attempted rehabilitation of tyranny by Simonides. Xenophon’s Simonides takes the reader outside the actual chain of events and into a dream for tyranny that is “utopia” as to Kojève or “utopia” for Strauss (OT, 146, 187). As Hiero indicates that he may relinquish time as the price for being a tyrant, Simonides counters with hints and suggestions as to how the tyrant might avoid this situation. Most particularly, Simonides introduces the notion that the tyrant replace mercenaries with citizens in the discharge of martial responsibilities (OT, 16–19). But tyrant Hiero is reluctant to do so. Thus, Simonides goes beyond discussion that the tyrant relinquish mere instruments of the fight and fear. Perhaps attentive to Hiero’s misgivings that the tyrant is only feared, Simonides suggests that the tyrant curry the goodwill of citizens, so as to secure admiration, and even affection. Simonides concludes in the last of Xenophon’s twelve chapters by advising Hiero that the tyrant be successful in executing massive public works, adding, “if you make the city you rule the happiest of these, know well that you will be declared by herald the victor in the most noble and magnificent contest among human beings” (compare OT, 3–21 with OT, 20). Simonides concludes by bidding this beneficent public tyrant to consider the fatherland his, to embrace all as comrades. In sum, Simonides defends the tyrant as a “real” man who emulates the divine, as to act for honor is to “come closer to what is divine” than any other

endeavor (compare OT, 14–15). This defends Kojève, who states point blank: “[T]he real object of religious thought is Man himself; every theology is necessarily an anthropology” (IRH, 71). Kojève’s post-fight Master-tyrant is an unwelcome squatter in the realm of the timeless, for Strauss the destination of the true philosopher’s quest. Thus, before the reader of the “Restatement” knows anything of the Strauss view of Kojève’s exact philosophical pedigree, before Strauss frames Kojève in the context of modern thought, and even before Strauss takes up Kojève on Hiero, Strauss identifies Kojève as accepting “atheism and tyranny” without the slightest objection and taking them “for granted” (OT, 185). Kojève’s human time represents what elsewhere Strauss terms “modern atheism,”69 the worst of what philosophy and revelation have to offer for being combined, for placing the Master-tyrant in the timeless, the eternal, displacing ideas. Strauss aims at restoration. First, Strauss turns to Xenophon and the reaction of Master-tyrant Hiero to the tyrannical condition. Frustrated consumption, social isolation, awareness of the non-relational life, a feeling of detachment from both animal physical pleasures and political human ones – in so emphasizing these aspects, Strauss profiles exactly those aspects of Kojève’s existential impasse that is the time-tyrant dilemma (OT, 53–54, 58). In maintaining that the tyrannical soul cannot be the repository of the eternal (OT, 39–48), Strauss argues for the implausibility of rule by the post-fight Mastertyrant, who cannot be trusted with the timeless, the eternal. And Strauss calls attention to the suicidal impulse of the Master-tyrant. It is not the prideful suicidal impulse of Kojève’s samurai. Rather, it is the suicidal impulse of the restive and sleepless Master-tyrant – the Master-tyrant in isolation. Interestingly, Strauss emphasizes that, whereas Simonides must elicit from Hiero an agreement that the tyrant is deprived of physical pleasures, Hiero initiates his feelings of anguish at social isolation (OT, 53). The loss is felt, internal, and known to the tyrant. This is noted repeatedly by Strauss as a turning point in the dialogue (OT, 54, 58). This is the Master-tyrant who is nonrelational and the epitome of the time-tyrant dilemma. Further, Strauss immediately sees the arguable escape hatch of Kojève, the use of citizenhenchmen. As if to underline Kojève’s solution to the time-tyrant problem, the Strauss “Restatement” holds forth that the transition from control by mercenaries to citizens is the “maximum improvement” needed for movement from a timeless, utopian tyranny to the beneficent one that Xenophon’s Simonides might have advocated (OT, 187–88). At the same time, remote Kojèvian tyranny is for Strauss “impossible” (OT, 210). Strauss thereby chases the timeless Master-tyrant from the universal, a universal that for emphasizing act as in

victory in the fight, produces nothing. However, it is not enough to dispossess the Master-tyrant. One must replace the Master-tyrant with ideas. And here the “Restatement” spends much effort. As Strauss notes expanding his reasoning from treatment of reason and revelation to a more thematic view of Western thought: No alternative is more fundamental than this: human guidance or divine guidance. The first possibility is characteristic of philosophy or science in the original sense of the term, the second is presented in the Bible. The dilemma cannot be evaded by any harmonization or synthesis.… In every attempt at harmonization, in every synthesis however impressive, one of the two opposed elements is sacrificed, more or less subtly but in any event surely, to the other.…70 In few, if any, other analyses Strauss undertakes does he so meticulously examine the mischief made by syntheses as the “Restatement.” Strauss performs a remarkable and brief tour de force of Kojèvian syntheses aimed at restoring the universality of ideas, rather than of Kojèvian cultures at the beck and call of Master-tyrants. Strauss does not really deny the existence or even the preponderance of Kojève’s actualizing tyrants. Nor does he argue with the idea that the desire for desire could account for much of what modernity would deem history. But he very much deems this a misbegotten path to the truly human, a path which can only be accessed through philosophizing, by placing the idea ahead of the act (OT, 198–99, 201). In accepting the significance of Kojèvian time as the capstone for exposing and correcting the time-tyrant problem of Kojève, and Strauss aims the Kojèvian time tool of synthesis, of overcoming yet preserving that which has occurred, against Kojève. In staccato, rapid-fire fashion, the normally sober Strauss presents three syntheses encompassed by Kojève’s time and politics: that between the classical morality of Masters and Slaves, that between Biblical and classical morality, and that between Socratic and Hobbesian politics (OT, 191–92). In considering the first, the Strauss mission is nothing less ambitious than undoing the phenomenology of Kojèvian time. As already noted, Strauss sets out to reduce Kojèvian desire for desire to mere desire. Doing so exposes the Master-tyrant as not so much a first human as the unsynthesized satyr Napoleon. Strauss does this by exploring the Master-tyrant, not as a seeker of selfverification, but as a ruler lost in the trappings of the base, one blinded by his pernicious craft rather than in search of verification through an encounter with an other. As “blinded by passion,” this tyrannical technician is not acting in

pursuit of self-knowledge, but rather acting for the sake of good appearance. The preeminence of reason controls the Strauss analysis, reducing desire for desire to mere desire, for even the “most charitable” consideration of the Master-tyrant’s relation to the Slave yields the conclusion that “the highest good is a life directed to wisdom, honor being no more than a very pleasant, but secondary and dispensable reward” (OT, 190–91). In short, in considering the interaction of Master-tyrant and Slave, Strauss confronts the essential fact of the Mastertyrant’s baseness71 as measured against previously existing classical wisdom in order to dislodge the Master-tyrant from a position outside time and to reinstall reason, excellence, and virtue as the inhabitants of the timeless. Wisdom, leading to the timeless and eternal, and not desire for desire, promotes the human. As Strauss notes in the context of putting classical and Biblical morality side by side: “[W]e all learn as children that … one must not do base things for the sake of the good that may come of them” (OT, 191). Having led us to education in an admirable child-like search for origins, the Strauss examination of the final two syntheses implicates time and the Strauss effort to discredit time’s trick of synthesis as a means to dispossess the squatter Master-tyrant. In analyzing Kojève’s second synthesis, Strauss holds that both the Biblical and the classical standards, the latter characterized by reason and discourse, are capable of leading us outside human time as Strauss understands the eternal. For Strauss, both are quite present, albeit outside time, as they are distinct from each other as “two moralities” that nevertheless make “very strict demands on selfrestraint” (OT, 191). Strauss argues elsewhere for their mutual antagonism72 and therefore that the two traditions cannot be synthesized to accomplish the result Kojève desires. For Strauss, the joint and irreconcilable presence of Biblical and classical moralities indicates that they are simply candidates for an “eternal order” that will dislodge Kojèvian Master-tyrants from outside time. Those Master-tyrants had defied both the Biblical morality through the desire for desire and the fight, and the classical morality through the rebuff and departure from human time.73 As a laconic Strauss observes as to Kojève: “Syntheses effect miracles” (OT, 191), the miracle of overcoming the time-tyrant problem provoked by this twin defiance. In examining the second synthesis, Strauss comes closest to identifying the timeless Master-tyrant in considering the history of ideas. The Kojèvian Mastertyrant is, as a perversion combining Biblical divine aloofness and supposed reason of the Kojèvian Real, bad, for preventing us from learning, as children learn. But, we beg Strauss, learning from what? The answer is learning from time, for to Strauss time is the path to the timeless. To be sure, Strauss is contending that the proverbial end does not justify the means, especially in the

dangerous company of Kojève’s Master-tyrants. But Strauss is saying something a good deal more. Strauss states this in the middle of considering the larger question of whether a good tyranny can be other than a “utopia,” whether the goodness might be acted upon in the manner of idea and act that is the Kojèvian Real. Strauss considers that Xenophon and Xenophon’s Simonides ultimately reject the possibility of a practical and practiced good tyranny (OT, 187–89). This means that Kojève’s removed post-fight Master-tyrant cannot engage in self-rehabilitation through acts in time. Or conversely, as Strauss prefers to put it: “History is absolutely ‘tragic’.” Its completion will reveal that the human problem, and hence in particular the problem of the relation of philosophy to politics, is “insoluble.”74 Though Strauss briefly passes judgment in this context on the purported end of time, Strauss makes it clear that this judgment on the end is a judgment made of and in Kojèvian time, the repetition of which foretells a bad end. As Kojève’s reference to Strauss as a detective engaged in the “subtle interpretation of apparent facts” illustrates (OT, 136n), Strauss is engaged in a reconstructive exercise, one that examines what Chapter 2 referred to as the crime scene of the time-tyrant problem. Like a detective, Strauss works in reverse order, beginning with the Master-tyrant as outside time, then, with desire for desire understood as plain desire, moving full throttle in reverse, placing the Master-tyrant back in his brief post-fight residence in animal time. True to form, Strauss’s consideration of Kojève’s third and final synthesis should finally get to the heart of Kojèvian time phenomenology, the fight. Having unseated the Master-tyrant from his place outside time, Strauss thus confronts Kojèvian nature prior to the fight, which is to say not yet inhabited space. As already mentioned, Strauss treats final Kojèvian synthesis by identifying Hegel as the mere intellectualization of a competition for Kojèvian nature, a race by all to become dominant and timeless, possessing as much space as possible (OT, 192). For Strauss, this race is the Kojèvian fight, that which is explained only after the fact with a bow to what Kojève sees as the Socratic and outer-worldly. This Kojèvian synthesis captures nature for Kojève, relegating it to the Hobbesian fight, or Kojèvian human time. This dislodges potential sources of the truth and gives the Master-tyrant a holding pen, a nature mort,75 in which to ruminate. Or as Strauss has it, the dislodgement of the eternal by Mastertyrants is “a conscious break with the strict moral demands made by both the Bible and classical philosophy” (OT, 192). This is the break that dislodged a true nature occupied by ideas of the “eternal order.” The trajectory of Strauss’s critique of Kojèvian syntheses, in moving from that which is outside time to the fight, thus mirrors the stages of the time-tyrant

problem in reverse and is nothing short of the exposure of the same. In employing the syntheses, Strauss has celebrated idea over action. The acting Master-tyrant can be enveloped by ideas, rather than ratify them as evidence of the desire for desire. Strauss needs time, especially a consideration of ideas in time, to show modern philosophy the error of its ways and to let ideas, not the reckless refugee “god-Man,” inhabit again the eternal. As he states: [W]hat is decisively important is that we first learn to grasp their intention and then that their results be discussed. La querelle des anciens et des modernes must be renewed – it must be repeated with much greater fairness and with much greater knowledge than it was done in the 17th and 18th centuries.76 The need is not so much ancient over modern. It is rather the need to revive the quarrel in time, reviving the theologico-political problem by reestablishing the superiority of the ancient as a rival to revelation. The “Restatement” curiously praised the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for their understanding of the ancients (OT, 185). Strauss, as a man of ideas is clearly up to something; the key to the eternal is the temporal, the idea in time. Thus, as befits a colleague quite content to allow an ostensible opposite number on his turf, Kojève leaves the Strauss reading of Xenophon largely intact. Strauss, he begins in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” tells us not what to think, but what to think about in interpreting. And Strauss does so by explicitly acknowledging that time gives us ideas. Kojève cautions that, despite himself, Strauss allows that time may alter ideas and understanding of action on ideas (OT, 135, 139). Kojève has thus found his license. And in fact Strauss commences in a nearly Kojèvian fashion. True, Strauss wishes to elevate the classical philosopher above the skulduggery of Kojève’s Master-tyrants, so as to position the philosopher to plausibly pursue the eternal. However, Strauss does not praise the timeless and universal for their qualities. Rather, in opening the “Restatement,” Strauss is almost like the friendly local apothecary, prescribing “the attempt to restore classical social science” because of “phenomena as what they are” (OT, 177). Strauss maintains that Mastertyrants of the rebuff, such as Hitler, only confuse Chamberlain’s or Stalin’s desire for desire as animal desire because they do not reference the “eternal order” and nature as superintending the human.77 The result is unmitigated carnage. In short, Kojève wastes no time in finding Strauss engaged in time. Kojève

uses the Xenophon text to conceal or dismiss the Strauss broadcast of the timetyrant dilemma. Hence, Kojève makes it his first order of business to avoid the caricature of the frustrated commander-consumer that is the Introduction’s timeless post-fight Master-tyrant; Kojève’s tyrannical Hiero receives advice from Simonides “spontaneously” (OT, 130). The Master-tyrant may disregard such advice precisely because of active engagement in “ ‘current business” ” (OT, 137). Kojève’s Simonides depicts a true Master-tyrant desirous of desire, yet one who “struggles and labors” in a “quest for glory” (OT, 140). Kojève’s response to Strauss is against the context of the terrific tyrannies of his century and emphasizes Master-tyrants as engaged actors. Kojève recognizes in Xenophon the honor-seeking Master-tyrant. Yet Kojève ignores the aloof, removed quality of same. Whereas Xenophon’s chapter 7 indicates that the tyrant as “real” man emulates the divine, as to act for honor is to “come closer to what is divine” than any other endeavor, Kojève allows that Master-tyrants are only divine “to a certain extent” (compare OT, 14–15 with OT, 140, 142). Kojève finds in Xenophon the honor-seeking Master-tyrant of the Introduction, less the trappings of the time-tyrant dilemma. It is most certainly true that whatever use Strauss makes of time, his understanding of the role of the act in time differs from that of Kojève. But in action Strauss does believe. Strauss makes the point elsewhere. “[A] special effort is required to transform inherited knowledge into genuine knowledge by revitalizing its original discovery.…”78 As Strauss sees it, the core of that justification is the challenge of philosophy: pursuit of the eternal, the universal, in and during time is the most human, and philosophic, of endeavors. Always questioning in pursuit of the timeless, the philosopher is a ready-for-anything. As the Strauss “Restatement” clarifies in response to Kojève’s “Tyranny and Wisdom” that satisfaction in pursuit of the timeless is often found in contemplating ideas in and about time,79 the history of philosophy. And ideas as timeless do not preclude the significance of action in time. As Strauss himself notes: “Western man became what he is and is what he is through the coming together of biblical faith and Greek thought.”80 To become takes action, and action in time. We return to Strauss’s syntheses.81 As happens, the fight and work play as important a role for Strauss as they do for Kojève. For Strauss, Kojève’s synthesis retains, from the Bible, work, and from classical philosophy, the drive to the universal and timeless through the fight. Both point to the desire for desire (OT, 189). Lost are the restraints of Biblical piety and classical moderation. Better in the Strauss view is the “oil and water” of the theologico-political, which insists that classical philosophy and Biblical labor cannot mix. As

valuable a weapon as the synthesis appears for Strauss, then, the Kojèvian synthesis is the impingement of acts in time upon ideas, upon the Straussian eternal. For Strauss, the alchemy of the Kojèvian syntheses attempts alloys in the form of the Slave, the Bible, and Socrates to temper, respectively, the desire for desire of the Master, the classical tyrant and Machiavelli, only to leave one with the base alloy of the evil, a fundamental known to classical philosophy, Biblical revelation, and child alike. Differences between Strauss and Kojève thus might focus on the internal workings of Master-tyrants. However, as suggested earlier, psychological profiles cannot disregard Kojève the time phenomenologist. Not surprisingly, commentary emphasizing the importance of the end of history in Kojève also ascribes great significance to the psychological motivation of the tyrannical need for love, as opposed to the desire for desire, maintaining that Strauss ascribes great significance to the former, or that Kojève’s concern for the latter may be reduced to issues of tyrannical psychology.82 In fact, the Strauss–Kojève exchange here is a testament to the time-tyrant problem, and to the Strauss determination to defend the vitality of the theologico-political problem. Strauss and Kojève both use the love-recognition dichotomy as proxies for the use they wish to make of their respective views of time, and the complications their counterpart has with the question. For his part, Strauss demonstrates a remarkable willingness to approach the Kojèvian plane of time analysis in remarking in On Tyranny: “The range of love is limited only in regard to space, but likewise – although Xenophon’s Simonides in his delicacy refrains from even alluding to it – in regard to time.” However, in borrowing Kojève, Strauss pinpoints the core of Kojève’s timetyrant problem, noting that love amounts to temporal “proximity” and the need for it in maintaining political order (OT, 89). In the face of Kojève’s demand for actualization by Master-tyrants, the Strauss “Restatement” becomes even more concrete as to the proximity problem, as Strauss suggests movement toward an “Oriental despotic state” following Kojève’s analysis (OT, 208). For his part, Kojève similarly uses the love-recognition discussion to press his view of time. Kojève allows that love and recognition may be mistaken, one for the other. The key is that either fuels the engine of human time, the desire for desire. In this respect, Kojève pays both classical philosophy and revelation a backhanded compliment, ceding a discussion of the love-recognition difference to them, as human time marches on. Aiming at both the Socrates of Strauss, the Socrates seeking the eternal free of the desire for desire, and God, Kojève cedes the discussion of love and recognition to those in a hypothetical eternal, maintaining

that in time the desire for desire prevails (OT, 160–61). In so doing, Kojève challenges the vitality of the theologico-political variance Strauss wishes to defend. And he again calls attention to time phenomenology as a basis for analysis. Whatever their differences, Strauss and Kojève choose time, not its end, as the basis for such confrontations they have. What perturbs Strauss is the rudderless universal of the desire for desire that is driven by acts, rather than ideas of the “eternal order.” In Strauss’s century, it was action driving ideas that accounted for the “falsified” homogeneity to which Kojève confesses, that which produced Volk in the service of unbridled Nazi aggression, the debacle of Munich in 1938, and its horrific aftermath.83 Acts alone take us back to reducing the unsynthesized actor Napoleon to the madcap and horrid universality of a forced idea, of the culture of the Paris of Robespierre. It is not for nothing that Strauss is Kojève’s most adept provocateur. Strauss knows full well that the philosopher-celebrity in his sights is very much of his times, and of time. Thus, as the beginning of the “Restatement” indicates, tyranny appears as a political rather than a philosophical problem – an easy hypothesis coming out of a century offering perhaps too much tyranny and relatively too little time for thought about it. In branding the Kojève solution “impossible” (OT, 210), what Strauss fears and anticipates is not so much the Kojèvian end state, but the charlatanism in time that leads to it. Specifically, in this light, the “Restatement” ’s concluding defense of philosophy as the human path might be juxtaposed against Kojève’s argument that tyranny is frequently an intellectual exercise in changing masks and mirrors to enlarge and excite an audience.84 And this is precisely how Strauss proceeds in introducing his “Restatement.” In defending the theologico-political problem and attacking the timeless Master-tyrant, Strauss sees the problem not as the end of time, but as possession of the universal outside time, during time. His characterization of the tyranny of the end state is exactly the same as his characterization of tyranny during time: both are Oriental and despotic (compare OT, 181 with OT, 208). Kojève’s end of time yields an insoluble politics because Kojève’s time does. Strauss makes this clear as the “Restatement” reaches its conclusion with the problem of time and Master-tyrants: the end of history is nothing but the “totality of the historical” (OT, 212) which is to say a Master-tyrant outside time. Strauss wants to redefine the cartography of the crime scene by redefining the natural as eternal, rather than the never-never land of Kojève’s tyrannical timeless, neither human nor animal.

Thus, suppose the crime scene of the time-tyrant dilemma is also frequented by thinkers as well as actualizing actors, thinkers who might explain Mastertyrants, to bring them, as it were, “back to earth.” Hence, the Strauss imperative to the double-daring modern’s modern set forth in the first line of the “Restatement”: speak. The point is well taken by Kojève’s most apt provocateur. On Strauss’s terms, this would thereby suggest that thought, and its articulation, circumscribes action, thereby defying the Kojèvian double dare that not only links acts, politics, and ideas, but posits that they are coextensive, making the exclusively human the exclusively political and tyrannical. Can Kojève’s Master-tyrant be talked into human time, thereby pulling Kojèvian thought out of the time-time problem? Strauss demands that moderns speak. This chapter proceeded to illustrate that Kojève the philosopher, the time phenomenologist, is the more complete version of Kojève. Leo Strauss, as Kojève’s most trenchant critic, responded to the latter, largely exploiting Kojève’s time-tyrant problem and Kojève as an advocate of acts that through syntheses show the degeneration of desire for desire into unrestrained desire over time. If Kojève prods Strauss to acts, Strauss surely prods Kojève to ideas. But this is a proposition Kojève is willing to accept. This is because Strauss joins Kojève in putting ideas in time. And were Kojèvian ideas confined to the desire for desire, Strauss would not be concerned with the niceties of interpretation over time. Indeed, ideas, at least Kojèvian ones, do count for Kojève. His views in the On Tyranny exchange are, after all, styled “Tyranny and Wisdom.”85 We will try to give Kojève’s speech on this question a fair hearing in Chapter 4.

Notes 1 Kojève, “Capitalisme et socialisme, Marx est Dieu, Ford est son prophète,” Commentaire, 135–37. 2 This chapter further discusses this connection infra. Universality and the afterlife are linked by Kojève. Although this work has emphasized desire for desire and Kojèvian time phenomenology as largely expressive of the human, it is not to be forgotten that Kojève often equates the truly human, at least in Master-tyrants, and the divine. See discussion of the “god-Man” Napoleon supra in Chapter 2; see also Kojève’s emphasis on Xenophon’s link of “real” men desiring desire and the divine, OT, 140. 3 See discussion of Kojève’s definition of tyranny in On Tyranny, infra. 4 Cooper, 259–316; Darby, 163–64, 173, 209–10. 5 Compare Smith, “The ‘End of History,’ or a Portal to the Future,” After History?, 2, relying on events rather than theory with Roth, Knowing and History, 115–25 relying exclusively on theory as the explanation for the end of history. 6 Nichols, 2–3, 22. 7 Burns, “Modernity’s Irrationalism”; Fenves, “The Tower of Babel Rebuilt: Some Remarks on ‘The

8

9

10

11

12

13

‘End of History’ ”; Lawler, “Fukuyama Versus the End of History”; Walsh, “The Ambiguity of the Hegelian End of History,” After History?. See e.g., IRH, 3–70, summarizing the first chapters of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit; IRH, 100–49 providing a résumé of Western thought; Essai d’une histoire raisonée, Vols. 1–3, especially 1: 87–88 on discourse and repetition in time; 3: 85 on discourse and action; see also the Strauss evaluation of Kojève, focusing on Kojèvian time with less attention to the Kojèvian end state; compare OT, 177– 207 analysis of Kojèvian human time, history, and philosophy with OT, 208–12 brief commentary on Kojèvian end state. Even those determined to read Kojève as a post-modern who reads Master-tyrants out of the Kojèvian equation acknowledge the paucity of his accounting of an end state (compare Drury, 15, 203–04 with Drury, 20–26, 144), as evidenced by the interpretations of Roth and Auffret that give great priority to a more detailed accounting of where we stand in reference to the end of Kojèvian time (Roth, Knowing and History, 83, 125–29; Roth, “A Problem of Recognition,” 296; Auffret, 25–27). As reported in Auffret, 622. The two block quotes commencing this section of Chapter 3 are from footnote 6 to a part of Kojève’s Introduction, which part is entitled “Interpretation of the Third Part of chapter VIII of the Phenomenology of Spirit (Conclusion).” The first quote was part of the original note 6 to the pre-war lectures that composed the Introduction; the second was part of a lengthy addition to footnote 6 termed the “Note to the Second Edition” covering in large part a series of Kojève’s post-war observations. Francis Fukuyama, a major contributor to the mainstream reading of Kojève, emphasizes a reading that gives Kojève’s end of time great originality, maintaining that the “Note to the Second Edition” of the Introduction contains the kernel of Kojèvian thought, based on the end of history. He holds that the Kojèvian end state of universality and homogeneity is based on the principles of the French Revolution (compare IRH, 159–62 n6 with Fukuyama, The End of History, 66–67). Not only might this overwork the significance of a footnote, it reads this footnote quite selectively, very nearly ignoring Kojève’s clear message that the universal and homogeneous state is a “return to animality.” This return approximates some European scholarship that subordinates the end of history to the notion of the non-existent in Kojève, or at least the non-existent in human terms. Filoni, 76, 214, 235–36. Fukuyama dismisses the philosophical import of this message, treating it instead in the context of Kojève’s career biography. Fukuyama, The End of History, 310–11. The phenomenological complications and inconsistencies of relying on the French Revolution as informing Kojève’s end state will be treated in detail with the discussion in this chapter of Kojève’s Napoleon, infra. Commentary alleging vagueness tends to disregard Kojève’s time phenomenology in favor of the atmospherics of the formal politics of an end state, on which point Kojève is admittedly inexact. Pippin, Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations, 255–56; Lawler, “Fukuyama versus the End of History,” After History?, 69. Consistent with the mainstream reading of Kojève, the emphasis is on external manifestations, not the core of Kojève’s thought. There are alternative candidates for irony in Kojève fully consistent with irony being in time, not at its end. One is the resurrection of a Marxist celebrating the capitalist and consumerist United States. Still others are that Kojève advanced his views as a Marxist for remuneration in the wake of failure as a market investor, or that Kojève celebrates a French victory on German soil at Jena, just as the Germans are on the precipice of a world-shaking victory on French soil. Nichols, 3; Mehlman, “Alexandre Kojève (1902–68),” The Columbia University History of Twentieth Century French Thought, 555. Though interesting, such ironies do not cut to the heart of Kojève’s time-centered message in the manner of the time-tyrant problem. Those advocating the mainstream Kojève may stress what appears as an unequivocal statement in the “Note to the Second Edition” of the Introduction to indicate Kojève’s view that history had ended with Napoleon. Actually, Kojève’s final statement on the question is far more ambiguous. In a celebrated interview shortly before his death, he vacillates as to whether Napoleon or Stalin ushered in the end of history. Interview by Gilles Lapouge, “Les philosophes ne m’intéressent pas, je cherche

14 15

16

17

18

19

20

des sages,” La quinzaine littéraire, 18–20. Interestingly, references to the uncertainty seem to predominate in brief summaries of Kojève, as opposed to those advocating a specific interpretation. See e.g., Melhman, 556; Roman, “Kojève (Alexandre),” Dictionnaire des intellectuels français, 783. See Bloom, “Editor’s Introduction,” IRH; J. Butler, 63. Kojève’s exchange with Leo Strauss exemplifies the nuance of thought in the “germ” of the end state. On one hand, interpretation, as interpretation, means subjecting ideas to the force of time, as Kojève attests at the outset of his dialogue with Strauss. On the other hand, Kojève views history as the arbiter of ideas, as “History itself will take care to put an end to the endlessly ongoing ‘philosophical discussion’ ” that occurs in Kojève’s human time (compare OT, 135n with OT, 168). ILH, 271, 305; OT, 135–36. Kojève distinguishes between commentary and interpretation, with only the latter providing a full explanation of the meaning of the text beyond the printed word. Hence Kojèvian interpretation emphasizes “reading between the lines.” “The Emperor Julien and His Art of Writing,” in Ancients and Moderns: Essays on The Tradition of Political Philosophy of Leo Strauss, 96; “L’action politique des philosophes,” Critique, 48–50. Perhaps above all, interpretation in contrast to commentary is an act of philosophy, for its ability to identify and reinvigorate ideas in a new social context. This of course sets the stage for the interplay of idea and act crucial to Kojève’s accounting of history. At times, Queneau, as assembler and editor of the Introduction, presents the Introduction as a commentary. Queneau, “Note de L’Editeur,” note “En Guise d’ Introduction,” ILH. There is, however, little indication that Queneau viewed the Introduction as a commentary in the strict sense sometimes used by Kojève. Adherents to the mainstream reading may vary in their recognition of the importance of the “germ” of the end state. Those downplaying it are more inclined to adhere to the connection between Kojèvian irony and the end of time; those recognizing it have less problem accounting for the continuing viability of Kojèvian philosophy. Compare Roth, Knowing and History, 83, 88, 137, 144–45 with Cooper, 220–24, 234. Among the ironies of Kojève’s staying in time are historical characterizations that contradict his time phenomenology. Kojève uses the term “born Masters.” Kojève’s time phenomenology, with its emphasis on action, does not deny the historical context of such statements as “born Masters” (OT, 140; OPR, 266). Taken literally, the suggestion that Master-tyrants are born and not made would undo Kojève’s entire time phenomenology, which posits that Master-tyrants are made and not born through the fight. But Kojève uses irony in support of his position that even inaccurate history may support transcendence of time. Kojèvian reference to “born Masters” is thus best viewed as an assessment not of the individual Master-tyrants, but of the cultural tolerance of a given society for the Master-tyrant as warrior. Commentators across the spectrum have noted a change in emphasis in Kojève’s corpus, from a militant “heroic Hegelianism” to a more subdued attempt to reconcile a reading of Hegel and the Master–Slave relationship to Western thought generally (see ibid., 84–85; Drury, 50–51). Without diminishing the accuracy of these observations, two points should be made. First, as at least one commentator has recognized, such a trend was shared by pre-war French interpreters of Hegel other than Kojève (Roth, Knowing and History, 29, 243). More importantly, both the militant futuristic Kojève and the latter day reflective Kojève giving voice to philosophy’s place in the past share the same views. Both concur on the centrality of Master-tyrants, yet place them outside a Kojèvian time phenomenology premised on the desire for desire and its encounters with future, past, and present, respectively. See e.g., discussion infra on the significance of the Master-tyrant in Essai d’une histoire raisonnée de la philosophie païenne, a latter day Kojève effort. Such changes in the direction of Kojève’s career are of chief value in Kojève’s intellectual biography and do not signal a significant change in the philosophic underpinnings of his thought. Even if a change in the tone or nature of Kojève’s work can be detected, it is difficult to attribute to it exact causes (compare Drury, 50–51 with Drury, 150). Hence, in examining the mainstream commentary on the end of history, commentary has begun to

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32

33

34 35

36

37

excuse Kojève; especially Smith, “The ‘End of History’ or a Portal to the Future”; von Laue, “From Fukuyama to Reality.” In retrospect, in considering his The End of History, Fukuyama makes the scarcest of references to Kojève. “Reflections on the End of History, Five Years Later,” After History?. Nixon, Six Crises, 236, 256. Safire, “The Cold War’s Hot Kitchen,” New York Times, July 24, 2009, A 25. Nixon, 256. Safire. Nixon, 289. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 428–29, 458. Those advocating the familiar Kojève may stress what appears as an unequivocal statement in the “Note to the Second Edition” of the Introduction to indicate Kojève’s view that history had ended with Napoleon. Actually, Kojève’s final statement on the question is far more ambiguous. In a celebrated interview shortly before his death, he vacillates as to whether Napoleon or Stalin ushered in the end of history. Kojève, Interview by Lapogue, 18–20. Above all, Kojève’s reference in the “Note to the Second Edition” is just that. Kojève never edited the original comment in the Introduction that temporally man lay in a vast gray area, the “germ” of the universal and homogeneous state, a characterization that, after all, remains in the text (IRH, 97). Kennedy, The Kennedy Wit, 22. Safire. Ibid. Nixon introduced the mantra that there would be no victors in a nuclear conflagration. Ibid. J. Butler, 7, 33. This interprets Hegel as viewing animal and human desire as similar. Butler seems more apt to focus on the difference between human and animal desire as inherent in human reflection, rather than on the nature of the objects of desire (ibid., 38, 45). Kojève styles the bourgeois a former Slave, without speaking of the Master-tyrant. On certain occasions, Kojève terms the bourgeois as non-political and, in fact, animal (ILH, 89, 108–09; IRH, 63). On other occasions, Kojève posits the bourgeois element as accounting for “the first revolutionaries and then citizens of the universal and homogeneous state” (IRH, 69). However, even in this latter event, Kojève admits that this fighting, political bourgeois does not risk life, does not act on desire for desire, in the same manner as the Master-tyrant (Ibid.). This is consistent with the view that the bourgeois synthesizes neither Master-tyrant nor Slave, and thus supports the atemporal elimination of the Master-tyrant in “non-dialectical fashion.” This is so much the case that the bourgeois is that character that Kojève associates most with the useless, non-actualizing intellectual (ILH, 89). Darby concludes that actualization of the bourgeois is frustrated by the bourgeois striving to be an abstraction in the form of a legal person; Cooper concludes that actualization does not take place because bourgeois risk is not that of the to be Master-tyrant and Slaves, but rather a risk associated with anonymous universality and an idea (Darby, 105, 107; Cooper, 111, 137; cf. ILH, 230–31). ILH, 152, 157, 206–08. Kojève argues several times that the object of human time is the replacement of theology with anthropology; generic man becomes god (ILH, 210–17). Thus, Napoleon could be viewed as a representative of man rather than removed from him. The problem is that Napoleon becomes exemplar of men, elevated and a source of human projection, as Kojève admits. This approaches Kojève’s critique of Christianity, the deification of man in the form of Christ (compare ILH, 146 with ILH, 155). Kojève sometimes tries to avoid this problem, not by suggesting that the Master-warrior will overcome the Slave-laborer or vice versa, but rather by suggesting the overcoming of the opposition of universal and particular (ILH, 200). But the problem here is that such an overcoming yields no preservation of one element or the other, thereby omitting a critical aspect of overcoming as Kojève had understood it (IRH, 203–08). As Kojève posits, the formation of the individual in the first

38 39

40 41

42 43

44 45

46

47 48

49

individual-citizen Napoleon would entail recognition of the universal, the Master-warrior, by the particular Slave-laborer as unique for the latter’s particularity. But there proves to be no explanation in Kojève for precisely what this means. Accounts of Napoleon particularly tend to depict their subject as aloof, relying on spiritual imagery appropriate to Kojève ‘s “god-Man.” Darby, 163. Interestingly, even a post-modern perspective sympathetic to the decisive, acting nature of Mastertyrants sees Kojève’s Napoleon more a removed god than a down-to-earth synthesis of Masterwarrior with Slave-laborer (Cooper, 223–24). Kojève takes pains to emphasize that Napoleon imposes his will on particular political constituencies, such imposition being a hallmark of tyranny as generally understood. Both tyrants and Napoleon are termed beyond good and evil, beyond conventional morality. Strictly speaking, Kojève attributes a god-like quality to tyrants and tyrannies, which he also associates with Napoleon. Thus, there can be little doubt as to whom Kojève is referring in his reference to the “revolutionary tyrant” in On Tyranny (compare ILH, 152–53 with ILH, 98–99). Phrased differently, it does not explain what element of the Master-tyrant, who was preoccupied with desire for desire, is preserved in the Slave turned citizen. As to Kojève critics who claim that the time-tyrant complication and the Master-tyrant’s remoteness in time are just anachronisms from the classical pagan state, and a transient inconvenience in the Kojèvian phenomenological sense, Kojève attributes the same remoteness from human time to the “ex-Masters,” who are equally the object of non-dialectical overcoming of the Master-tyrant by the Slave who is “obliged” to do so for want of any other way (IRH, 231). Various critics have attributed Kojève’s complications generally to a reading of Hegel’s Master–Slave relations that is on a level excessively anthropological and historical, as opposed to psychological and internal, in speaking to the development of the individual consciousness. See e.g., Kelly, 52–53. Such critics focus on what Kojève ignores, rather than the possible problems created by the time-tyrant dilemma. Fukuyama, The End of History, 66–67: Fuller, “The End of Socialism’s Historical Theology and Its Rebirth in Fukuyama’s Thesis,” After History?, 55. Compare Cobban, Dictatorship: Its History and Theory, 9, 214–15 with Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics, 98, citing Cobban approvingly; see Boesche, “An Omission from Ancient and Early Modern Theories of Tyranny: Genocidal Tyrannies,” Confronting Tyranny, 42. Tyrannies may be ill at ease with territorial expansion. Moggach, “Failures of Authority: A Hegelian Diagnosis of Modern Tyranny,” After History?, 57–58. A leading Kojève biographer holds the end of time as crucial to Kojève’s post-war appraisal of new literature, a literature featuring wise heroes appreciative of the condition of the end of time. However, in a later and more conclusive statement as to developing new literature, Kojève attributes its basis to the timelessness of the gods of mythology, not to an end of time. Characteristically, Kojève reverts to history, and hence time phenomenology, as he considers the end of time. Compare Auffret, 509 with Françoise Sagan, “Le Dernier Monde,” Critique, 702–08. The concern for aggrandizement and territory then gave way to a more organic approach, ranging from game and choice theory to more normative analyses. The former is represented by James Fishkin, and large parts of Roger Boesche’s work might be taken for the latter (Fishkin, Tyranny and Legitimacy: A Critique of Political Theories, 27–31; Boesche, Theories of Tyranny from Plato to Arendt, 460–62). Universality and the afterlife are linked by Kojève. Zakaria, 26, 99, 156. It would not be inaccurate to consider the Introduction’s recounting of Western history as the story of a parade of universals that are ideas. This holds true for Kojève, from the imperative of war in the Greek warrior-state, to the universalization of the particular in the person of the Emperor during Roman despotism, to the personalization of the universal under Christianity (ILH, 97–99, 155). Universality and the afterlife are linked by Kojève. Although this work has emphasized desire for

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

desire and Kojèvian time phenomenology as largely expressive of the human, it is not to be forgotten that Kojève often equates the truly human, at least in Master-tyrants, with the divine. See discussion of the “god-Man” Napoleon supra; see also Kojève’s emphasis on Xenophon’s link of “real” men desiring desire and the divine, OT, 140. Commentary suggests that modern life has become distracted by the nihilistic quality of this universality, at the expense of eclipsing the ordinariness of Master-tyrants. Lilla, “The New Age of Tyranny,” After History?, 247–48. IRH, 162 n5. For the competing view that Japan offers a serious, comprehensively thought out alternative on Kojève’s part to America as the post-historical society, see Darby, 173, 184, 209–10; Fukuyama, The End of History, 319–20. The complication with this view is that it does not take into account Kojève’s clear view that Japan was atypical even during human time (IRH, 161 n6). Again, Darby’s detailed treatment appears as still another analysis that focuses too much on the Kojèvian end of time, in and of itself, an accounting that even Darby seems to qualify. See notes 35, 38 supra. IRH, 161 n5. Contemporary commentary has viewed the American-Japanese dichotomy as a referendum on the exact identity of Kojève’s end state (Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics, 103–06). This would not seem to integrate with Kojève’s remarks preliminary to presentation of Japan in the “Note to the Second Edition,” a preface which describes the world situation as at the end of time, albeit still in the “germ” thereof, what Kojève terms as a realignment of the provinces, or developing countries. Kojève in On Tyranny will go on to clarify that such realignments and other trappings of Master-tyrants are by-products of tyrannical desire for desire, very prevalent during at and about the time of World War II (OT, 138–39, 169–70). Were Japan to have significantly altered this view, Kojève would have been expected to enunciate why in his final interview. Instead, Kojève’s final interview just repeats the spatial realignment view of the preface to Kojève’s Japan. Finally, the structure of the final interview as reported distinguishes between Kojève’s discussion of an end of time on one hand and Japan on the other. Kojève, Interview by Lapouge, 19–20. The possibility of contemporaneous Master-tyrants is not the object of extensive attention by Kojève until quite after the Introduction. In the Outline of a Phenomenology of Right, Kojève argues for such a society, at least on the basis of an idea of justice appropriate to contemporaneous Masters. See OPR, 264. Commentary on Kojève has in fact termed the existence of contemporaneous Master-tyrants crucial to the development of the Outline of a Phenomenology of Right (Frost, “A Critical Introduction to Alexandre Kojève’s Esquisse d’une Phénoménologie du Droit,” Review of Metaphysics, 629–30). This will be discussed in detail as Kojève’s Outline in Chapter 5 infra. Compare Roth, Knowing and History, 125–46, suggesting that Kojèvian irony is a main theme during the period of the “Note to the Second Edition” without analyzing Kojève’s disposition in same with Roudinesco, La bataille de cent ans: Histoire de la psychanalyse en France 2. 1925–85: 150–60; Cooper, 96, 192 suggesting irony, even playfulness, as a more abiding product of Kojèvian philosophy generally. While Kojève can be read to view Jena and 1806 as the end of history and human time, there seems to have been ambivalence on Kojève’s part in the years after the original Introduction that permits the inference that no thinker, including Kojève, was prepared to set forth a final plan for the end of human time (Kojève, Interview by Lapouge, 19). Mainstream commentary is divided between its natural attraction to the modernizing Japan of the headlines on one hand and the Japan of the samurai portrayed by Kojève on the other. The subtlety of Kojève’s treatment can only be captured through resort to time phenomenology. In contrast, mainstream commentary treats Kojève’s Japan as an afterthought and the object of hedging, with the reference that it “very much resembled” the proposed end of history. Compare Fukuyama, The End of History, 101, 107, 186 with Fukuyama, The End of History, 319–20. Despite maintaining that the samurai represents a viable option for the end of Kojèvian human time, even Darby lapses into the view that what has transpired in Japan parallels not the end of history but Kojèvian human time, noting a “striking similarity” between Japan and history as Hegel describes it,

as recounted by Kojève. Darby, 181; ILH, 126–28. 58 The problem is not so much Kojève’s compatibility with the end of history; it is the anomaly in the Kojèvian human time designed to take us there. The time-tyrant problem registers in all eras. For example, Kojève’s Essai d’une histoire raisonnée de la philosophie païenne, the work Roth cites for the proposition that Kojève abandoned the fight for reflective discourse (Roth, Knowing and History, 137) actually demonstrates that the Master-tyrant and the Slave never leave the stage as long as we are in Kojèvian time and the fight continues. Kojève evaluates classical philosophic discourse for its tyrannical, legalistic, universalizing elements that suppress the human (EHR, 2: 287–90, 328–35). Attesting to the time-tyrant problem, Kojève characterizes such past efforts as ethereal and outer worldly. The outer worldly and authoritarian nature of philosophic discourse, Kojève maintains in his survey of ancient philosophy, is simply a product of the fight, with the voices of philosophic discourse paralleling those of the Master-tyrant and Slave in such manner that this discourse does exactly what the Introduction promises it do – mirror the dynamic of the fight, from one philosophic era to the next (EHR, 3: 224–25). Even Roth notes Kojève’s abiding concern with the outer worldly in reporting on human time (Roth, Knowing and History, 133). Kojève’s discourse in On Tyranny thus appears to capture the outer worldly, the untimely, yet human time as well for discussing the divine in Master-tyrants while emphasizing tyrannies as “concrete cases” (OT, 140, 149). As to the contention that Kojève’s professional corpus changed to achieve a kind of peace with the end of history, the problem for Kojève is less the end of Kojèvian time than with Kojèvian human time itself – and particularly with the time-tyrant problem. While Roth states the problem as one of learning to live within the end of history, even the later Kojève of the Introduction’s “Note to the Second Edition,” after the exchange with Strauss, seems quite comfortable with being only at the “germ” of the end state, a “germ” that means the end of only history “properly so-called.” The “Note” continues as Kojève acknowledges that only America marks something like the “return to animality” he envisages for the end state, while Europe has still undergone “large revolutions.” This attention to the “germ” of an end state thus underlines Kojève’s concern with timelessness, not with the end of time, about which he has relatively little to say. For further discussion of the “germ” of the end state see Chapter 7 infra. 59 Compare Pangle, Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy, 11–12; Zuckert and Zuckert, 50 with Drury, 151–58. Interestingly, some of those wishing to attach Strauss to one struggle for the West most vigorously seek to dissociate him from the most current one. Zuckert and Zuckert, 265–67. 60 Compare OT, 24–25; Pangle, 27–28 with Janssens, Between Athens and Jerusalem: Philosophy, Prophecy and Politics in Leo Strauss’s Early Thought, 178. 61 Gourevitch and Roth, “Introduction,” OT, xi. 62 Pippin, “Being, Time and Politics the Strauss–Kojève Debate” reprinted in Idealism as Modernism, 234; Roth, Knowing and History, 126–27. 63 There is evidence that the exchange with Kojève enabled Strauss to broaden his perspective on the ability of modern thought to appreciate and access classical texts as they were intended. In the 1940s, Strauss conveyed a view that the Enlightenment obscured the true message of the ancient texts. However, in the exchange with Kojève, Strauss suggests that the Enlightenment thinkers are far more capable of accessing the classics than readers at the time of Strauss. Compare Strauss, “The Living Issues of German Postwar Philosophy” reprinted in Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 137 with OT, 185. 64 Kojève to Strauss, Vanves, France, December 26, 1949; Strauss to Kojève, Chicago, Illinois, September 14, 1950. 65 OT, 198, 200–01; Meier, 55–59. The language of the “Restatement” closely resembles the language Strauss employs in his texts most directly concerned with the theologico-political tension. Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” reprinted in Meier, 144; Strauss, “The Living Issues of German Postwar Philosophy” reprinted in Meier, 136.

66 OT, 185–86. According to one careful student and reader of Strauss, that which Strauss seeks to access, ideas, belongs not in the arena of time, but in that of nature or mythology, in the province of eternity. Pangle, “Introduction,” Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 4–5. A discussion of the Straussian view of nature is in this chapter infra. 67 Strauss, Hobbes’ politische Wissenshaft in Gesammlete Schriften, 3: 7–8 quoted in Meier, 4. A description of the evolution of this view in the thought of Strauss is recounted in Meier, 7–8. See also Tanguay, Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography, 166. 68 Commentary on Strauss, including that which is relatively recent, acknowledges the centrality of this question, without sustained analysis of how Strauss demonstrates the concern. See generally, Meier; Pangle, 82, 104. 69 Strauss, “The Living Issues of German Postwar Philosophy,” reprinted in Meier, 130. 70 Compare Strauss, Natural Right and History, 74–75 (quoted above with emphasis supplied); Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 26 with “Reason and Revelation,” reprinted in Meier, 149– 50. 71 Strauss seems to want to posit the baseness of the Master-tyrant as timeless. Some commentators have analyzed the Master–Slave dynamic, limiting it to the classical warrior state (Darby, 102–03; Drury, 18–26; cf. Cooper, 267). True to his emphasis on the Master-tyrant as being outside time, the “Restatement” of Strauss seems not to exhibit this tendency. Kojève himself would seem to dismiss the point in stating: “and universal history, the history of the intervention between men and their interaction with nature, is the history of interaction between warlike Masters and working Slaves” (IRH, 43). 72 Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 168–83. 73 OT, 192. The rebuff by the Master-tyrant exhibits classical morality with the consequence of tyranny, recognition of which is acknowledged by moderns. As Victor Gourevitch points out, the third synthesis reflects on a notable break in Straussian thought by attempting to demonstrate how Xenophon’s Hiero might be viewed as a bridge between ancient and modern thought (Gourevitch, “Philosophy and Politics I,” Review of Metaphysics, 62). This just affirms the possibility that Strauss acknowledges the benefits of beneficent tyranny, in which the passions of the tyrant are controlled by supervening reason outside time. 74 OT, 108. As Strauss observes: “[H]istory should be applied to itself ” and in so doing, “[H]istorical research shows us more and more how much we are under the spell of the medieval tradition of Aristoteli[ani]sm and Biblical authority.” Strauss, “The Living Issues of German Postwar Philosophy,” reprinted in Meier, 133, 124–25. 75 Strauss might have sidestepped the issue, resting on a more conventional interpretation of Hegel. For commentators such as George Kelly and Quentin Lauer, the Master–Slave dichotomy assumes primarily, if not exclusively, an internal psychological dimension rather than an external, political dimension (Kelly, 34; Lauer, A Reading of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit,” 104–08). These commentators maintain that Master and Slave are in internal psychic dialogue by which one reaches full self-consciousness through redefining the bonding between the I and the other. Kojève extrapolates this dichotomy into the external political realm. A position, arguing for a broadly social reading of Hegel’s Master–Slave relationship, is maintained by John Plamenatz (Plamenatz, 150–55). Consistent with the Plamenatz reading, Kojève pushes us back into politics and the sweep of history through more explicit, less metaphorical references. See text supra. 76 Strauss, “The Living Issues of German Postwar Philosophy,” reprinted in Meier, 137. 77 For Strauss, the eternal is not the Kojèvian animal and cyclical but the higher order of ideas and nature. OT, 187, 192, 201. 78 Strauss, “Political Philosophy and History,” What is Political Philosophy and Other Studies, 77; see also “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy,” Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 31–32. 79 As one commentator has recently detailed, Strauss uses history both to show that it pales in

80 81

82 83

84

85

comparison with the eternal as the aim of the philosopher, and to call attention to defects in political authority to facilitate the exercise of philosophy. Meier, 56–58. Leo Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections,” Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 147. Strauss does not implicate time in his original analysis, “On Tyranny,” as Xenophon alone gives him no need to do so. But, true to the nature of the conversation as an exchange, the “Restatement” acknowledges the looming link of time. Roth, Knowing and History, 126; Nichols, 25. Hitler famously derided the negotiated protocol brandished by Chamberlain at Heathrow on his return from Munich as just a “scrap of paper,” summarily dismissing it as the product of the submissive from an inferior world. Indeed, chronicler William Shirer relies on documentation from Munich and the Chamberlain–Hitler negotiations to indicate that Hitler signed the protocol quickly, reluctantly, and dismissively. Shirer, 391. For Hitler, the protocol that Chamberlain proclaimed would yield a “peace in our time,” was the animal time of the fearful, the weak-kneed. In so doing, he was stating the chasm between Master-tyrant perceptions of Kojèvian human and animal time. Shirer reports the Hitler of Munich at his most vociferous on the issue of time. When Chamberlain meekly inquired of Hitler whether Czech farmers in the Sudetenland might remove their cattle, Hitler responded in a fashion typical of timeless Master-tyrants, both demeaning the human time of Czech labor and seeming, in fact, to equate the farmers with the cattle, both as occupants of Kojèvian animal time. For Hitler, Czech diplomats at work were not distinguishable from farmers and cattle. Hitler would not deign to countenance their presence in the negotiations (ibid., 387). OT, 208–12. Both commentary and short works of Kojève himself belie a tendency toward the strategic use of irony and props to register points, not so much as to the end of human time, but in the course of it. See e.g., Kojève, “The Emperor Julian and His Art of Writing,” Ancients and Moderns, 105–08. The title of his piece analyzing Xenophon and responding to the initial Strauss analysis changes from “L’action politique des philosophes” to “Tyrannie et Sagesse” or “Tyranny and Wisdom.”

4 The Attempt of Kojève’s Thinkers to Resolve the Time-Tyrant Problem

The Importance of Kojèvian Ideas Thus far, this book has focused on Kojève’s time phenomenology and what it produces, Kojève’s “existential impasse” of Master-tyrants or, more precisely, the time-tyrant problem. Yet, Kojève is about thinkers as well as political actors. Kojève was well aware that philosophically remote Master-tyrants have a way of staying around and, as to human time, leaving the imprint of a jackboot on the backsides of those lucky enough to survive. How so? This chapter will maintain that Kojève strenuously holds that if thought, philosophy, has led us into the existential impasse of the time-tyrant problem, thought might lead timeless Master-tyrants out of it. It is thus that fifteen years after setting forth the time-tyrant problem in the Introduction, and with Hitler, Auschwitz, Stalin, the Purges, and Katyn intervening, Kojève entitles his response to Leo Strauss “Tyranny and Wisdom.” Despite the sway Master-tyrants hold as initiators in the Introduction, Kojève’s title responding to Strauss in On Tyranny assigns thought, wisdom, a status coeval with tyranny, action. In fact, a good part of Kojève’s response deals not with conventional political actors such as tyrants, but with thinkers. And it couches the time-tyrant problem in terms of the intellectual infirmity of the Master-tyrant, stating: Finally, in “revolutionary” as well as in “conservative” periods, it is always preferable for the rulers not to lose sight of concrete reality. To be sure, that reality is extremely difficult and dense. That is why, in order to understand it with a view to dominating it, the man of action is compelled (since he thinks and acts in time) to simplify it by means of abstractions: he makes

cuts and isolates certain parts or aspects by “abstracting” them from the rest and treating them “in themselves.” (OT, 149) Gone are the Introduction’s will o’ the wisp cameo appearances of the Mastertyrant in the fight. Instead, Kojève attributes an intellectual incapacity to Mastertyrants, an incapacity that is nonetheless illustrative of the removal of post-fight Master-tyrants from human time. Specifically, Kojève indicates that, if the Master-tyrant thinks and acts “in time,” this is only insofar as the Master-tyrant is “compelled” to do so through abstraction. Phrased more concretely, Hitler and Stalin worked their gruesome mayhem through the prism of the Master race ideology of Goebbels, or scientific Marxism-Leninism. Kojève reminds that the failure is an intellectual as well as a social and political one, and that the time-tyrant problem has intellectual dimensions. Master-tyrants can only act “in time” through “abstractions.” As it turns out in Kojève’s elaboration, the post-fight Master-tyrant is an “uninitiate” for failure to be aware of the interplay of act and idea, for failure to appreciate the Kojèvian Real (OT, 148). To the extent that such acts by the Master-tyrant may impact human time, this ruler is not in human time, for thinking in animal Stalin are compelled to enslave, and exterminate. Their cameo appearances as exhibited in show trials, mass round-ups, and death machines nonetheless depict conflicted figures, figures not completely animal for acting isolated and selfabsorbed, yet, figures not human as bereft of the thought of the desire for desire. Politics is not a sufficient explanation; one must turn to philosophy. For Kojève, the validation of acts by ideas has significant importance. We recall from Chapter 2 the Strauss indictment of Kojèvian rudderless universality, an accusation that makes tyranny a political headless horseman that takes heads, as witness the regimes of Robespierre or Pol Pot. This is to take the “Master” out of the Master-tyrant. Kojève’s answer is to pair a thinker to the Master-tyrant to impose discipline on tyrannical action through attachment of idea to act. In the Kojèvian Real, ideas are in play and, in connection with acts, may be proven, as the act of Washington’s sword at Yorktown validated the ideas of Jefferson’s Declaration. Alternately, acts may inspire ideas; the Real provokes ideas. The collision between the Union and Confederate forces at Gettysburg in July of 1863 affected a philosophy of political union articulated in Lincoln’s renowned Address months later. The leapfrog and intersection between act and idea that forms the Real is critical to Kojèvian human time. Nonetheless, Lincoln’s explanation of the end, the meaning, of Gettysburg, July, 1863, is not

only far more eloquent, but far more lucid for the acts four months preceding. This is the mode of the Introduction. In unexpectedly characterizing postfight Master-tyrants as having a penchant for abstraction and removal from time and Slaves in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” Kojève makes it difficult to understand how, in a concrete manner, any thinker could summon those outlandish outlaws, post-fight Master-tyrants, from a timeless slumber and what that would mean. Yet, Kojève presents the seminal questions of “Tyranny and Wisdom” as follows: [D]oes it follow that these modern “tyrannies” are (philosophically) justified by Xenophon’s Dialogue? Are we to conclude that the modern “tyrant” could actualize the “philosophic” ideal of tyranny without recourse to the advice of the Wise or of the philosophers, or must we grant that he could do so only because a Simonides once advised a Hiero? (OT, 139) Kojève leaves open the possibility that Master-tyrants are moved not so much by face-to-face encounters with thinkers as by a spirit of the times, including an accumulation of ideas from the past. Similarly, Master-tyrants need not consciously act to break the existential impasse of the time-tyrant dilemma. Kojève’s answer to the above questions is not that Master-tyrants resolve questions in favor of thinkers profound and past, but that they “actualize” ideas and in so doing reenter time.1 In short, thought – and thinkers – matter as a remedy to the time-tyrant dilemma. Kojève needs a thinker. But whom? We know that Kojève does not find the need for a thinker who engages Master-tyrants personally. Yet, the thinker must have a compelling message that defines the spirit of the times in a manner that suggests the preservation of Master-tyrants as well as their installation, as reflected in Kojève’s concern for conservative as well as revolutionary periods. Were we vaudevillians, we might say that Kojève needs a “straight man” thinker to set up the action-oriented Master-tyrant of the punch line. For it is the punch line of the Kojèvian fight or work that both ratifies the idea and preserves it in some manner, making it memorable.2 In fact, as we shall soon see, it is not too much of an exaggeration to consider “Tyranny and Wisdom” to be a gag written in reverse, with the action-packed Master-tyrant of the punch line in search of an effective speaking “straight man” thinker who needs to deliver a line on which to act.3 It is thus that the Introduction and “Tyranny and Wisdom” present two thinkers, the

philosopher and the wise man4 as candidates to coax Master-tyrants from a timeless, non-relational state. To this, Kojève adds a thinker he will profile in “Tyranny and Wisdom” as the intellectual mediator. But first, we need a script – a manner of speaking to and about Mastertyrants. The portions of this chapter immediately following will examine Kojève’s articulation of both the script and the search for the thinking “straight man” to assist Kojève’s action-oriented but timeless post-fight Master-tyrant.

In a Manner of Speaking: Kojèvian Circularity – the Script of the Dual, the Instantaneous, and the Total The very title of “Tyranny and Wisdom” suggests compatibility between tyrannical act and idea that counters Strauss’s lambaste of Kojève as representing a rudderless, action-packed, and reckless universality. Kojève sees himself advancing Hegel’s proposition that “What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational.”5 Ideas inform acts and vice versa. The duality of act and idea finds its analogue in Kojèvian circularity. Idea and act point to an even more fundamental duality: that of time and space. For Kojève, circularity is a proof, whereby “in developing it, one ends up at the point from which one started” (IRH, 90). Elsewhere, Kojève posits that this means the identity of premises and conclusions, or that all possible changes are exhausted so that the initial synthesis and the final synthesis are identical (IRH, 194). Here, we again encounter Kojève the outrageous. He proclaims: “Socrates is mortal, because Socrates is mortal.” Kojève clearly has something in mind not associated with Logic 101. The Socratic proposition just reviewed seems circular and is therefore objectionable in common parlance because its premise and conclusion are linked as ideas, or abstractions. Let us reconsider the Socrates of Logic 101 through the following syllogism: Socrates is a man. Man is mortal. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. It is no accident that, looking at the above syllogism, we can engage in spatial crisscross to obtain the third line that equates Socrates to mortality. A concrete Socrates on the page, in space,6 assumes another dynamic if we know Socrates

secured that space for having acted in human time. And for having made his mark in space, Socrates has done so in Kojèvian time. Socrates is mortal for acting in time as such. In fact, such action is time. As Kojève notes, “history completes itself by man’s perfect understanding of his death” (IRH, 258, 255). Thus, the persistent, workmanlike, creating Socrates of, say, Theaetetus and the subversive, intellectually combative Socrates before the Athenian jury in the Apology are both mortal in time – as confirmed by the spatial discourse in the syllogism on the space of the preceding pages. Rather than representing redundancy, Kojèvian circularity holds that space evidences time and that time operates on space, as one attests to the other. In raising the stakes by summoning the timeless post-fight Master-tyrant, Kojève appeals not simply to action, for acts just ratify ideas. But, recalling the above quoted provocative questions in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” the timeless Master-tyrant seeks more. “Socrates is mortal because Socrates is mortal” – and (has acted to evidence that mortality) (IRH, 255–57). Action provides the more. It is not just that idea and act leapfrog; it is that action makes discourse whole by integrating ideas of the remote past in present space, as the acts of a steadfast Union Army in repelling Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg gave rise, not only to contemporaneous ideas integrating Lincoln’s views on Union, but to past ideas of reverence for the dead expressed by Pericles in this Athenian’s Funeral Oration. The Introduction notes that the timeless principle “cuts through the temporal circle” (IRH, 107, 111–12; CTD, 68). This is catnip to timeless Mastertyrants. They have the motivation to act on ideas that their acts can make appear timeless, eternal (OT, 173–76). As such Master-tyrants do not have to share a stage with contemporaneous thinkers. This appeal is all the more when the Master-tyrant considers a place in history,7 not to secure the desire of another but to have ideas valued. Being the center of attention provides good reason for Master-tyrants to act in time, in order to leave their mark, in space, on posterity. They have the motivation to act on ancient ideas so that their acts appear timeless, eternal. The time-space duality in Kojève’s circularity has a centrifugal force. The second characteristic of Kojève’s inclusive circularity is that it be instantaneous, given the dual supporting relation of time to space, of idea to act. When the term instantaneous is used here, it does not mean that every idea is ready for action in Kojèvian space. Specifically, instantaneous means that the idea can only be understood in acting, in risking life. Broadly, it means that all ideas worth thinking account for acts then extant,8 for the reality of the fight and work.

For example, Kojève takes pains to argue that “dialectic” is not so much change and interaction as the accord of idea with the social reality, with Kojèvian space, at any given point (IRH, 186). The problem with this articulating side of the Kojèvian human is that it reduces the concreteness of things or acts to the past, so that understanding the act as “empirical reality” in human time is “equivalent to murder” (compare IRH, 134 with IRH, 140). Timeless, non-relational tyrants, as would-be future-oriented actors rehabilitated to Kojèvian human time, are unlikely to be compelled by the innate conservatism in mere speech. In linking cumulative acts to ideas in order to establish the instantaneous, Kojève must make the idea and speech dynamic. Kojève’s solution is to provide the idea with greater depth through the role of memory. Kojève acknowledges the two-edged side of memory as follows: It is by memory … that Man “internalizes” his past by making it truly his own, by preserving it in himself, and by really inserting it into his present existence, which at the same time is an active and actual radical negation of this preserved past. (IRH, 232–33) This internalizing has a nonetheless active profile: [I]t is exclusively the philosophical idea going all the way back to Socrates that acts politically on earth, and that continues in our time to guide the political actions and entities striving to actualize the universal State or Empire. (OT, 172) Kojève means that the advice attracts the post-fight Master-tyrant in two senses. First, advice is “philosophical” or “politico-philosophical” (OT, 172, 174–75). The timeless Master-tyrant is drawn to instantaneous ideas for their momentousness, for being panoramic (OT, 146, 174). The advice elevates and necessarily has a philosophic quality. Second, instantaneous advice not only incorporates philosophic ideas, but memories of the acts of past Master-tyrants that support such ideas. In acting, the Master-tyrant can enter the pantheon of their company. This creates a climate of “one-upmanship” in the very competitive circle of Master-tyrants9 as each seeks to outdo others living and passed.

As to Master-tyrants, Stalin’s wartime evocation of Mother Russia and Franco’s entente cordial with the Roman Catholic Church are examples of Master-tyrants using the trappings of tradition to tap a latent nationalism in times of crisis and transition. Collectively, the dual and the instantaneous thus give the timeless Mastertyrant the motive to entertain ideas, and to act on them, respectively. But the Master-tyrant needs to be concerned with the unity of idea and act. It is thus no surprise that Kojève should assign discourse that tends to the circular a third, crowning characteristic: that of totality. Totality occurs with the universal and homogeneous state, when no action is unaccompanied by an idea and every idea has been “actualized.” But equally if not more important is the drive to totality that characterizes Kojèvian human time itself.10 As Kojève puts it: “all discourse that remains discourse ends in boring Man,”11 which is to say in making man non-relational, a non-actor outside all Kojèvian time. The move to totality during Kojève’s human time demands an end to ineffectual “pie in the sky” meanderings and in favor of actionable discourse. Totality and human time run on parallel course for Kojève: [I]n the truth – it is necessary to live outside of Time in the eternal circle. In other words: the eternal circle of absolute knowledge, even though it is in Time, has no relation to Time; and the entirety of Knowledge is absolute only to the extent that it implies an eternal circle which is related only to Eternity. (IRH, 107) Here Kojève’s “even though” is key. Master-tyrants of all stripes and periods are entranced by totality, by having the final say. Having tasted the impasse of being “outside of Time,” these post-fight Master-tyrants crave eternity. During Kojève’s “revolutionary” periods noted above, Master-tyrant ratification by act cements ideas in memory, as Stalin’s Red Army at Stalingrad linked Mother Russia to Marxist-Leninist ideology or the repression Franco’s of police state married Torquemada to anti-Bolshevism. In contrast, during “conservative” periods, prosaic Slave labor epitomizes the drive for totality. One recalls the canvassed social surplus of Goya and Picasso’s “Guernica,” now in Madrid’s Prado, as graphically showing the end in sight and within our time. It is evidence of what might be involuntarily thrust upon Iberia’s post-fight Master-tyrants, from Napoleon’s siblings through Franco. Satisfaction of the Master-tyrant’s desire yields a discursive Slave product fashioned by work with a potentially

subversive message, a temporal product that appears as a spatial “surplus,” one that “educates” the Master-tyrant to his status outside human time, a status that does “violence” to the proud nature of the timeless, post-fight Master-tyrant. Claimed by either Master-tyrant or Slave, totality exists as a drive in Kojève’s human time. The achievement of totality in time then leads to the issue of whether Kojève’s end of time itself is not only a product of, but necessitated by, the interplay of idea and act that is Kojèvian human time. Kojève says so. Of course, Kojèvian totality reaches its zenith with a proposed end of time. But this is only so because, for totality to work its way through, and be a critical aspect of, human time, Kojève has to posit the end of time as a premise. The end of time only “leads to the starting point” of Kojèvian time (IRH, 94). Kojève further notes that circularity means that one “goes through the totality of questions – answers” that concerns the human and the consummation of the human (IRH, 94; cf. ILH, 41). At best, then, the end of time is the answer to a question posed long before, a “return” as emphasized in the detailed analysis of the “Note to the Second Edition”12 undertaken in Chapter 3. Totality thus attests to the importance of Kojève’s human time, not its subordination to the idea of an end state. Seen thusly, the much-vaunted end state is different in degree, but not in kind, from the leapfrog of act and idea that is Kojèvian human time. Were Kojève’s universal and homogeneous end state an original, truly expansive totality,13 the Introduction would never characterize the totality it represents as a step-by-step process (ILH, 304, 309). Finally, were the totality of Kojève’s end state of a different kind than the process of totality in human time, Kojève would never be able to assert, as he does with authority in the Introduction, that we are merely in the “germ” of the end state. As dual, instantaneous and total, Kojèvian discourse is circular and offers the possibility of bringing the post-fight Master-tyrant into human time by implicating the Master-tyrant in the activity of the Slave. But how is the message delivered, and by whom?

Speaking Of and About Master-Tyrants: Kojève’s “Top Down” and “Bottom Up” Response As noted, Kojève takes the position that the Master-tyrant alone cannot escape the time-tyrant problem. Ideas and a thinker to articulate them are required. But ideas from what corner? If speech is to bring the acts of Master-tyrants into human time, it must be from the proper vantage point, one that captures the acts

of post-fight Master-tyrants, summoned to the stage of desire for desire by the possibility of attaining, executing on the grand idea of recognition from all. Kojève’s imagery and political construct point to two responses as to the vantage point of speech, one designed with Master-tyrant descent, the second concerning a citizen ascent, both as profiled in Chapter 3.

“Top Down” Revelation Kojève’s revelation is circularity’s demonstration of itself. As such, like elements of discourse, the revelation may exhibit a timeless idea within time itself (CTD, 102; IRH, 95). As Kojève explains: “[F]ighting and work, which engenders thought and discourse, causes them to move, and finally realizes their perfect coincidence with the Real which they are supposed to reveal or describe” (IRH, 186; emphasis supplied). Revelation thus occurs during time. Acts reveal. But this leaves the trickier proposition of revelation, not as the relation of the Master-tyrant to act, but to idea. As noted in Chapter 2, the ordering, commanding Master-tyrant may appear to act in human time, but does not think in human time, desire for desire having been spent. What idea, then, does the acting post-fight Master-tyrant craving reentry into human time seek? We go to Kojève’s final Master-tyrant, that dispatcher of all Master-tyrants at Jena, Napoleon. Kojève speaks of the galvanizing event that is the apparition of the “god-Man” Napoleon to Slaves, a stupefying event that engenders not desire for desire, not human time, but a vicarious identification with an other than the self, as witness the assessment of Napoleon’s capabilities by a mesmerized public.14 The ideas of even Napoleon, whom Kojève styles as one of the “great tyrants of our world,” are not real, are not concrete. It is up to Hegel, says Kojève, to express Napoleonic ideas as “realized ideal” (OT, 169; IRH, 69–70). Yet Hegel, as Napoleon’s charge, “remains in identity with himself because he passes through the totality of others, and he is closed up in himself because he closes up the totality of others in himself ” (IRH, 94–95). The ideas of Napoleon thereby become the idea of Napoleon15 – and this is due to Hegel. And the trend seems to repeat in the “germ” of Kojève’s end state. The “cult of personality,” a vestige of twentieth-century meta-tyrannies, might largely be said to project an idea onto the person of the Master-tyrant. “People–State– Leader” was the slogan of isolated neo-Stalinist Turkmenistan in the 1990s as its three components worked their way simultaneously into the national soul. Two observations must be made. First, this is entirely consistent with, and only explained by, Kojève’s time phenomenology, which poses ideas and postfight Master-tyrants as timeless. Inevitably the two will be enmeshed. Kojève

thus has the basis for a revelation narrative involving both the idea and the Master-tyrant as same. Second, even though seemingly abstract, this configuration is not at all implausible in the Kojèvian Real. A key part of that narrative is suspension of time; devoid of action, Mastertyrant and idea appear revealed as one. Both are timeless. Kojève captures the temporal ambiguity by indicating that Napoleon transcends the animal but does not leave it (ILH, 148). As idea, Napoleon is not time, is not action, but as Master-tyrant conveys a sense of urgency, of the need for action through, for example, Kojève’s imposing citizen-henchmen agents. Idea and Master-tyrant merge, as Kojève’s emphasis on the spontaneous reaction to the message and messenger of the Master-tyrant indicates (OT, 144–45). Nor are the hallmarks of timelessness particularly lofty and philosophic. To the Master-tyrant in a state of suspension, Kojève ascribes the goal, not to fight, but to “maintain” power (OT, 136–37). Suspension seems a real, palpable instance of governing. However, ideas so suspended would seem to be incompatible with the “secondary and derivative” or even “tertiary” role Kojève’s action-centered human time foresees for them (IRH, 90). Il Duce’s posturing as idea did little to pull Italy from the Depression. Kojève means to say that the price of the thrill is a “false” idea. That which is timeless, suspended, and isolated is false, unproven by the test of Kojève’s time (OT, 149, 153). It is not that timeless revelation cannot occur during time; it is rather that, as timeless, it has no probative value outside time, given Kojève’s circularity. Clearly the “top down” mode of ascent to ideas is not sufficient. Kojève’s imprecision here, in recounting revelation as the experience of timelessness, underlines the fundamental problem of the time-tyrant dilemma. A second vantage point from which to articulate Kojève’s speech, his discourse of circularity, is thereby necessary.

“Bottom Up” Dialectic Kojève’s script of circularity means not that up and down are opposite, but that they are partners. As Kojève remarks in his Introduction: “the Word – rises up through its meaning to the entity revealed by its meaning; and on the other hand, this entity descends through the meaning toward the Word, which it thus creates” (IRH, 106). Yet, Kojève is clear that even the maestro Hegel neither actively demonstrates nor refutes meaning. Rather, dialectic is “bottom up” for having the core meaning in acts, fights, and works, as the thinker reflects them (IRH, 190). The playing out of the relation of idea to act in space is thereby brokered by discourse, and by thinkers entrusted with it.

From this, two principles follow. First, “top down” revelation and “bottom up” dialectic are complimentary. Second, dialectic is essential to an attempted resolution of the time-tyrant problem and timeless Master-tyrants. As to the first, a top down idea from philosophers can guide politics, as “fighting and work which engenders thought and discourse, causes them to move” (IRH, 186). And this formulation has relevance to the second point: use of the “bottom up” quality of dialectic to resolve the time-tyrant problem. The idea of the timeless Master-tyrant may be hard to grasp, but the idea of the exceptionalism of the isolated Master-tyrant centered on self, and tyrannic megalomania, is not. Such political actors see themselves as initiators of the new, the dramatic, be they Pol Pot in Year Zero or the Thousand Year Reich of Hitler. Yet, when depleted of the desire for desire in the post-fight stage, Master-tyrants may appear to be in time, as history’s ultimate action-figures, when in fact they are flailing. The particular challenge of the thinker in the context of dialectic is to convert the passive activity of reflecting that which has occurred and to animate the post-fight Master-tyrant, despite the limits of mere reflection of the Real. Kojève resolves the problem of the thinker here in a manner completely consistent with the script of circularity. To remind, in that script, there is a return, a finding of the beginning in the ending. Memory has a functional role, and is more than the internalization noted above, the province of thinkers. Rather, internalization is a force that is imposed. The storehouse of memory is more than the revelation of thinkers. Rather, willing, ordering, the forte of even the timeless Master-tyrant, is essential: “[H]istory is always a conscious and willed tradition, and all real history also manifests itself as a historiography: there is no History without conscious, lived historical memory” (IRH, 232). Kojève seems to direct the post-fight Master-tyrant to the escape hatch of a place in tradition, in lieu of “ ‘disappearing’.” He summons truly revolutionary Master-tyrants to the tasks of finding a place in time, if only through tradition (IRH, 233, 233 n27). One need only recall an imperiled Stalin’s appeals to Mother Russia in the face of Nazi aggression and the masterful Goebbels “totaler Krieg” speech following the firebombing of Dresden, with its summons to defense of Volk. In both, tradition rescues and defines Master-tyrants in extremis. As noted earlier, an aspect of the instantaneous in circularity is to use memory to give ideas depth, to have them appeal to the sense the timeless Master-tyrant has of his place in a larger human story. At first, this seems to place a heavy onus on the passive, non-relational Master-tyrant, with an appeal to the active power of memory from an essentially passive, non-relational consumer of things in the post-fight era. In fact, just as

Hiero’s Simonides reminds the tyrant Hiero that “real men” are different from animals in their desire for honor, for desire for desire, Kojève has the classical city-state reminding Napoleon of just this point (compare OT, Hiero, 14–15 with OT, 140–41). What is crucial is that Kojève sees the appeal to memory as spontaneous, meaning rooted in provoking sentiments, even senses, as he sees Simonides do with Hiero at the outset of Xenophon’s work (compare OT, Hiero, 4–9 with OT, 136). Such appeals to senses shake timeless but sensuous postfight Master-tyrants from their slumber and spur the desire for desire through encouraging imitation (OT, 169–70). This means an imitation of a past idea, once discarded, then reworked and celebrated as rooted in tradition. The appeal to memory is more conspicuous in “Tyranny and Wisdom” than in the Introduction, in which the Master-tyrant is not even presented with a menu, to say nothing of options for consumption à la carte. “Tyranny and Wisdom,” in contrast, is more concerned with the practical continuation of regimes and thus the practical predicament of the time-tyrant problem. Mother Russia or Volk might appeal to a polity’s search for recognition of itself. But in moving back to human time, Master-tyrants can be as futuristic as the desire for desire itself. Hence, Kojève’s “Tyranny and Wisdom” concludes that the thinker ought not criticize the Master-tyrant or other “statesmen,” especially when such political actors might regard “the very ideal” advocated by the thinker in high regard, so that the ideal “might be actualized at some future time” (OT, 176). Memory serves not only to tie the non-relational post-fight Master-tyrant to the polity, but to reinvigorate the desire for desire in the Master-tyrant, at least with the perspective that the polity and the Master-tyrant may, in the long run, secure recognition, and fulfill the desire for desire. Kojève’s depictions in “Tyranny and Wisdom” serve to fill out, to make plausible, the concrete failings of a timeless Master-tyrant: lack of perspective and indecisiveness. The presentation of ideas through memory may serve to cure both problems. But can ideas help to bring the Master-tyrant into human time?16 It is time to return to Kojèvian casting for the thinker who might bring the Master-tyrant, whether the brooding Master-warrior of antiquity or the compromised authoritarian of liberal impulse like a Frederick the Elector or a Catherine the Great, into human time. To revert to our vaudevillian analogy, it is thus time for auditions. At least the top down and bottom up approaches have succeeded in profiling the auditioners, with the thinker associated with revelation of the top down approach called Kojève’s “wise man” and the thinker concerned with work and the fight, the descriptive dialectic, Kojève’s “philosopher.” Kojève’s auditions for the role of

intellectual “straight man” proceed accordingly.

Audition One: Revelation and the Kojèvian Wise Man The wise man embodies the script of the dual, the instantaneous, and the total noted by Kojève. Indeed, Kojève at times seems to confine the presence of the wise man to the end of time, the someone who features the instant reconciliation of acts and ideas as the totality of history. Kojève states that “the Wise Man must necessarily be Citizen” of the end state, thereby strongly suggesting that the end state is the sole preserve of the wise man (IRH, 95). Those emphasizing the mainstream Kojève see in Kojève’s link of wisdom to the end of history a certain irony17 and even pessimism. In fact, Kojève, and most particularly the Kojève of “Tyranny and Wisdom,” is open to the possibility that it is the timeless wise man, not the philosopher, who might do so, and not at the end of history, but during it.18 And though, as will be discussed shortly, Kojève does seem to ascribe to certain wise men a role at the purported end of time, Kojève clearly sees wise men as playing a role during time,19 as indicated by his ascribing wise man status to interlocutors in Plato as well as Xenophon (IRH, 77). If there is an irony, then, it is with respect to the timeless as supporting that which occurs in time, rather than the end of it. The in-time business of the wise man is revelation in and about time. Time does nothing if not reveal. Kojève describes that vessel of revelation, the wise man, accordingly: His role is that of a perfectly flat and indefinitely extended mirror: he does not reflect on the Real; it is the Real that reflects itself on him, is reflected in his consciousness, and is revealed in its own dialectical structure by the discourse of the Wise Man who describes it without deforming it. (IRH, 176) Reference to the “dialectical” and to “discourse” clearly signals a Kojève view that the wise man is versed in these two tools of human time, and uses them. The wise man can thus labor in the same milieu as the in-time philosopher. The question then becomes what peculiar contribution Kojève ascribes to the wise man in time that he does not ascribe to other thinkers. However, a cautionary note is in order. By linking idea to act, Kojève’s history-laden “Tyranny and Wisdom” seems to dismiss the wise man as a solution to Kojève’s problem.20 In fact, Kojève seems to regard this paean to the

end of time a pest during it, excusing the wise man from an analysis of history merely “[i]n order to simplify things” (OT, 147). To see why the wise man remains an auditioner for the thinker advising the Master-tyrant, yet a complicated and difficult one, we must further examine Kojève’s “top down” revelation and the connection of the wise man to it. To further examine this contention, it is necessary to treat the dual aspects of the Kojèvian wise man, as revealing and as revealed.

The Wise Man as Revealing Before getting into great detail as to the role of the wise man in human time, a more basic question is in order. If the wise man reveals human time, is the wise man human? It seems that Kojève answers the question in the most straight forward manner, given the circumstances his time phenomenology has created: “[H]e is ‘divine’ (but mortal). The Wise Man is an Individual, however, in the sense that it is in his existential particularity that he possesses universal Science. In this sense, he is still human (and therefore mortal)” (IRH, 238 n30). In short, the wise man is human in time, but yet divine, timeless. Of course, as we have seen time and again with Kojève, encounters with the timeless and the timetyrant dilemma lead to language that is rather a mish mash. Just as the timetyrant dilemma produced a “god-Man” Napoleon and the tyrant striving for the divine in Xenophon’s chapter 7, the wise man is divine but mortal. The profile of the wise man as revealing, contributing, and therefore active, arguably permits analogy to the prodigious Slave working in the milieu of the physical, the animal.21 However, the particularity of the wise man’s product is in the decidedly ethereal universal science established through circularity (IRH, 239–40). Indeed, the wise man, even if and when revealing in time, cannot touch palpable, political acts, but rather ideas serving strictly as such,22 slavish objects of desire. Hence, in the plain speak of “Tyranny and Wisdom,” Kojève questions whether the wise man: “[w]ants to leave the realm of ‘utopia’ and ‘general’ or even ‘abstract ideas,’ and to confront concrete reality by giving the tyrant ‘realistic’ advice” (OT, 147). Just thereafter, Kojève’s wise man evaporates, as if into the thin air of pure Kojèvian space, as Kojève again takes up the theme of ideas existing in time, ideas that might be “actualized.” Kojève gets at the dilemma of the active, revealing wise man in a somewhat backhanded manner in the highfalutin’ language of the Introduction: [A]ll philosophy that is “true” is also essentially “false”: it is false in so far

as it presents itself not as the reflection or description of a constituent element or a dialectical “moment” of the real, but as the revelation of the Real in its totality. (IRH, 185) The negative implication of the above quotation is that, while the thinker lives for the dialectical “moment” embracing the fight or work, the wise man is about revelation, which is outside such a moment.23 This raises the possibility of wise man revelation during but not in human time, in short the possibility of revelation from a state of suspension. Such a possibility would have advantages, among them that one need not locate the wise man in a mere moment, or even a split second. Yet, while 1806 constitutes the end of history and the inauguration of the universal and homogeneous state, the milieu of the wise man is again another phenomenological environment. One commentator describes it as that of an opaque non-time, rather than simply the end of time – with current society in between “Good Friday and Easter,”24 in between time’s nascent end at Napoleon’s Jena and the blossoming of the wise man’s wisdom. Kojève’s Introduction sets up the Holy Saturday scenario, speaking of the staple of ideas and words: The past – that is, the entirety of the actions of fighting and work effected at various present times in terms of the project – that is, in terms of the future. This past is what distinguishes the “project” from a simple “dream” or “utopia.” Consequently, there is a “historic moment” only when the present is ordered in terms of the future … by the past – that is, by an already accomplished action. (IRH, 137 n25) Let us assume with Kojève that Jena marks the beginning of the end of human time, its “germ” in which revolutions, both large and small, can occur (IRH, 160 n6). How would suspension be managed if not through overcoming the past? It is not managed through a jump-ahead for, post-Jena, there are no more acts to initiate, no more ideas to have.25 As Kojève aptly notes, we only understand the past referenced “in terms of the future.” And without a direction to the future, there is no need to overcome the past, making suspension of time impossible. In the end, the celebrated, active, revealing wise man is ineffective. The problem with the “germ” of the end state as Holy Saturday is not that the wise man has no new ideas, nor that there are no Master-tyrants left to advise. Rather,

it is that there is no one of any stripe left to act upon advice. As a result, characterizations of a Kojèvian end state range from the possibility that such a state may be propelled by idea, principle, rather than an act,26 to a regime in the hands of faceless technocratic forces27 or to an animal kingdom whose constituents are androgynous and biologically homogenized.28 Some of these interpretations expressly implicate ideas, principles; none suggests desirous of desire acts or actors. In fact, for linking idea to act, Kojève indicates that discourse cannot be outside the time of the acts it recounts, as discourse as revealed “is Time” (IRH, 132). Suspension in time can, therefore, not further revelation, even in the strong suit for the wise man that is Kojève’s “germ” of the end state. Kojève thus notes: “For we certainly cannot assert, on the basis of attempts already made, that the State in question is impossible in principle. Now if this State is possible, Wisdom is also possible” (IRH, 97). The end state is thus idea, principle, devoid of act for being devoid of the desire for desire. Adherence to Kojèvian circularity demands that Holy Saturday make us, most generously, Doubting Thomases rather than nothing-to-lose penitents ready to define possibility on the basis of mere “principle.”29 And this lack of correspondence to the Real, to the imprimatur of the final ratifying act, is what, in the final analysis, gives the so-called active, revealing wise man nothing to say in Kojèvian discourse.

The Wise Man as Revealed Wise men are not only active and articulating and revealing – they are also revealed. Or, to repeat Kojève as above quoted, the wise man is a “perfectly flat and indefinitely extended mirror: he does not reflect on the Real; it is the Real that reflects itself on him.” Another way of phrasing this is that proof by Kojèvian circularity entails the identity of process and result, so that the message and the someone of the wise man are one and the same. At first, the passive wise man seems the perfect partner to advise the timeless final “revolutionary tyrant” Napoleon in “Tyranny and Wisdom.” Characteristically, as a Master-tyrant, albeit the “revolutionary” one, Napoleon never escapes Sein, which Kojève styles nature (ILH, 148; IRH, 158). Yet, Napoleon acts in the present of the Kojèvian Real. The issue, then, is whether the passive, revealed wise man might spur the last revolutionary Master-tyrant to action. Were the passive wise man to do so, it surely might be on the verge of the debut of the wise man at the end of time, as in the Napoleon who heralds the “germ” of Kojève’s end state (ILH, 387; cf.

IRH, 96–98). The case for the pairing of the passive reflected wise man and the last revolutionary tyrant is not far-fetched. However, close scrutiny of Kojèvian time phenomenology shows this not to be the case. First, the wise man and the Master-tyrant are opposites on the Kojèvian spectrum of human time. Although exceptional as a final revolutionary tyrant, Napoleon, like any Master-tyrant, should, by definition, act from the desire for desire. In contrast, the wise man is always complete and satisfied in being recognized (IRH, 19, 46, 73 with IRH, 95). The Master-tyrant is at his most human having just departed from animal fear; the wise man is at his most human on the precipice of a full-blown return to animal desire and consumption (ILH, 392, 425). Kojève identifies the wise man as premier citizen for passive revelation of circularity, of all ideas thought, of all deeds done (compare OT, 139 with OT, 175, IRH, 95). Even though, as Chapter 2 indicated, Napoleon himself becomes a model, a passive object of civic emulation, Napoleon performs something surreptitiously active – the assembly of a new citizenry. Thus, the Kojèvian claim to circularity assumes that process and result will occur in the same time environment – but the Master-tyrant and the wise man simply do not share one. We move to the role of the passive wise man as revealed, short of the “germ” of the end state. The attribute of passivity raises a broad issue, whether the passive, revealed wise man has an audience of anyone. This calls into question whether the wise man is capable of being relational and temporal in any sense. True to the script of circularity, Kojève’s message at the end of time holds nothing new. Rather, it reinforces that which has been: in the absence of human time, there is eternally repetitive space in which procreation and consumption exist (ILH, 393). As Kojève notes, this is a default option: “[S]tatic Being (that is, Space, that is, Nature), therefore, is the overcoming of Error in favor of Truth” (IRH, 156). In this perpetual, timeless return to space, Kojève sees man as an animal, albeit a reasonable one, who as such remains perpetually faithful to the cycle of repetition (ILH, 394). The question, then, is what the arrangement holds for the wise man. Note that Kojève’s profile of the animal and the identical holds importance over thought, over reason. Space dominates thought, and the thinker in space, the wise man. In this dynamic, Kojève nowhere necessarily involves the wise man or revelation. The wise man is “satisfied without being willing and able to serve as a model for all others.” Kojève’s much prized objective verification of selfvalue occurs as to the wise man, not through others. In space, without the other and therefore outside Kojèvian human time, there is an “objective aspect of identity to oneself, of conscious agreement with oneself ” (IRH, 79, 93). Space is

the classic res ipsa loquitor, quite capable of speaking for itself without the wise being informed by an other, but only by space. As alone and non-relational during time, the passive, revealed wise man is hardly a partner for the already timeless post-fight Master-tyrant30 during human time.31 The contentment of the wise man, mere space, lies in what is held to Kojève’s mirror, not that which the mirror reflects, Kojève’s revealed wise man. As revealed, Kojève’s passive wise man is superfluous. Revelation – be it through active speech or passive mirror-like reflection – carries the kind of millennial impact one might associate with Kojèvian rhetoric. Yet, the Americans of Kojève’s “Note to the Second Edition” in the Introduction seem to be the pedestrian progeny of the wise man as thinker during the “return to animality.”32 It suffices to note that Americans seem famously content with their obliviousness to their past and pedigree, focused on the eternal present of desiring, acquiring, and consuming, rather than beholding, revelation. Contentment begets no interest or energy. Thus, again, rhetoric hides the reality of the need to conform to Kojèvian time phenomenology. To recall the “Kitchen Debate” example of Chapter 3, we are taken with the allure of Kojève the raconteur of a superficially plausible world of Napoleon the liberator, at the expense of Kojèvian time phenomenology. Kojève’s wise man thus may seem an inferior auditioner – but compared with whom? Kojève sees Hegel as an erstwhile wise man. But he sees in Hegel someone other than the grandmaster of the chessboard that is frozen at the end of time with monarchs, rooks, and bishops toppled and only pawns standing, as someone other than just revealing and revealed. Hegel, rather, is a listener. Kojève refers to Hegel as primarily the first in a line of “auditor-historianphilosophers” (IRH, 183) who listen to history’s flow of ideas, observing and describing accordingly. Who better to audition than an active auditor? We immediately turn to a case study to illustrate why the wise man may assume a different posture in audition, perhaps earning the appellation of “philosopher” in rousing the timeless Mastertyrant from his non-relational state.

The Wise Man Transformed to Philosopher in the Face of the Master-Tyrant: The Case Study of Socrates and Thrasymachus The double dare substitutes time for nature as the standard, urges that the desire for desire is tantamount to a drive for power over others, and justifies this social formula as the self’s quest for knowledge of self. It means that that which

ultimately and only concerns power is in the interests of knowledge.33 Hence, one might expect that the Introduction would take on some dimension of that most explicit of Platonic political texts, the Republic, concerning as that work does the relation of knowledge to the political. Here, Kojève does not disappoint. Seen outside the context of Kojève the modern’s modern, the movement in book 1 of the Republic, with Socrates in the company of Adeimantus, is that justice may reside in soul and in city, being a harmony of the aspects within each. But Kojève sees Socrates’s response to Adeimantus differently. As we might expect by now, he sees it in terms of the social and relational, and therefore in terms of the Kojèvian temporal. Kojève disregards Socrates’s proffer to Adeimantus that “perhaps there would be more justice in the bigger [in the city] and it would be easier to observe it closely.” Kojève instead maintains that the Republic stands for the proposition that the individual soul is too small to be known – and that the city is itself knowledge rather than exemplar of it.34 In shifting the focus of analysis to the social, the city, Kojève forecloses any analysis of knowledge, or explanation of the unknown, outside the context of the desire for desire, and Kojèvian time. In fact, Thrasymachus’s argument with Socrates proceeds in two parts that parallel the trajectory of Master-tyrants. In the first, Thrasymachus equates justice to the advantage of the stronger; in the second, Thrasymachus defends injustice as rule by desire, rule the “way a man would regard sheep.”35 In the first part of the argument, Thrasymachus seeks reputation and recognition, resembling the Master-tyrant of the fight and the cameo appearance as “catalyst” in human time. Thrasymachus does so in the face of that most masterly of concerns: to “win a good reputation,”36 the desire for desire, that will be achieved by besting Socrates37 in dialogue. In this first part of the argument, the famously irrepressible and impetuous Thrasymachus, seeking recognition, encounters in Socrates an alternately passive, revealed wise man on one hand, and an active, revealing and revealed wise man on the other. Seeking combat in the first part of the argument, Thrasymachus has encountered a non-combatant,38 a passive Socrates focused on the self rather than self-validation through besting others, consistent with Kojève’s portrayal of the contented wise man.39 For example, Socrates readily acknowledges his debt to others, hoping to continue his role as a perturbing, elusive target rather than an object of desire. Thrasymachus demonstrates the telltale frustrating signs of Master-tyrant rebuff, such as a diminution of Socrates’s capabilities for being an equivocator, a spineless wordsmith, and one unworthy of discussion with Thrasymachus.

Yet, in the first part of the argument, Thrasymachus also encounters an active, revealing wise man, and is not much pleased. Thrasymachus had expressed frustration at this Socrates of the bob and weave for his use of irony, and frustration at Socrates as a mirror-like “sycophant,” borrowing and articulating the arguments of others.40 In short, Thrasymachus objects to Socrates as a revealing wise man. All the while, Socrates engages in the “usual trick” of selfdefense, deflecting criticism of a self that actively reveals, that reflects circularity of ideas and acts that Kojève would claim for proof.41 It is the active, revealing Socrates, in the Kojèvian sense, who proves so infuriating to Thrasymachus, the most energetic of Socratic interlocutors. The second part of the argument demonstrates the abandonment of desire for desire for Kojèvian animal time, with the pitfalls it poses for the post-rebuff Master-tyrant. Movement to the second part of the argument proceeds as Socrates presses his point that it is not power that is the basis for defining justice. Thrasymachus had readily assented to Socrates’s position that ruling is an art governed by knowledge, even readily assenting to the idea of rule for mutual advantage of ruler and ruled. It is only with the observation by Socrates that knowledge should be exercised for the advantage of the ruled that Thrasymachus balks.42 In Kojèvian parlance, it is when the possibility of mutual benefit is removed, when the possibility of knowing the ruler’s knowledge of self through the ruled is eliminated, that Thrasymachus posits that knowledge and power travel to an outer circle, that of mere desire and animal time. Focused on the outer circle of desire, Socrates suggests the direst consequences.43 This detachment of Master-tyrants acting in their self-interest from the social order is crucial, for it enables Socrates to turn Thrasymachus’s strongest argument, the argument that a rule of Master-tyrants based on desire is simply “things as they are,” against him. It is then that Socrates can proceed to argue against the soul of the Master-tyrant as puny, mean-spirited, and corrosive of the interests of the city44 for being unjust. In doing so, Socrates becomes a different kind of thinker, one who is “setting speech against speech,”45 so as to take Thrasymachus on the basis of things as they are and as they can be captured in discourse. Clearly, something has occurred in the encounter. Thrasymachus changes from the position that Socrates is a mirror-like sycophant, a “nonentity” in the words of Thrasymachus, to the position that Socrates twists arguments.46 As the Kojève of “Tyranny and Wisdom” indicates, it is time to turn from the wise man, both revealing and revealed, to a thinker involved in “concrete reality,” one who, as Thrasymachus portrays Socrates in

his more nimble, active moments, “knows better how to make the most of his own arguments” going from isolated abstraction to a full consideration of the intersection of idea and act (OT, 148–49). Socrates the revealing and revealed wise man has changed stripes. In the second part of the encounter with Thrasymachus, Socrates is speaking of Kojève’s Real, the city. Thus, in this second part of the argument, Socrates is pulling Thrasymachus, that champion of Master-tyrants, back into human time. With remarkable prescience as to Kojève’s post-rebuff Master-tyrant who is an involuntary consumer, Thrasymachus will do unto others that which is done to him, pledging to “take the argument” of Socrates and give Socrates a “forced feeding.”47 At odds with nature, Thrasymachus as spokesman for post-fight human Mastertyrants can only envision raw animal consumption as, in fact, the most unnatural of relations.48 From referencing this outer circle of the Kojèvian spatial and animal, Thrasymachus is brought back into the human orbit by gradually admitting that even injustice in the self is based upon an analysis of injustice in the social, in the city.49 In Kojèvian parlance, the Republic has demonstrated how a Master-tyrant might engage “concrete reality” through the mediation of a thinker, something neither a revealing, nor a revealed, wise man could do. The revealing and revealed wise man, as thinker for Master-tyrants, cannot serve as the intermediary bringing Master-tyrants into Kojèvian human time. Kojève was searching for a “straight man.” He instead found a mime. It is time to consider a candidate other than the wise man, someone who is a maker of arguments and deals in the concrete. What is first required is that we reclaim, well short of the universal and homogeneous state, what is, for Kojève, the inner circle of human time that has its roots in the quest for self-knowledge, which is, again, the core of the desire for desire. This means an activity that finds all would-be human discussants alive, one that is not subject to immediate refutation so as to allow recognition of one by an other, and, if not fully conscious in the Kojèvian sense, an activity at least capable of becoming so. That most human of activities, for Kojève, is philosophy. But we are cautioned from our experience of the “Kitchen Debate” not to let facile parallels substitute for rigorous analysis according to Kojèvian time phenomenology. We proceed to examine whether an alternate, the philosopher in Kojève’s “auditor-historian-philosopher” under that phenomenology, can eviscerate the time-tyrant problem through discourse that brings the Mastertyrant into human time.

Audition Two: The Philosopher’s Role in Dialectic and the Conundrum of Kojèvian Desire in Human Time The presence of the philosopher as thinker in Kojèvian time seems comforting. Even a non-Kojèvian understanding of human existence perceives the need for enlightenment through discourse. Everyday societies develop categories that, through discernment, constitute the socially unknowing seeking relief through discourse: game patients in psychoanalysis, duly qualified and humbled Philosophy 101 students after having read selected Platonic dialogues, and Vance Packard’s malleable masses. This last example should give rise to pause. It suggests movement to the politically unknowing, and unknowable. The importance of imposing “citizens,” suggests the following maxim: to dominate is not to listen, not to know (IRH, 145). Yet, knowledge is necessary. What Kojève’s in-time philosopher appears to add is that time is the great dividing line between absolute knowledge and the work to get there. But can the philosopher, as the thinker of the script of circularity, of “advice,” through appeals to memory, get the post-fight Master-tyrant to act? Actually, Kojève appears to argue that the philosopher has a significant advantage over the wise man in handling the script of Kojèvian circularity. As Kojève notes: “Now, man essentially creates and destroys in terms of this idea he forms of the Future … Hence, there is Time only where there is History” (IRH, 138–39). It is the philosopher, and only the philosopher, who reverberates this script, as an “auditor-historian” (IRH, 183). Meaning? As auditor-historian, the philosopher speaks about Master-tyrants in speaking to them. This speaking to in speaking about is appealing to memory. The philosopher arguably breaks the “existential impasse” of the rebuff by summoning the post-fight Master-tyrant back into the realm of desire for desire that is Kojève’s human time. This means that history both embellishes tyrannical acts in discourse,50 elevating them to a glorified past, and then drives the Mastertyrant to act in and to continue human time. In this speaking about and to, philosophy is indelibly linked to work, as Kojève notes in recounting philosophy’s newfound emphasis on the Real: “[T]o introduce Work into the Real is to introduce … Consciousness and Discourse that reveals the Real” (IRH, 212). Discourse, it seems, is part of work. Hegel’s knowing work, the pen to paper on the surface of his drawing room table near Jena that creates discourse, is as much a part of history as the life and death of the fight of Jena – and the brick and mortar understanding of the work of the

table itself (IRH, 34, 44). In fact, the Slave needs ideas to elaborate on a nascent desire for desire, and philosophy supplies them (IRH, 229–30). And that seems to place the philosopher front and center in Kojèvian human time. The philosopher’s revelation is thus, in some sense, less but more than that of the wise man. Less as only the wise man reflects the circularity, the totality, that leads to the end of time; more in that the philosopher, not the wise man, is Kojève’s front line observer to, and participant in, human time. The philosopher, unlike the wise man, is embedded in the change, and especially the overcoming that is evidence of Kojèvian time.51 The wise man may reveal the truth. But the philosopher “discovers the absolute truth as a result of the implicit or tacit ‘discussion’ between the great Systems of history and, hence, as a result of their ‘dialectic,’ … the ‘dialogue’ of the Philosophies” (IRH, 183). As such, this philosopher has an audience, directing Master-tyrants engaged in “a continuous succession of political actions guided more or less directly by the evolution of philosophy” (IRH, 183; OT, 174) rather than simply the wise man’s mirror-like reflections. Thrasymachus as proxy for Master-tyrants merely seeks to eliminate a noisome Socratic wise man and gain a philosopher, a chaperone in human time for the Master-tyrant, someone with whom he might “mix it up.” Thrasymachus is poised to strike, not because he disagrees with Socrates, but because he has not secured an answer52 from Socrates posing as wise man. In short, the advantage of the philosopher is that the philosopher is not only flush up against human time, but a part of guiding its direction. The trick is whether the philosopher is compatible with those would-be action figures that are post-fight Master-tyrants seeking to reenter human time. Kojève’s philosophy as work means that such advice can only be broad. We thus reexamine Kojève’s commitment to the secondary and tertiary. As the Introduction notes: In particular, throughout history, there was always a philosophy (in the broad sense) ready to give an account of the state of things realized at every decisive turning point in the dialectical evolution of the World. Thus, the history of philosophy and of “culture” in general is itself a “dialectical movement,” but it is a secondary and derivative movement. Finally, insofar as Hegel’s thought and discourse reveal and describe the totality of the real in its becoming, they too are a “dialectical movement”; but this movement is in some sense tertiary. (IRH, 190)

Here, Kojève conveys that while ideas leapfrog with acts, Master-tyrant fights and Slave works – as acts – change time. This engages timeless Master-tyrants in the moment. We cannot make sense of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address without the battle, and we cannot grasp Spinoza without knowing the Inquisition. But the philosopher is also the bearer of cumulative history. That is, ideas are “secondary and derivative,” the appeals to memory discussed above. Finally, ideas have “tertiary” significance; as human time reaches the crescendo the “germ” of the end state, ideas assume greater dimension for their ability to interrelate and weave the story of the universal and homogeneous state. They, thus, become further removed from political actors and conversant with each other, as might a purely elegant theory in physical science that summarizes all preceding ideas in advance of final acts of proof.53 This “tertiary” status rests on the increasing accord of act and “secondary” idea, an accord which defines Kojève’s futureoriented human time. Hence, for being increasingly removed from actors, the philosophic view is “tertiary” for including a world view. Emphasizing externalities, the mainstream reading of Kojève has inclined to the view that the problem of integrating the Kojèvian philosopher to the Mastertyrant is one of time management. Specifically this is the view that this philosopher is not an adroit multi-tasker,54 unable to achieve the balance of the theoretical and practical. In contrast, the remainder of this section will contend that the philosopher’s time problem is one involving the quality or nature of the philosopher’s time, and not its quantity. Kojève’s philosopher proves timeless, as does the post-fight Master-tyrant, and timeless in a sense that is incompatible with effectively eliciting action of that Master-tyrant in Kojève’s human time. There are indeed aspects of Kojève’s “Tyranny and Wisdom” that suggest that the philosopher may have trouble with limited time, with balancing theory, with giving practical advice to the Master-tyrant (OT, 164–67). However, this is only because the philosopher more fundamentally is no closer to Kojèvian human time than the post-fight Master-tyrant. In fact, entirely consistent with the Introduction’s reference to “secondary” and “tertiary” advice along the spectrum of human time, Kojève’s philosopher celebrates the abstract over the concrete. Here, the philosopher is engaged in theory and extracts from acts ideas in the larger context beyond tyrannical self-aggrandizement and delusion. Investigation of the philosopher’s time quality problem begins with an exercise in comparison and ascertaining how the Kojèvian philosopher might be said to provide “value added” as to the timeless Master-tyrant by reintroducing human time and the desire for desire. As argued, conventional politics and externalities do not explain the value of Kojève’s philosopher. In fact, the

philosopher bears a striking resemblance to Kojève’s post-fight Master-tyrant. Kojève’s “Tyranny and Wisdom” describes the philosopher as “[d]espising the ‘great mass,’ indifferent to its praise” (OT, 165). This disdain certainly recalls the posture of the post-fight Master-tyrant in the face of Slave accolade. Yet, Kojève describes the Master-tyrant as a “man of action” who “thinks and acts in time,” an observation that seems to deny the time-tyrant problem. However, no sooner does Kojève mention this than he attributes the Mastertyrant tendency to abstraction, and remoteness, to compulsion, not the desire for desire (OT, 149). What is more, Kojève makes it clear that the acts and ideas of Master-tyrants that may appear in time actually come to us with not a little help from the Master-tyrant’s in-time friends, Kojève’s pesky, imposing citizenhenchmen (OT, 148 n2, 148–49). As noted in Chapter 2, Kojève’s construct may describe the post-fight Master-tyrant as acting in, but thinking outside, human time in the most theoretical sense. One might more easily view these Mastertyrants as listless leaders relying on empty revolutionary rhetoric by day and frustration with Slave products in the dead of night. The pattern fits many authoritarian regimes in the world’s backwaters, in which posturing through revolutionary rhetoric conceals a decrepit economy, the Cuba of the recently deceased Fidel Castro being one example. Yet, Kojève’s description even fits the seemingly more dynamic expansionist mega-tyrannies of Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union, cases in which ideological purity and rigid party control bound an otherwise removed, aloof tyrant to the polity through citizen-henchmen. This integrates perfectly with the ordering, commanding post-fight Master-tyrant surrounded with the trappings of control, yet dependent and force-fed by Slaves and drained of the capacity for desire for desire. In short, the Kojèvian Real can capture the Master-tyrant who “thinks and acts in time” yet whose authority is severely compromised by the penchant for abstraction that renders the post-fight Master-tyrant an “uninitiate” (OT, 148), a true residue of the time-tyrant problem. What then is the philosopher’s value added? Kojève’s philosophers give practical advice and settle for the halfway house of ideas based on historical perspective, the broad secondary and tertiary categories (OT, 165–69). Second, just as the removed Master-tyrant relies on the proxy of the “citizen” to act in time, Kojève entrusts the work of the removed philosopher, engaged in a secondary and even tertiary exercise, to a Johnny-on-the spot broker of ideas and acts, in all seasons and for all seasons. This thinker is the Kojèvian “intellectual.” The memory-bearing philosopher operating with ideas that seem secondary and tertiary to action-oriented Master-tyrants will see “farther in space and time”

(OT, 150). Such appeals to memory need to register palpable benefits to Mastertyrants, just the same. Lost desire for desire must be reintroduced. Thus, Kojève sees a cadre of opportunistic “intellectuals of all shades” garnering the favor of Master-tyrants by the marketing, and even fencing in, of those removed philosophical perspectives in a context “more or less spread out in time and space” and appealing to the desire for desire of Master-tyrants (compare OT, 150 with OT, 175). The New Economic Plan presented by Kojèvian intellectual Lenin convinces Master-tyrant Stalin that the time is fitting to actualize the idea of a leveling of rural classes, homogeneity in the thought of philosopher Marx. Thus, philosophic labor in relative obscurity and remoteness from Master-tyrants is the norm. Somewhere between the idea of a classless homogeneous society conceived by the philosopher Marx in a London library, and the kulak gravesites in Ukraine subject to mass exhumations bearing witness to the “actualized” idea of homogeneity executed by Stalin, lies the intersection of idea and act, the seat of reason in Kojève’s “Tyranny and Wisdom.” In casting the formula between the remoteness of the philosopher and the immediacy of agent intellectuals, Kojève is inclined to speak in terms of gradations, not absolutes. Philosophic vacillation is appropriate to the task; as Chapter 2 has noted, the post-fight Master-tyrant may act in human time, but thinks in animal time. Thus, the philosopher must rekindle the desire for desire in the mind of the timeless Master-tyrant through tertiary concerns of appeals to memory and place in history, yet address the timeless Master-tyrant’s penchant for histrionics and the trappings of authority that evidence covetousness for objects, by articulating supporting secondary ideas. Therefore, only rarely is contemporaneous compatibility between Master-tyrant and philosopher achieved, as when Kojève accords Aristotle and Alexander a status on par with Hegel and Napoleon, a clear indication that time, and not the end of it, is Kojève’s true focus (OT, 169–70). But such combinations are exceedingly rare. Far more common are the precarious alliances of Diderot and Catherine the Great, or even of Voltaire and Frederick, which usually yield mismatches among cantankerous and ill-fated contemporaries.55 Also, Kojève deals chiefly in “Tyranny and Wisdom” with the twentieth-century state. This presents a Zeno’s paradox of greater tyrannical remoteness accompanied by greater accretions of tyrannical power as Kojève’s ubiquitous citizen-henchmen do their dirty work on behalf of an “authority” recognized spontaneously. All of this yields the conclusion that, at alternating moments, the philosopher may need to calibrate, to play, the notes of secondary and tertiary activity in accordion-like fashion. The philosopher has help, ceding ground to a posterity of eventual Kojèvian intellectuals capable of overcoming the “prejudices” of

isolated Master-tyrants through relating ideas by narrative in bits and pieces, rather than the force-fed Rabelaisian gorging the post-fight Master-tyrant experiences at the hands of Slaves.56 Balancing theoretical and practical, secondary and tertiary, and the eventual presence of successor intellectuals, Kojève’s philosopher proves a rather resilient and crafty multi-tasker. To the extent the philosopher appears to divide time, this does not suggest a shortage of time. Rather, time is in the service of prompting desire for desire in post-fight Master-tyrants, so that ideas might bring Master-tyrant acts in time.57 In short, in treating the philosopher, Kojève’s time remains for the making, in the Kojèvian sense, not for the taking. It is a making that Kojève intends will avoid the timetyrant problem by use of citizen actors and both philosophers and intellectuals as thinkers. The quality of time, and the importance of Kojèvian human time, is the issue, not the quantity of time. Yet, Kojève’s model of governance by proxy, resting on henchman-citizens as to acts and intellectuals as to ideas, should give rise to pause. The blustery, ordering commanding post-fight Master-tyrant of the Introduction has ready agents in the henchmen-citizens of “Tyranny and Wisdom” who are delegated the task of action on ideas in the sphere of action in time. Yet, the same cannot be said of agency on the thinking side. The issue is philosophic motivation, and the presence of the desire for desire in the philosopher, meaning the ability of the philosopher to function in human time. At times, Kojève suggests characteristics of the philosopher amenable to future-oriented human time, such as the urge for quick action on ideas. At other times, Kojève clearly points out that the philosopher’s value added in eliminating the abstract in favor of the concrete means dealing with a “reality that is extremely difficult and dense,” no doubt both a reference to the burrowing the philosopher must do at secondary and tertiary levels in treating history and a prelude to the need for Kojève’s processing mediating intellectuals (compare OT, 164–65 with OT, 149). This suggests the following dilemma: the more the philosopher needs to make advice concrete, the more the philosopher needs to consider more remote historical context in which advice will be received,58 as confirmed by Kojève’s reflection on reflection and memory. And here we have the problem of the philosopher’s motivation. Such expansiveness dilutes the personal dimension of the philosopher’s original idea. In fact, the Introduction questions whether a philosopher’s idea, per se, might be sufficiently attached to the self of the philosopher to occupy the realm of desire for desire and human time. As Kojève notes: An idea (Gedanke) is born from Desire – that is, from not yet realized

Negation of the given … Man creates the Idea by ideally creating the (natural or social) given, and he realizes the Idea by actually inserting it into the given through Work which really transforms this given according to the Idea. (IRH, 229 n24) Work is born from the Desire for Recognition … and it preserves itself and evolves in relation to this same Desire. (IRH, 230 n25) Kojève discusses two things. Philosophy in itself is born of “Desire,” not the desire for desire. Philosophy evolves through the creation of the idea, not its negation. The idea, not the desire of an other, is desired and created. This is not the stuff of work and human time. In contrast, only the realization of the Kojèvian idea is tied to the desire for desire. Kojève’s link of creation of the idea to desire, rather than desire for desire, makes the philosopher incompatible with his human time. What happens when the philosopher “creates the Idea by initially creating the (natural or social) given” as noted above? The very notion of creation of an idea contrasts with the cherished other whose desire is sought. In contrast to the philosophic idea, that other is the “presence of an absence” providing the basis for the longing that is at the heart of Kojève’s desire for desire (compare IRH, 93 with IRH, 5, 225). Once created, the idea is static, being only a candidate for Kojève’s workplace. Hence, in the philosopher’s want of wisdom, “one is forced to accept the possibility of realizing the ideal of Wisdom.” Desire, not desire for desire, is at issue. By contrast, pursuit of the future-oriented desire for desire and the other demonstrates a different temporal dynamic. It enables man to overcome the animal past and to realize any number of possibilities distinct from those previously existing (compare IRH, 92 with IRH, 251). It is thus no accident that Kojève seems on surer footing in his discussion of philosophy at the creative, formative stage in reflecting the Real, rather than discussing the display of the idea through articulation, a stage that implicates issues of the philosopher’s recognition of the self, an area where Kojève is at his most tentative (compare OT, 174–75 with OT, 158–62). To recall some of the analysis of Chapter 3, Kojève explicitly states that once one begins on the human path of desire for desire, and the Kojèvian future, one cannot then switch back – even for a second – to the animal path, desire (IRH, 251 n36). The mere creation of the idea entails mere desire.

But yet, the philosopher is not in animal time. In fleeting fashion, the Introduction comes closest to the issue of the philosopher’s behavior and its relation to desire for desire as follows: Actually Work is born from the Desire for Recognition (by the intermediary of the Fight), and it preserves itself and evolves in relation to this same Desire.… To be sure, there have always been men who knew that they worked “for glory.” … [M]ost people think they work more in order to gain more money or to augment their “well-being.” However, it is easy to see that the surplus … consists mostly in living better than one’s neighbor or no worse than the others. (IRH, 230 n25) Kojève’s “To be sure …” thus distinguishes between acting “for glory” and acting taking into account the reactions of others, from acting from desire for desire. The former recalls Kojève’s very exceptional Napoleon, who acts not from desire for desire, not in human time, but in “nondialectical” fashion and for “the sake of glory alone.”59 The Master-tyrant and the Slave follow the rule of Kojèvian time phenomenology: they adhere to desire for desire, seeking adulation, or at least referencing themselves against others to “keep up with the Joneses.” The exceptions to the rule are philosophers as Kojèvian glory-seekers, who glory not in self but initially in ideas. Indeed, Kojève implicitly seems to chart a course for the philosopher that is neither human nor animal. This neither/nor status of the philosopher as to Kojève’s temporality makes perfect sense given Kojève’s time phenomenology. Ideas are the great hybrids in Kojève’s temporal classifications, even as objects of pursuit. On one hand, they do not involve an other; the reward for experiencing them in itself confers no recognition on the philosopher.60 Thus, ideas would in themselves not be the objects of pursuit in Kojèvian human time. Yet, ideas are “created,” part of the handiwork of “the (natural or social) given” and thereby attached to the self of the philosopher. They are, therefore, very much a part of the patchwork of the human, as Kojève’s grudging concession to their secondary or tertiary status, when measured against the Real of the fight and work, attests. It thus seems as if Kojève has yet to present a thinker who can unqualifiedly provoke action on ideas in time. And, here again, we confront the grand irony of Kojève’s time-tyrant problem. The philosopher is in the same predicament as the post-fight Master-tyrant: neither is in animal or in human time.61 In fact, the

philosopher faces a dilemma reminiscent of that of the Master-tyrant and the ascending/descending either/or noted in Chapter 2. Either the philosopher follows Kojève’s third way of “glory” and ascends from human time to focus on an idea, in which case the philosopher manifests neither desire for desire nor desire, and is therefore atemporal. Or, the philosopher creates the idea from desire, but later becomes attached to it from desire for desire, as would a Slave to a work product. The ideas are then incorporated as secondary or tertiary features62 of the large Kojèvian mosaic that is human thought. In this vise, the quest for glory can yield delusion. This places the philosopher even further outside human time than suspected,63 as more an advisor like Rasputin to the court of the czar than a “New Age” Voltaire to Frederick the Great. To be discontented is to pursue, yet to flail outside a time Kojève articulates. The audition of the wise man to bring the Master-tyrant into Kojèvian time yielded a mime. The audition of the philosopher has yielded a pundit; this is to say, a thinker caught in a vise between referencing the needs of the self and the needs of the selfish non-referential Master-tyrant in extremis whom the philosopher would ostensibly serve. Consideration of the philosopher, like that of the wise man, merely underlines the time-tyrant problem. It is thus that we again turn to the Strauss–Kojève exchange for verification of Kojève’s fundamental philosophical and political challenge.

Kojève’s Nuclear Culture of Two and the Strauss Critique of Homogeneity If, as emphasized in Chapter 2, the Strauss–Kojève exchange is, for Strauss, about clearing the high road of the universal to preserve the constructive antagonism of the theologico-political problem, the Strauss analysis of Kojève’s homogeneity is about the low road, an attack on Kojèvian human time that is the intersection of idea and act leading to Kojève’s universal. Both Strauss and Kojève have their motivations for not making the exchange a rendition of history in the traditional sequential sense, as both wish to emphasize that ancient teachings have relevance to modernity, Strauss because they have currency as eternal, Kojève because in modernity ancient tyrannical ideas are at last “actualized.” Thus, both treat events in a bit of a zigzag fashion. Strauss jumps from ancient tyrants to his contemporary in Portugal’s Salazar, and Kojève strenuously argues that modern tyrannies have implemented the advice of the ancient Simonides (OT, 138–39, 188). Thus, both camps deploy events strategically, not to derive a whole-cloth panoramic view of history

leading to an end state, but rather to illustrate a point about the process, about Kojève’s in-time intersection of act and idea. Strauss and Kojève view philosophy as a quest, and a public one at that (compare OT, 167 with OT, 205). Attitudes, behaviors, and externalities do not suffice to get to the Strauss and Kojève difference over the philosopher. Consequently, the egalitarianism in homogeneity that Strauss wishes to attack is not that which is most manifest in history and externalities. If anything, Strauss critiques Kojève for manifest political inequality and an order tending to “a planetary Oriental despotism.”64 Nor is the easy egalitarianism of leisure depicted in Kojève’s “Note to the Second Edition” the particular target of Strauss.65 Instead, Strauss says the homogeneity of act and idea is impossible, arguing for the durability of the classical standard over time, for its ability to embody a “stable standard,” while maintaining that Kojèvian desire for desire lacks sustenance for its reliance on the vicissitudes of “actual situations” (OT, 210–11). The Strauss concern for homogeneity is thus, at bottom, an assault on Kojève’s parity of act and idea, the heart of Kojèvian proof by circularity. This makes Strauss Kojève’s most pertinent and impertinent provocateur. For Kojève, the act is the basis for the idea, as the Introduction’s reference to philosophy as a “secondary and derivative” spectator sport implies. To say that Strauss critiques Kojève’s reliance on history to inform philosophy is only to state, more fundamentally, that Strauss objects to ideas resting on the bedrock of acts. Phrased differently, the difference between Kojève and Strauss is with respect to time phenomenology. Kojève’s philosopher is dissatisfied because of an awareness that all acts have not occurred, and all ideas not thought. His philosopher necessarily remains dissatisfied in time. In contrast, the philosopher of Strauss has knowledge of ignorance referenced against pursuit of the timeless. As a matter of conduct, both seek others, but the philosopher of Strauss out of attachment to the timeless, while Kojève’s out of desire for verification of ideas through acts (compare OT, 201 with OT, 148–49). This seems fairly consistent with the need of timeless, non-relational post-fight Master-tyrants to secure the advice of philosophers, and indeed with Kojève’s advertisement of “Tyranny and Wisdom.” Strauss most strenuously objects, maintaining that this attempted shuffle of act and idea, of Napoleon and Hegel in the nuclear culture of homogeneity, cheapens philosophy. As Strauss sees it, Kojèvian homogeneity, in advocating that each recognize each, demands that the philosopher recognize the actor, thereby holding ideas hostage to acts and to the times in the formulation that is Kojèvian circularity. The Strauss concern is clearly less with an interpretation of

events in time, more with the meaning of time itself.66 His “Restatement” follows a twofold path: diminution of the significance of act, and an elevation of the timeless idea. The first salvo of the Strauss double-barreled attack is as respects acts. The diminution of act therefore permeates the “Restatement.” When, for example, Strauss speaks of Kojèvian thought as a synthesis of Socratic and Hobbesean politics (OT, 186), Strauss means to say that the synthetic is the base, a signal of the downward trend of ideas when subjected to Kojèvian human time. Strauss critiques this rendering of the Socratic and eternal subject to the never-ending rigmarole of “every man for himself ” of Hobbes. It is to say that Kojèvian nuclear homogeneity means that the idea has been bankrupted by the act. Kojève has made acts, the base and the banal, ordinary and hardly subject of comment. Kojèvian time, argues Strauss, has anesthetized us to it, caught up as we are in acts, in the ambiance of modern dictatorships (OT, 177). Strauss holds that we have lost sight of the Master-tyrant, so immersed are we in Kojèvian human time and its trappings. Thus, as Strauss continues his critique of Kojève in the “Restatement,” he does so speaking not of Kojève the outrageous, but of Kojève the matter-of-fact, a thinker who, in mixing the ancient and the modern, “speaks of such terrible things as atheism and tyranny and takes them for granted” (OT, 185). To Strauss, Kojève speaks with the nonchalance of one who believes events happened because the script of circularity demands that they happen in time, and as a consequence of our reading of the ideas of antiquity in light of current events. For Strauss, Kojève’s philosophic third way that is outside Kojèvian human and animal time is a hapless rather than a happy situation, one occasioned by giving act primacy over idea so that the idea per se has no Kojèvian time to inhabit absent that inhabited by the base acts that proves its justification. Strauss aims to interrupt this conversation between actor Napoleon and thinker Hegel, this nuclear homogeneity, before it gets started. Strauss does this by pointing out the asymmetry of idea and act. Or, in perhaps more obvious fashion, Strauss attacks Kojève’s nuclear culture of two by arguing in the “Restatement” for the strictest possible separation of politics, acts, and philosophy, ideas. This is tantamount to calling attention to the time-tyrant problem as the residue of an improper corruption of philosophy by the act of the fight. Second, while attacking the acts that are Kojèvian time, Strauss elevates ideas to the timeless and eternal. As such, Strauss opens the “Restatement” with a defense of a philosophy free of the vagaries of current social conditions. Because act-filled time dominates Kojève’s philosophy, Kojève diminishes the latter as

“secondary and derivative.” Strauss will have none of the pollution of ideas by acts, noting: The difference between the philosopher and the political man will then be a difference with respect to happiness. The philosopher’s dominating passion is the desire for truth.… As he looks up in search for the eternal order, all human things and all human concerns reveal themselves to him in all clarity as paltry and ephemeral, and no one can find solid happiness in what he knows to be paltry and ephemeral. He has then the same experience … which the man of high ambition has regarding the low and narrow goals, or the cheap happiness, of the general run of men. (OT, 197–98) Note that Strauss here does not level his attack on Kojève the modern; rather, his objection is lodged against the time phenomenologist. Strauss criticizes the “cheap happiness of the general run of men” as in time, confined to the “paltry and ephemeral.” That is, Strauss casts the difference in terms of time, that of Kojèvian human time in comparison to the truly eternal.67 The price of this homogeneity is the cheapening of ideas by subjecting them to the vagaries of Kojèvian time. However, given Kojève’s mutual reinforcement of acts and ideas, Strauss knows full well that it is not sufficient to allege that eternal ideas trump Kojève’s worldly acts. As noted, Kojève argues for the predicate to acts as an idea, the desire for desire. It would thus be logical for Strauss to attack Kojèvian acts of the fight and works at their root. This is exactly how Strauss proceeds. The “Restatement” rather quickly identifies Machiavelli as the predecessor to the modern’s modern for setting forth that ideas can serve raw passions (OT, 184– 86). Strauss then proceeds to relegate Kojève’s desire for desire to the status of mere desire, indicating that Kojève represents a modern tradition that “emancipated the passions and hence competition” (OT, 192). Yet, as noted in Chapter 3, Strauss alleges that Kojève reduces all to desire and animal status. In yet another example that Strauss is not chiefly concerned with Kojève’s end of time, Strauss does only not aim at the “return to animality” that is Kojève’s most explicit description of the end of time.68 In addition, Strauss repeatedly argues that Kojève brings us atheism, not animality (OT, 185–86). And the atheism is based in the “paltry and ephemeral” of the desire for desire, an atheism that corrupts timelessness, during time, using time. Thus, Strauss attacks Kojève from the inside out, rarely challenging

universality and homogeneity as products of the end of time, almost always couching his critique in terms of Kojèvian time. Kojève the time phenomenologist sets forth a philosophy of history. In elevating ideas, Strauss counters with a history of philosophy. Accordingly, the “Restatement” is particularly keen to discourage an outsidein view of philosophy, and the mortgage Kojèvian acts have on ideas. For Strauss, the history of philosophy means magnifying ideas, and diminishing acts. Just so, the “Restatement” plays to the miniature Master-tyrant Salazar, in contrast to the pharaohs, the Alexanders, and Napoleons of Kojève’s “Tyranny and Wisdom” (compare OT, 188 with OT, 153, 169–70). Conversely, the inclination to avoid an outside-in philosophy of history in favor of an inside-out history of philosophy permeates a key theme of the Strauss–Kojève exchange: the role of the philosopher.69 Contrary to the mainstream version understanding that Strauss would have the philosopher appeal to the few and Kojève to the many,70 Strauss delineates the difference more fundamentally as a rejection of Kojève’s temporal and relational. Strauss discards the subjective and objective continuum for self-knowledge developed by Kojève in favor of one focused not on others, but on ideas. Philosophy loses its character when it loses track of the idea, particularly in its unknown aspects (OT, 196). Strauss will not permit philosophy to be constrained by any time, let alone one that makes ideas a “secondary and derivative” recollection of the suicidal death throes of Mastertyrants, those unsatisfied satyrs that are the “catalysts” of Kojèvian human time. Strauss elevates ideas as philosophy rethinks, reconsiders, reconstructs what has occurred (compare OT, 25, 208 with IRH, 166, cf. IRH, 194). The process is continual. Thus, the brief Strauss protest against the emptiness of the Kojèvian end state is a direct rebuttal to Kojève’s view that, whatever one does at the end of Kojèvian human time, the prescription is the same as for what is to be done in Kojèvian human time. Strauss will not have philosophy as an echo to Kojèvian acts. Accordingly, the key elements of the Strauss analysis of Xenophon feature the diminution of act and the elevation of idea to undo Kojève’s homogeneity. As to diminishing the act, Strauss maintains that Xenophon’s story is a chronicle of the failure of tyrannical acts as embodied in the time-tyrant dilemma, exposed by Xenophon’s wise man, Simonides. In his initial analysis of Xenophon, an essay called “On Tyranny,” Strauss shows the Master-tyrant’s repugnance toward sex and, secondarily, toward food. The former shows the Master-tyrant outside human time for a failure to secure adequate recognition of a partner, an other, and recalls the rebuff of Kojève’s post-fight Master-tyrant. The latter evidences the Master-tyrant as involuntary consumer outside animal time (compare OT, 3–

8 with OT, 50–51). At bottom, the Strauss critique of Kojèvian homogeneity, then, is based on a critique of Kojève’s time phenomenology and the identification of the contours of the time-tyrant dilemma. Strauss also works to elevate ideas. He suggests that Simonides instructs a less than receptive Hiero, insinuating that Xenophon’s Simonides represents wisdom as a virtue that is eternal and thus outside both the sweep of the satyr Master-tyrant’s vast social resources and his animal savagery (OT, 189–90). Such a wisdom, as noted by Strauss, poses “a limit to the tyrant’s power, and therefore a danger to the tyrant’s rule” (OT, 41) for being outside the Mastertyrant’s reach. By Strauss’s terms, this less-than-animal status places the Mastertyrant well below the zone of eternal truth71 with which the philosopher should be concerned. At the conclusion of Xenophon’s chapter 7, which Strauss views as the “peripeteia” of the dialogue (OT, 58), the Master-tyrant Hiero clamors for death (OT, 191). However, it is a suicide not to overcome animal status, but rather to escape the miserable fate of the unsatisfied satyr grounded in neither animal nor human time, very much reflective of the time-tyrant dilemma. For Strauss, better that wisdom occupy the timeless than that the Mastertyrant do so. In pointing to the possibility of tyrannical suicide, Strauss argues that Master-tyrants in the timeless cannot be trusted with themselves, much less social orders. The thinker Simonides as bearer of wise ideas and the reckless Master-tyrant as actor can thereby never be on par. Strauss embarks, therefore, on no less a task than that of locating a man of wisdom who is capable of reasoned articulation apart from, any Kojèvian notion of time.72 This thereby tears asunder what, for Strauss, is Kojève’s nuclear culture of homogeneity between the Master-tyrant and the Kojèvian philosopher. The careful Strauss denigration of act and elevation of idea to undermine homogeneity targets Kojève’s grand purpose. Kojève states that homogeneity lies in “a State that is the goal and the outcome of the collective labor of all and of each” (OT, 146). But first, each must relate to each. Phrased differently, universality of the all is contingent upon homogeneity. Full Kojèvian homogeneity, Strauss seems to remind us, is implausible when each must face each in a regime of baseness and oppression, not just when each confronts the all, the state, with the tyrannical deck always stacked in favor of the latter. And if each cannot recognize each, the nuclear homogeneity of those first two of the end state, Napoleon and Hegel, is not feasible. In the face of this obstacle, it is thus that Kojève apparently refuses to engage the aid of Xenophon and Simonides when he otherwise might. Most particularly, Hiero’s chapter 11 might be viewed as exemplar of Kojève’s formulation of homogeneity as a state that is “the collective labor of all and of each.” In fact,

Simonides, in advising the Master-tyrant to create great public spectacles and sports but not to participate in them, is urging that the Master-tyrant become an all, but not an each, to be admired for aloofness and largesse rather than to be envied. Not unlike the Introduction’s Napoleon, the Simonidian born Master would be an image for civic display and discussion rather than a peer for the citizenry, that which is to be desired but not that from which desire is expected. Thus, despite the importance of Kojèvian homogeneity giving rise to the all, to universality, Kojève largely refuses to take the bait of great public works and spectacles offered by Xenophon’s chapter 11. Kojève does not do so for two reasons. First, Kojève does not engage the fullness of Xenophon’s text precisely for fear of granting credence to Strauss’s attack on the relation of the each to the all that comes with Kojève’s homogeneity. Second, and more broadly, Simonides’s Master-tyrant in Xenophon’s chapter 11 merely confirms the problem of tyrannical remoteness, the time-tyrant dilemma. Much is at stake in the philosopher’s failure with the Master-tyrant. As we have seen, Kojève disqualifies the wise man from explicit consideration in “Tyranny and Wisdom,”73 leaving the role of the thinker to advise the Mastertyrant to a second auditioner, the philosopher. Strauss takes dead aim at precisely this dialectical philosopher, seeking to bring the Master-tyrant into time through discourse, maintaining that the meeting of idea and action in human time74 amounts to nothing of value. As recognition of each by each includes the formation of an all, movement within the “germ” of the Kojèvian end state toward cultural universality, the all, cannot occur within the homogeneity of each recognizing each, cannot occur when idea and act are on the same plane. “For try as one may to expel nature with a hayfork, it will always come back” (OT, 203). Strauss makes this remark in the heart of his criticism of the Kojèvian philosopher, which is to say the heart of his criticism that the rambunctious acts of Kojève’s Master-tyrants can revise ideas that will make philosophy have meaning. It is also in the context of elevating philosophy above Napoleon, and restoring nature to its place in the timeless and eternal, rather than the scratch paper of works and fights Kojève wishes for it. The critique by Strauss is so impressive that we might also inquire as to whether it is, for Kojève, equally compelling. This gives rise to the question of whether Kojève might ever nudge nature or space from its place as the habitant of animals and Master-tyrant vagrants and, like Strauss, consider nature’s role in helping philosophy.

Kojève’s Escape from the Time-Tyrant Dilemma: A Renege of the

Double Dare Through Encounters with Nature As noted, in attempting to guide the post-fight Master-tyrant back into human time, a thinker must resort to memory. In response to the time-tyrant dilemma and the inability of either the wise man or the philosopher to resolve it through discourse, using memory, Kojève assigns memory to another courier. This courier is the child. As Kojève notes: For men know that they are mortal when they educate their children, in such a way that the children can complete their works, by acting in terms of the memory of ancestors who have passed away. Now, this projection into the future, which will never be a present for the one who thinks of it, and also this prolongation in an existence of a past that does not belong to that existence, are precisely what characterize historical existence.… (IRH, 257) In effect, Kojève here removes ideas from the hands of philosophers. And he does so with good reason. As noted, philosophers feel alternately outside human time or conflicted in it for advancing ideas with a receding desire for desire for their remoteness to acting Master-tyrants, the audience that would recognize them. In contrast, the child is an actor, and, as actor “in terms of the memory of ancestors,” is a kind of self-contained thinker. Act and idea are integrated. It seems that, in the child, Kojève may have finally surrendered the pitchfork Strauss places in his hands, and enlisted nature to his cause. Kojève thereby finally avoids the time-tyrant problem. But this is done at enormous cost:75 that of abandonment of Master-tyrants and, arguably, of Kojèvian human time. Specifically, there is no evidence that the child carries such desire for desire. In fact, Kojève allows: “[E]very ‘educated’ child is not only a trained animal … but a truly human (or ‘complex’) being: although in most cases, he is only to a very small extent, since ‘education’ … generally stops too soon” (IRH, 220 n19). Both the rule and the exception are key here. From what we know of animal time and Kojèvian space, a “trained animal” is truly an oxymoron. No training is necessary for birth, desire, acquisition, procreation, death. Kojève’s parent, as a proxy for repetitive generational nature, would direct the child were we in Kojève’s animal time. In fact, in Kojève’s discussion, the parent proves to be nature’s weak voice. Parents “only encourage” (IRH, 220 n19) a child otherwise

engaged in action. The only possible value of training would be to promote movement in human time. Of its nature, training does not advance a self-generated desire for desire (IRH, 11). Rather than possessing the self-combustion of the desire for desire, the trained child is a “wind ’em up.” Again, Kojève’s parent offers only encouragement, not the desire that elicits desire for desire from the child. Yet, the “human … ‘complex’ ” side of the child derived from “education” yields, in fact, a ubiquitous and instantaneous on-the-job trainee – acting, selfmade, and recalling. The characteristics certainly suggest Kojèvian human time. On the other hand, in suggesting an education that “stops too soon,” Kojève presents a conventional view of time for the taking, not for Kojève’s human making. Thus, the child suffers from the same temporal infirmity76 as the time-taking philosopher, whom the child might replace, despite the child’s claim to bear memory. Neither is in Kojèvian human time, a time that is made, rather than taken, and one that stops only when the actor, a Slave or a Master-tyrant – not the trained child – ceases desire for desire. It may be small comfort to Kojèvian time phenomenology, but the byplay between the child, on one hand, and the philosopher advising Master-tyrants, on the other, reverberates in the offices in charge of foreign assistance, from Brussels to Washington to Tokyo, to developing countries. The competition for assistance often involves consideration of urgent natural problems such as population control and the arrest of epidemics. This reflects the urgency of the Kojèvian animal present for addressing or responding to animal desire. Yet, this must be balanced against the need for sophisticated long range policy advice to Third World governments, which largely suggests the pursuit of desire for desire by such governments, the longing for respect on the world stage, and reflects the long range investment in the future so characteristic of Kojèvian human time. Is it to be condoms and feminine hygiene for the back country or rigorous advice in the capital city on the contraction and expansion of the national money supply? The decision opting for the latter does so largely predicated on the proposition that governments in the Third World “have a future” that merits long-term incremental reform to overcome much of the nation’s past, quite in the manner of the future–past–present formula of Kojèvian human time. In the political snake pit just underneath Master-tyrants, such advice is often undercut, either through policy co-option or interdiction and manipulation of intellectual and financial product, due to host government corruption or internecine backbiting. The end of the script is typically Kojèvian – and vividly illustrates the timetyrant problem. Frustrated by the standoff between Western constituencies

pressing for such long-term policy advice as opposed to present humanitarian relief, Western military advisers often insinuate themselves and press the case for shipments of military gadgetry and hardware so as to speak the “language” Master-tyrants understand, the language of pursuit and domination that is an external manifestation of Kojèvian human time. Appropriations are extended, protocols signed, and the net result is a curious compromise of aid in the form of AK-47s and prophylactics that were originally intended for secondary school systems in the Western world. The sharp divide between the familial, the natural, and the urgent on one hand and the martial, the strategic, and the futuristic77 on the other persists in policy decisions, much as Kojève depicts. Kojève’s ability to so brilliantly capture the goings-on in Western capitals visà-vis the Third World reminds us, as did the “Kitchen Debate,” of Kojève’s allure. It is an allure evidenced by the mainstream, outside-in reading of Kojève, which seems to confirm so much of what has happened since Kojève’s passing in 1968. Meantime, Kojève’s phenomenological house remains unattended. The Kojèvian child, like Napoleon, the samurai, and Kojève’s born Master from Xenophon, is at the rear of a parade of Kojèvian hopefuls designed to deal with the time-tyrant problem. There is no escaping the time-tyrant dilemma and the need to read Kojève inside-out. Meanwhile, there is not just the question of to whom Strauss is listening; there is the question of whom should be responding to Kojève. This is especially so given what appears now as his more precise yet troublesome effort to acknowledge the role of nature in Kojèvian human time. The structure and emphasis of Strauss’s “Restatement” indicates that the main task in his review of Xenophon’s On Tyranny is the protection of philosophy. Strauss seems to take on all comers on its behalf, countering the perceived bagatelles and gambits of social scientists, relativist intellectuals, and dogmatists, to say nothing of Mastertyrants and their entourage of “intellectuals” surrounding Master-tyrants as identified by Kojève. The question arises as to what Strauss would make of Kojève’s probing child, who displaces the notion of time as an exhaustible commodity pointed to an eschatological end, and who substitutes time as an experience in harmony with nature. In presenting the child in the Introduction, might Kojève have in mind a revision of his time phenomenology, a phenomenology which captures so brilliantly many aspects of the modern world, yet leads to the time tyrantproblem? Chapters 5–7 will explore how it is that our modern’s modern, the apostle of the double dare, does just this.

Notes 1 Indeed, the verb “actualize” and its derivatives form the operative process Kojève emphasizes from beginning to end in “Tyranny and Wisdom” (OT, 139, 176). 2 IRH, 15. Kojève, in fact, likens human history to comedy, largely for the role-playing that the fight and work set up (ILH, 255; IRH, 253). See note 84 and accompanying text in Chapter 3 supra. 3 Tyranny may always require explanation, but the need to explain Master-tyrants may disappear with Kojèvian human time. Actually, it may be argued that even though the Kojèvian end state is the end of human time, marking the end of the Master-tyrant, domination continues. Critics across the spectrum from Strauss to Shandia Drury have suggested that the Kojèvian end state of animal time and the universal and homogeneous state will be marked by a kind of tyranny of thought control or a mechanical rationalism fueled by technology (compare OT, Strauss, 211 with Drury, 15, 45). While Kojève’s Introduction does not explicitly accept the notion of tyranny in an end state, Kojève notes the point to Strauss. He indicates that the tyrant at the end of history, in contrast to the Master-tyrant, “becomes an administrator, a cog in the ‘machine’ fashioned by automata for automata,” providing grist for the positions of both Strauss and Drury (OT, 255, Kojève to Strauss, Vanves, France, September 19, 1950). This is precisely because this remark finds no detailed elaboration in Kojève’s actual work. As a consequence of the view that tyranny may continue after the end of time, while Kojève’s Masters do not, the term “Master-tyrants” provides valuable clarification, signaling those tyrannies formed in the course of human time. See discussion in Chapter 2 infra. Kojève himself approximates the term in stating: “And the acts of a Slave give no satisfaction to that aristocratic Master, the ancient tyrant” (OT, 142). From its beginnings, it would seem that Masters produce tyrannies. 4 Kojève does emphatically pair a certain kind of wise man with the end of time. The Introduction’s strongest statement in this regard comes in speaking of wise men who are in the human time of fight and work just prior to the end of Kojèvian human time. But this is precisely the point. Contemporaneous with the end of time, and during time, Kojève posits wise men who are timeless. Kojève acknowledges this in stating that the wise man at the cusp of the “return to animality” needs to be not only human, but divine. In fact, Kojève seems to attribute the human to the philosopher and the timeless and divine to the generic wise man. Compare ILH, 329 with ILH, 334. 5 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 10. 6 This concrete Socrates eliminates the middle term of the syllogism: “Man is mortal.” There is no real need in Kojèvian terms for the premise and the “middle” term of the Logic 101 argument. Kojève’s most exaggerated treatment of the elimination of middle terms is the elimination of parathesis from the thesis-antithesis-synthesis configuration. For Kojève, parathesis represents the neither/nor of a combination of thesis and antithesis, idea and reality. The example of the unfathomable that Kojève provides is decaffeinated coffee, obviously offered prior to its being made concrete and real by modern commerce and technology (EHR, 1: 65, 103–13, 132). 7 In fact, as this book will illustrate shortly, that portion of “A Note on Eternity, Time, and the Concept,” Kojève’s remarkably energetic and abbreviated treatment of Western thought in the Introduction, is replete with visual images of ascent and descent that convey meaning as to Kojève’s grounding of ideas in the baseline of space through time. In contrast, the core of the existential impasse is “attitudinal” and an issue of the post-fight Master-tyrant’s conviction that no action will further the desire for desire (IRH, 19, 50). 8 Kojève takes pains to emphasize that Hegel, the philosopher he interprets and supports, is not an idealist but rather a realist, the harbinger of what this book has called the intersection of idea and act, the Kojèvian Real (IRH, 176–84, 191–93). 9 Rather than discuss the use of memory in Kojèvian time, one commentator is inclined to phrase the issue of Kojève’s instantaneous not in terms of circularity, but in terms of movement to the end of

10

11

12

13 14

15

Kojèvian human time, arguing that the instantaneous is part of the movement from symbol to sign (Darby, 144–45). IRH, 70–73. Kojève’s emphasis on revelation surely encompasses theistic, even religious elements. See Chapter 3 supra. But at least one commentator holds the struggle for theism versus atheism as central to Kojève’s political thought. This commentary holds that L’athéisme, an unfinished work of Kojève’s written a few years before the lectures providing the basis for the Introduction, is politically more coherent precisely because Kojèvian themes recognize an other in the form of God, whereas the atheism of the Introduction commences with the rock bottom proposition of nothing and man as selfreferential (Laurent Bibard, “Introduction,” L’athéisme, 51). Indeed, Kojève seems to acknowledge a critical difference between theist and atheist in that “[L]e Dieu du théiste … est radicalement différent de l’homme et du monde; il est ‘autre’ par rapport à l’ ‘homme dans le monde’ dans son ensemble … est différent du donné du monde” (L’athéisme, 114). In any case, Kojève depicts the question as occurring very much in time. IRH, 53. Outerworldly discourse may occur in human time. Outside time, “pie in the sky,” “theological” discourse may be about post-rebuff Master-tyrants and those like them such as the “godMan” Napoleon, the samurai, and the tyrant celebrated by Simonides in Hiero’s chapter 7 (IRH, 107– 14). Kojève elsewhere posits the disappearance of discourse with the end of human time, but only “in the strict sense” (IRH, 160 n6). The mainstream reading of Kojève tends to emphasize, if not focus entirely on, the end of history as the unique contribution of Kojève’s thought. See Fukuyama, The End of History; Roth, Knowing and History, generally. However, using Kojève’s own standard of totality as applied to circularity, the end of time is not a unique contribution of Kojève. Kojève, in working with the end of time, only answered a question posed by his predecessor Koyré: how can a time-based philosophy assert truths when time is in flux? The end of time is thus a primary premise to a Koyré–Kojève line of argument. Auffret, 321; Koyré, Études d’histoire de la pensée philosophique, 165–66, 175. It is not unique to Kojève. Its status as a premise is consistent with the observation that it is remarkably imprecise in the thought of the future-oriented Kojève. See discussion in Chapter 3, infra. Invariably, Kojève refers short-hand to overcoming the past as negation, both in time and at its end. See e.g., ILH, 309; IRH, 226–27, 231–32. Vicarious identification of citizens with Napoleon merely underlines the view that Napoleon is far more than a first among equals, but is a divinity presiding over the end of Kojèvian time (ILH, 146– 47). Accordingly, Kojève confers upon Napoleon the appellations “Creator head of the Perfect State” as well as “Citizen,” and, without qualification, refers to Napoleon as a “god-Man” (IRH, 73). Homogeneity marks the society as “nontransformable” in the sense that each constituent has encountered each other on the basis of a mutually recognized project of the Kojèvian state (IRH, 95; OT, 146). Criticism of Kojèvian homogeneity comes from many quarters and makes for strange bedfellows. With a view to the characterization of Napoleon, Strauss indicates that ordinary citizens are deserving of the same civic station as Napoleon, but do not receive it; Drury generally agrees. However, Strauss makes the argument based on the classical notion that equals should receive equal, Drury on the basis of actual Slave labor (OT, 207–08; Drury, 38–39). Unlike the textual analysis above, neither starts from the Kojèvian base of desire for desire and its inadequacy in delivering civic homogeneity. Later in this chapter and in Chapter 7, there will be an extended discussion of the issue. There is evidence that Kojève grappled with this problem of Master-tyrant turned idea. He does so in the Introduction, attributing to the desirous of desire would-be Master-tyrant a need for universality in terms of territory that translated into the universality of the idea, as expressed by law. Kojève’s subsequent work on justice and jurisprudence even suggests that this bond of Master-tyrant to law as universal principle is so complete that the Master-tyrant is simply an idea. Following these two efforts, Kojève finally seems to settle for an intermediate position in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” conceding the importance of the idea and the nondescript nature of the post-fight Master-tyrant as an “authority” recognized “spontaneously,” yet capable of securing a league of “citizens” to impose

ideas, the ideas of the Master-tyrant, be they concerning a master race or dialectical materialism. 16 As noted, Kojève describes tyranny more as a philosophic and phenomenological condition, less as a regime. Therefore, he provides no explicit details as to whether a Master-tyrant would reenter human time through a fight or some other sustained political event. The important thing is that the Kojève of “Tyranny and Wisdom” sees a thinker as leading the otherwise remote, aloof Master-tyrant, thereby indirectly acknowledging the time-tyrant problem. This overall aspect of Kojève’s work eludes those with an exclusive focus on the Master-tyrant of the fight. See e.g., Jarczyk and Labarrière, De Kojève à Hégel: 150 ans de pensée hégéliennne en France, 29; Drury, 27–38. For a critical perspective on this trend, see Howse and Frost, “Introductory Essay: The Plausibility of the Universal and Homogeneous State,” OPR, 13–14. 17 Mainstream commentary links wisdom to the end of time. Roth, Knowing and History, 8, 84–85; Drury, 51, 78. A contrary view, placing less emphasis on irony and more on Kojève’s pragmatism, is expressed in a biography of Kojève and is more in line with the analysis of this book. Auffret, 465– 69. 18 This is a point repeatedly made by Kojève in “Tyranny and Wisdom” when, after emphasizing the importance of ideas as “actualized ” in Kojèvian human time, Kojève holds out the possibility that a wise man might give such an accounting during such time. Indeed, Kojève maintains that “absolute truth” is attainable in a state understood as timelessness concurrent with Kojève’s human time, as through the presence of the wise man in mythology, religion, or traditional philosophy (IRH, 83–84, 183–84). Kojève explicitly entertains the view that Xenophon’s Simonides, who arrives long before the “germ” of the end state and Jena, can be a wise man. Compare OT 138–39, 175 with OT 147, 169. In contrast to this consistent interpretation, those emphasizing the Kojève of the end of time acknowledge an ambiguity in Kojève’s position, sometimes maintaining that Kojève eventually lapses into an irony as a result of trying to accommodate philosophy and the end of history, other times arguing that Kojève exemplifies the commitment of the philosopher to the state and political life. Roth, Knowing and History, 83–84, 136, 143; Roth, “A Problem of Recognition,” 303. Another perspective on the motives of Kojève in “Tyranny and Wisdom” is discussed in Chapter 7, infra. 19 Of course, wise men might be identified in retrospect, and justified by subsequent events. Circularity demands that just as thinkers influence history and actions, history and actions influence our views of earlier thinkers. This assessment also needs to take into account the subtle but important emphasis Kojève places on the rediscovery of thinkers preceding Hegel in light of the revelation of Hegel the wise man (IRH, 96 n8). Again, the emphasis advocates of the mainstream Kojève place on the end of history and irony or pessimism tends to obscure this key point. See discussion of this point in Chapter 7 infra. 20 OT, 147, 158, 169. In theory, post-fight Master-tyrants could reappear in human time by their own devices, but only briefly. Kojève never states that any one Master-tyrant is good for but one fight. In fact, Kojève sees the fight as the life of the Master-tyrant, presumably with the rebuff and involuntary consumption as interludes, albeit phenomenologically significant ones. Thus, Kojève, for example, indicates that “the man who behaves as Master will never be satisfied” (IRH, 20). This surely suggests the possibility of a lifetime of fighting. Kojève in fact envisages the warrior society dedicated to “warlike Masters” (IRH, 60). The import of this does not resolve the time-tyrant problem, for it merely means that the fighting Master-tyrant would make intermittent appearances in human time as a catalyst, thereby interrupting the existential impasse that is the time-tyrant problem. 21 Particular attention should be paid to Kojève’s “particularity,” as quoted just above. Particularity is the hallmark of human time. It is the process of work in which the Slave reclaims self-value. Particularity leads to individuality, when the particular Slave is recognized in the universal of the end state through citizenship. This links the wise man to the Kojèvian Slave. And for Kojève, in human time, one is either a Master-tyrant or a Slave (IRH, 16, 43). As the wise man in human time is not a Master-tyrant, the wise man must then be a Slave. 22 IRH, 176. Kojève’s Le Concept is most pointed here in indicating that, while the philosopher is

23

24 25

26

27

28 29

30

concerned with reflection on wisdom as a goal to be attained, the wise man is a reflection on and of the self, which is totality. The point is repeated in “Tyranny and Wisdom” (CTD, 54; OT, 147). The wise man appears to represent a condition of being that is not encapsulated by the “moment.” In contrast, man in human time is becoming. The link of becoming to being should probably be confined to Kojèvian phenomenological analysis – i.e., in Kojèvian terms, how that which is experienced appears to man. In rare instances, the Introduction qualifies its remarks with the observation that phenomenological claims are not ontological claims, most notably in Kojève’s brief accounting of the Heideggerian project. Specifically, Kojève suggests that desire for desire may account for anthropology, the story of man, but that not even Heidegger could extend this argument to account for a new theology, a new afterlife of man (IRH, 259 n41). Kojève nowhere gives a detailed account of Heidegger’s precise influence on his thought, but firmly views Heideggerian philosophy as an attempt to place Hegelian phenomenology on an ontological level (Kojève, Review of Tragische Existenz. Zur Philosophie Martin Heideggers, 418–19). It would appear that the Kojèvian time phenomenology borrows considerably from what commentators on Heidegger have analyzed as Heidegger’s consideration of time (compare IRH, 135–36 with de Boer, Thinking in the Light of Time: Heidegger’s Encounter with Hegel, 47–48). On the other hand, Heidegger is also seen as positing the proposition that phenomenology is a method of ontology, not a discipline separate from it (Marion, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology, 60– 61). Kojève’s perspective, though not fully articulated, does not appear sympathetic to this view (IRH, 259 n4). Kojève, at times, comes close to equating phenomenology to ontology and metaphysics but explicitly stops short of equating them (IRH, 134 nn21–22). Darby, 158, 186–88. It is not that Kojève does not recognize the problem. Indeed, possibilities are so sparse that Kojève resorts to describing the wise man’s art of writing his thoughts down in a final book as that ratifying action. Yet, to be a ratifying action on the idea, the act must be in human time as Kojève knows it. Kojève attests to the phenomenological ambiguity here in describing the wise man as part citizen of the end state at the end of history, part philosopher in human time (compare ILH, 302 with ILH, 304). Ibid. Further to the observation that the shape of Kojève’s end state may rest only on principle, commentary on Kojève has stipulated that the universal and homogeneous state cannot be a nationstate, thus arguably losing a sense of the concrete (Howse and Frost, 24). Commentators as diverse as Strauss and Drury see roughly the same danger in a technocratic Kojèvian end state. Again, this should give rise to pause as to whether the end of history, as opposed to history itself, is the central aspect of Kojèvian thought. Compare Strauss, 211 with Drury, 43–46. Cooper, 273. Actually, the Introduction is quite specific elsewhere in integrating the notion of “possibility” into Kojèvian proof by circularity. Possibility, as Kojève most precisely explains it, is grounded in a desire for desire, the move to the future. But this is merely a necessary condition of possibility. What is indispensable is also a past, the entire panoply of “actions of fighting and work” that gives rise to the desire for desire, to the “making up” of one’s mind as to an idea, a project. In the Introduction, this contrasts with the Master-tyrant in waiting before the fight, the Herr, whose pure I is based on animal desire rather than on desire for desire, an I for whom self-knowledge is presumably not a concern (ILH, 239). Here, it is important to note that the animality of space, that of the wise man, is not that of the postfight Master-tyrant. Mainstream readings of Kojève emphasize the externality of consumption by such Master-tyrants. They tend to place the post-fight Master-tyrant squarely in the outer circle of space, animal life, and consumption. Cooper seems to emphasize the Master-tyrant as a consumer who enjoys a life of “brute enjoyment” that is a “reconfiguration by satiation of subjective certainty already experienced as animal sentiment” (Cooper, 95). But this reference to subjectivity excludes satisfaction. Kojève notes, speaking of the Master-tyrant:

[H]is enjoyment and his satisfaction remain purely subjective: they are of interest only to him and therefore can be recognized only by him; they have no “truth,” no objective reality revealed to all. Accordingly, this “consumption,” this idle enjoyment of the Master’s, which results from the “immediate” satisfaction of desire, can at the most procure some pleasure for man; it can never give him complete and definitive satisfaction.

(IRH, 24)

31

32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

49 50

51 52

This subjective satisfaction, this enjoyment, means that the post-fight Master-tyrant cannot partake of the objectivity of space. It is mere consumption, reproduction, and survival: that is Kojève’s outer circle of animal time. In fact, the Introduction eventually says that the life of enjoyment is “unlike an animal” (IRH, 228). IRH, 70. This may be because the “animal raisonnable” of the wise man inhabits a different space from Napoleon; it is no accident that Kojève reserves the environment of the “bosom of nature” to but two parties: pre-historical, primitive man and the real wise man Hegel (compare IRH, 26 with IRH, 34). Recent commentary reflecting a mainstream reading of Kojève has tended to discount Kojève’s remarks in the “Note to the Second Edition” describing the end of history as a “return to animality.” Nichols, 118. Yet, this remark is the most precise description Kojève makes as to the end of history in that “Note.” What is more, the “return to animality” is fully exemplar of Kojèvian circularity. See notes 5–6 and text infra. Compare IRH, 113–30 on the ancient position with EHR, 2: 253, 262–63, 289–90 on the politicization of Aristotelian metaphysics from a Kojèvian perspective. Compare Plato, Republic, 45 with IRH, 115. Plato, 21. Ibid., 15. Ibid., 14–15. Socrates, like Xenophon’s Simonides, might be thought to defend tyranny (Gourevitch, “Philosophy and Politics I,” 69–70). See note 19 and accompanying text supra. Ibid., 18–19. Ibid., 15. Compare Plato, 20, sailor analogy on mutuality with Plato, 21–23, shepherd analogy on benefit to ruled. Ibid., 31. Ibid., 32–33. Ibid., 25. Compare Ibid., 19 with Ibid., 29–34. Ibid., 23. Even mainstream commentary on Kojève indicates that Thrasymachus represents the unnatural. Singh, 82. But this commentary does not explain how the unnatural and the inhuman can be the same. Kojève’s timelessness does. Plato, 29–34. Kojève’s Introduction traces a careful history of transition from the removed, speechless, post-fight Master-tyrant of ancient times to a post-fight Master-tyrant who not only speaks, commands, but listens, commencing during what Kojève characterizes as the Medieval period of flattery. Compare ILH, 115, 125 with ILH, 125–26. Kojève views philosophy proper as a reflection of the philosopher on wisdom, not on the self (CTD, 54). Plato, 13–14.

53 54 55 56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

See generally, Kojève, L’idée du déterminisme dans la physique classique et dans la physique moderne. Nichols, 122; Singh, 46. Cf. Delacampagne, 149–50, 167 as to the relation of Voltaire and Frederick; OT, 169–70 on exceptional importance of the pairing of Aristotle and Alexander. Compare IRH, 229 with OT, 149. Here, it suffices to note that “A Note on Time, Eternity and the Concept” in Kojève’s Introduction is a celebration of philosophers ahead of their time, precisely for making major contributions to bring time to the forefront as the theme in philosophy, and the heart of Kojève’s double dare. For example, the mainstream reading holds that Kojèvian intellectuals exist to relieve the philosopher of the onus of dealing with the practical. However, Kojève rather more precisely suggests that intellectuals exist to interpret philosophical ideas and bring them into proper temporal context to appeal to removed Master-tyrants. Compare Singh, 46 with OT, 173–76. The philosopher’s remoteness in time from tyrannical action on such advice reminds us of the farsightedness with which Kojève approaches the philosophic contribution. The advice of the philosopher cannot address particulars of social context. This is the work of the Kojèvian intellectual. Rather, the advice of the philosopher is panoramic and seems to include an intellectual rendition of the cumulative condition of human time, of the impact of all fights and works to date (OT, 172). Compare IRH, 230 n25 with IRH, 231. This reference to glory in itself is important. At other times, Kojève refers to action for glory, meaning honors bestowed by others, in which case “glory” is connected with desire for desire. OT, 140. On the other hand, at times “Tyranny and Wisdom” veers to the position that philosophers really desire desire through “historical verification” of the ideas they hold (compare OT, 157–59 with OT, 161). Yet, such acknowledgment is often posthumous as to the philosopher and thus outside Kojève’s model of desire for desire. Kojève is mixed in his characterizations of the Master-tyrant’s actions, sometimes suggesting that the Master-tyrant voluntarily dictates his fate, as in the language quoted in text that the Master-tyrant “obstinately persists.” However, while the Master-tyrant may will the fight, post-fight consequences lead to what Kojève terms an “existential impasse,” an intractable and permanent condition that seems beyond the Master-tyrant’s control (IRH, 19, 46). As Kojève notes: “Le Maître est figé dans sa Matrise. Il ne peut pas se dépasser, changer, progresser” (ILH, 27). The question of the Mastertyrant’s will and its place in the “existential impasse” that is the time-tyrant dilemma is detailed in text infra. The Introduction’s characterization of philosophy as “secondary,” even “tertiary,” in the face of the Kojèvian Real of the work and the fight may be the genesis of a shift in emphasis in Kojève’s philosophic career. But opinions are mixed. Some commentators dismiss Kojève’s later work on the history of philosophy as a product of irony in the face of the supposed end of history; others tend to view Kojève’s later works as advancing integral parts of the earlier Kojèvian corpus (compare Roth, Knowing and History, 140–45 with Bibard, 15, 56 n20, 59 n64). Reconciliation of dialectical movement that is the philosopher’s with the totality and circularity of the wise man will be explored in Chapter 7. One way out of this dilemma is the solution of beneficent tyranny in which the tyrant is advised by the wise man, a solution largely ignored by Kojève. See discussion in Chapter 7 infra. In this connection, Strauss seems to make Simonides a kind of proxy for Socrates. At times, Strauss underlines the precise limits of Xenophon’s chapter 11 as a political regime for promoting true beneficence, at other times emphasizing the pragmatic character of beneficence as a means of satisfying the polity (compare OT, 38, 68–69 with OT, 62, 70). This mixed emphasis again recalls Socrates’s exchange with Thrasymachus, which appears to balance philosophic and pragmatic concerns. OT, 208. The time-tyrant problem, as exemplified by Kojèvian homogeneity, yields some unexpected

65

66

67

68

69 70 71

72

twists in the Kojève–Strauss exchange. For Strauss, who does not hesitate to justify philosophic reserve, Kojève’s self-satisfied philosopher rivals the Master-tyrant for his isolation from the polis; in turn, it is Kojève and not Strauss who most actively considers the possibility of political rule by the philosopher as supported by history (compare OT, Strauss, 197 with OT, Kojève, 167). There is plenty to support Strauss’s refusal to follow this path. Kojève’s homogeneity is derivative of the desire for desire and not production; hence material egalitarianism is not a goal (cf. Riley, 13–15). Moreover, Kojève reads history as reconciling a reformed capitalism and material egalitarianism through increasing production, thereby putting him at odds with doctrinaire Marxists (Kojève, “Marx est Dieu, Ford est son prophète,” 136–37. See Chapter 5 infra). Of course, a Strauss argument for the detachment of politics and philosophy to preserve the latter is common enough outside the context of Kojève. Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? 11–12. Strauss, for example, seems to concede the field of the political to Kojève, perhaps tacitly accepting that Xenophon’s Simonides may have found a way to justify a certain kind of tyranny based on public beneficence, and actually conceding that lessons might be drawn from the practices of modern tyrants (OT, 188; Gourevitch, “Philosophy and Politics I,” 69–70). The closest the Strauss analysis comes to acknowledging Simonides as wise is to praise his skill at imparting tyrannical teaching to Hiero. Fairly extended, this might also apply to implicitly give credence to the argument for public beneficence made by Simonides at the conclusion of Hiero (OT, 38–39, 75, 188). A mainstream reading of Kojève has the exchange with Strauss as primarily about the end of time, yet simultaneously acknowledges that it is about the importance of the philosopher, a character both Kojève and Strauss acknowledge must be relational, engaged, and, in the Kojèvian sense, temporal. Compare Smith, 146 with Smith, 150–54. The clear importance of the philosopher is thus consistent with the view that time, not its end, is central to the exchange between Strauss and Kojève. Compare Roth, Knowing and History, 84–85, 144–45 (emphasizing the end of history) with Auffret, 463–67 (emphasizing Kojèvian time, not its end, despite the subtitle of Auffret’s work). Not surprisingly, by emphasizing Kojève’s end of history, advocates of the mainstream reading of Kojève have been unable to precisely articulate how the exchange with Strauss influenced Kojève. Roth, Knowing and History, 130–48. Meier, 59. For an emphasis on such externalities in discussing Strauss and Kojève on the philosopher, see Singh, 64. The time-tyrant problem linking the born Master to Kojèvian Master-tyrants generally places those arguing for the classical universal and those arguing for post-modernism in the same camp. See note 3 supra. Both emphasize the relentlessness of Kojèvian tyranny. Both Strauss and Drury, for example, acknowledge that the Kojèvian end state would contain tyranny, either in the form of technology, or citizens dominating citizens, or a form of despotism, and that such a state represents a philosophic return of all past forms of tyranny, presumably the “born Master” and the imposing “citizen” of Kojève’s “Tyranny and Wisdom” among them (see Strauss reference to despotism, text supra; compare Drury, 25–26 with Drury, 46–47). Presumably, a post-modern approach might see the threat that the “existential dilemma” and the time-tyrant dilemma pose for actualized tyrannies and largely ignore the presence of the “born Master” in Kojève’s “Tyranny and Wisdom.” In contrast, a reading of Kojève to defend a modern, Hegelian position placing less emphasis on extracting tyranny from the Master and Slave relationship might seek to marginalize Kojève’s approach to the Master–Slave relationship by limiting it to a historical period. A mainstream reading characterizes the Strauss analysis as “transhistorical.” Roth, Knowing and History, 132. However, were Strauss merely trans-historical, he might have embarked on the familiar enough course of distinguishing between man and animal in responding to Kojève. Yet, Strauss does not refute the Master-tyrant by calling him a mere animal. Quite the contrary, Strauss follows the lead of Xenophon’s wise man, Simonides. Strauss’s review of Xenophon’s work concludes that Kojève’s born Master Hiero is less than an animal and more a biologically unsatisfied human, one whose

73 74

75

76

77

appetites are frustrated so that even the Master-tyrant is “somehow aware” that the Master-tyrant’s well-being is not based on the fight and its prizes, but lies in the soul (OT, 43). Consistent with the view that Strauss’s attack has as its goal to establish the atemporal, and not just the trans-historical, he clearly views the dénouement of Xenophon’s work as separating knowledge, wisdom, and the eternal from the Kojèvian relational and temporal. See discussion in Chapter 7 infra. This puts the entire explanation of Kojèvian history in “Tyranny and Wisdom” at risk, since the philosopher hardly has firm footing in Kojèvian human time if for no other reason than absence of clearly discernable desire for desire. As a result, Kojève’s response to Strauss loses its true agent of circularity and all Kojève’s historical accountings, from Pharoah Ikhnaton to Salazar, must be counted as provisional footnotes, not endnotes, to the text of a universal and homogenous state not yet completed. Hence, the argument for alleged “actualized” tyrannies does not carry the force of even Kojèvian circularity (compare IRH, 166 with OT, 139, 171), and has an uncertain status appropriate to the provisional “germ” of this end state. If the choice is between tyranny and the ability to at least conceive of something other than tyranny, Kojève is at least occasionally open to the latter. Examples here would be Kojève’s consideration of animal time, of non-relational space or nature and of the exclusively natural, desiring Herr, precursor to the first Master-tyrant (IRH, 133, 158; ILH, 239). The Introduction’s synthetic historical analogue to the child as human animal is the bourgeois. It is the bourgeois who, Kojève seems to claim, is like the child for being, strictly speaking, in neither Kojèvian human nor animal time (ILH, 116, 120; see Chapter 2 infra), whereas the child might be said to be in both. Yet, there are similarities. In fact, the bourgeois might be said to represent an abstraction of a Slave, one who escapes fearful animal status through projection of the self as an abstraction in order to suppress earlier animal fear from the fight. In a similar vein, Kojève considers “ ‘repressions’,” denials of self, as central to the development of the child (compare Darby, 107 with IRH, 220 n19). For Kojève, animal and human times are, respectively, life and death matters. To defy death is characteristic of the fight that commences Kojèvian human time. Action in the face of death suggests the influence of Heidegger, whom commentators have associated as revising Hegel by positing that time is the negation of negation, a casting aside of that which will be irretrievable. Heidegger is thereby viewed as revising the Hegelian dialectic, a feature of which is preservation even in overcoming (de Boer, 257–60). The emphasis of Kojèvian human time on action in the face of death might be viewed as a middle ground for its Heideggerian emphasis on death, on negation, as central while including the Hegelian emphasis on continuity. In this case, the continued but diminished presence of terror in the Slave as human time progresses makes negation and death so central (IRH, 23, 26).

5 In the Shadow of War The Beginning of Kojève’s Answer to the Time-Tyrant Problem

Wartime and Evolution in Kojève’s Corpus The Kojève of Paris on the precipice of military and political collapses introduced in Chapter 1 was a philosopher of the all or nothing in an all or nothing Europe, the playing field of tyrants both Teutonic and Slavic. In the double dare, to eliminate either Man or Time is to eliminate the other. Tyrants, Man, and Time traveled together in Kojève’s desirous of desire world. Eliminate any one, and all three are eliminated. Were the pre-war Kojève of the Introduction an Olympic gymnast, his events would be floor exercises, followed by the balance beam. One false step, such as the post-fight rebuff, and the Master-tyrant flies off the mat, or outside the boundaries of human time and animal time. As a gymnast in any event knows, a central core understanding and energy radiates in the execution and performance of any event. And the time-tyrant problem, by which Man, time, and the social order are lost, shakes a core understanding of a stable Kojèvian social order in severing the relation between ruler and ruled. This chapter and Chapters 6–7 will set forth that the wartime and post-war Kojève, including the Kojève of the Strauss–Kojève exchange, moves the motif from nullity to duality. Were the post-war Kojève to enter Olympic gymnastics, his event would be the parallel bars. Actually, Kojève began his turn in events with the turn of events in Europe. Kojève startles us during the war years, in the midst of the havoc and carnage he so vividly and accurately foretold Mastertyrants would wreak while bestriding Europe. In that carnage, and one half decade after the Introduction, Kojève begins the move to duality and backs away

from nullity, writing in the Outline of a Phenomenology of Right: [T]he Master and Slave are only logical “principles,” which do not exist in fact in a pure state. But the Citizen is a synthesis of mastery and servitude, and this synthesis is … an evolution. This evolution [is] … a definitive equilibrium of mastery and servitude … [O]ne can speak either of (relative) aristocratic mastery or (relative) bourgeois servitude. (OPR, 213) In fact, Kojève does make this remarkable statement in his 1943 Outline, a work roughly temporally between the Introduction and his “Tyranny and Wisdom” of the early 1950s. He so wrote far from the lecture halls of the Sorbonne that made him first in a line of France’s philosopher-celebrities and in fact more as a clandestine operative1 in Vichy, France. Kojève’s ideas in the Outline are juridical, centering on the “idea of Justice and Droit, understood as the realizing process of this Justice” (OPR, 33). Kojève here seems to repeal the core of the Introduction, his Master-tyrants and Slaves, broadly his time actors, and, more essentially, his human time. The Outline is subject to little commentary, with those indicating that it is Kojève’s richest work also posing the possibility that it is his most aberrational, and most certainly among the least studied.2 To revert to gymnastics, Kojève gyrates, but does he vacillate? This chapter will maintain not. It would take another decade before Kojève would apply duality to the condition of Master-tyrants explicitly in his “Tyranny and Wisdom”: A man can work hard risking his life for no other reason than the joy he always derives from carrying out his project or, what is the same thing, from transforming his “idea” or even “ideal” into a reality shaped by his own efforts. A child, alone on a beach, makes sand-patties which he will perhaps never show anyone; and a painter may cover the cliffs of some desert island with drawings, knowing all the while that he will never leave it. Thus, although that is an extreme case, a man can aspire to tyranny in the same way that a “conscientious” and “enthusiastic” workman can aspire to adequate conditions for his labor…. [I]n general the “bourgeois” statesman who renounces glory on principle, will exercise his hard political “trade” only if he has a “laborer’s” mentality. And he will justify his tyranny as nothing but a necessary condition for the success of his “labor.” (OT, 140–41)

Here, Kojève extends the above quoted view of the Outline that the Mastertyrant and Slave are mere principles. As laboring on ideas, the prodigious bourgeois Master-tyrant becomes largely indistinguishable from the idea. As near principle, the Master-tyrant can do what the Introduction would have held unthinkable and certainly undoable: mimic the working Slave. The duality is between a fighting Master-tyrant and a bourgeois Master-tyrant who is laboring. In doing so, Kojève resolves the time-tyrant dilemma by putting the person of the bourgeois Master-tyrant3 in the thick of time and labor. Notice the Kojèvian italics and quotations in the lengthy passage just cited. “ ‘[L]aborer’,” “ ‘enthusiastic’,” and “ ‘labor’ ” might all be attributed to the Kojèvian Slave. But such terms are further conditioned by a “ ‘conscientious’ ” focus on the “ ‘idea’ ” and the most personal “efforts.” In short, the person of the laboring Master-tyrant approaches, like the good bourgeois of the Introduction, the ideal itself. The bourgeois Master-tyrant, unlike the warring, ultimately aloof, fighting Mastertyrant, is about the craft of state – statecraft. In short, Kojève himself accomplishes what the bevy of thinkers just discussed in Chapter 4 could not: put the Master-tyrant back in human time, avoiding the time-tyrant problem. Precisely how does Kojève create an alternate path to the fighting, warring Master-tyrant through Master-tyrant labor? And how does Kojève extend the argument to the decade of the 1950s, moving from precipitous floor exercises to the comparative stability of the parallel bars? This chapter will treat the former, and Chapters 6 and 7 will focus on the latter. In so doing, these chapters aim to present a richer, more integrated understanding of Kojève’s political works, one more subtle than the emphasis of the mainstream Kojève4 on the end of time will allow. In particular, this chapter will posit that Kojève’s wartime corpus, including the Outline, is broadly concerned with social order,5 while a reconsideration of “Tyranny and Wisdom” deals with political order. Among the questions examined will be the reconstruction of Kojèvian tyranny such that both the Master-tyrant and Kojèvian human time are more complex, particularly as concerns the relation of the idea to both.

The Turn in Kojève’s Outline The human of the Introduction is desirous of desire and for this reason temporal in the Kojèvian sense. But the extension of this means the Master-tyrant of the fight and ensuing time-tyrant problem, making the human chaotically and, in Kojève’s thinking, tragically, social. In contrast, the Outline characterizes the

human differently: [T]he act in and by which an animal Homo sapiens creates itself as an authentic human being is necessarily such that it makes him capable of entering into interaction with another human being created in the same manner so as to provoke the intervention of a similar third being.… (OPR, 54) This intervention lies at the heart of justice, the theme of social organization of the Outline. And as time phenomenologist, Kojève attributes the essence of justice to priority in time. True, Kojève assigns to desire for desire, that determinant of fighting Master-tyrants and the political, a place as “the ultimate source of the idea of Justice” (OPR, 219). However, that which takes precedence over the desire of desire is the mutuality between the contestants in the fight, not the fight’s outcome. Kojève writes: “It is the mutual consent of the parties which excludes injustice from the situation, this consent preceding the Struggle – that is, all use of force, all “pressure” of one upon the other” (OPR, 219). This notion of consent is very important juridically; for if there is not necessarily justice when there has been consent, there is surely no injustice. The fight may manifest the desire for desire. However, it implies mutuality of consent among contestants, a mutuality that is recognized by a third party noncontestant (OPR, 221). For Kojève, relationship carries temporal connotations, for mutuality addresses justice and injustice, ideas that are, as the Outline repeatedly emphasizes, sui generis, by which Kojève means “universally and eternally valid,” timeless (OPR, 86, 205–06; emphasis added). The third party intervenor, a judge, has as motive “to realize and reveal the idea of Justice” (OPR, 84). The desire for desire may be propelled by the need for self-knowledge, but mutuality of consent, and an understanding of the human on the plane of justiceinjustice, is already what we know of the human before the fight, before Kojèvian human time. Thus, justice is truly “universally and eternally valid,” timeless, as Kojève understands it. Notice that Kojève’s truncation of the fight focuses not on its result, but on its simple occurrence. Justice is sui generis apart from the political because it: 1 2

is part of the human story, as a result of the primordial act of the fight; but is juridical and autonomous for establishing combatants prior to the fight at equipoise (that is in need of a third party intervenor) and not part of the political.

For its focus on the mere occurrence of the fight, and not on its subsequent political dimensions, Kojève avoids the time-tyrant dilemma and develops a system that is independent of the political. It seems as though Kojève is proceeding on dual tracks: one for politics, the desire for desire and time, and the other as to the judicial, application of ideas through a third party intervenor and the timeless. We have found the parallel bars and the balance beam.

Droit as Time Proceeds True to his status as time phenomenologist, Kojève assigns the theme of justice an abiding presence in time. Its presence is through Droit, which the Outline will term the manifestation of a sui generis “idea of Justice” and stands as a system,6 one through which one might view Master-tyrants and Slaves as mere “ ‘principles’ ” in the juridical sense, as Droit evolves in human time. Kojève carefully works out a behaviorist definition of Droit, based on action and reaction between two parties, in which the acting party seeks to annul or repeal the reaction of the other through resort to an “impartial and disinterested third” party. In the Outline, Kojève intends that the intervention of the third party will produce an effect that is not negation, is “not nothing,” but is rather Droit, which Kojève styles variously as legal rules and institutions (OPR, 39, 40–42). Nothing could be further in effect from the obliterating desire for desire of the Introduction’s Master-tyrants who overcome the past, the given, for that desire (IRH, 171–73, 247). The phenomenology of juridical relation, Kojève holds in the Outline, is very much about that which is, not that which is not. And that which is in Droit and the principles of justice is the compatibility of the person of the Master-tyrant within time, if only by the subordination of that person to principle, as Kojève promised in the quotation introducing this chapter. The very core of the Outline is demonstration of the evolution of Droit over time. The key point is that Master-tyrants, subordinated as principles of Droit, are far more compatible with a social order than the person of the desirous of desire the Master-tyrant of the Introduction, who, when left to the device of desire for desire, is ultimately timeless and non-relational. Before getting to Kojève’s chronology of Droit, such as it exists, we might elaborate on this point a bit further. Because Droit is juridical principle manifest in time, those expecting a definitive allocation of rights, duties, responsibilities, and claims for any given case of third party intervention will be disappointed.

Kojève’s Droit is not Blackstone or the Justinian code; it does not purport to determine the extent to which upstream riparian owners may flood a downstream plain or what relief an employee dismissed for seeking extended maternity leave may secure. Rather than being prescriptive, Kojève’s Droit deals in social patterns, modes of thinking, when allocating responsibilities among the disputatious seeking the judgment of a third. This is an organizing principle for society in the most fundamental sense. And, for Kojève, it is thereby the organizing principle for time. And now we treat the chronology of Droit and the principles of justice, the heart of the Outline. The very first principle is equality. As we have seen in the discussion of mutuality of consent, it is Kojève’s aim to show how otherwise desirous of desire Master-tyrants can be reconciled to time, relation, and society. Since the desire for desire is rooted in knowing, this means making the Mastertyrant of the fight knowing as to self-worth. The post-fight rebuff of the Introduction’s Master-tyrant ensures that the Master-tyrant will never know selfworth. In contrast, even before the fight, the Outline’s eventual Master-tyrants will know much of the value of self. Justice, present through the principle of equality as registered by mutual consent by combatants to the fight, ensures this. Both the Introduction and the Outline view knowledge of self-worth as important. But, in contrast to the desirous of desire Master-tyrant of the Introduction, the Outline’s “human consciousness of the ideal of Justice” (OPR, 221), equality through mutual consent to the fight, confers true knowledge of self-worth on the all fight contestants, including eventual Master-tyrants. The Outline’s eventual Master-tyrant not only knows through mutuality that the Master-tyrant is at parity with an opponent, but the Master-tyrant comes to this knowledge through participation in the social exercise of consent. Consent implies equality as, through consent, a party to the fight recognizes the other party as at parity, equal in the interest of self-knowledge (OPR, 221). As such, these Master-tyrants of the Outline are, through equality as a principle of justice, human, relational, social – and truly temporal, because of the fight. Before the eventual Master-tyrant lifts a sword in the Outline, before the eventual Slave lifts a hammer, both are reconciled to time through the principle of justice known as equality. Aristocratic Droit is entirely rights-based and operates on the principle of equality, in which things of identical nature may be substituted as, by analogy, only Master-tyrants relate to each other in their own sequestered, rarefied environment. “Like for like” are the watchwords (OPR, 243–44). Since the Master-tyrant gains all he has from strength of will and physical strength, this aristocratic Droit is based on right, entitlement, and not on obligation. Society

thereby mimics the values of a community of Master-tyrants. This principle of Droit finds its analogue in criminal law, most obviously in the proverbial “eye for an eye,” in which the state intervenes on behalf of a victimized society and answers strength with strength (OPR, 373–74). The Outline most closely associates this form of justice with Master-tyrants. Yet, this means dealing with the reality of the time-tyrant problem.7 Kojève styles the aristocratic idea of justice as “indeed impossible” (OPR, 244). He does so for only one reason: it lies outside human time. Master-tyrants have no reason to relate to each other and in effect cannot relate to post-fight Slaves due to the time-tyrant problem (OPR, 244, 248–49). Or, as Kojève confesses: “the ideal of aristocratic Droit is … the absence of all interaction between Masters” (OPR, 244). In short, Kojève’s human time and the nature of Master-tyrants make the idea of even a society of Master-tyrants, united around an idea of justice (to say nothing of desire for desire), untenable. Why, then, bother to discuss? Kojève does so because the notion of rights-based claims of equality have great relevance – not in speaking of the relation between persons, but in terms of property, the relation of a person to a thing. It is thus no accident that the practical value of aristocratic Droit is in the area of property law, which, again, is exclusively based on entitlement through strength alone of one sort or another – the saw that “possession is nine-tenths of the law” would ring true in Kojève’s aristocratic Droit, having its vintage as it does in the expansionist Master-tyrant (OPR, 435–38). The idea of justice in aristocratic Droit is fundamentally static and exclusive (OPR, 249). This idea of justice is outside human time, incapable of implementation in it, as it has nothing to do with relations as to humans. The raw equality of aristocracy is thus not the basis for social cohesion; it echoes the time-tyrant problem. Thus, for a form of justice to evolve in time, it must be interactive, it must relate humans, each to an other. The Introduction affords a clue here, noting that history is the history of the Slave working on the idea of providing for Mastertyrant above Slave animal needs, but yet, this aspect of the desire for desire does not implicate justice. In contrast, the Slave experience of the Outline gives rise to still another “form” of Droit, based on equivalence, rather than equality. It relates closely to the Slave world of work, which is both explicitly in, and is, Kojèvian human time. This must be the case. Because of the time-tyrant dilemma, Master-tyrants cede the field of human endeavor to Slaves after the fight. For Kojève, equivalence contrasts with the “like for like” equality of aristocratic Droit. It is rooted in the post-fight experience of the Slave who offers subservience to the Master-tyrant in return for life (OPR, 251–52, 260, 274–75, 435–36). Work becomes the social coin of the realm. Not surprisingly, therefore,

this principle of equivalence and parity through agreement is the backbone of bourgeois Droit, the Droit of commerce and contract, neither of which aristocratic Droit countenance. But perhaps most prominently, this bourgeois idea of justice carries human time in all its aspects. The bourgeois dynamic of contract must do so, as each party considers the value of contributions different in kind. And the flexible contract dynamic will also consider aristocratic equality, or the status of the parties (OPR, 255, 257). It is thus not surprising that Kojève’s equivalence is what drives the evolution of the idea of justice over time. In introducing the juridical principle of equivalence, Kojève takes pains to distinguish it markedly from equality, as the exchange of unlikes is not like for like (OPR, 251–60). But this keeps the Master-tyrant in the environment of equivalence, and thus in human time as a principle – that of equality, not as a person. The Introduction emphasizes that the rebuff removes the Master-tyrant from the world of the Slave. Yet, the working and ascendant Slave and bourgeois accommodate difference, true to the principle of equivalence. The Slave adopts the point of view of this Master that he is only an animal, thus acknowledging that there cannot be the like for like justice of equality. The Slave thus acknowledges the Master-tyrant principle of equality, even if it is not effected. From there, the Slave sees the prospect of exchange, and a grudging acceptance of Slave work by the Master-tyrant. Second, the Slave assumes that to some extent the Master is like the Slave, not as an equal, but as a co-participant in time. The Slave “assumes that the Master gives him his security in exchange for servitude because he acknowledges the equivalence of these things” (OPR, 260). For the sake of equivalence, the social and relational, the Slave ignores the rebuff and keeps the Master-tyrant arguably in Kojèvian human time, at least via the fiction of post-fight exchange of the Master-tyrant’s grant to the Slave of survival in return for Slave work product. In short, without Master-tyrant justice, albeit from equality, equivalence could not occur. Different though both principles are, Kojève’s human time encompasses both. Kojève’s equity is the third of his forms of justice. It is also emblematic in the Outline of the end state as an entirely expected synthesis of equality and equivalence, the principled proxies of Master-tyrants and Slaves. Anticipating what Kojève will term the end condition “of all and of each” in “Tyranny and Wisdom” a decade later (OT, 146), the flexible character of equivalence extends to all. But equity also incorporates like for like equality in elevating, and reducing, each to the status of citizen in an end state. Kojève’s formulations as to equity underline the time-tyrant problem in various respects. True to the precedent of the Introduction, in which Kojève

consigns his clearest statement as to the politics of the end state to a footnote, and a belated one at that, the Outline is similarly and repeatedly less than surefooted as to what the end state means in juridical terms. The Outline indicates that “it is very possible” that the end state of equity “will never be realized” and writes that “[t]here is not a lot to say about the Justice of equity”8 At times, Kojève inclines toward describing the synthesized equality and equivalence of an end state as lacking that which they had been in aristocratic and bourgeois Droit; at other times, he reverts to the worn language of universality, homogeneity, and particularity (compare OPR, 267 with OPR, 272–73). Both the political and juridical end state, considered in isolation as unique, prove difficult to describe. On the other hand, the Outline provides for malleability in viewing social relations precisely as the advertised end state is considered in view of time phenomenology as understood through principles of justice. Kojève is at his most lucid on this point when he describes equity as a process of evolution of juridical principles over time, specifically from equivalence to equity.9 Most immediately, this says that the mentality of the Slave, the principle of equivalence, will lead to an end state. All of this is to remind that, whether in the political or the judicial realm, there is difficulty defining the end of time or the end of history as the terminus of a chronology. This is largely because the person of the Master-tyrant has vast complications entering time in order to end it, as the amalgam of the “god-Man” of Napoleon or Kojève’s largely misunderstood samurai attest. In contrast, the Outline views the end state as a mixture of ideals of justice, constantly evolving, and thereby eluding chronology. Consistent with Kojève’s own misgivings as to the full realization of equity, the little commentary there is on equity in the Outline refers to “(socialist) equity,” and rightly states that “[N]o advance blueprint is available of the positive right that merges as the final synthesis of equality and equivalence.”10 Indeed, a blueprint is difficult to discern. Equity is known for what it subtracts, not what it adds. Kojève removes aristocratic status from equality and the exclusively commercial from equivalence and exchange. That is, equity is best thought of as the diminution of the aristocratic in status, and a broadening of the scope and variety of things subject to exchange. The result enhances the status of things and the value of persons. The result is equity: the person becomes a thing, but nonetheless has elevated status as such. Accordingly, as the Outline ends, Kojève offers the following view: “But one can assume, or if one prefers, stipulate that the Empire will retain the phenomenon of Property, if only by preserving the idea of property constituted by the owner’s own body” (OPR, 471). The exclusive

character of status as aristocratic is lost as equity reduces all to the common denominator of the body. At the same time, equivalence now demands that the person has value – as property. In fact, the Outline concludes by referring to end state contracts as “status-like” because they touch on labor as bodily function and the value of work as action (OPR, 478). In short, the Outline’s end state is just a logical continuation of Kojève as time phenomenologist: the end state is bringing what had been timeless during time, status, into the inclusivity of the universal and homogeneous state, even as exchange becomes the mechanism advancing uniformity of the status of persons. Equity elevates but levels: “The anthropogenetic act creates a sui generis autonomous human existence, without one being able to say that there is a human being (a ‘soul’) outside of the natural being (the ‘body’)” (OPR, 215). Kojève makes this leveling but elevating move in the context of downplaying the fight (and its consequence, the time-tyrant dilemma), and celebrating work. In so speaking, Kojève emphasizes the breadth of work and its force in social integration through creating an “economic sphere” of interdependence, a sphere that Kojève demands will rival and challenge nature itself in scope (OPR, 215). The end state, such as it is, entails use of labor, the grist of Kojève’s human time, in leveling and raising status. As with the Introduction, Kojève’s Outline is remarkably prescient as to twenty-first century trends. Kojève’s formula for leveling status through elevating the importance of bodily exchange beckons images of “coolie capitalism” in China and the Dickensian mandarin mills serving as the world’s first true factories to the world. Progress through broken backs and severed limbs is nineteenth century; but securing world competitive advantage for progress is a twenty-first century phenomenon. This is because of the integrating force of interdependence in markets – one secured through leveling status and elevating exchanges of bodies. If the Outline matches the Introduction in descriptive power, Kojève also wants to demonstrate its new philosophic authority. And this means revising time phenomenology. Kojève begins the Outline at the core of his philosophy, by revising his understanding of phenomenology and the role of time in it. The phenomenology thus is not primarily about self and value of self, as in the Introduction, but rather about the observable, interactive, and social relations that integrate and bind. Hence, phenomenology must be about behavior and the objective, that which outside the subject will “create or alter something in the subject … but so that this is noticeable from the outside” (OPR, 37). And this means fine external nuances as well as the grandiose Chinas. Consistent with Kojève’s depiction of an ideal state as in its “germ,” might

not equality and equivalence coexist and blend more collaboratively outside the brutish influence of the person of the Master-tyrant? This “germ” means that movement to such an end state comes in all shapes and sizes. Hence, as Kojève’s famously portrayed depiction of America in the “Note to the Second Edition” of the Introduction suggests, we might look to the West for clues as to an ideal state, not to the East. There, the playing field for juridical principles may be more subtle yet more observable, and possibly freer of the politics of personality associated with the persons of Master-tyrants. Thus, the move from equivalence to equity, from time to celebration of exchange as timeless, need not entail only the spectacle of churning bodies in mandarin mills. The Outline’s juridical equity is all around us in most subtle ways, far from the boom of the cannon at Jena. The emergence of full-blown equivalence and its coexistence and indeed mingling with equality is still relatively fresh in mind.11 The West’s Gilded Age involved the collision of status with exchange as a leveler of that status. We might reference the social phenomenon of early twentieth-century dining. This leads to a look most particularly at a celebrated confrontation between Princeton’s President Woodrow Wilson and the university’s eating clubs. The strong-willed and authoritarian Wilson dearly wished to replace these bastions of status, located on Princeton’s Prospect Avenue. In an effort to promote a student psychology of openness through intellectual exchange, Wilson wanted the hub of social life to be the residential quadrangle, a veritable crossroads for the mixing of ideas and constant social flux, both figuratively and literally. From a Kojèvian perspective, Wilson viewed the eating clubs as a confluence of property and ossified social position, both characteristics of aristocratic equality as represented by a Princeton student body then exuding inherited wealth. At the same time, as befits equivalence on the way to equity, Wilson objected to the clubs, less for standing pat on status, and more for their arbitrary and arcane processes of exclusion. Wilson’s cherished residential quadrangle would celebrate an intellectual elite, but open the elite circle by means of robust exchange between faculty and students and between upper and under classmen.12 Each would bring something – a ripe prescription for exchanges among unlikes. Wilson wanted equivalence clearly ascendant over equality. But as it turns out, Prospect Avenue reflected change as explained by the interrelation of juridical principles, rather than authoritarian intervention. The Wilsonian solution fit the times, the “germ” of an end state in which aristocratic equality and bourgeois equivalence competed and then reconciled. Princeton’s students, scions of masters of bourgeois exchange, became the aristocracy of nouveau riche. At the same time, aristocracy served equivalence. Those

founding the eating clubs on Princeton’s Prospect Avenue elevated that most democratic of activities, eating, universal in practice and homogeneous for the fungibility of foods, by creating a parody of equivalence, thereby advertising it. As if to prove this, Wilson never quite secured his residential quadrangle. The end state is not the pure equivalence of intellectual labor and exchange Wilson would have wanted. Instead, status did yield to equivalence, as the clubs revised standards without necessarily relaxing them, championing equivalence implicitly by promoting student diversity and demonstrated social initiative – the conviviality of the fresh and unexpected receiving unlike social experiences.13 Participation gives rise to a new found status (but status nonetheless). Not unlike the end state occasionally referred to by Kojève, status does not disappear; rather it derives its strength from incorporating equivalence into equality. A survey of Prospect Avenue shows something like the Outline’s synthetic equity at work, leveling status by means of underlining the importance of diversity and exchange. Equity, being emblematic of the “germ” of the end state, offers its twists and turns. Kojève admits as much. In opting for ideas over characters, the Outline plainly states that Master-tyrants may at times champion bourgeois exchange, as did the status-seeking masterly denizen founding families of the eating clubs. The Outline is equally adamant that those advancing exchange may do so in the name of a new standard for status, as did Wilson in championing the quadrangle as a bastion of scholarly excellence (OPR, 235–36). In emphasizing ideas over characters, the Kojève of the Outline thereby suggests something quite novel: the much vaunted end state is less the terminus on a temporal continuum, a temporal end point, and more a state of mind reflective of the synthesis of equality and equivalence that equity represents. In fact, in marked contrast to the Introduction, which tracks history as we might conventionally understand it, the Outline is more content to emphasize the content of ideas of justice, less inclined to place them in factual context. It is certainly true that Kojève sees ideas of justice altering over time and that these alterations correspond roughly with what a conventional history might refer to as periods of first aristocratic, then bourgeois, dominance. However, the Outline principally views time, always Kojève’s critical coordinate, as the interaction of the ideas of equality, equivalence, and equity. As noted, equality is not capable of social implementation, as Master-tyrants do not relate with each other and the absence of relation means the absence of time. The time-tyrant problem is pervasive. This leaves Slaves to implement ideas of justice. However, the Outline reasons that they cannot do so as Slaves. By default, the formation of Droit, the implementation of justice, is left to citizens. As Kojève notes: “All

Droit in force, therefore, is more or less synthetic: a Droit of the Citizen, a state of becoming” (OPR, 237). The idea of equity, the purported end state, is actually recurrent throughout history. Thus, Kojève caps the Outline’s summary of the historical evolution of Droit by saying: “In truth, i.e. for us, man is always a Citizen – that is simultaneously Master and Slave (and therefore neither Master nor Slave)” (OPR, 231). In short, Kojève’s “always” means that the timeless, a synthetic state of equity and its citizen, for example, can be coextensive with becoming, with time. Rather than a structured five-course meal of haute cuisine in which all leads to a savory end state and equity, Kojèvian justice is more like a smorgasbord of timeless principles in which societies over history can partake and mix as they like. True to this book’s view that time, and not the end of history, is central to Kojève’s thought, equity, a supposed ultimate state, reverberates throughout the human experience. The corporeal, bare bones economics of Dickensian London surely reverberates in the mandarin mills of the Middle Kingdom; the turn of the century polemic over the meaning of Prospect Avenue previews current discussions about what it means to be a true meritocracy, as we anguish over the “hype” versus the reality of rankings of America’s 100 “top universities.” It is indeed not hard to see the consideration of diversity and inclusiveness versus status as a recurring human theme. Accordingly, the Outline discharges the discharge of the Introduction’s cannon of Jena as a means to explain the end state, and the untenable time-tyrant problem.14 Instead of Slaves and Master-tyrants as characters, the forms of equivalence and equality offer a more malleable means to synthesis to the end state. It is therefore tempting to posit the Outline as an alternate juridical plot line to the untenable politics of the persons of Master-tyrants in the Introduction. Yet, a resort to the Kojèvian Real suggests that the personae of Mastertyrants, and Kojèvian politics, is not so easily discarded. Politics does, in fact, infiltrate the juridical. Here, it is really helpful to distinguish between the absolute sui generis “idea of Justice” and its manifestation in Droit, the on-theground events that might be said to constitute “actualized” justice. This latter involves the dispensing of justice “at the point of sword” and has been in the tyrannical repertoire for quite some time. Indeed, Uzbekistan’s President Karimov to this very day hearkened back to Tamerlane as a model Uzbek ruler, a no-nonsense type claiming descent from Genghis Khan and controlling a large swath of Central Asia in the 1400s, based on what we might call a program of “law and order” with a heavy emphasis on the latter. The point is that political dominance and justice have mixed, as both the political and the juridical are

“actualized.”

Practical Implications of Kojève’s Turn in the Outline As we occasionally saw in Chapter 2, Kojève’s approach offers something that neither traditional political philosophy nor modern social science is particularly good at explaining. As to the former, Kojève seems to stand traditional notions of tyranny on their head, for much of pre-Kojèvian political philosophy had held departure from, not adherence to, legal norms as a hallmark of the tyrant.15 For its part, modern social science seems content to extend the logic of traditional political philosophy, viewing the law as something to be manipulated by Mastertyrants.16 Neither captures the deference that the Master-tyrant seems to accord the juridical as a stabilizing influence. In fact, Kojève’s juridical path seems to have the effect of preserving tyranny strictly as a political phenomenon, yet organizing society juridically, thereby marginalizing the time-tyrant problem. This is done precisely by confining the Master-tyrant outside Kojèvian time and as an exception to the “idea of Justice.” When Master-tyrants do meddle in the juridical by advancing a “form” of Droit, this orders Kojèvian human time and strengthens the patchwork of interactive societies such as the family, the academy, and even the church, all of which live alongside the political and require accommodation (OPR, 132, 142). And Master-tyrants will so engage through juridical relations, not to establish but to perpetuate control. It is not at all implausible to imagine modern day Tamerlanes, who relish manipulation of the juridical to sustain the political. The game of musical chairs played out in 2002–03 over the presidency of Venezuela challenges both the traditional assumptions that tyranny is inimical to institutional authority and that it enjoys little popular support. A large portion of the participating Venezuelan public mobilized in the political arena that is “the street,” to support the engaging, but in many ways eccentric and removed, President Hugo Chavez and resist a coup d’état against a leader who appropriated Venezuelan law via decree and executive fiat to enhance legitimacy. In so doing, Chavez boosters seem the very model of imposing citizen-henchmen employed as instruments of a Mastertyrant. As the Outline emphasizes, the political preserve of the state, and Mastertyrants, is absolute, while the judicial realm ensures that the honeycomb of interactive social interests is integrated by the buffer of Droit. The committed citizen partisans taking to the street for Chavez were also compensated workers and reconciled family members. Droit provided their interconnecting societies

sufficient social ballast to support the existing political regime. Yet, Kojève’s Outline presents the “Citizen” as the synthetic product of the juridical, suggesting an integrity to juridical form and to timelessness. But if so, is the timeless of the Outline more akin to that maintained by Leo Strauss than to the timelessness of the Introduction?17 Might the juridical and ideal thereby inform the political, keeping the citizen in the street, in time, rather than sythetical in an end state? Chapters 6–7 will address these and other issues.

Notes 1 Auffret, 377, 379–92. 2 Howse and Frost, 2–3, 24. 3 The argument here is subtle and a coordination of two points already made. First, as noted above, the bourgeois is, for Kojève, an idea. See Chapter 3, See footnote 34 and accompanying text supra. But in “Tyranny and Wisdom” Kojève very definitely gives the bourgeois a face the bourgeois otherwise lacks: the face of the bourgeois who happens to be a Master-tyrant. In such an alteration, there is arguably no place for action on an idea for its sake. Rather utility is paramount; therefore, in this instance, Kojève’s reference to seeking glory could be regarded as the desire for desire. Compare Chapter 3, footnote 40 and accompanying text supra with OT, 140–44. 4 It is certainly the case that Kojève scholarship is divided on the exact connection between the Outline and the remainder of his work. One commentator emphasizes Kojève’s dissociation from the Outline, as if to suggest that it is an aberration from his work on the end of history as presented in the Introduction. On the other hand, Auffret, perhaps the most definitive biographer of the intellectual Kojève, views the Outline as just an extension of Kojève’s abiding preoccupation with the end of history and, in particular, as a vision of the universal and homogeneous society (compare Roth, “A Note on Kojève’s ‘Phenomenology of Right’,” 450 with Auffret, 22–31). Interestingly, although Roth’s most extended treatment of Kojève emphasizes an ironic period of his work in which he sees himself at the end of history yet continues to philosophize, Roth makes little attempt to reconcile this point with Kojève’s Outline (Roth, Knowing and History, 88). 5 The approach of this chapter is needed. Even though commentary styles the Outline Kojève’s most original work and upbraids Kojève scholars for failing to come to grips with it, the same commentary merely asserts the connection between the Outline and “Tyranny and Wisdom.” No effort is expended to demonstrate why or how. Compare Howse and Frost, 3 on the Outline’s uniqueness with Frost, 595 positing the influence of the Outline on Kojève’s “Tyranny and Wisdom” without elaboration. 6 Use of the term “system” here does not connote an institution. For example, Kojève’s disinterested third party may be a legislature or the police as well as a judge (OPR, 160). 7 Consistent with the view of the Introduction that the time-tyrant problem is an existential impasse, the Outline refers to the post-fight Master-tyrant as non-existent. OPR, 213. 8 OPR, 92–93, 268–69. Even commentary saluting the Outline as indispensable for an understanding of the end state concedes a lack of clarity as to its evolution. See note 10 infra and accompanying text. 9 OPR, 213, 474–79; Howse and Frost, 2. Thus, it is completely true that Kojève gives a far more detailed accounting of the end state in the Outline than in the Introduction. But this is because he voids the persons of Master-tyrants and the time-tyrant dilemma in favor of principles. 10 Howse and Frost, 13, 17. 11 Without reference to Princeton and Wilson, Kojève speaks most concretely about the insinuation of equivalence into equality in relying on one of philosophy’s most revered analogies as to justice, the

apportionment of food among diners of different means and appetites (OPR, 269). 12 Axell, The Making of Princeton University: From Woodrow Wilson to the Present, 14–15. 13 Ibid., 16. 14 In addition to Howse and Frost, other contemporary scholarship on Kojève has tended to avoid the details of the Outline as given above and to reconcile it to the Introduction along the more general lines of the Kojèvian end state (Roth, Knowing and History, 116). The problem is that such analyses focus on Kojève’s end of history without examining the import of the time-tyrant dilemma in Kojève’s history. See Chapter 2, note 22 and accompanying text supra. Without such a perspective, promises to deal with the details of the Outline in the context of Kojève’s other work only result in an acknowledgment of Kojève’s end state as a “nightmare” (compare Roth, Knowing and History, 106 n27 with Roth, “A Note on Kojève’s ‘Phenomenology of Right’,” 450). Actually, the conclusion of Kojève’s Outline very nearly openly acknowledges the possibility of a totalitarian end state, with the state claiming even the bodies of its citizens. But Kojève pulls back from allowing this most fundamental violation of the person, granting the citizen this aspect of property (OPR, 471–73). The retrenchment is the final coup de grâce by the Outline to possible control by the state, the Outline’s heir apparent to the Master-tyrant. Consistent with that part of the Outline dealing with Kojèvian human time, Kojève seeks to protect the most private aspects of individual lives from heavy-handed political authority, thereby allowing a respite from Master-tyrants and an outlet from the complications of the time-tyrant dilemma for being able to posit Droit as an alternate organizing element in society. See discussion of significance of Kojève’s economic homogeneity in text infra. 15 See e.g., Rousseau, The Social Contract, bk. 3, ch. 6; Boesche, Theories of Tyranny, 2–3. 16 One commentator has argued that there is no modern theory of tyranny that comes with a historical perspective (Boesche, Theories of Tyranny, 17–18). This critic maintains that political science has been taken with classification and identification in studying tyranny, at the expense of studying, as does Kojève, how tyrannies function (Ibid., 462–63). For an example of the modern trend to classification at work, see Carlton, Faces of Despotism, 10–20. Looking to function, Kojève holds that appropriation of, rather than resistance to, law is a key aspect of Kojèvian tyranny, dedicated as Master-tyrants are to the imposition of universals. See note 22 in Chapter 1 supra. 17 Here it is important to remember that Kojève attributes his thinking on the ancients, particularly as to Plato, to both Strauss and Jacob Klein. Preface, CTD, 33; see also Paris, Kojève to Strauss, February 17, 1959, OT, 304.

6 As Sand-Patties Become Sand Castles Enter Kojève’s Bourgeois Tyrant

The Move Toward a Master-Tyrant at Work It would take the horrific losses in battle by terrific tyrannies in Berlin, Tokyo, and Rome, the consolidation of the grip of a surviving Master-tyrant from the Elbe to the steppe of Eurasia, and the atomic age to do it. But Kojève finally came to admit that tyranny is more than, and perhaps mostly not just about, winning fights. In his post-war work, Kojève comes to explicitly accept that Master-tyrants are about survival, not just winning fights, and that this survival comes through a kind of working – working on ideas. This chapter will detail how the time dynamic of the Outline, with action on timeless ideas, pervades and informs Kojève’s post-Introduction politics. Kojève’s Outline and his “Tyranny and Wisdom” bracket the post-war period of evolution in his work. “Tyranny and Wisdom” might be thought of as an addendum to the Outline, as the commencement of Chapter 5 suggests. As we have seen, “Tyranny and Wisdom” defends and, in fact, enlivens the citizen of the street celebrated by Chavez and might be said to caricature same through the precocious citizen-henchman. But foremost as to the time phenomenologist, to be in the street is to be in time, not its end. The Outline is at least open to the proposition that ideas, especially juridical ones reflecting social relations, can determine politics: Droit is inseparable from the Society or the State where it is realized. If a State or Society cannot exist without Droit, neither can Droit exist in actuality without a State or Society or an autonomous Society. And statesanctioned Droit is nothing other than the realization and manifestation of this interdependence between the State and Droit. (OPR, 160) Though indebted to the Outline, “Tyranny and Wisdom” returns to the idea of

the persona of the Master-tyrant, at least in part, though not the Master-tyrant of the Introduction. The power of the juridical informing the political means doing so through ideas, not the characters of the Master-tyrant and the Slave. “In truth, i.e. for us, man is always a Citizen – that is simultaneously Master and Slave (and therefore neither Master nor Slave).” In stating that one is neither Master-tyrant nor Slave, Kojève seems to discount the politics of human time in the Introduction, which insists that man is either Master or Slave (compare IRH, 8 with OPR, 231). In stressing that one is both Master-tyrant and Slave, or simultaneously so, the Outline abandons desire for desire as the original animating force in political life. Desire for desire evaporates when one is self-directed, rather than directed to an other. Thus, Kojève’s reference to “always a Citizen” means that citizenship is not the product of an end state in the temporal sense, but rather the product of dialogue in time between equality and equivalence.1 One is only a citizen, simultaneously a Master-tyrant and a Slave, yet neither, by the abiding presence and interplay of the ideas of equality and equivalence leading to equity, as rooted in the timeless ideas of pre-fight consent, parity, and mutuality. The Outline leads to a revolutionary view of Master-tyrants, as well as citizens, so as to escape the time-tyrant problem. In organization as well as scope, the Outline rivals the Introduction. True, Kojève’s Outline never comes close to saying “Justice is Time.” This Kojèvian deadpan is not in the Outline in the way that “Man is Time” and “Time is Man” are in the Introduction. And, as will be demonstrated, it is equally a watershed for its connection to “Tyranny and Wisdom.” To recall the dramatic turn of “Tyranny and Wisdom” noted in at the outset of Chapter 5, Kojève the outrageous turns into Kojève the impudent. Seemingly without warning in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” within lines of including the tyrant described by Xenophon’s Simonides in the stable of those outlandish outlaws, aristocratic Master-tyrants, Kojève depicts the bourgeois as a child alone on a beach, making sand-patties which he will perhaps never show anyone; or a painter covering the cliffs of some desert island with drawings, knowing all the while that he will never leave it. Thus, although that is an extreme case: [A] man can aspire to tyranny in the same way that a “conscientious” and “enthusiastic” workman can aspire to adequate conditions for his labor … [I]n general the “bourgeois” statesman who renounces glory on principle, will exercise his hard political “trade” only if he has a “laborer’s” mentality. And he will want to justify his tyranny as nothing but a necessary condition

for the success of his “labor.” (OT, 141) Kojève profiles a bourgeois side to the Master-tyrant that in three respects enables Kojève to escape from the desire for desire and the ensuing time-tyrant dilemma of the post-fight rebuff. First, the bourgeois in the Master-tyrant in “Tyranny and Wisdom” as a child fashioning sand-patties alone does so in the name of transforming an “ ‘idea’ ” or even an “ ‘ideal’.” In so doing, the bourgeois aspect of the Master-tyrant eschews the desire for honor, recognition, the desire to be desired (OT, 140–41). Tyranny is thus a means to realizing ideals rather than the Introduction’s path to validation of self-value. Second, the bourgeois in the Master-tyrant is not fully political, as the bourgeois does not demonstrate desire for desire. In its most extreme form, this aspect of the Master-tyrant entails action for the sake of labor “alone,” just as the bourgeois labors alone (OT, 140–41). Left to his own devices, this Master-tyrant is not only non-political, but is non-relational.2 The question then becomes how the time-tyrant problem is avoided, as it appears as if Kojève has merely presented another way to view the Master-tyrant in isolation, as a recluse in isolated labor rather than an active agent of scorn through the post-fight rebuff. We now have the reason for Kojève’s emphasis on those ubiquitous and energetic citizen-henchmen. Kojève introduces these actors, who are key because they act in time on behalf of the workmanlike-but-isolated bourgeois Master-tyrant. But, with the citizen-henchmen, Kojève makes a more subtle point. Kojève is far less concerned with the founding of a tyrannical regime through the fight, and far more concerned with issues of regime maintenance through citizen-henchmen. The position in time of even the bourgeois Mastertyrant may be opaque as Kojève styles citizen-henchmen acting on order from “authority” on high (OT, 145). Nonetheless, “Tyranny and Wisdom” makes clear that it is the imposing citizen who actualizes the ideas of the bourgeois Mastertyrant in ensuring continuation of tyranny. These first two characteristics of the bourgeois tyranny illustrate how, consistent with the Outline, ideas matter, yet also how the bourgeois in the Master-tyrant might be said to act in time through the agency of imposing citizens. Third, the bourgeois tyranny in “Tyranny and Wisdom” indicates that time, and not its end, resolves the time-tyrant problem. The condition of the Outline’s “Citizen” is less that of man at the end of time, far more the product of what

happens in time, of “compromise” leaving the Citizen “more or less stable and viable” (OPR, 242, 254). This is not the language of climax but rather of maintenance, of stability. From here, it is not difficult to see Kojève’s move to the continuing importance of citizenship in “Tyranny and Wisdom” with emphasis on dutiful citizen action on behalf of the prosaic Master-tyrant to preserve and expand tyrannical regimes. Accordingly, the regimes are very much the product of time, not time’s end, and of Kojève’s time-consuming activity, labor, as the foundation of the end state, “the collective labor of all and of each.”3 This recalls the time-based, synthetic end state of equity in the Outline. Given these three reasons, it is critical to understand in what respect. Kojève intends to relegate the human time of the Introduction as an element in explaining a social order, and to replace the time-tyrant problem4 with a juridical order as a social integrating force. The timelessness of ideas prevails. That which is timeless precedes time. In the Outline, this is mutuality, parity, and an idea of exchanging one’s sense of value of another in return for justice, for receiving one’s due. The fight and the ensuing rebuff in Kojèvian time do not do this. However, the urge to restore timelessness, meaning pre-fight parity, mutuality, and consent,5 through the application of justice in time, does. The Outline thus seems to suggest “Tyranny and Wisdom.” But a careful examination of how the Outline’s juridical realm of ideas might be transported to the political realm of “Tyranny and Wisdom” is required.

Kojève’s Broad Understanding of the Political Through the Jurisprudential Where Droit is, Kojève maintains, so, too, is society. As labor is the business of society even in the Introduction, it is not surprising that the Outline assumes a decidedly economic bent, especially in view of equivalence and most especially exchange (OPR, 178–79, 290). In so doing, Kojève will bypass the desire for desire, and expand consideration of human endeavor, beyond the first anthropogenetic act of the fight. But true to Kojève, where there is society and jurisprudence, there is time and the human. The question then becomes whether this movement might be expanded beyond the human endeavor of economics to a new human endeavor for politics beyond the desire for desire and the fight. The conclusion of the Outline’s Part 1 has it that the political and the jurisprudential are “complementary and inseparable …” while one of the opening chapters of Part 2 states that however the Outline deals in ideals, those ideals must relate to actual

social interactions (OPR, 171, 233). The economic realm goes beyond the animal. But the Introduction holds that this is because Slave labor takes one outside animal fear after the fight. In contrast, in the Outline, equivalence is necessarily a “taking account of the point of view of the interested parties” (OPR, 253). One ventures beyond the self-centeredness of the desire for desire to consider others in an encompassing and inclusive politics. This inclusiveness of political audience culminates in “Tyranny and Wisdom” as Kojève holds that the audience for the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant is the citizen engaged in the ostensibly economic activity of labor, but to political purpose, as “the collective labor of all and of each” is a state that is “politically and socially homogeneous.” Economic labor has not just the goal, but the political “outcome” (OT, 146) as if to underline that even the ideal state runs on that staple of human time, labor. And where there is labor, so there is the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. The end of the Outline foresees as much. In its conclusion, Kojève foresees a further division in political life, one beyond the Introduction’s ironclad difference between Master-tyrants and Slaves. This is the difference between political “governors” and Master-tyrants. The latter is relevant only in the context of the fight; the former is concerned with post-fight order and stability. And Kojève makes clear that the governor is a citizen (OPR, 337–39). And the Outline makes clear that a vast popular audience undergirds the political authority of the governor, holding that familial and economic interests support the political order as such, a clear reference to post-fight concerns for legitimacy and stability. It is the governor of the Outline, not the Master-tyrant of the fight, who upholds this expanded political order (OPR, 337–39). Rather than being limited to discernable commercial interaction, the Outline concludes with the argument that it is exchange, engagement, that links any product of labor to society. “Tyranny and Wisdom” resonates with applying this to ideas, and what ideas gain in exchange. Kojève will address this in three ways that truly underline the use of the economic character of the Outline to expand politics in “Tyranny and Wisdom.” First, the bourgeois Master-tyrant consciously agrees to “renounce” the desire for desire. In exchange, the bourgeois in the Master-tyrant secures a pleasure from “carrying out his project” (OT, 140–41). The second closely relates to this initial quid pro quo. In a variation of the first kind of exchange, the isolated bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant, the child “alone on a beach,” becomes selfeffacing, becomes the idea or the project. In return for the self-effacement, this bourgeois in the Master-tyrant secures societal resources in the form of citizenhenchmen, responding, not to the charisma of a leader, but to a selfless

“authority” that derives its force from eliciting popular appeal “spontaneously,”6 or for being isolated. Again, “ideas” form the basis of the appeal of the authority to citizen-henchmen in Kojève’s core presentation of the nature of tyranny. Kojève goes on to link the isolated bourgeois in the Master-tyrant to citizenhenchmen in the street through that broker of ideas presented in Chapter 4, the Kojèvian intellectual mediator. Third, he argues that proponents of ideas of the bourgeois Master-tyrant must test a “market place,” the market being exactly the Outline’s situs for exchange (OT, 155 with OPR, 434). The mode of exchange clearly extends the logic of Outline to the political realm of “Tyranny and Wisdom.” Two accomplices already mentioned in this book, the intellectual mediator and the citizen-henchman, illustrate a larger point. The particular labor that is the exchange of idea for act, for implementation, places the broader politics of “Tyranny and Wisdom” squarely in Kojèvian time. Both accomplices draw the difference between the isolated timelessness of the post-fight Master-tyrant of the Introduction and the constructive isolation of the bourgeois in the Mastertyrant in “Tyranny and Wisdom.” Indeed, it is the craft of the intellectual mediator to ensure that the ideas of the isolated bourgeois Master-tyrants may be actualized given the times. And insofar as Kojève’s yeomanlike citizenhenchmen are receptive, it is because such ideas are generated “spontaneously”7 or free from desire for desire. Both accomplices underline the case for the uniqueness of the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. And, on reexamination, we see that they do so in joining the bourgeois side of Master-tyrants in the trek from isolation of hand-crafted sand-patties to the grand project of actualization in time, socially admired sand castles. The potential for actualization gives ideas their value. It is only in time, in “the historical plane of active social life,” that ideas are put to the test through works and fights (OT, 168). This suggests most precisely the exchange of ideas for acts in the capacious market place of the social and political environment. In fact, “Tyranny and Wisdom” attributes the ability to determine when ideas are prime for exchange as both critical to the art of the thinker, and particularly Kojève’s intellectual mediator, and critical to securing their maximum value, which is to say their maximum historical impact (OT, 148, 174–75). Time and the idea thus interrelate. It is not the charisma of the removed eccentric that supports tyranny. Rather, it is the control of social institutions by the in time bourgeois side of the Mastertyrant. This aspect of Master-tyrants of the modern’s modern not only snubs the institutions of “imagined republics,”8 for this is the task of a mere modern, but, continually fashions and refashions ideas, juridical, economic and otherwise, to

fit the circumstances through citizen henchmen and intellectual mediators. In this sense, the traditional models of tyranny as a reactive, cyclical phenomenon that resist the juridical order are not so much wrong as irrelevant to Kojève. Droit enables him to maintain a historically comprehensive view of tyranny as inevitable, while ensuring that there is nothing against which the tyrannical regime need necessarily react. The juridical socializes Master-tyrants, but also presents opportunities for control through conferring post-fight legitimacy. Control of the juridical realm not only facilitates control of society and diminishes possibilities of developing an effective political opposition to Master-tyrants, but, as we have just seen, is the basis for the exchange between ideas and acts in an expanded political realm without the desire or desire. But in looking at Kojève’s post-Introduction expanded politics without desire for desire, might there be politics outside of Kojèvian human time? We turn briefly to this.

Kojève’s Noble and Ignoble Political Animals Two of the few commentators analyzing the Outline write as follows: Far from being beasts, nihilists or even playful snobs, the inhabitants of this final order will be citizens, workers and members of families, with reciprocal rights and duties appropriate to these human roles, whose distinctively human needs are met through recognition in work and love in the family.9 The same page goes on to indicate that the Outline marks a departure from the Introduction, that the Outline provides a rich view of such a state, and that the Outline is unique, having little connection with “Tyranny and Wisdom.” This book will take the view that the first two of the three are most certainly correct, as already maintained. But it will also take the view that the Outline very definitely integrates with the post-Introduction corpus. The unifying theme is the need to eliminate the desire for desire from an accounting of matters political, and most especially its residue, the time-tyrant problem. As always, one begins to look at the worker state depicted in the Outline from the standpoint of Kojève the time phenomenologist. As suggested at the outset of Chapter 5, consistent with the Outline’s view that justice is peculiarly human: “citizens, workers and members of families” live free of desire for desire but nonetheless as humans organized in a series of honeycombed small communities

interrelating through commercial, cultural, and social associations drawn to justice through the hopes of mutual profit and reciprocal love10 as manifest by Droit in its various forms. In short, the commentary quoted above and the Outline attest to a politically viable alternative to the desire for desire and the time-tyrant problem – and a more positive view of the force of the human in social life. Far from having no influence on Kojève’s latter corpus, the Outline’s idea of a community united by ideas most certainly finds a place in “Tyranny and Wisdom” and its consideration of the “ ‘political’ in the broad sense of the term” (OT, 145). And he does so at a critical juncture of “Tyranny and Wisdom,” when he defines tyranny by ingredient, imposing citizen-henchmen, spontaneity, the remote authority, and the like. In fact, Kojève’s definition is an exercise in the expansion of political community, moving from narrow rule by violence and terror to the broader means of control by ideas from remote authority (OT, 144– 45). Evolution from the Outline’s force of juridical ideas to political ideas having the force of authority and spontaneity is evident. This relates closely to a second aspect of tyranny Kojève provides in “Tyranny and Wisdom.” This concerns extending equivalence and its instrument, exchange. The implication of the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant in idea-foract exchange has already been discussed. However, equivalence and exchange in the realm of ideas also works its way downward to implicate citizen-henchmen. The ruled need not accept the content of an idea advanced by the bourgeois Master-tyrant. But they very much need to accept the gravitas, the “ ‘authority’,” of the ruler seeking to impose it (OT, 144–45). On multiple occasions, Kojève uses the characteristic of spontaneity11 to emphasize that citizens ruled do not accept ideas out of desire for the Master-tyrant, but rather accede to authority, an authority that is unmistakenly related to political notions of stature, even legitimacy. Third, as does the Outline, “Tyranny and Wisdom” treats the end state as a continuation of that which occurs in human time. As noted, the Outline views equity as a matter that can prevail in any society, at any period, given the right conditions. Similarly, the most precise statement in “Tyranny and Wisdom” as to the end “State” is “the goal and the outcome” of the “collective labor of all and of each” (OT, 146). As not only a goal but an outcome, this state is contemporaneous with labor, and as such is not a temporal end state but an ongoing process in time. Such a state is a true Kojèvian time piece, as much so as the solid Hegelian table noted in Chapter 2. Combining these three aspects, what kind of individual would, as political, be in community, responsive to authority and the product of a process?

Process, authority, community, and status as an individual outside desire for desire – these are the Kojèvian essentials as to citizenship in a universal and homogeneous state under the auspices of a bourgeois Master-tyrant. This expanded political realm embraces not only the economic, but the realm of thought as well. How is Kojève’s end state “(socialist)” – at least parenthetically so, as noted by commentary?12 As noted above, Kojève’s answer in the Outline is the only sense in which it can be: by allowing ostensibly politically homogeneous citizens to sustain their existence with the most minimal of economic resources, their bodies – thereby reducing homogeneity to subsistence economics.13 So corporeal and minimalist is Kojève’s whole notion of property that its juridical boundaries are apparently defined by a stomach pump: The piece of cheese I have already swallowed is clearly “mine”: no one has the droit to take it from my stomach. In that case, then, the cheese I have grasped in order to swallow is also “mine”; and the cheese that I have “acquired” in some way or another is equally mine. (OPR, 472–73) Whereas the economic man of the “return to animality” of the Introduction is a consumer, the economic man of the Outline is a beset producer. Kojève’s socialism is thus based on a shift from a political homogeneity in which all receive all, to an economic homogeneity in which each gets enough14 – and just enough at that. At the same time, the body brings with it the soul. Kojève states: “The anthropogenetic act creates a sui generis autonomous human existence, without one being able to say that there is a human being (a ‘soul’) outside of the natural being (the ‘body’)” (OPR, 215). The end state of equity thus carries implications for the self in the most profound sense. The sense in which leveling is enabling is embodied in the self-sufficient wise man. This leveling to austere corporeal terms nonetheless intersects with Kojève’s expanded politics. In the realm of equity, each is recognized by the all of politics. Hence, the “collective labor” of “Tyranny and Wisdom” impoverishes economically, but ennobles politically. In writing of labor and politics, Kojève notes with emphasis: In fact, the political man … will be fully “satisfied” only when he is at the head of a State that is not only universal but also politically and socially homogeneous … that is to say of a State that is the goal and the outcome of the collective labor of all and of each.

(OT, 146) There is enough soul in the body to make a citizen, whose labor, free from desire for desire, in the context of the collective, sustains the mentality of the end state. Politically, labor equates with actualization, the execution of an idea and its transformation into society. Indeed, the citizen labor of “Tyranny and Wisdom” leaves behind the Slave labor of the Introduction, and the desire for desire.15 As we have seen, the very definition of tyranny relies less on fear and violence than appeal to animal instincts, a point Kojève makes in subordinating the “label tyranny in the perjorative sense” to the broader political sense of tyranny that includes citizens, not the Introduction’s Slaves (OT, 145). Instead, Kojève is more interested in the idea-for-act exchange, with citizen-henchmen and intellectual mediators coming to the fore. They provide the basis for actualization of ideas. Yet, and profoundly, Kojève insists from the outset of “Tyranny and Wisdom” that the Kojèvian thinker, including the philosopher, be subordinated to the political labor of actualization. All thinkers thereby become part of Kojève’s expanded political base, one going quite beyond the Slaves of the Introduction. But a detectable change in Kojève the time phenomenologist is at work; therein lies the explanation for the profound change. Time in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” and even the time of the Kojèvian thinker, is less characterized by the Introduction’s making through fights and works, and far less propelled by the desire for desire. Instead, time is a factor to which one is subject and, thus, something the political actor can lose. Hence, from beginning to end in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” the Kojèvian thinker of any variety is severely dependent on the “ ‘current business’ ” of the Master-tyrant (OT, 137, 165). Circumstances, and temporal circumstances, severely limit the impact of an idea. More to the point, Kojève, in addressing Strauss, speaks of problems of temporality and finitude (OT, 163, 165), in contrast to the double dare, which saw time as an extension of the human, defining the very human in man. As a consequence, Kojève’s concern, expressed repeatedly, is whether the thinker can devote “all of one’s time” to the service of Master-tyrants (OT, 163, 165). The time of “Tyranny and Wisdom” thus constrains the community rather than expressing it, is for the having and the losing, not for the making. Ideas and their bearers, Kojèvian thinkers, are thus subject to the constraints of other citizens. We are in the realm of the political as ordinarily understood. What had been an idea becomes adapted to the social, in the form of a “project”16 or, in the language of “Tyranny and Wisdom,” that which must be “actualized” (OT, 139). Exchange of idea for act makes the idea social. The transition from idea to

project makes the idea political, and attests to the need to attain and retain tyrannical status, and to the nature of the bourgeois effort. This aspect of “Tyranny and Wisdom” thus explains why and how it is that the isolated, bourgeois side Master-tyrant, inclined to the realm of ideas, can not only enter human time, but make us conceive of time politically speaking in the more ordinary sense. And here, we again encounter the opportunities afforded by Kojève, and the complications of time phenomemology. As foreseen in the end of the Outline, the very model of this new sweatshop “coolie capitalism” has the state permitting just enough man in the citizen to retain his body for barter as labor within the economic society of Kojève’s judicial realm. The expanded politics of “Tyranny and Wisdom” has collective labor as a hallmark of citizenship. What, then, of Kojève’s claim in the Introduction that the wise man is the exemplary citizen of a final state? True to the skin and bones laborer of the Outline’s post-historical, animal time,17 the wise man seems to epitomize a kind of temporal austerity to match the physical austerity of the laborer. How does the wise man labor? The wise man’s production is rooted in reflection, the reflections of the wise. Reflection, a hallmark of contact with timelessness in the best sense of the Kojèvian wise man, is a blend of sufficiency of self, containment within one’s body, and relation with others through activity not based on desire for desire. This is reflection of one’s self-sufficiency in relation to others. The self-sufficiency resonates in an absence of desire for desire and hence a timelessness (IRH, 93). One recalls the Outline’s formula for timeless disposition as to what will become social relations: each pre-fight combatant merely “assumes that the other’s consent has the same nature as his own” (OPR, 221). The self-sufficiency of the wise man permits a similarly momentous determination as to political relations in timelessness: there are none. The wise man is in a closed social system, in contrast to the Outline’s open one relying increasingly on exchange. But both feed on minimalism, either in the form of a leveling corporeality in the case of the worker-citizen, or in the form of the isolated, self-sufficient wise man. The wise man’s austerity means reflection. Understood as bare bones from the economic perspective, that labor is self-affirming, tranquilizing in the broad sense of Kojève’s politics, and reflective. Kojève’s pairing of wisdom and animal status may seem strange. However, as noted, his crowning temporal description of the end state is that of a “return to animality” and the absence of desire for desire.18 And Kojève’s time phenomenology and proof by circularity seem to demand it. True to Kojèvian circularity in which “each question is its own answer” (IRH, 94), the wise man

reflects self-contentment free of desire for desire, in the timeless, and, if not quite a return to animality, a “back to the basics.” That such reflection may be received makes the collective labor of the universal and homogeneous unlike desirous of desire Slave work. Circularity demands that matters end as they began, with an idea having no reference in time. This is the essence of Kojève’s self-contained, reflecting and reflected wise man. The Outline and its extension in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” as argued in this chapter, lead to the bourgeois Master-tyrant as a solution to Kojèvian time phenomenology and the time-tyrant problem in particular. One understanding of Kojève, gleaned from reading portions of the Introduction’s “Note to the Second Edition” holds that if work is the staple of Kojèvian human time, the end of the latter must mean the end of work. Yet, if so, how can equity, which deals with the distribution of resources, govern a listless social condition in which no one works and no one cares? The choice is thus between an end state in which equity is key and work therefore comes back into the picture or a time phenomenology in which work and equity are of no importance.19 The former would severely amend Kojèvian time phenomenology as presented in the Introduction; the latter would contradict the Outline. Perhaps this is why, as suggested above, only a select audience of Kojève scholars deal or wish to deal with the Outline. This chapter has opted for the former view that the end state has as its hallmark the collective labor “of all and of each” of “Tyranny and Wisdom.” Thus, Kojève’s response to Strauss implies that such state is not the end of time, for including labor. As such, politics and relation are possible, as in collective labor each recognizes each, confering homogeneity and a leveling of the citizenry; and each in turn is recognized in the all of the state (OT, 146), thereby expanding the political and elevating each in the political sense. Therefore, if one posits Kojèvian time phenomenology and the time-tyrant problem, and not the end of time,20 as the center of Kojève’s concern, the Kojèvian corpus can be integrated. The end state of the Outline’s equity might be politicized. Equity might be viewed as an exchange of different items, ideas for acts, as “Tyranny and Wisdom” makes clear in emphasizing actualization. This is the imposition of ideas on others who therein acquire citizen status as ruled. This side of equity bespeaks equivalence, the exchange of unlikes. But that exchange elevates politically by expanding the citizenry of those engaged in acts, yielding citizen-henchmen. This side of equity bespeaks equality, the shaping of a community of likes. In fact, Kojève sees equity as he sees the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant, as “[a]t a given moment” when the equality and equivalence can be mixed (OPR, 271), attesting to the need of idea for act and the reverse. It surely looks as if equity exists in Kojèvian human time

whenever and wherever humans decide to adopt it, thus erasing the time-tyrant problem and the desire for desire. “Tyranny and Wisdom” makes the laboring Master-tyrant, as opposed to the Introduction’s fighting one, central to the “justification” of tyranny” (OT, 140, 142). Kojève may explain desirous-ofdesire Master-tyrants in the Introduction. But in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” Kojève justifies tyranny as a regime that furthers the intersection of idea and act in time, including in the collective labor of an ideal state. Equity in collective labor consists in a synthesis: that of equivalence for showing the differences between idea and act, even as they exchange, and of the equality of citizens in the expanded politics of “Tyranny and Wisdom.” Kojève describes equity, not in the language of human time’s end, but rather as a compromise of timeless principles brought into time.21 Equity is thus an end state, but not a state that marks time’s end. Accordingly, as to Kojève’s end state, the Outline not only shows Droit as the organizing force for a society, but it accounts for how the end state, as initially presented in the Introduction, can become more palpable, borrowing heavily on the dynamism of bourgeois exchange to yield nonetheless an active homogeneity, all the while resting on the pedestal of a heavily statist, socialist regime in the political sense. In so doing, Kojève may have done more than explain Venezuela in the spring of 2002. His image of the end state as resembling something like an austere bourgeois socialism, an oxymoron for virtually any other political thinker,22 may come close to an accounting of the seeming paradox of the entrepreneurial, yet constrained “on the backs of the poor,” “one bowl of rice per day” society that is today’s China, which is regarded by many as the country to watch in this century. This chapter has endeavored to establish the relation between the Outline and “Tyranny and Wisdom,” arguing that the former shows a bourgeois aspect to Kojève’s Master-tyrant that is perhaps jurisprudential in form, but political in effect, and, perhaps above all, plausibly timeless – at times. The connections to “Tyranny and Wisdom” demonstrate the application of idealism in a regime of the at times timeless Master-tyrant, but a regime that is nonetheless sustainable in time with the help of Kojève’s irrepressible accomplices, citizen-henchmen, and intellectual mediators. Yet, the occasionally graphic, corporeal quality of the Outline suggests that it is not completely idealistic. The Outline was, after all, composed by an author of and in the times, and hatched as the two mega Mastertyrants of the age quarreled for possession of sewer space in the muck and gore of Stalingrad in the middle of 1943. Nothing could be less lofty and more in Kojèvian time, even and especially as understood in the context of the desirous of desire fighting words of the Introduction.

The Kojèvian Real may confirm that a pragmatic Master-tyrant may stalk Hegel’s and Kojève’s planet. Hegel writes: “What is rational is actual.” For Kojève, this means the desire for desire of fighting and warring Master-tyrants of the Introduction. This political environment means that Kojève says what he means. But Kojève also means what he says. After all, Hegel prefaces the above remark with the following: “What is rational is actual.”23 Therefore there is a place for ideas such as the jurisprudential of the Outline in the regimes of Master-tyrants. As jurisprudential, they are ultimately political, meaning regimesustaining, thus eliminating the practical complications of the time-tyrant problem. From all corners of the globe, from the Venezuela of Chavez to the modern mandarin mill of China, Master-tyrants are onto something. But to be consistent, we cannot stop here. Time and again, the world in which we live reverberates with the accountings of Kojève. But does he remain the double-daring time phenomenologist this book has presented, for a connection between the more idealistic Outline and “Tyranny and Wisdom” in presenting the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant?24 Kojève’s elimination of desire for desire as the “only” key to the acts of Master-tyrants looms large. Kojève does not jettison human time and the desire for desire; he merely suggests that they are not the only aspect of the human (OT, 140). Among the questions are exactly how bourgeois and warrior coexist in Master-tyrants, and above all, whether Kojève’s reworked Master-tyrant can keep two different ideas of time in mind, one based on warrior desire for desire, the other based on bourgeois work for its sake, in proceeding with a regime. Kojève may leave us a hint in the beginning of “Tyranny and Wisdom” when he cautions us to read between the lines in characterizing the technique of his interlocutor Strauss. No sooner does Kojève do so than he reverts to the exact text of Xenophon. Might other works of Kojève, more proximate to “Tyranny and Wisdom” than the Outline, help us better read between the lines of “Tyranny and Wisdom” and the questions of the bourgeois and the warrior in the Master-tyrant, and the role of time in it? Much continues to provoke further exploration. For example, the extension of the Outline’s hardscrabble labor to “Tyranny and Wisdom” yields, as noted, what for the Introduction would be an oxymoron: that of “collective labor.” As labor, it seems to epitomize Kojèvian human time; as “collective” it is not further to the time engine of desire for desire, the core of which is not the pursuit of the collective, but rather of the self. All of which reminds us is subject to what Chapter 3 noted as the controlling Kojèvian textual statement: that we are in the “germ” of an end state. In fact, collective labor would seem to exemplify two essential ingredients the Introduction attributes to the “germ” of end state: being “realized in deed” for being labor and extant as “in all its perfection” as

collective (IRH, 97). Yet, for us as yet, so much remains unsaid as to the dimensions of this “germ”. If we suspect the Kojèvian corpus after the Outline and before “Tyranny and Wisdom” as providing elaboration, we would be right. The next chapter will elaborate upon the notion of Kojèvian authority and its use in underpinning a revised post-Introduction Kojèvian politics. Leave it to our contrarian modern’s modern of the double dare to set forth that, in an age of ideologies armed and colliding all throughout Europe, Kojèvian authority leaves more than ample room for the person of the Master-tyrant, both in force and complexity. It is to this body of Kojève’s post-Outline corpus that we now turn.

Notes 1 Elsewhere in the Outline, Kojève uses remarkably similar language to that referencing the citizen in the text above quoted. He does so in introducing the ideas of exchange, interaction, and consent as critical to justice: “for us (or in truth) – if not for the participants themselves – the meaning [raison d’être] of the entire interaction” (OPR, 220, cf. OPR, 178–79). Such interaction to form citizens only occurs in time. 2 Ever respectful of the autonomy of the juridical from the political in the Outline, Kojève takes care to add that such acceptance of the reality of the world of work is undertaken when the Master-tyrant is “not a Master properly so-called” and that, as concerns the judicial realm, “it is not in this capacity” that the Master-tyrant does so (OPR, 245). “Tyranny and Wisdom” ends this distinction in setting forth the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant, and, as this chapter will argue, expanding Kojève’s politics. 3 OT, 146. Even in the Outline, the mechanics of contract, emblematic of equivalence, are not “a simple epiphenomenon of economic or indeed commercial activity.” Equivalence, the step before equity, “extends far beyond the properly economic sphere” (OPR, 179). 4 Ignoring the time-tyrant problem and Kojève’s solution to it has influenced readings of the entire Kojèvian corpus. At least two commentators have noted that Kojève does not deal with Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Riley, 18; Frost, 599–600). But the main purpose of the Outline is not so much to supplant Hegel’s Philosophy of Right as to correct the persistent problem left by Kojève’s Introduction, the time-tyrant dilemma. In the Introduction, Kojève steadfastly maintains that his Hegel is the Hegel of the Phenomenology of Spirit, which Kojève appears to regard as Hegel’s singular work for being exemplar of circularity (IRH, 31–32). Yet, the Outline implies that its time narrative differs from that of the Introduction (OPR, 54). 5 Risk, a masthead of the mainstream Kojève, is manifest not initially by the fight itself, but by consent before the fight. Risk thereby has its incubator in the pre-fight timeless. Risk is, thus, not primarily a product of “valorization” as claimed by advocates of the mainstream Kojève. Roth, Knowing and History, 105–07. Rather than advancing a martial society that splinters Master-tyrants and Slaves, the risk of the Outline accords risk the status of that which eliminates inequality among pre-fight contestants. Hence, in saluting risk, Kojève characterizes it as merely the appearance of the desire for desire, which is preceded by the pre-fight mutual consent as the first step toward justice, an externality rooted in timelessness. See text supra. 6 The concept of spontaneity in “Tyranny and Wisdom” very definitely traces its routes to the Outline. See note 7 supra.

OT, 145. Again, use of this term attests to the indebtedness of “Tyranny and Wisdom” to the Outline. 7 Nowhere in the Kojèvian corpus does the concept of spontaneity receive more play than in the Outline. Spontaneity is occurrence free of interaction, with others or with other events. Concommitantly, the idea of justice is eternal, sui generis, and without reference to social condition (OPR, 69, 86–87). 8 Machiavelli, 61. 9 Howse and Frost, 3. 10 The Outline recognizes spheres outside the area of work that may be influenced by the juridical and that such spheres may begin as animal and conclude as human. This is true of family life. Thus, Kojève’s discussion of the juridical seems to negotiate the strict separation of animal and human time noted in the Introduction (OPR, 400 n93, 406, 428). 11 Kojève will have more to say of this in his The Notion of Authority, written at practically the same time as the Outline. This work will be treated in Chapter 7 supra. 12 Howse and Frost, 13. 13 Kojève appears to have a broader understanding of the modern socialist impulse than the class-based analysis of Marxist orthodoxy. He seems to equate socialism with a broadening of the discipline of bourgeois duty, as evidenced by the expansion of international trade along market principles (see OT, 256, Kojève to Strauss, Vanves, France, September 19, 1950; cf. Frost, 631). Socialism is thus less a phenomenon of controlling means of production and diminishing class domination than of the proliferation of contractual duty as a means of stabilizing social and economic life. Kojève’s socialism is thus a kind of self-corrected capitalism that, through a broadened juridical equivalence, decentralizes the means of production and makes economic wealth possible for a greater number, irrespective of the class interests and identities of the owners (Kojève, “Marx est son Dieu, Ford est son prophète,” 135–37). 14 OT, 255–56, Kojève to Strauss, Vanves, France, September 19, 1950. A reading of “Tyranny and Wisdom” finds it very much informed by the Outline in replacing the political homogeneity bankrupt by the time-tyrant dilemma as represented by the unsynthesized Napoleon in Chapter 3 supra with economic homogeneity. Kojève admits in the dialogue with Strauss that the project of pure homogeneity informing the political order is less than clear, while also indicating that homogeneity is more an economic than a juridical phenomenon (compare OT, 173 with OT, 145–46). 15 And yet, labor in the end state very definitely precludes a temporal end state, since labor must be in the Kojèvian end state. IRH, 158–59 n8. See further explanation of this in Chapter 7. 16 Kojève, “Hegel, Marx et christianisme,” 339–65. 17 True to the logic of the Introduction, which links the human to the political, the conclusion of the Outline is fairly faithful to the proposition that the citizen of the end state is a commodity (OPR, 471– 73). This leaves unexplained the relation of work to the many spheres of activity which the Outline had claimed give a fuller human status. See notes 9–10 and accompanying text supra. This suggests that the austere economics of the Kojèvian end state supplants such spheres as just luxuries. 18 The mainstream reading of Kojève seems to treat the return to animality in a manner influenced by Fukuyama’s reading endorsing the ascendancy of Western liberalism and democracy. Hence, the mainstream reading tends to downplay the return to animality in characterizing American life, while implicitly attributing it to revolutionary China. Compare Nichols, 117–18 with Nichols, 122. However, Kojève’s consistency can easily be seen in viewing him as a time phenomenologist. The “return to animality” is first and foremost the absence of human time, the absence of desire for desire. The position had great vitality for Kojève, as he applied the return indiscriminately to the United States, and to China. Kojève to Strauss, Paris, October 29, 1953, OT, 261–62; see also discussion in Chapter 2 infra. 19 The Outline offers both Master-tyrants and Droit as parallel political and social phenomena respectively, but popularizers of Kojève have avoided the complications of the time-tyrant dilemma. Fukuyama claims that Kojève is more liberal than authoritarian (Fukuyama, 351 n32). But, according

20

21

22

23 24

to the Outline, he is both. The subtlety of the message may account for why those who might otherwise be thought to enthusiastically embrace Kojève’s Outline do not. Robert Howse and Bryan-Paul Frost, rare among even Kojève specialists for offering extensive commentary on the Outline, assert that the Outline presents a single definitive concept of justice as the alternate to tyranny in the creation of the universal and homogeneous state. The contention is half correct. The Outline addresses Kojève’s most important problem. But this is not the content of the end state. As noted above, Kojève’s “more or less” as to equity raises as many questions as does the “germ” of the Introduction. Rather, Kojève’s most pressing problem is the absence of social cohesion wrought by Kojèvian human time and the time-tyrant problem, the “existential impasse” of Kojève’s most important political actor, the Master-tyrant. In fact, like the Introduction, Kojève’s Outline devotes by far and away most of its analysis to Kojèvian human time, and to the position that the political and juridical are to be distinguished during it. Howse and Frost, 3, 13. The mainstream reading of Kojève only occasionally touches on timeless, rather than the end of time. In discussing eternity in Kojève, one commentator states that Kojève’s “Eternity” is the “negation of temporality.” Nichols, 58. Yet, for Kojève, this can seem an oxymoron. Time is not negated; time is, rather, negation, Specifically, the negation of the past is a mark of Kojèvian human time. Kojève juxtaposed human time and nature, negation being of the latter, not the former. “Time is the negation of Space” as Kojève emphasizes again and again (IRH, 137, 155, 247). Fukuyama notes the Asian trend to merge capitalist exchange with the discipline of highly authoritarian political regimes, but does not, as Howse and Frost correctly observe, bring the Outline to bear in his analysis. Fukuyama prefers instead to view Kojève’s end state through the prism of American-style liberal democracy and free markets (compare Fukuyama, The End of History, 124–25 with Howse and Frost, 24). Yet, in the final analysis, Howse and Frost seem to interpret the Outline’s “socialist synthesis of equity” as akin to the American-style equality of opportunity noted by Fukuyama (compare Howse and Frost, 22 with Fukuyama, The End of History, 291). What is missing from accounts of the Kojèvian end state is the grim minimalist message of Kojèvian economic homogeneity as set forth at the very conclusion of the Outline. While Kojève allows some differentiation among men in the juridically driven final society, all such differences must be derivative of the product of each worker’s body, with no apparent allowance for inheritance or investment, as property is treated as just an extension of the efforts of the body (OPR, 471–72, 477). Such rigidity nonetheless accounts for Kojève’s misgivings about the end state. See Chapter 5 supra. Philosophy of Right, 10. See discussion in Chapter 3, notes 33–35 and accompanying text infra. As the Introduction notes, in the bourgeois, “Man transcends himself, surpasses himself, projects himself onto the idea of private Property, Capital” (IRH, 65). In effect, the bourgeois chases the legal idea to the extent that the bourgeois becomes that idea; recognition from another is not the consideration. As Kojève notes: “[H]e is – being the Slave of [the idea] of capital … his own Slave.” IRH, 68. The bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant carries the same general problem.

7 Kojève’s Return to Conventional Politics – at an Unconventional Time

Of Kojève’s Time First, Of Kojève’s Times Second This book has offered substantial evidence from many flashpoints in the Kojèvian corpus that Kojève is a time phenomenologist engaged in solving a time problem that is one of his making. Hence, his Introduction introduces the question of the timeless, non-relational, and apolitical Master-tyrant. His Outline outlines a solution to it, offering the argument of a social organization based upon timeless ideas of justice rather than Master-tyrants, a social organization not based on the self-defeating desire for desire. His “Tyranny and Wisdom” finds tyrants in wisdom and, remarkably, wisdom in tyrants. “Tyranny and Wisdom” offers a fusion of the Introduction and the Outline. It retains the Introduction’s emphasis on the political, yet maintaining the Outline’s insistence that timeless ideas, fashioned by a bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant,1 may provide the basis for a political order that is an alternative to the desire for desire. This thereby avoids the time-tyrant problem, yet provides the basis for a stable political order for Master-tyrants based on social relations with the likes of citizen-henchmen and intermediary intellectuals. While these works demonstrate a nimbleness in adapting Kojèvian thought, they often put Kojève at odds with the times he so often advertises. Kojève penned the Outline, which might be read as a celebration of justice, during the struggle for supremacy between two Master-tyrants in the streets and sewers of Stalingrad. And, although Kojève introduced a bourgeois side of the Mastertyrant to prominence in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” he did so as Mao seized control of China from the Kuomintang, making the Strauss barbs as to the “Oriental despotism” in Kojève all the sharper. This chapter will maintain that given the choice between perfect conformity to the Kojèvian Real and adherence to time phenomenology by correcting the problem of the time-tyrant problem, Kojève’s post-Introduction wartime and

post-war corpus inclines strongly to the latter, reinforcing the view of Kojève as an inside-out time phenomenologist in search of a solution to the time-tyrant problem. And in the wartime and post-war corpus, Kojève is no less bold – or contrarian. During the period from the stunning entry of the Wehrmacht into Paris until the Nazi capitulation, our time phenomenologist seemed to defy his Kojèvian time – and the times. As a Master-tyrant danced at Compiègne following the fight, Kojève seemed more concerned with the routine of governance and regimes, writing his The Notion of Authority. Then, as the world properly anticipated decolonization on a massive scale by an exhausted Britain and a compromised France, Kojève authored his Outline of a Doctrine of French Policy, a bold assertion that French culture might expand to be the basis of a Latin Empire in the world, operating as a kind of broker between AngloAmerican influence and that of the Slavic Soviet states. Finally, at the height of hot wars in Southeast Asia and North Africa, sparks within the cauldron of the Cold War, Kojève both asserts the ascending similarity of Soviet and American societies and the end of fights in his remarkable 1968 “Note to the Second Edition” of the Introduction. We have seen Kojève at his most seductive in mirroring events, the Kojèvian Real. Yet, as just noted, Kojève is equally compelling for apparently writing in defiance of events. This view is ambitious enough. But there is an additional reason beyond the imperative to revise a time phenomenology to avoid the time-tyrant problem. That reason concerns Kojève himself. Specifically, it concerns how Kojève viewed himself among the category of the three thinkers identified in Chapter 4: philosopher, wise man, and mediating intellectual. This chapter will maintain that Kojève, for lack of perfect correspondence to the Kojèvian Real about him, sees himself as a thinker in the “germ” of transition: an imperfect and less than satisfied wise man, a philosopher dealing in the timeless and less-than-Real, and a technically flawed, advising intellectual mediator. This chapter will further specify that Kojève’s “germ” is less about the end of time, and more about the consequences of timelessness. First, however, a more comprehensive accounting of Kojève as time phenomenologist is in order.

A Reprise: Inside-Out Time Phenomenology in the Post-War Kojève

Mayhem, skulduggery, and violence may abound in the desirous of desire politics of the Introduction. In themselves, they say little of the desire for desire requisite for Kojève’s human time. Yet, they might prevail apart from the desire for desire as well. Speaking of the bourgeois in the Master-tyrants, Kojève explains that “one does away with one’s rivals because one does not want the goal attained, the job done, by another, even if this other could do it equally well” (OT, 141). The external environment may spell unmitigated carnage, but even this does not guarantee the presence of the desirous-of-desire Master-tyrant. Rather, elimination of a rival attests to the motive of the eliminating Master-tyrant. The bourgeois side of a Master-tyrant liquidates, kills, as would a master craftsman, to complete a project in the way favored by the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. As if to underline the importance of time and the non-existence of the desire for desire, Kojève has the bourgeois in the Master-tyrant eschew the search for a peer, noting: “even if this other could do it equally well.” Love of the idea, love of the timeless, supersedes the desire for desire, the search for peer recognition and, indeed, Kojèvian human time, in favor of the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant “carrying out his project” (OT, 140), or bringing the timeless idea into time, even while introducing a blood lust for the elimination of others in so doing. The outside-in reading of Kojève, with its emphasis on contestation and carnage, cannot distinguish between the bourgeois and the warrior in the Mastertyrant. In contrast, the inside-out reading of Kojève can, provided the desire for desire and time phenomemology are central. Even in the Outline, Kojève seems to keep desire for desire in the phenomenological driver’s seat2 by positing: The ultimate origin of all human, cultural, or historical phenomenon is anthropogenic desire and the act which realizes or satisfies it – this act being, on one hand, the Risk of the Master in the struggle, and on the other hand, the Work of the Slave which results from it. (OPR, 215) And within paragraphs of presenting even the bourgeois in the Master-tyrant, Kojève has the Master-tyrant returning to the hapless world of relations among humans, competition among would-be rulers, and the desire for desire (OT, 141– 43). The question is then whether there is a true distinction between the laboring and warring sides in the Master-tyrant, and how such distinction is best argued. The answer, as we shall see immediately, is perfectly consistent with Kojève’s

status as a time phenomenologist at work in The Notion of Authority.

Politics Beyond Desire for Desire: Time and Kojèvian Authority The desire for desire presented in the Introduction concerned itself with rule, however ultimately frustrated by the time-tyrant problem. Yet, traces of “Tyranny and Wisdom,” including the seminal definition of tyranny, are concerned with authority. Authority, as Kojève relates in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” concerns recognition, but cannot be based on fear, thereby making such recognition apart from the dynamic of the fight and the desire for desire. At the same time, that authority as respects the Master-tyrant concerns “his eminently human value, though not necessarily his superiority” (OT, 143). Kojève thereby retains the personal dimension of desire for desire, without, again, the rebuff, the time-tyrant problem, and the non-relational status of ruler and ruled inherent in Kojève’s time phenomenology. All of this demands a closer exploration of Kojève’s The Notion – that is, The Notion of Authority. Completed one year before the Outline and about a decade before “Tyranny and Wisdom,” The Notion sets forth four archetypes of authority, those of Father, Judge, Master (Master-tyrant), and Chief. As The Notion proceeds, it becomes clear that the recognition attending authority transcends character and, rather, represents the fusion of character and idea to form archetype. The recognition of the Father is based on tradition and gravitas, that of the Judge on appeal to eternal ideas (as carried forward in the Outline), that of the Master-tyrant on dominance, and that of the Chief on a crafty perspicacity and a penchant for long-range planning. Thus, authority attends the person of the Master-tyrant but may have its basis in a number of social and political configurations. Kojève’s archetypes are supported by broad and powerful bases that underline the maintenance of regimes – appeals to the presence of tradition for the Father, neutral principles of justice for the Judge, order and force for the Master-tyrant, and effective, forward-thinking, project-oriented governance for the Chief. But Kojève’s work on authority has a broader and more ambitious political purpose. Foreshadowing the imposing citizen-henchmen so critical to the maintenance of tyranny in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” Kojève sees authority as implemented by an agent, with others as the objects of agent action without reaction by those others otherwise capable of reaction (LNA, 58–59). Most critically, authority, unlike the desire for desire, may be exercised outside and within human time, as The Notion’s linking of the Judge dealing in eternal

principles with the Master-tyrant, the Chief, and the Father dealing in aspects of human time suggests. The Chief clearly foresees the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. But Kojève’s reference in “Tyranny and Wisdom” to eventual transition from this side to the desire for desire by warring Master-tyrants is not to be mistaken as suggesting that the regime of the Chief is unstable. Quite the contrary, the legitimacy of the Chief lies in perspicacity, ability to foresee social needs (LNA, 126). As more explicitly political, The Notion provides the bridge between the Introduction and “Tyranny and Wisdom” in a way the juridically oriented Outline could not. In fact, Kojève in The Notion holds that idea and persona are inextricably linked. In The Notion, Kojève holds recognition to be about something much broader, and supposedly less intimate, than the validation of self. Rather, recognition means legitimacy in the broadest sense (LNA, 62, 64– 65). Ultimately, “Tyranny and Wisdom” will hold that such “ideas” may be “imposed” on the ruled by citizen-henchmen, ideas emanating from an authority the ruled “recognize spontaneously” or free from desire for desire (OT, 145). Thus, while the ideas, the message, may emanate from the Chief or the bourgeois Master-tyrant, the medium of imposition is a tactic more associated with the Master-tyrant of the Introduction. The dichotomy between medium and message is, as it turns out, not only the basis for distinction between the bourgeois and the warring side of the Mastertyrant in “Tyranny and Wisdom” but also for their collaboration. Ultimately, The Notion sees the warring Master-tyrant and the laboring Chief (the eventual bourgeois of “Tyranny and Wisdom”), as the core of the political.3 Kojève places the Chief at the core of statecraft and the political (LNA, 138). The special spontaneity of the Chief not only places the Chief outside time, like the Judge, but also enables implementation of ideas in time by adopting human conditions to it in a “ ‘project’ ” (LNA, 96–97 n1). With an eye to social integration, The Notion argues strenuously for the staying power of the Chief. At the same time, Kojève remains faithful to the archetype of the Master-tyrant as connected to the origin of political life, risk-oriented, and, at least in The Notion, oriented to the Present for this risk-taking (LNA, 140, 149). The issue thus becomes whether these two aspects of a ruler compete or collaborate. Kojève’s answer to the question is that they collaborate. But his explanation is firmly rooted in time phenomenology revised from that in the Introduction. Time, and only time, is Kojève’s basis for setting forth the collaboration.4 To the Chief, Kojève assigns the Future; to the Master-tyrant of fights he assigns the Present (LNA, 118–19). We immediately note a difference with the Introduction, which used the Future of insatiable warring Master-tyrants as central to human

time (compare, IRH, 138 with LNA, 118–19). To maintain that both lay claim to the Future would create conflict; instead The Notion gives the warring Mastertyrant a priority in physical space (LNA, 118), while according the Chief greatest legitimacy in the realm of projects and ideas. In virtually the same argument, Kojève then goes on to maintain that the timeless may be achieved in two ways. The first, peculiar to the Chief, and the eventual bourgeois side of the Mastertyrant, is laboring in the abstract, devoid of action in the Kojèvian Real. The second is peculiar to the fighting side of the Master-tyrant of the Introduction and quite the opposite. It is timelessness achieved through touching Future, Past, and Present, leading to the time-tyrant problem (LNA, 123). What is needed to escape both deficiencies is combining the best of both, the ideas of the bourgeois Chief to establish a connection to the ruled not based on the desire for desire, and the momentary intrusion of the desire for desire to secure imposition of those ideas on the rules as a precondition to ultimate spontaneous acceptance. One need only think Hitler and Goebbels, Dzerzhinsky and Trotsky, force followed by the fervor of revolutionary education, to see the pattern (LNA, 123). With the Future versus Present distinction, Kojève is, in fact, laying the foundation for a collaboration, with the warring Master-tyrant summoning the would-be ruled in the physical realm of a Present, and the political realm of projects, policy, as the habitat of the Chief shaping a Future. We are thus not far removed from the definition of tyranny in “Tyranny and Wisdom” with the imposition of ideas on the ruled by citizen-henchmen in a real tyrannical present, but with the ruled accepting those ideas spontaneously from an authority they believe best equipped to deliver the Future they wish, in a dynamic quite free of the desire for desire. Most obviously, Kojève in The Notion allows for mixed archetypes in a single ruler, presaging the laboring and fighting aspects of the Master-tyrant in “Tyranny and Wisdom.” The direction of The Notion is toward such mixed authority. Halfway through The Notion, Kojève allows for mixed exercises of authority, potentially combining any two or more of the four archetypes, particularly those of the Chief and the Master-tyrant. Why? All indications are that Kojève is eager to use these combinations to illustrate that which produces social integration and efficacy, and to see these in the context of human affairs (LNA, 88). Further, consistent with the view in Chapter 6 that “Tyranny and Wisdom” is inclined to focus less on the origin of regimes and more on their maintenance, The Notion ultimately, if not predominately, concerns the practice and exercise of mixed authority (compare, LNA, 40–106 with LNA, 107, 147– 75). This distinction, between the origin of the political, the relational, and the temporal and their maintenance, is what enables Kojève to remain faithful to

locating the desire for desire at the origin of rule, as in the quoted language from the Outline above, yet treating the practicalities of politics and engagement emphasized in “Tyranny and Wisdom” (compare LNA, 116 with OT, 140–42). Fighting Master-tyrants may commence relation and politics, but perspicacious Chiefs will maintain them. Might both elements be captured in the same Master-tyrant? “Tyranny and Wisdom,” by arguing for eventual return from the bourgeois to the warring side of the Master-tyrant, would seem to say so.5 This need not mean drastic instability, but rather simply a managing of different perspectives, a view facilitated by keeping time at the center of the explanation.6 Kojève’s regime stability holds that the Present of the risking Master-tyrant cannot truly be human unless it is linked to the Future (LNA, 143–44). And this becomes crucial in The Notion as the mixed archetype of the Master-tyrant and the Chief is the pivotal combination in setting forth the politics of The Notion. The Future of the Chief is an empty vessel, waiting to be filled with the Chief’s projects. Time in this sense is not for being but for having, a resource outside man to be had, lost, measured, and apportioned, a key metric but not the human race itself. Again, The Notion registers in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” in which Kojève indicates the need of a Master-tyrant for a thinker who “will see farther in space and in time” (LNA, 76 with OT, 149–50), a time that is thus not made but nonetheless filled, occupied with projects, activities. For being outside the desire for desire, the Chief is revolutionary (LNA, 149). This refurbished Future creates the precondition for the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant, in a timelessness to secure ideas to implementation as recounted in “Tyranny and Wisdom.” This prodigious bourgeois side will “sooner or later” seek “guidance in … day-to-day actions” (OT, 174). And the advice is frequently from a “philosophical-advisor” or the mediator discussed in Chapter 4 who understands the consequences of the acts of warring Master-tyrants past, thus summoning the bourgeois to warring action.7 Hence, “Tyranny and Wisdom” allows that man does more than make (or be, as in the double dare) time. Kojève also views time as a ready-made resource, an instrument providing a benchmark for meaningful political action. Still, an element of the Future of the warring Master-tyrant from the Introduction persists in The Notion. That is the element of risk, propelled by the desire for desire. This risk of The Notion is based on being physically present and, in a rare display of Kojèvian English, “up to date,” and therefore temporally Present in the sense of The Notion (LNA, 120). This Present implicitly incorporates the desirous of desire Future of the Introduction, for Kojève’s repeated emphasis on the risk undertaken by the Master-tyrant in The Notion, and the correlative reward of being current so as to formulate a project – and

thereby control the Future (LNA, 88, 116). Thus, The Notion does not entirely lose the Introduction’s “Man is Time, and Time is Man.” Spontaneity, implementation of ideas in time, a bond with the ruled – all these characteristics of the Chief and would-be bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant attest to Kojève’s need to avoid the plague of timelessness – the time-tyrant dilemma. If the persona of the Master-tyrant can accommodate two ideas of time, and especially two ideas of the Future, those of the warring and bourgeois sides of the Master-tyrant respectively, how might ideas, large political ideas, thrive?

Instructions to the Chief and the Conundrum of Implementation in the “Germ” of the End State Kojève deploys big ideas in his 1945 Outline of a Doctrine of French Policy,8 a missal penned for that Chief-in-waiting, Charles de Gaulle.9 But Kojève’s big idea, expressive of an inclusive politics, is equally key. This is the idea of Latin Empire. Kojève’s Doctrine calls for the development of a Latin Empire as central to the position of France in the new post-war order. Kojève means this empire to counter a geopolitical polarity between the Anglo-American Empire, on one hand, and that of a Slavic Empire, the heart of which is an exhausted but resurgent Soviet Union, on the other. The two Futures in The Notion appear subtly when, in the first sentence of considering the realization of a Latin imperial design, Kojève indicates: “Called to act externally, the Latin Empire can build itself only by overcoming the obstacles from outside on the one hand and finding support on the other” (ODFP, 24). Here, Kojève is two-handed rather than two-faced. Kojève’s call seems to evoke the future-oriented desire for desire of the warring Master-tyrant, a Future that anticipates “overcoming the obstacles” of the Past to secure a Present. And indeed, Kojève’s plan for action initially calls for the dynamic of overcoming the past and old orders, such as predominant German militarism and entrenched English economic interests (ODFP, 24–26). At the same time, with the Future of the strategic planning Chief (and what in “Tyranny and Wisdom” will be the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant) in mind, Kojève is also concerned with a time in reaction to which one must exercise options. This means a France “finding support,” for example, from the United States by appealing to its base economic interests (ODFP, 25–26). Thus, the Chief even negotiates a Future in the face of what Kojève would style nearly twenty-five years later in the “Note” to the Introduction’s Second Edition as a “return to

animality,” and concern for consumption. Durable Chiefs are, it seems, active even in the context of such a return. A post-war Kojève may appear to speak with a forked tongue on the issue of time. However, what is quoted above from the Doctrine appears entirely consistent with the blended role of Master-tyrant and Chief that he assigns originally in The Notion. But the temporal symmetry suggested by The Notion is, in fact, not in evidence in Doctrine. The Future of the Chief and the bourgeois Master-tyrant is very much in evidence. Kojève’s Doctrine speaks of the Latin Empire not just as an idea, but as a kind of ethereal state of mind, in which the psyche indulges a combination of Catholicism, sensuality, and easy partaking in the relaxed beauty of a communal culture (ODFP, 13–15). And this instruction to Chief de Gaulle truly resonates with The Notion. It is a Future that considers the project of Europe,10 one that anticipates developments and moves to adjust to secure implementation. At times, it is a Future that considers a French Europe, as exemplified by ferocious French resistance to Anglo participation in the Common Market. At alternate times, it is a Future that considers a Europeanized France, demonstrated by the remarkable collaboration between de Gaulle and Adenauer that was, when implemented, thus a bit more Latin than imperial. But in any case it is a Future based on project level preferences, strategy, and planning. Yet, the insatiable desirous of desire Future of the fighting Master-tyrant is not a factor in the Doctrine. Nor is the physical Present noted in The Notion. This is so for the most obvious of reasons: the Kojèvian Real. August 27, 1945, the date attributed to Kojève’s Doctrine, may seem a curious time to champion empires. Days before, America’s Enola Gay and the weaponry of the infamous “Little Boy” lay waste the physical dimension of the last Axis empire of the war. The omnipresence of “Little Boy” on the horizon over Hiroshima might seem a reverberation of the cannon of Jena. Absent both the desire for desire and a physical dimension, the “Note to the Second Edition” indicates that this leaves us with a society built in theory on timelessness, a Future of unending ceremonial teas and an agglomeration of selves putting those selves to the sword, the implausible refuge of non-relational warriors. Hence, Kojève concludes the “Note” in a manner that demands that form – the timeless, non-relational Master-tyrant of the Introduction and the deadly delicacy of samurai culture – must be detached from content, a content rendered by the Chief.11 For every Yasukuni Shrine in Japan, a temple to the timeless warriors, there are a 1,000 projects – Yokahama harbors, robotics, and high-speed railways – binding people by action to a new Future, featuring a

control over destiny. If it is politics we want, it is politics and time that we get with Kojève, but a time bearing strategic opportunities, a time of Chiefs and the bourgeois side of Master-tyrants. And so, with the end game of a universal and homogeneous state gone, there is no need for the Introduction’s tyrannical predicate, the presence of the warring Master-tyrant, in the Doctrine. If “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” did away with the insatiable desire for desire of the Future of the fighting Master-tyrant, the physical Present accorded the fighting Master-tyrant is similarly absent from Doctrine. The Notion explains that the fighting Master-tyrant, even absent war and contention, commands this Present through decisive, intuitive, and rapid action (LNA, 127–28). But there is a catch. Such an action-oriented warring side of the Master-tyrant needs ideas as well, typically in the form of “advice.” In fact, “Tyranny and Wisdom” portrays the advisor initially as a “philosopheradvisor” seeking the validation of quick action on ideas in the political realm, according to Kojève best had by appeal to the current political and social context against the backdrop of history. In short, the “philosopher-advisor” as a purveyor of ideas must become what “Tyranny and Wisdom” will call “ ‘intellectual mediators’ ” (compare OT, 164–65 with OT, 174). The dilemma is that, to interest the Present-oriented warring Master-tyrant, the advice must be concrete. And Outline of a Doctrine of French Policy as appealing to the idealistic bourgeois in the Master-tyrant is anything but concrete. As an Outline, this Kojève work does not concern itself with concrete implementation. As a Doctrine, it does not deal in day-to-day situations that attract the attention of the fighting side of the Master-tyrant in the physical Present introduced in The Notion. And, as concerning Policy, it implies a permanence that the somewhat capricious warring side of the Master-tyrant, drawn to the urgent and the lifeand-death of a situation, may resist. Thus, the Introduction’s Master-tyrant is nowhere to be found in the Doctrine. The Introduction’s desire for desire absent, along with the physical Present of The Notion, nothing in either the Doctrine or the Kojèvian Real suggests discernable movement to universality and homogeneity through the Doctrine’s Latin Empire. That Real situated post-war Europe on the cusp of a Paris–Bonn axis, not one of Paris–Madrid–Rome. That Real featured a North Atlantic Treaty Organization famously and discretely constructed to keep the Americans in, the Soviets out, and the Germans down. And, most tellingly, that Real featured not the tripolarity envisioned in the Doctrine, but the Cold War, the most nearly fatal bipolarity in human history, a formulation at which Kojève would have no doubt bristled. Indeed, the project of a Latin Empire rests on an argument for the

distinctiveness of Latin culture, not its integrating effects or its potential for export. Going further, the Doctrine is largely based on the proposition of French continental exceptionalism, rather than the torch of universality and homogeneity ignited by the cannon of Jena. The lopsided time phenomenology of the Doctrine, leaning on the planning Future of the bourgeois, without the desirous of desire Future of the warrior, removes Jena as the springboard for the universal and homogeneous. To remind, no such problems plague the Outline of a Phemonenology of Right. The Outline ostensibly offers an alternate path to universality and homogeneity,12 with timeless ideas as to equality and equivalence implemented in the temporal by the fighting side of the Master-tyrant as well as the bourgeois side. In the mode of the Outline’s synthesis of compromise, the universality of globalization is suddenly meeting hardscrabble austere socialism, with neither overtaking the other, but coexisting to form the paradox of what has been fortuitously termed the “Middle Kingdom.” The Outline is bourgeois-friendly for showing how timeless ideas may be implemented in history. And it resonates with today’s Kojèvian Real, from Princeton’s Prospect Avenue to Asia’s mandarin mills, yielding the corporeal self of a “sweat of the brow” society. Similarly, the “return to animality” promised by the “Note to the Second Edition” of the Introduction and the true product of the fighting Master-tyrant, seems at hand. The revolutionary tunic and collar that were unmistakably Mao’s yield to the realization that such a uniform is the drab and comfortable gray of state bureaucrats13 worldwide hawking a national everfor-hire labor force, subjected to the vagaries of an international market governed by bourgeois exchange, and, therefore, sorely in need of the nostrums of civic, collective pride to remain motivated. Mid-level functionaries seeking to conform Chinese economic society to the rigors of WTO accession and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade signal that the anonymous and ubiquitous “authority” as well as the ideas imposed from above in Kojève’s “Tyranny and Wisdom” are not far away. In one manner or another, these are previewed by the Outline, The Notion, and Doctrine. And this “return to animiality” seems more consistent with world events than either the animality of a consumerist America or its total rejection in the aloof samurai culture of Japan in the “Note.” Yet, the problem is, as suggested in Chapter 5, that the crowning idea of equity, a synthesis of the bourgeois and fighting tendencies in Master-tyrants in the form of bourgeois equivalence and aristocratic equality, does not sit easily in Kojève’s timelessness, let alone a timelessness that prevails in an alleged end state.

The challenge of finding two coexisting Futures just reminds that Kojève’s problem is with timelessness, not the end of time. The two Futures might be said to reveal ideas, that of the fighting Master-tyrant the desire for desire, that of the bourgeois Master-tyrant the object of planning, the design of the project. Neither idea rests at the end of time, as such an end would mean that desire for desire is extinguished and work is non-existent. Instead, the contest between the ideas representing the two-sided Master-tyrant might better be said to characterize the “germ” of the Kojèvian end state. This “germ” exists not with reference to events, but rather ideas.14 Kojève’s reference to the “germ” characterizes its main activity as the sorting out of ideas prior to action on them (compare IRH, 97, 160 n6 with IRH, 97–98). The alternate time phenomenology of the Outline, The Notion, Doctrine, and “Tyranny and Wisdom,” is such a sorting out from the Introduction, and features a social order resting on relation, an expanded politics, governance and a constructive project-oriented Future, the legacies of the Chief, and the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant.15 Each, to one degree or another, provides a plausible order in response to the straight-laced desirous of desire history of the Introduction. Ever the contrarian, the modern’s modern of the double dare suggests a revised Future, the evolution of which commenced in the muck and gore of Stalingrad, with the Outline, and became refined with Sputnik, not far from the horizon in “Tyranny and Wisdom.” In considering an end, time, as we might ordinarily understand it, marches on. As we have seen, Kojève revises his time phenomenology in the Outline and The Notion, making this more manifest in Doctrine and “Tyranny and Wisdom.” However, as suggested in The Notion and Doctrine, we must ask if this revised time with two Futures is capacious enough to both take into account a pause, and to link the Future of the warring Master-tyrant to a Present that is not only physical, but that can nonetheless match the Future of the bourgeois in the realm of ideas. We again encounter the true fulcrum of Kojèvian irony, which lies not with the end of time, but with Kojèvian time itself. In a true irony, as we approach the universal and homogeneous, we merely need to return to Kojève’s human time. On this path to revision, the contrary nature of Kojève the modern’s modern remains intact. We must return to a most unlikely source: Kojève’s Introduction itself.

The Time of the Introduction Reexamined: A Bifurcated Present to Match a Bifurcated Master-Tyrant

The heft of the Kojèvian Real suggests that repressive and combative Mastertyrants do, at turns, demonstrate a proclivity for the ideas and, indeed, the projects of the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. Such Master-tyrants are quite capable of commanding and commandeering ideas and of laboring with them. As Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” attests, the reduction of the thoughts of Mastertyrants to ideologically bite-sized nuggets in a small volume was critical to sustaining civic morale during perhaps the largest populist agrarian revolution ever witnessed. The practice continued into the relatively recent past in Niyazov’s Turkmenistan, where the printed thoughts of the President in the “Roukama” were accorded equal space with the Koran in Niyazov’s corner of Central Asia. Whether the cover of the book is a revolutionary red or a sanctimonious white, the tactic carries a profoundly anti-intellectual message: it pairs the Master-tyrant to the idea and crowds out competing voices, carrying an alternate intellectual heritage off the stage. If ideas have authority to Master-tyrants, one must place them in the context of Kojèvian time phenomenology. In establishing a bourgeois counterweight to the eventually timeless fighting side of the Master-tyrant, Kojève is proceeding along two parallel paths as respects time phenomenology, one based on the desire of desire and the warring Master-tyrant from the Introduction, the other based on the formulation of projects in “Tyranny and Wisdom” by the initially idealistic bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant who then enters time to implement them. The key issue is whether the two might be joined through an expansive, elastic time phenomenology. Surprisingly, such a revised time phenomenology is based in the Introduction itself. Kojève writes: Desire determined by the Future appears, in the Present, as a reality (that is, as satisfied Desire) only on the condition that it has negated a real – that is, a Past. The manner in which the Past has been (negatively) formed in terms of the Future is what determines the quality of the real Present. And only the Present thus determined by the Future and the Past is a human or historical Present. Therefore, generally speaking: the historical movement arises from the Future and passes through the Past in order to realize itself in the Present or as temporal Present. (IRH, 135–36) Kojève so states with a view to eventually using an escape hatch from the model of the insatiable desirous of desire and its ensuing non-relational, politically

untenable Future characterized by the time-tyrant problem. The above language of the Introduction provides a guide as to how we might better understand The Notion and Doctrine. Kojève distinguishes not just between Future, Past, and Present, but distinguishes between a “temporal Present” and a “historical Present.” In the above quote, Kojève looks at the Present as both a product of hindsight, as a “historical Present,” and as that which will “realize itself ” as a “temporal Present.” The former is the province of the idea-centered Chief and bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant, while the latter characterizes the fighting side of the Master-tyrant. In so stating, Kojève both compensates for inadequacies in the fighting and bourgeois sides of the Master-tyrant, and provides the foundation for what will be the post-war transformation of this time phenomenology. To compensate for the inadequacies of the warring Master-tyrant, eventually timeless through the rebuff, we have seen how the warring Master-tyrant may be informed by the historical Present fashioned by the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant, with emphasis on the momentousness of projects. Only the historical Present provides this. What The Notion styles as the raw, physical Present of the impetuous fighting side of the Master-tyrant gives an insufficient accounting of the motivations of the Master-tyrant. Instead, “Tyranny and Wisdom” collapses the idea-oriented “statesman” into the “Statesman,” while maintaining the desire for desire that is the core of the warring Master-tyrant. The warring statesman of the “struggle” becomes the bourgeois Statesman in the context of the historical Present, as the idea becomes enlarged through historical context, thereby providing political justification for implementation and moving activity from task to project level (compare OT, 141–42, 156 with OT, 174–76). We are dealing with two sides, fighting and laboring, of the same Master-tyrant. And the language of the Introduction suggests that the fighting side of the Master-tyrant returns the favor. As the above-quoted language of the Introduction suggests, the fighting side of the Master-tyrant will promptly overcome the Past: “Future > Past > Present … is Man in his empirical – that is spatial – integral reality.”16 Despite this overcoming, the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant will have to access the Past. Indeed, after the above-quoted language indicating that the Past is “(negatively)” formed, the historical Present is “conscious and voluntary action which realizes in the present a Project for the future, which Project is formed on the basis of the knowledge of the past” (IRH, 136). Seen thusly, while “Future > Past > Present” are stationary points cumulatively constituting human time for Kojève, the Present of the fighting side of the Master-tyrant is a Present that, as historical, is movement, which, as movement, renders the Present the “present” and the Past the “past.” The true

outcome, and a kind of legacy for the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant from the fighting side, is a Project which is a future embodied in the present. Clearly, for this project orientation, the Introduction here foresees the Chief of The Notion, the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant of “Tyranny and Wisdom.” And the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant reciprocates in giving to the warring side of the Master-tyrant – temporally. Kojève specifies: “the historical movement arises from the Future and passes through the Past in order to realize itself in the Present or as temporal Present” (IRH, 135–36). This desirous of desire Future of the fighting Master-tyrant “passes through the Past” as a predicate to action on the desire for desire, as a predicate to the temporal Present that fighting Master-tyrant will come to epitomize. And in so acting, the warring Master-tyrant has some realization of the impact of the fight on history, as “the historical movement arises from the Future” and from the desire for desire. As noted, the fighting side of the Master-tyrant will accept the “historical movement” of the back end, in the manner of a great man theory appealing to the Master-tyrant’s desire for desire, as suggested in Chapter 4. Kojève creates a temporal locomotive in which the “front end” temporal Present of the fighting warring side of the Master-tyrant driven by the desire for desire, informs and is informed by, inspires and is inspired by, the “back end” of a historical Present of the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. This front end–back end model rests on alternating desire for desire and bourgeois labor. Just so, even in the earliest pages of the Introduction, it is most certainly true that, while history is the “history of desired Desires” of the warring side of the Master-tyrant, it is also true that “History is the history of the working Slave,” at least suggestive to the prodigious laboring side (compare IRH, 6 with IRH, 20). “Tyranny and Wisdom” elaborates in presenting the child alone on the beach sculpting sand-patties, the analogy to the bourgeois fashioning an idea in isolation. To secure this movement is to access the Past through making the Past part of this movement as historical. The bourgeois Master-tyrant needs to suspend movement to the fighting side of the Master-tyrant, the desire for desire, and indeed the Kojèvian human that instantaneously overcomes the Past. Two reformulations will be in order for the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. First, the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant needs to be alone with an idea, for the idea to be the idea of the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. Second, the movement of the historical in the idea demands that the idea must be implemented, or “actualized” in the parlance of “Tyranny and Wisdom,” very much in human time. It takes suspension in order to effect the counter-instinctual move from a

stage whereby warring Master-tyrants retract the rebuff and accept the Slave idea “actualized” in the realm of work as relayed by the intellectual mediator, and another stage in which the bourgeois in the Master-tyrant appropriates an idea ultimately as “his ‘idea’ ” (OT, 139–40). It is the presentation of the social landscape, as the culmination of all fights fought, all works completed, the historical character of the present, that permits the bourgeois side of the Mastertyrant to gain perspective,17 to “ ‘distance’ ” the self from the promise of recognition offered by an idea and, in rather workmanlike bourgeois fashion, to examine the idea for its merits and “ ‘take a stand’ ” on it (OT, 174). Suspension from human time and the isolation of the bourgeois Master-tyrant remove the discount tag Kojève placed on mere philosophy as “secondary,” or even “tertiary,” as noted in Chapter 4. The secondary and tertiary are estimable, signs that the bourgeois is removed and formulating ideas. History thus facilitates the hibernation of the bourgeois – at least for a period, by detaching acts from past fighting Master-tyrants and placing the historical condition on the plane of ideas. In this suspension, Kojève maintains in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” philosophy reflects the Past for appreciating the broad context of an idea “beyond a given historical moment” (OT, 148). Instead, regarding the perspective of the as yet non-relational and idealistic bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant, the abovequoted language of the Introduction notes that the “Future is what determines the quality of the Present.” More plainly phrased in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” to contemplate action on a project or plan is to “see farther in space and time,” the essential characteristic of the Chief or the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant (OT, 150). The Past informs the Present, making this Present a historical Present that will fuel a visionary Future of the Chief, or of the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. Above all, suspension, and finding the historical in the Present, entails reflection. Accessing the historical Present requires constant probing and reconsideration – even Kojève’s Doctrine is just that, the outline of a plan that took some account of France’s past in formulating the transition from nationstate to empire. But Kojève’s title suggests that attaining the status of plan, of Chief-like project, demands more precise analysis of events passed. At his calculating, removed, and reflective best, the bourgeois in Master-tyrants earns them the appellation “Statesmen,” as the state, acting qua state, provokes and elicits ideas as well (OT, 162, 165, 174–76). Hence, the historical Present is both the “back end” of already synthesized ideas that have confronted the Real, the human time of the fight and work, and a prelude to the “front end” of the dynamic, fighting side of the Master-tyrant acting in a temporal Present. Second, after suspension, the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant must

implement, must face and enter human time and depart the splendid isolation of the world of ideas. The fighting side of the Master-tyrant also implements, but it is unquestionably the case in the Kojèvian Real that the warrior handles the realm of the fight, the bourgeois that of work. Both have a claim to the temporal Present. Kojève compactly acknowledges this aftermath to the historical Present when he indicates that “[a] statesman … can act only in the present,”18 the statesman being informed by the past, but acting in the present. That aftermath is the temporal Present, a temporal configuration Kojève assigns to the fighting side of the Master-tyrant in The Notion; “Tyranny and Wisdom” expands the playing field of the temporal Present beyond the desire for desire, to include with the historical Present, the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant, and the eventual Statesman as well. “Tyranny and Wisdom” must therefore create an alternative path for the actualizing, in-time bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. And indeed “Tyranny and Wisdom” does, referencing not desire for desire and the internal need for validation of self-worth, but, rather, referencing the forces in the external political environment toward “emulation” and “ ‘competition’.”19 Have we at least reached some vindication of the outside-in reading of Kojève, one whereby simply the evident desire to dominate explains any act of a Master-tyrant? To the contrary, the movement of “Tyranny and Wisdom” toward emulation turns us inward. While the focus is not internal for being centered on the self, the focus is explained by another internal factor very close and dear to the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant: the idea, the project, the sand-patty (no doubt soon to become the sand-castle) of the bourgeois. In contrast to the fighting side of the Master-tyrant risking life for desire for desire, the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant will risk life for “his ‘idea’ ” and its transformation into a “reality” (OT, 140). And this inside-out explanation will register in Kojèvian space and human relations therein. To the point and completely counter-intuitive to a mainstream reading of Kojève: Kojèvian analysis of the proclivities of the bourgeois Master-tyrant in human time lead to the conclusion that the bourgeois is far more likely to kill, to exterminate, opposition to advance ideas than the conspicuously fighting aide of the Mastertyrant, for whom enslavement as a means to secure the desire of the desire from a peer-soon-to-be-Slave is paramount (OT, 141–42). In contrast, the bourgeois side, driven by the internal force of devotion to one’s idea, has the idea of something to defend and advance over opposition. How can something for Kojève be both historical and Present? Even the mellow, isolated bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant has demands – the idea must be his idea, not that presented by an intellectual mediator (OT, 140–41), thus giving a quality of the Present to the historical. On the other hand, “[f]rom

the Hegelian perspective,” the action on an idea requires a distance from the idea, otherwise the Master-tyrant “cannot consciously and freely decide for or against it” (OT, 174). Kojève aptly recounts the centrality and complexity of bringing an idea current yet conferring originality on the acting, warring Mastertyrant as follows: [D]oes it follow that these modern “tyrannies” are (philosophically) justified by Xenophon’s Dialogue? Are we to conclude that the modern “tyrant” could actualize the “philosophic” ideal of tyranny without recourse to the advice of the Wise or of the philosophers, or must we grant that he could only do so because a Simonides once advised a Hiero? (OT, 139; emphasis supplied) The “must we grant” refers to the inevitability of a commanding temporal Present, a call to action by desirous-of-desire Master-tyrants once the lessons of the historical Present are drawn.20 Yet, Kojève here echoes the Outline’s elevation of principle at the expense of actors. Xenophon’s interlocutors become generic, “a Simonides” and “a Hiero.” The strictly historical Present demands that we be far from a great man view of the historical that might tantalize the fighting side of the Master-tyrant. What is more, Kojève implicitly places the thinker on par with the Master-tyrant. There is a summons to the historical Present by suggesting that even the most recent Master-tyrants have their deeds justified “only … because” Xenophon’s dialogue is an exchange of ideas between a mediator like Simonides who relates social realities and Hiero who has misgivings on the benefits of being a Master-tyrant. The cumulative nature of the historical Present demands circumspection, and patience, qualities in short supply as respects the fighting side of the Mastertyrant. Indeed, Zhou Enlai, the intellectual right arm of the most notorious Asian Master-tyrant of the last several centuries, may have proved equally wry and prophetic when he was famously said to have remarked that it was too early to determine the consequences of the French Revolution.21 Kojève would be perfectly in accord with the suspended judgment of this consummate Chinese diplomat and intellectual mediator to the bourgeois side of a Master-tyrant. “Tyranny and Wisdom” characterizes the suspension in time as a process that “could go on for more or less a long time” (OT, 174), as did the encounter of Zhou’s China with the French Revolution. It is not events that are suspended. It is, rather, time, the time that would otherwise be the labor of the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant, the time that is suspended as the isolated bourgeois tyrant

weighs ideas provided by intellectual mediators until events make it ripe for the idea to be “actualized.”22 Not only is Zhou’s suspension a good holding strategy for ideas, it is a particularly apt Kojèvian one, for the alternative is to be guided by events as they “run their course,” an anathema for Kojève, for whom time is purposeful, man-made, and, according to the conclusion of “Tyranny and Wisdom,” “ ‘reasonable.’ ” Yet reason, the intersection of idea and act in the Real, need not circumscribe China only. Indeed, a double-barreled tyranny, featuring a modern bourgeois as well as a traditional martial side, may hold the key to post-war political dynamics. Kojève might be seen as laying a philosophic basis without parallel for describing the various elements of post-war democratic totalitarianism that have evolved from both the Marxism-Leninism in Eastern and Central Europe’s “people’s democratic republics” and the cult of personality-based republicanism in the then-decolonizing Third World. The side of the Master-tyrant that is the bourgeois means an emphasis on principle, as well as persona. This has given such countries a dignity on the international stage never theretofore enjoyed, be it manifest in the pan-Arab secular socialisms of the 1960s or the non-aligned movement. Severe social and economic transitions have meant that many such regimes, however democratic in rhetoric and form, had large vestiges of authoritarianism, if only to move reform. Where there are enthusiastic imposing “citizens,” one usually finds high-handed, muscular authority, if not Kojève’s bourgeois in the Master-tyrant outright. The likes of Nassar and Nehru surely had voices, ideas, as well as faces, on behalf of the newly enfranchised, the newly emancipated. In broadening political relations beyond the desire for desire with a view of authority elaborated originally in The Notion, Kojève presents a view of politics that is less human in the Kojèvian sense, but more humane for absorbing Master-tyrants, citizen-henchmen, and the put-upon alike. Thus, Kojève may again be found to have pinpointed a formula that has eluded empirical social science. A summary of Kojève’s wartime and post-wartime corpus is as follows: the Outline flirts with the idea of a political order driven by other than the desire for desire and based on ideas; The Notion proposes a political ruler, the Chief, who might direct such a political order; the Doctrine shows in part how such an order might be implemented as based on a grand idea or project;23 and, finally, “Tyranny and Wisdom” shows how the bourgeois side of a Master tyrant, the successor to the Chief of The Notion, might coexist with the fighting side of the Master-tyrant through the relation of the historical and temporal Presents. With “Tyranny and Wisdom” as the culmination, the order and trajectory of Kojève’s political corpus can only be explained by addressing his time phenomemology,

its complications and its amendments. But issues loom. A difference between the warring and bourgeois sides of the Master-tyrant cannot be fully reconciled. And this difference is best expressed in terms of time phenomemology, the seeming compatibility of the historical and temporal Presents notwithstanding. The difference in the two is in respect of events past. The historical Present of the bourgeois side adopts the Past as a valuable rear view mirror. Hence, “Tyranny and Wisdom” notably praises “Stakonovite” prizes for emulation, for imitation, of projects past to further projects championed by the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant (OT, 138–39). In contrast, the aristocratic, warring side of Master-tyrants might simply bulldoze the Past made concrete in terms of the wasted corpses of forced laborers for a Stalinist era dam. But, from the standpoint of the historical Present, the Past is informing, encompassing the corpses as industrial martyrs in service to the Soviet state, worthy of emulation. Essentially, Kojève refers to the passage from the historical Present, with its emphasis on the Past and emulation, to the temporal Present, with its emphasis on overcoming the Past, as the transition from emulation as connection to tradition, to emulation tinged with competition, struggle, and the fight. Suspension has its limits in informing a temporal Present. And then there is the issue of implementation. The temporal Present in fact is informed by the historical Present in the vaguest sense. The Notion prefaces “Tyranny and Wisdom” in this regard by holding that fighting Master-tyrants have a physical presence in the Present (LNA, 120). But as it develops, the spatial and the temporal are at odds. In temporal terms, “Tyranny and Wisdom” captures the post-fight Master-tyrant gingerly, indicating that the merely physically present post-fight Master-tyrant24 is engaged in the middle of “ ‘current business’,” in a time that is limited and must be apportioned for extraordinary activities such as those of philosophers advising on practical politics (OT, 137–37, 152, 165–67). In fact, at the post-fight stage, the formerly fighting, now-victorious side of the Master-tyrant is non-relational and hence non-political. In this sense, Kojève’s tongue-in-cheek reference to “ ‘current business’ ” is, like Kojève’s reference to a Japan that is “ ‘post-historical’, ” indicative of true Kojèvian irony, that of the time-tyrant dilemma: the desirous of desire human time only unites and socializes the defeated Slaves, making victory in the fight an impossible political solution for the ostensible ruling post-fight Master-tyrant. Thus, there is nothing particularly current, or business-like, in the reference to Kojève’s “ ‘current business’ ” of the post-fight warrior side of the Master-tyrant. As the Introduction indicates, this stage largely suggests a forcefed, neither animal nor human, post-fight Master-tyrant. Thus, the temporal Present does not readily connect to the historical Present.

Nor has the historical Present a particular affinity for the desire for desire rooted in the temporal Present. As suggested above, Kojève makes this point, albeit somewhat obliquely, in this discussion of emulation, mostly deciding that the bourgeois side seeks emulation of ideas, not the desirous of desire self. This is fully consistent with citizen-henchmen hawking not their individual selves, but rather imposing ideas in the central definition of tyranny in “Tyranny and Wisdom.” Indeed, citizen-henchmen have as a primary object of their efforts avoiding the temporal graveyard of “ ‘current business’.” The temporal Present of a mere physical post-fight presence must be rescued in some way by a historical Present. But it cannot be, due to the asymetrical treatment of events past by the temporal and historical Presents, and particularly the treatment of ideas gained from understanding events past. To return to our shrewd Chinese diplomat, Zhou as intellectual mediator knew that Master-tyrants fall hard. He also knew that their at times disconcerting thump has a way of disorienting philosophers like Marx, and perhaps the Kojève of the Introduction, both of whom may have acquired the habit of finding their revolutions in the wrong places, be it Marx’s turn-of-the-century imperial Germany or perhaps even the Introduction’s speculations as to America and Japan, rather than the more compelling silhouette of China in the Outline.25 In short, the cumulative lessons of a historical Present do not always find appropriate takers in fighting Master-tyrants in the temporal Present. To avoid the time-tyrant problem, Kojève must express temporally a manner of integrating the fighting side of the Master-tyrant and the laboring, bourgeois side. But a close examination yields problems with integrating the temporal and historical Presents, largely because they lead to an understanding of events past, which is, for the fighting side of the Master-tyrant, continually overcome, but for the bourgeois side, a crescendo of the cumulative that becomes the historical Present through movement. Considering the wartime and post-war corpus of Kojève, we are thus no closer to avoiding a politics of Humpty Dumpty, of shattered leadership, than we were with the time-tyrant problem of the Introduction. If even the wartime and post-war corpus of Kojève gives us two senses of the present, and two of the past, we must ask the same as to the Kojèvian Future. It is now time to turn to the possibility of two Futures, and their true meaning for Kojève’s “germ” of an end state. The issue is then who is best equipped to handle the issue of the two Futures and what this means for Kojève’s most precise articulation on the end – that we are merely in its “germ.” On focusing on the “germ” of the end state, it is key to understand what Kojève does and does not mean. Kojève emphasizes that the

“germ” of the end can be articulated “in principle,” meaning at the least that an idea of the end can and should be articulated. Second, the nature of the end Kojève profiles is “perfection” (IRH, 97). For being articulated the end must occur during Kojèvian human time, as ideas are key tools in and of Kojèvian human time. For having its defining characteristic as perfection rather than finality, the end state and the “germ” of the end state refers not to a temporal end. Instead, it is an end particularly well suited to reflection in and by the wise man – during Kojèvian human time. Thus, Kojève asserts that such an end state is possible; it is subject to actualization in time. Or as set forth by Kojève, if “Eternity in Time” is feasible, “the possibility of going outside of Time is excluded.” This is the possibility posed by Kojève’s prized Hegel. Hegel means that “One is outside of Time only by being in Time” (IRH, 97, 115). In this, the wise man is without parallel. If the post-war corpus has taught us anything in dealing with the duality of presents, pasts, and futures, it is that suspension from Kojèvian human time is in order, and that an integrating goal such as totality first returns us to Kojève’s human time, not its end. Of the thinkers to advise the fighting Master-tyrant, or for that matter even the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant, Chapter 4 presents three: the philosopher, the wise man, and the intellectual mediator. Yet, the need to take into account duality, the need for suspension from time and totality leads to the conclusion that, as the Kojèvian corpus draws to a close, for Kojève two’s a company, and three a crowd. The wise man, not the philosopher, brings the calling cards of suspension and totality to the fore, with the intellectual mediator left to deal with the legacy of the two Futures that might appeal to the fighting and warring sides of the Master-tyrant, respectively. It is not that this position is without complication in the post-war corpus. We recall that Kojève assumes away the wise man in “Tyranny and Wisdom” only for the sake of the argument or “[i]n order to simplify things” (OT, 147, 169). Thus, in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” Kojève seems not to discuss wise men. Or does he? Accordingly, the final part of the book will examine exactly what M. Kojève thinks it is that he and Mr. Strauss were undertaking in On Tyranny.

Of Wise Men Reconsidered and Reread: The Strauss–Kojève Exchange as a Final Futile Attempt to Pair the Master-Tyrant with a Thinker The specter that Strauss may be a Kojèvian wise man surely commands our

attention and, as we will soon see, surely commanded those of Kojève and, even more so, Strauss. However, before taking this issue up, it is important to see how their exchange in “On Tyranny” and especially in the “Restatement” treat the dual Futures and the two-sided nature of the Master-tyrant evolving in Kojève’s wartime and post-war corpus, and indeed in his “Tyranny and Wisdom.” First, however, it is valuable to recap why this book has treated the exchange at various points in the text. Chapters 3 and 4 treated the exchange largely in response to the genuine theme central to Kojève’s Introduction, the time-tyrant problem, as a secondary matter demonstrating that both Strauss and indeed Kojève refute the competing claim that the end of history is similarly central. Chapter 3 demonstrated that the feature of universality in Kojèvian thought is far less about the universal in a temporal end state, and far more a symptom of the time-tyrant problem, a proposition with which Strauss seriously agrees and one singularly tied to the Strauss concern for the theologico-political problem. In parallel fashion, Chapter 4 demonstrated that the feature of homogeneity in Kojèvian thought is far less about the homogeneous in a temporal end state, and far more a symptom of the time-tyrant problem, a proposition with which Strauss seriously agrees. Kojève’s homogeneity is singularly tied to the Strauss concern with undermining the parity of idea and act, and is very much a feature of Kojèvian time. This said, the Strauss “Restatement” must not only address the Introduction, but also the array of amendments to the Introduction that Kojève addresses in his wartime and post-war corpus. Those arguments might best be summed up by Kojève’s pairing of the bourgeois and fighting sides of the Master-tyrant so as to avoid the time-tyrant problem, with the temporal model being the front end–back end relationship between the temporal Present of the fighting side of the Mastertyrant and the historical Present of the bourgeois side. This concluding section will maintain that Strauss undoes the connection that Kojève establishes between the two sides. Most pointedly, this concluding section refutes any notion that he, Strauss, might be considered a wise man and intellectual mediator in their service. Strauss rather brusquely dismisses the idea that a temporal Present of the fighting side of the Master-tyrant might inform the bourgeois side formulating a historical Present, with Kojève leaving the fighting side of Master-tyrants with a controlling say in the fate of mankind. Strauss refers to what may be the end of time as having the character of Oriental despotism – then again, Strauss characterizes ancient political orders, very much in Kojève’s human time, as Oriental despotism (compare OT, 208 with OT, 181). Strauss does certainly seem to treat an end of time – until one realizes that he sees very much the

possibility that it could repeat itself, making it no temporal end of time at all (OT, 209). In so doing, Strauss is affirming what this book has pointed out in a multitude of contexts: Kojève’s end is not temporal but a ratification of the existing condition of timelessness. For Strauss, a repeating and chronic Oriental despotism deprives the historical Present of its informing quality, leaving us with the timelessness of their fighting side of post-fight Master-tyrants, the timetyrant dilemma. Thus, with a view to Kojève’s post-war corpus especially, Strauss maintains that the Future pushed by a desirous-of-desire temporal Present is no future at all but a repetition, desire for desire being exemplar of the tendency of our modern’s modern “to lower the goal of man” thereby making actualization of an end state in the Future of the desirous-of-desire fighting side of the Master-tyrant “impossible” (OT, 210). Fights and works, the Kojèvian temporal guideposts of evolution, just attest to this lowering, even as understood in Kojèvian terms. A Kojèvian end for Strauss is thus based on “not war nor work but thinking,” with state of mind the crux of an end state (OT, 208–10). This undermining of any idea of a true temporal end of history thereby exposes for Strauss the continuing Kojèvian problem, the time-tyrant problem. If Strauss exposes the time-tyrant problem in undermining the connection of the temporal to the historical Present and the concomitant desirous-of-desire Future of the warrior side of the Master-tyrant, Strauss reserves most of the “Restatement” to refute the reverse solution in Kojèvian post-war time phenomenology, that being how the historical Present informs the temporal Present. This is the realm of the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. The “Restatement” spends far more energy on this configuration for, if accepted, this Kojèvian time formulation implicates ideas formulated in the eternal in service of Master-tyrants, a Straussian worst of both worlds in degrading ideas and elevating Master-tyrants. The Strauss “Restatement” is not simply a defense of the life of philosophy as Strauss understands it over Kojèvian politics. Rather, it is a defense against the challenge mounted by Kojève’s bourgeois Master-tyrant, the attempt to solve the time-tyrant problem, a solution fashioned by that archetypal bourgeois tool: work. The wise man, that epitome of suspension, is the ideal thinker to complement the bourgeois in the Master-tyrant: free of desire for desire, reflected in suspension, and made current by the Kojèvian intellectual mediator. It is thus no surprise that the bulk of the “Restatement” turns in the other direction, to the Straussian philosopher, completely free of the desire for desire yet always probing, always the embodiment of the discipline Strauss says is “knowledge of our ignorance of the most important things” (OT, 201) and

therefore a quest that is never simply reflective. Strauss, therefore, takes issue with the Kojèvian bourgeois on the nature of work. The work of thought for Strauss is the pursuit of what has not been attained: wisdom; whereas the work of thought for Kojève is a reflection of that which has. The Strauss philosopher needs no mediator to become relational; while detached, this philosopher is aware of dependence on the political community such that life cannot be spent only on the “eternal order,” but must include work in the political order supporting the philosophic life (OT, 199–201). In contrast to the bourgeois side of the Kojèvian Master-tyrant and most certainly that Master-tyrant’s wise man sidekick, Strauss replies that his philosopher is necessarily and inextricably relational, though often detached. This is exactly the profile Kojève might like to see in the wise man cum intellectual mediator, featuring alternating stages of removal and timely engagement. And as two is a company, three a crowd, this eliminates the philosopher. And Strauss in his most direct engagement of Kojève appears to cooperate. As if to suggest that each wishes to impose his view of the philosopher on the other, Kojève and Strauss both appear to describe the other as philosophers. But the symmetry is only apparent. Kojève more accurately indicates that Strauss is a thinker “presenting himself … as a philosopher in quest” of knowledge (OT, 135–36). But the approach is coy. The philosopher fashioning advice at secondary and tertiary level is hardly the thinker needed to advise the Mastertyrant, whether fighting or laboring and implementing. This philosopher is prone neither to advising “quickly” nor to apportioning time for the political (OT, 165, 163–69). As analysis builds to a crescendo, Kojève thus ventures that all things considered, his wise man, not the philosopher, is the superior candidate to advise the Master-tyrant (OT, 169). As Kojève concludes “Tyranny and Wisdom,” his philosopher in reality looks less like the in-time philosopher of the Introduction, and more like the withdrawn wise man inclined to the timeless26 – hence the desperate need for the intellectual mediator. In implicit response to the Strauss emphasis on quest, Kojève’s wisdom and wise man must be rooted firmly in and during Kojèvian human time, not its end.27 While it is true that the wise man is the consummate citizen of an end state, the end state may occur throughout history, as argued at the conclusion of the preceding section. Wisdom, the Introduction states, “can only be realized at the end of History.” But after this seemingly absolute position, Kojève then reverts to the importance of process, arguing that such an end can only be detected in time, in “historical reality,” and that one need only have the view of the “imminent realization” of the end of history, not the end itself (IRH, 95–96).

Circularity means that the past, history, confirms and confirms repeatedly, in human time – not at its end (IRH, 193–94, 201). Thus, history always beckons, especially during the “germ” of the end state. As Kojève’s wartime and post-wartime corpus develops, the only way of retaining the significance of the end state is thus a timelessness, a suspension, that encompasses an accounting of all becoming, the totality of the historical Present and the dynamic in-time temporal Present. Master-tyrants and wisdom are coextensive in human time – hence Kojève’s “Tyranny and Wisdom.” And in Strauss, Kojève thinks he finds a wise man comfortable in the timeless, in suspension, yet aware of advising the bourgeois side of the Mastertyrant, and quite compatible with the role of intellectual mediator. Note the crafty manner in which Kojève presents Strauss in “Tyranny and Wisdom”: Perhaps in spite of what its author may think about it, this book of Strauss’s is truly important not because it purports to reveal to us the authentic and misunderstood thought of a contemporary and compatriot of Plato’s, but because of the problem which it raises and discusses. … Xenophon … tells us between the lines what to think about what [Hiero and Simonides] say. Strauss fully spells out Xenophon’s thought and tells us between the lines what to think about it. More precisely, by presenting himself in his book not as a wise man in possession of knowledge but as a philosopher in quest of it, Strauss tells us not what to think about all this, but only what to think about when speaking of the relations between tyranny or government in general on one hand, and Wisdom or philosophy on the other. In other words, he leaves it at raising problems; but he raises them with a view to solving them. (OT, 135–36) Notice that while Kojève appears to rule out Strauss as a wise man, when speaking of revelation and presentation, it is actually Strauss whom Kojève holds responsible for so doing. Kojève’s remarks as to reading between the lines are not to be taken casually, but rather in the context of Kojèvian time phenomenology and Kojève’s search for a wise man and the role of space, circularity and totality in so doing. As noted in Chapters 2–4, the Introduction places great stock in the capacities of the physical dimensions of the printed word in expressing finality. Print in space, devoid of Kojèvian human time, does so (ILH, 424–25, 439–41). Textual lines clearly matter to Kojève as labor in

space, that which the wise man reveals. But the aspect of totality in circularity also matters. Totality means revealing change, works, and fights (IRH, 201). Hence, as a revealing wise man for Kojève, Strauss also calls attention to another spatial aspect of a page, the lack of print on the page, that which is between the lines. At first glance, this might seem solely to address the question of esoteric writing so frequently attributed to Strauss. But actually, “Tyranny and Wisdom” puts forth that Kojève had something far more practical in mind: the search for a thinker who can see “farther in space,” that is, according greater scrutiny to the space of the text, and eliminating abstraction by tying ideas to acts.28 For Kojève, acts are what lie between the lines Strauss reads. And from the first page of the “Restatement,” Strauss demonstrates an acute interest in linking contemporary tyrannical acts to classical ideas. The mode of Strauss is to “leave it at raising problems,” in the mode of suspension between the historical Present and the temporal Present. In short, the brief Kojève depiction of the Strauss effort is aimed at subtly creating a profile – that of Strauss as wise man laboring during human time, but in the realm of the suspended timeless. Similarly, Kojève presents the reality of pairing the timeless wise man with the intellectual mediator,29 Strauss being both. Strauss for Kojève does not tell us what to think; rather, like the wise man, Strauss reflects, being content to relate the problem, “what to think about.” At same time, Kojève presents Strauss as a practical intellectual implicating solutions, one “who raises them with a view to solving them,” suggestive of the practical intellectual mediator searching for the right time to apply an idea. This is not at odds with the reflecting, active side of the wise man. Even the Introduction has it that for the wise man “each question is its own answer, but is so only because he goes through the totality of questions-answers” (IRH, 94). In Kojèvian parlance, the answer must be identical to the question; in Straussian parlance, wisdom is the pursuit of answers knowing that the question never recedes. In both cases, endings imply beginnings. For Kojève, Strauss is thus both timeless wise man and intellectual mediator. Both the wise man and the mediator conduct a kind of sifting exercise, with the wise man perhaps referencing all against the baseline of the timeless, whereas the intellectual mediator may be more inclined to first start with “concrete problems raised by current political affairs” and then review ideas for usefulness. Arguably, the “Restatement” obliges. There, Strauss takes account of the cumulative force of history, and then a suspension. His “Restatement” begins with taking a fresh look at contemporary tyrannies and then measures them against classical ideas, thereby suggesting the cumulative force of the historical Present Kojève has in mind. Like the Kojèvian intellectual mediator, Strauss

goes on to remark that the mid-nineteenth century may have been more fertile ground for the timeless presented by the ancients, and, astonishingly, weighs competing political theories against the reality of Salazar’s Portugal (OT, 177– 78, 185, 188). Both the Strauss philosopher and the Kojèvian intellectual mediator must be engaged with the social, all the while taking up the eternal order and the timeless. Specifically, consistent with the compatibility of the wise man and Kojèvian human time, Kojève emphasizes that historical progress, during human time, allows one to see the possibility of wisdom. Wisdom is thus less a temporal end point, and more a mentality that enables one to experience the timeless, to go beyond the reality of works and fights (OT, 169, 174). As Kojève notes in his final interview, he was truly looking for wise men, not the philosophers of the Introduction. Strauss might no doubt bristle at the dual role Kojève seems to have in mind for him. For Kojève, disagreement does not disqualify Strauss from status as a wise man. After all, Kojève quarrels with Hegel about so basic an issue as the inherent capacity of Nature or Space, the given, to change free of human intervention; but this does not preclude Kojève from designating Hegel the “real Wise Man” (compare IRH, 96n with 217–18). Rather, as Chapter 4 has noted, what is key is that the wise man be. Be what? The answer is, be the someone of everything, all thoughts thought, all deeds done. As Kojève’s tribute to Strauss at the beginning of “Tyranny and Wisdom” suggests, this means being the important that points to the important, being reflected and reflecting. Most precisely, Kojève says that the Strauss interpretation is secondary; rather the Strauss work “owes its importance to the importance of the problem” it takes to the market place of ideas, to that which it reflects (OT, 136). The importance of showing the important, reflecting and being reflected, is nothing less than demonstrating the idea as accumulated in history to date, in the cause of taking human time forward. Or, in the precise parlance of Kojèvian time, it is moving from the “historical Present” to the “temporal Present.” Finally, as to embodying circularity and totality, if Strauss is a wise man, it follows for Kojève that Strauss is a citizen of the end state to be; as such the wise man reveals and is revealed by the universal and homogeneous state (IRH, 95). To remind, this is the end state of the idea, not a temporal end state. But, for Kojève, this citizenship is not a matter of enlistment in a supervening political entity, that which might preoccupy the outside-in mainstream reading of Kojève. Rather, derivative of an inside-out reading of Kojève as time phenomenologist, citizenship entails internal conviction. The wise man must first realize that

rediscovery of ideas and acts leads to the conclusion that the current state is inadequate. Second, the wise man needs an “idea of a perfect State and try to realize it” (IRH, 96 n8). Wisdom is possible for Kojève if such a perfect state is possible in principle. Strauss accepts that some perfect state is more than possible in principle, noting only that it is merely “improbable.” Strauss would adhere to the view that classical virtue rather than universal and homogeneous satisfaction be the benchmark for the perfect (compare IRH, 97 with OT, 210). For Kojève no matter, as Kojève quarrels with even Hegel over the end state. What counts is a conviction as to a “perfect State,” however unlikely and whatever the profile. And what counts is a commitment to “realize” same, meaning to take ideas to the market place for deliberation. Then, for Kojève, one is a Hegelian wise man, which is to say one in the “germ” of the end state. Wisdom entails conviction to the possibility of a state and the desire to “realize” it. Lurking within the Strauss of the between-the-lines is, for Kojève, the role of the wise man in a suspended time. Kojève contrasts the Strauss of the betweenthe-lines work, the work that directs us what to think about, with Xenophon who tells us what to think on a certain subject (OT, 135–36). In short, in reading between the lines, one reads outside space and therefore in the timeless promoted by Strauss. Kojève contends that Strauss demonstrates a key element of the Kojèvian wise man: the motif as the wise man “re-discovers,” a rediscovery of the gap between idea and act. Accordingly, from the first paragraph, the Strauss “Restatement” calls for that which can be “learned again from the classics,” a learning that includes acts as well as ideas, as Strauss calls for the remembrance of bad as well as good through the act of rereading (compare IRH, 96 n8 with OT, 177, 185). For Kojève, the imperative is in the name of the timeless: it is the view that space, the space of the text, against the backdrop of in-between-the-lines Kojèvian acts, can convey that which is timeless in the author, the author’s idea. For Kojève this rereading, this redoing, the reengagement in the market place of ideas, is perhaps the most palpable evidence of revealing and being revealed (compare OT, 155–60, 177–78, 205 with ILH, 303, 408). Rereading is done in light of intervening acts between readings that yield new ideas. To Kojève, the Strauss instruction to reread is tantamount to reengagement of the market place, thus bonding idea to act. In the parlance of the Introduction, Strauss labors in the suspension of deliberation before action, in the historical Present, whereas Xenophon the intimate of Master-tyrants, is in the thick of the temporal Present. This call to circularity through the totality of rereading, an encounter with the timeless in the classics, is during time. As the outset of the “Restatement” shows,

it is particularly critical because of, not despite, events in the twentieth century. For Kojève, this makes Strauss a wise man,30 but also a Kojèvian intellectual mediator. This means knowing when it is time for the timeless. In this respect, the required rereading is not an exercise in repetition. Rather, encountering the timeless requires understanding as the author has understood matters: “We are in need of a second education in order to accustom our eyes to the noble reserve and quiet grandeur of the classics” (OT, 185). For Kojève, in so stating, Strauss argues strenuously, as would a Kojèvian intellectual mediator, that such an education to access the timeless is largely contingent on time, on the period in which we receive ideas, and that the eighteenth century was far more hospitable than the twentieth for such an exercise. Strauss very correctly observes that Kojève does not reject the classical standard (OT, 186). Rather, the difference between the two is the temporal context in which that standard is most meaningful. To Kojève, Straussian interpretation appears as a modest exercise purporting to stipulate that which Hiero and Simonides said to each other, the last bastion of passive philosophy of the “historical Present,” of the suspended state of the wise man.31 The reading between the lines is, for Kojève, the exercise of relaying how what Simonides said to Hiero has relevance today, how it comes to pass that “a Simonides” speaks to “a Hiero,” thereby making their messages, the “ ‘principles’ ” they carry, important – more important than the original speakers. This is because of the acts intervening between the lines – and in time. The historical Present then becomes a temporal Present. In responding, in rereading in light of Hegel, the Simonides of the historical Present becomes “a Simonides” of the temporal Present, a Simonides informed by the ever-changing current political situation as Kojève and Strauss proceed through the “germ” of the end state (ILH, 393–94, EHR, 1: 86–87, 90–91; EHR, 3: 354–55). For Kojève, Strauss cannot escape the same fate as Kojève.32 Both are subject to the various syntheses, as Kojève might have them. In fact, that very modernity is what enables Strauss to “read between the lines,” for modernity must be a factor in any restoration. Kojève allows that intellectual mediators come in all shapes and sizes, a menagerie of “intellectuals of all shades (more or less spread out in time and space).”33 What counts for Kojève is the intersection of time and ideas, not a willingness to advise Mastertyrants. Unlike the restive philosopher, the Kojèvian intellectual mediator will take what comes. For Kojève, this malleability leaves Strauss as the intellectual mediator susceptible to the self-centered contentment of the wise man. Strauss demonstrates for Kojève self-centeredness in the best sense of the term. Kojève’s

Introduction suggests that being a wise man means not flinching from the label “subjective” and, in fact, embracing it (IRH, 79). Strauss commences his extended discussion of philosophic motivation with his own definition of the wise man, albeit an oblique one. It is, like Kojève’s, a definition that leads back to the self and the link of self to idea: “Therefore the philosopher ceases to be a philosopher at the moment at which the “subjective certainty” of a solution becomes stronger than his awareness of the problematic character of that solution” (OT, 196). At the same time, this subjectivity is rooted in time. Go to the market place of ideas, both Strauss and Kojève bid their audience, to secure the needed “awareness” (OT, 199, 205). The reflecting wise man thus contains a measure of the intellectual mediator, weighing the appropriateness of idea to circumstance, self and society, subject and object, the tandem of the wise man abetted by the mediator. To Kojève, Strauss, in so maintaining, fulfills the role of a scavenger of ideas, matching them to the times in the mode of intellectual mediator. The market place for Kojève is the portal of timeless ideas into time and actualization; for Strauss it is precisely where the wise man goes to escape time, to escape the prejudices of unlike minds. In either event, the intellectual mediator and the mediator’s playing field, the market place, serve as buffers to the wise man, providing protection from the vagaries of time.34 And there is an intriguing case that the “Restatement” has Strauss playing the role of mediator. As noted in Chapter 6, the Outline suggests homogeneity between thinkers and Master-tyrants from the economics of exchange. Indeed, Strauss almost seems to anticipate what will be the cue of Zhou Enlai. He comes devilishly close to identifying Kojève’s end state informed by economic homogeneity with the “planetary Oriental despotism,” in which China as the Middle Kingdom plays a pivotal role in the seesaw of world affairs. Strauss comes remarkably proximate in suggesting that the “war-waging worker” of civic universality could be the worker of the wage war of the Outline’s bare-bones economic homogeneity when he questions the ultimate worth of Kojève’s stark end state and the animal struggle for survival (OT, 208– 09). So long as Strauss exhibits tendencies of the intellectual mediator bringing the timeless into time, a role in which the “Restatement” engages and even at times appears to relish, Kojève’s “Tyranny and Wisdom” is content to let Strauss view the market place as a venue for purity, not parity, all the while reflecting the Kojèvian Real. Hence, Kojève’s salutation to Strauss in his abstruse first paragraph of “Tyranny and Wisdom” is a masterpiece in double entendre. For Kojève, Strauss’s work is important in that it purports to be philosophic, though he, Strauss, may have thought himself wise35 – for commanding us to respeak, to

reread, and, in Kojève’s classification “re-discover,” thus, offering a reflection of the intersection of real and ideal, the protestations of a seemingly cantankerous Strauss notwithstanding. But Strauss can make a compelling argument to escape service as a Kojèvian wise man and intellectual mediator. In a counter-intuitive sense, Strauss goes to the market place to disengage, to encounter ideas in the midst of an indifferent society and to find the few who might understand them (OT, 205); Kojève, in contrast, goes to engage, to find ideas at work in that very society, for all his emphasis on the relation of the idea to the current political situation. There is much more to the Straussian claim of independence from Kojève’s intentions. Kojèvian engagement in the market place demands that the intellectual mediator compensate for the suspended and merely reflecting, reflective wise man. However, the unity Kojève might have contemplated in combining the roles of revealing wise man and intellectual mediator is an oxymoron. The wise man is to be the someone of circularity, including totality, revealing all thoughts that can be thought, all deeds that can be done. In contrast, the ideas of the intellectual mediator are anything but the intellectual mediator’s; Kojève puts forth the mediator as an alternate to the Kojèvian philosopher to put an end to the problem of desire for desire and the philosopher’s attachment to the philosopher’s ideas. The intellectual mediator is in the business of selectivity, elimination, the Zhou-like biding of time and withholding of ideas until they are ripe for the times. Strauss pairs ideas with periods, but has no truck with Kojèvian exchange whereby the period places value on the idea.36 He thus cannot assume the mantle of intellectual mediator. Nor can Strauss assume the position of wise man. His view of the pristine quality of the timeless and its detachment from the market place gets at the crux of the Strauss problem with the Kojèvian wise man, and why he, Strauss, cannot be enlisted in the effort. To be wise in the Kojèvian sense is to be timeless, suspended from time and contented, which is to say absent desire for desire. But the Straussian view of the timeless is something quite a bit more active than the activity of even the active, reflecting wise man noted in Chapter 4.37 Strauss lets slip that Kojève seeks to make of the Straussian philosopher a Kojèvian wise man, just as Kojève lets go his philosopher of the Introduction (OT, 201). In so doing, Strauss departs from his normal argumentation in the “Restatement” that he will not treat the wise man. He does so to attack Kojève at his most vulnerable: as time phenomenologist. Strauss strenuously argues that the timeless is no place for rehabilitating Kojèvian wise men seeking to advise the bourgeois side of Master-tyrants through the relais of intellectual mediators. The

timeless is no more for suspended wise men than for forlorn post-fight Mastertyrants. Rather than suspension, the mode of the Straussian timelessness is pursuit, the pursuit of what one cannot know and never will. Only ideas, not wise men are timeless or the Straussian “eternal.” Otherwise, there can be no cherished pursuit of wisdom, of the eternal – or Straussian wisdom is “knowledge of one’s ignorance” (OT, 196). It is an awareness of absence rather than a presence. As understood by Strauss, the Kojèvian wise man cannot reflect the timeless, the eternal, for not being in it. Accordingly, Strauss cannot and will not strive to accomplish a perfect State as a work in Kojèvian human time. Strauss argues that a Kojèvian end state is “impossible” when referenced against a “ ‘tragic’ ” history. This judgment as to the impossible can only be made through the workings of history, during time. By tragic, Strauss goes on to elaborate that one cannot hold fast to philosophy as Strauss understands it should be and the Kojèvian politics of “infinite labors and struggles and agonies” (OT, 208–09; emphasis supplied). The Strauss coupling of the timeless, of infinity, not with the end of time, but with, in fact, works and fights, the essence of Kojèvian time, is not to be missed. Strauss caps his critique of Kojèvian impossibility by anticipating what would be the core of Kojève’s “Note” one decade later: that the end is not so much a product of temporal progression as of a humanity “returned, as in a cycle, to the prehuman beginnings of History” (OT, 208). Repeated impossibility in and during human time, predicating human time on desirous of desire works and fights, the unmasking of the vaunted end as in fact a frustrating default option of a return: the Strauss critique is far less aimed at the unique aspects of a universal and homogeneous temporal end state, far more at the characteristics of a frustrating timelessness, the core of which is the time-tyrant dilemma. Hence, Strauss comes nowhere close to the model of the striving wise man Kojève wants. In short, the Strauss critique undermines Kojèvian time phenomenology, including any attempt to relegate the fight and celebrate works, particularly through the work of fashioning a historical Present, for that will always include some element of the fight, the desire for desire, and the tragic timelessness of the post-fight. Any link of the historical Present to the temporal Present only underlines the problem, yielding not movement to a universal and homogeneous state, but rather a return to animality. By this, Strauss means to say that timeless reflection of the time-tyrant problem yields the “impossible” of the time-tyrant problem. Entirely consonant with the overall position of this book, the Strauss “Restatement” spends far more effort characterizing the precise nature of the universal and homogeneous state than does Kojève (OT, 207–12) – and expressing profound dissatisfaction with

it. Strauss thereby exempts himself, the very self that, as wise man, should reflect this state, from it. Strauss devotes most of the “Restatement” to dismemberment of that handiwork of the bourgeois Master-tyrant, the historical Present. We recall the “Restatement” ’s salutation to Kojève as not so much a defense of the classical as an attack on “such terrible things as atheism and tyranny” which Kojève is said to “take for granted” (OT, 185). The charge of atheism is a Strauss attack on the timeless bourgeois Master-tyrant fashioning a historical Present in the timeless; his charge of tyranny is a critique of the fighting Master-tyrant in a temporal Present that is the neverending desire for desire. The true wise man, Strauss maintains, has a place abetting neither. The “Restatement” has it that, while history may instruct, the cumulative force of the historical Present as reflected by events and reflecting them does not validate. Instead of functioning as intellectual mediator, Strauss brings us his preference for the socially astute Austen over the deep and dark Dostoyevsky, to prevent tampering with the eternal and timeless, and, instead, to prefer mastery of the message of the times. In defiance of the cumulative impact of Kojève’s historical Present, Strauss calls for a rereading from the perspective of the eighteenth rather than the twentieth century (OT, 185). As to the temporal Present, Strauss appeals to our sense of familiarity of time in the ordinary sense, recent events, to consider the idea of tyranny at work in figures from Salazar to Stalin (OT, 185, 188–89). More generally, regarding the cumulative nature of a historical Present promoted by Kojève, Strauss remarks that just as Kojève completed his lectures, “Historicism is in the best case a proof of our ignorance.” It validates an absence, but not a presence. History does not equate to wisdom, but rather may lead to the true pursuit of wisdom in the timeless, the eternal.38 In itself, time thus counsels modesty; it does not circumscribe the human condition, as does true philosophy. Rather, for Strauss, time simply and properly directs man back to pursuit in the eternal. He wishes to protect the timeless, while using ordinary historical experience, the Salazars and Stalins given us by Strauss, to highlight the threat atheism and tyranny pose to the eternal. Both tactics have a common purpose: they support need for rereading. The classical has priority, not because the classical has seniority, but because it is closest to the eternal. Thus, the “Restatement” directs us from the outset to a rereading of the classics, as one may “assume the classical concept of tyranny is derived from an adequate analysis of the fundamental social phenomenon,” the fundamental being given by eternal standards (OT, 192; emphasis supplied). As Strauss understands, rereading secures philosophy and a return to pursuit of the eternal.

The Strauss emphasis on rereading goes to pursuit in the timeless, a pursuit that obviates suspension. And with elimination of the suspended wise man goes the historical Present and its instruction to the temporal Present.39 And with the elimination of the historical Present goes the coin of the realm of intellectual homogeneity, the possibility of the wise man and intellectual mediator engaging and being engaged by the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. The Strauss call for rereading is in the interest of timeless pursuit exclusively. In the bargain, time is lifted of the burden of exemplifyng the eternal. So freed, time may constructively illustrate. Accordingly, as the Strauss critique of Kojèvian intellectual homogeneity proceeds, based on the exchange of idea for act, it is remarkable that Strauss seems more sympathetic than Kojève to the cause of homogeneity. This resonates in his critique of the “Oriental despotism” for its “rottenness,” the core of which is disturbance of the timeless standard of virtue, and its replacement with a dominant ruling class, thereby aligning mischievous ideas with tyrannical acts in an intellectual homogeneity between thinkers and Master-tyrants, to the detriment of a more genteel political homogeneity among an equally unknowing, wisdom-pursuing classical aristocracy in which all were homogeneous as enveloped by the timeless ideas of virtue and propriety (OT, 181–82). As noted, for Strauss this attack on timeless ideas is timeless, as it continues in an Oriental despotism that is now “planetary” in scope.40 In characterizing Oriental despotism in the then of antiquity and the now of Strauss, Strauss directly undermines the cumulative authority of the Kojèvian historical Present and its ability to legitimize the acts of fighting Master-tyrants in a temporal Present. Strauss takes all possible pains to attack Kojèvian intellectual homogeneity and to preserve philosophy from politics and, thereby, the corruption of an intellectual homogeneity that draws philosophers into the realm of the political, the civic, and, for Kojève, the tyrannical. Ironically, for Kojève, all of this makes Strauss a tough man to corner and press into service as a wise man to assist the time suspended, occasionally isolated, bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. Strauss seeks to reduce “Tyranny and Wisdom” to “Tyranny or Wisdom.” And the relation between the historical Present and the temporal Present is largely the backdrop for the Strauss analysis. Strauss, like the approach to Kojève advocated in this book, takes an inside-out approach in his critique of Kojève. Strauss makes short work of the view that a temporal Present driven by the desire for desire informs our reading of history. Indeed, the original Strauss work on Xenophon’s Hiero has as the “peripeteia” of the dialogue that most intimate and internal of deliberations, the fighting, warring Master-tyrant looking within the self and finding emptiness to the point of suicide, the elimination of

self, the very opposite of the self-validation sought through the Kojèvian fight. And the signature characteristic of such temporal Present embodied in the fighting Master-tyrant is not the outside-in attributes of bellicosity or aggressiveness. It is rather that, as isolated, the Master-tyrant has “walls of … distrust.” The subsequent “Restatement” in the shadow of Kojève’s analysis permits elaboration. The core of desire for desire is an “erotic love” in which the Master-tyrant seeks acclaim from all regardless of the nature of the acclaim or the “quality” of those extending it (compare OT, 58 with OT, 198–99). In short, the “Restatement” moves from merely noting the external of Master-tyrant “attachment” in attempted relations with the vanquished and ruled (OT, 198) to the core of erotic love, the desire for desire, and the heart of Kojèvian time phenomenology. The Strauss critique ultimately relies on an inside-out view of the temporal Present, calling attention to Master-tyrants as potential suicides,41 and the time-tyrant problem of fundamental post-fight non-relation, the origin of which is the Master-tyrants in the eternal, the “atheism and tyranny” Strauss decries in his salutation to Kojève. In short, Strauss maintains that there is no true Future provided by the temporal Present. This is because the temporal Present yields only the occupation of the timeless by post-fight Master-tyrants. The sticking point in the timeless represented by the time-tyrant problem precludes any Future. But, with knowledge of the evolving nature of the post-war Kojève corpus, the Strauss critique of Kojèvian time phenomenology does not stop with, or even principally aim at, the time-tyrant problem of the Introduction. Rather, most of the “Restatement” concerns undermining the connection between idea and act as represented by the cumulative effect of the historical Present informing the temporal Present. This is reflected in that great undercurrent of the “Restatement”: the Strauss desire to preserve the idiosyncrasies of the philosophic pursuit of the eternal against the cumulative wave of ideas and acts, and most particularly tyrannical acts, that fills Kojèvian human time. Accordingly, the most immediate salvo the “Restatement” fires at Kojève is the very idea that Master-tyrants, even when they reveal a more pacific, bourgeois laboring side, can be entrusted with ideas, which is to say the Future. Most obviously, Strauss challenges the value of a Kojèvian utopia as justified because it might ultimately be actualized à la Zhou, which is to say over a long period, with arguments building to a crescendo as supported by a superior insight into fights fought, works wrought (OT, 187). As noted above, Strauss is keen to undermine the historical Present, particularly the argument that its source of validation is a cumulative view of history. Most broadly, Strauss moves to expose Kojève’s seeming argument for the

force of ideas given their cumulative nature – and to expose Kojève’s cumulative of the historical Present as based on the idea of force. The “Restatement” begins with the view that naked force is base and concludes with the frank statement as to the disguise of force through “the unabashed substitution of suspicion and terror for law” (compare OT, 191 with OT, 211). Modern science and technology undoubtedly afford tyranny many disguises, as Strauss notes in the opening paragraphs of the “Restatement.” Strauss goes so far as to say that force and ideas cannot be mixed, in direct contravention of Kojève’s model of the ideaimposing citizen-henchman. The Strauss interpretation of Xenophon guts this model in the name of understanding tyranny as did the classics. Neither Xenophon nor Strauss acknowledge the Kojèvian vehicle pairing idea to force, the citizen-henchman. Indeed, both strip the legitimacy of citizenship from such a figure, both referring to the equivalent of the citizen-henchman as a mere bodyguard. This attending lack of fellowship among citizens deprives this purveyor of tyrannical ideas, of propaganda, of a kind of representational legitimacy, in dealing with the ruled. In fact, Xenophon commences analysis by merely referring to bodyguards and only later in Hiero underlines their apartness from the ruled by referring to them as mercenaries; the Strauss analysis in his “On Tyranny” emphasizes the apartness of the mercenary (OT, 8–9, 12, 18–19 with OT, 63, 69). Force, mercenaries, are, at bottom, the basis of any actualized tyranny, for Strauss the “only question” (OT, 186–87). Strauss is saying more than that ideas backed by force cannot be sanitized by a historical Present and the trappings of Kojèvian wise men, intellectual mediators, and the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. Rather, force gives rise to the apartness of Mastertyrants that delegitimizes the cumulative in the historical Present, and makes for tyrannical acts that are haphazard, capricious, and most unworthy of the eternal. Having undone the cumulative character of the historical Present, the Strauss Simonides is not Kojève’s “a Simonides,” but rather a between-the-lines Simonides as Strauss intended, reflecting and reflective, not of Kojèvian acts but of the eternal, and always provoking Hiero into a condemnation of tyranny in the eternal’s defense. Finally, the cumulative character of the historical Present aside, Strauss wishes to undermine the character of Kojèvian ideas as subject to genuine philosophic transmission. Strauss does so through analysis of two aspects in Xenophon: silence and irony. To recall, Kojèvian ideas are generated by action in space, changing the given, making history through altering the Kojèvian Real. It is up to Strauss to point out that the merger of the spatial and the social merely results in non-relation, the time-tyrant dilemma. Strauss emphasizes that the source of Xenophon’s irony lies in Simonides’s tactic of getting the would-be

politically powerful Master-tyrant Hiero to fear the wise man (OT, 41, 51). Strauss attributes great importance to Xenophon’s transition from a discussion of tyrannical desire for things in space such as food, to a discussion of the desire for another. Strauss emphasizes that it is the relation between the merely spatial and the social that is key; he views Xenophon’s Hiero as “most of all” concerned with the pleasures of sex, but crucially, homosexual sex, that is sex with one who is like, sex with a peer. Strauss is taking the fight to Kojève on the turf of the desire for desire and Kojèvian time phenomenology when Strauss contends that Master-tyrants seek a relation with “one who is willing,” but are ultimately disappointed due to suspicion, fear, distrust. Finally, Strauss points to this aspect as the “only motive which excites in tyrants the desire for tyrannical rule” (compare OT, 7 with OT, 46, 50). In short, Strauss lays out all the elements of the Kojèvian time-tyrant dilemma: longing for desire of a peer, pursuit and ultimate frustration, and the rebuff of the other, due to dominant Master-tyrant status. Granted, one might contend that Strauss does not identify such elements in terms of a Kojèvian fight. Yet, a fight there is. It is the inward fight for selfvalidation, an inward fight that sees the Master-tyrant as bankrupt as a result of the desire for desire. Hiero’s admission to the possibility of tyrannical suicide is more than showing the path to the very opposite of the tyrannical wish for Kojèvian self-validation; it is an admission that the time-tyrant dilemma leads to the extinguishment of self. But for Strauss it signals even more. That moment is the “peripeteia” of the dialogue because the ideas in speech of the would-be tyrant Hiero must yield to the ideas in speech of the wise man Simonides (OT, 54). In short, the cumulative force of the historical Present, resting on desire for desire, must yield to the wise man. Wisdom instructs that placing the desire for desire in the eternal, outside time, only results in self-defeat. Thus, no idea worthy of the eternal can come from the desire for desire. This need to protect timeless ideas from the political pervades practically every subtext of the “Restatement.” Strauss’s discussion of the sect versus the party is best considered as a discussion of how eternal ideas might be segregated from the political dangers posed by Master-tyrants in the timeless (OT, 195–96). Strauss’s preference for love over Kojèvian recognition is ultimately about the desire to preserve a timeless feeling for the eternal over the frustrated Kojèvian relational bond ending in the non-relational (OT, 198–202). Strauss terms his analysis of the core of Kojèvian time phenomenology, the desire for desire, the “conquest of nature” and proceeds with his analysis of Xenophon. However, facing Kojève particularly in the “Restatement,” Strauss pairs this conquest of Kojèvian space, of the given, with “the possibility of the popularization of

philosophy or science” (compare OT, 23, 27 with OT, 178). In short, Kojèvian desire for desire, Kojèvian human time, lowers the eternal ideas and elevates Kojèvian acts, fights and works, fights and works that place the Master-tyrant in the position of the timeless, as detailed in Chapter 3. Hence, the issue of Kojèvian homogeneity, equating the Master-tyrant and the thinker, comes down to possession of the universal. But, Strauss reasons, this troubling universal is not so much the universal and homogeneous of the Kojèvian end state understood as the end of time or history. Rather, Strauss repeatedly underlines that it is the universal of the “universal and perpetual,” in short the universal of the timeless during a time that does not end, a critique that reverberates in the detested Oriental despotism of the “Restatement,” a regime of Master-tyrants that is perpetual, time-transcendent, and timeless (compare OT, 27 with OT, 181, 208). Strauss goes so far as to say that ideas derived exclusively within Kojèvian time are merely based on opinion and can never truly attain the universal, the eternal (OT, 193). To be precise, Strauss treats the question of a Kojèvian temporal state, referring to it as “ ‘the universal and homogeneous state’,” and quickly moves to the real problem, that of timelessness and a problem that is “universal and perpetual” for the corrupting effect of the desire for desire on ideas (compare OT, 192 with OT, 193). There can be no force of the historical Present, as no idea arising from the desire from desire can emanate from the timelessness, the eternal, of the wise. Strauss exhalts the classical because it celebrates that most human of endeavors, the pursuit of eternal ideas through dialogue among the wise, in the market place, in time, not at its end (IRH, 138, 146–47). Kojève is, at times, the implacable foe of Strauss. He is so not because he is not a modern rejecting ancients, nor because his alleged temporal end state threatens Strauss, nor even because he justifies contemporary Master-tyrants. All these aspects are but symptomatic. Rather, Kojève is the implacable foe of Strauss because his time phenomenology, original in the Introduction, and as post-war revised, has as its basis the desire for desire. Desire for desire corrupts the timeless through both the frustrated behavior of the rebuffing fighting side of the Master-tyrant, and the interrupted conversation between the wise in time and their communion with the eternal. The former leads to a “return to animality” as even acknowledged in the “Note to the Second Edition”; the latter to the diminution, the “popularization” of ideas through opinion, such that the eternal in ideas ceases to exist. We are at the “germ” of the temporal end state that will never come as, between them, the “return” and “popularization” just repeat themselves.42 Such are the Futures delivered by the temporal and historical Presents respectively. Or, as Strauss has it, the struggle for the universal is “perpetual,”43 timeless.

To this end, neither Strauss nor Kojève are especially keen to address an end state understood as an end of time. Strauss keeps the discussion in time, as the pursuit of the eternal by the wise is very much in time; Kojève for his newfound emphasis on the laboring bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant therefore keeps his central political character in time. Strauss does not address a temporal end state because of a history of philosophy that points to the eternal; Kojève does not because of a philosophy of history, a time phenomenology that proves unworkable, both in the original and as revised. To illustrate, the perpetual never-never land of the “germ” of an end state that refuses to move forward with a Future, we revisit Kojève’s supposed saving, seminal definition of tyranny, that which seems to overcome the time-tyrant problem: [T]here is tyranny … when a fraction of the citizens … imposes on all the other citizens its own ideas and actions, ideas and actions that are guided by an authority which this fraction recognizes spontaneously, but which it has not succeeded in getting the others to recognize; and where this fraction imposes it on those others without “coming to terms” with them, without trying to reach some “compromise” with them, and without taking into account of their ideas and desires. (OT, 145) (emphasis supplied) In retrospect, Kojèvian wisdom through the alleged cumulative force of the historical Present rests not on the intimate relation of a bourgeois Master-tyrant, a Kojèvian wise man, and discerning intellectual mediators. Rather, the diffusion of ideas, of cumulative wisdom, rests on perpetrators of force, citizen-henchmen, imposing the “ideas and actions” of bourgeois Master-tyrants through spontaneous activity, free of desire for desire. Wisdom through suspension, through spontaneity, is asserted. Yet, it is not clear how or why the citizenhenchmen would seek it or how they would deliver it free of force. As in the great “whodunnit” of Napoleon and the end state at Jena discussed in Chapter 3, it is by no means clear how desire for desire, and human time, end. Thus, Kojève’s “germ” does not so much preview as prepare, and prepare for the perpetual condition of timelessness. Work and fights, those engines of Kojèvian ideas during human time, are gone and provide no basis for ideas. Hence, one is left with the singular idea of timelessness, free of embellishment. Kojève’s bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant, the supposed answer to the timetyrant problem, is somewhat of a peek-a-boo, in and out of human time. And yet,

the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant attests to the problem with the timeless and non-relational, for being reliant not on the force of ideas – for in the “germ” there are none except for the idea of timelessness – but on the idea of force.44 This pulls us back to the time-tyrant problem. It is thus that Kojève, in beginning “Tyranny and Wisdom,” not only salutes Strauss as a thinker who does not dictate thought, but instead provokes us as to what to think “about ” (OT, 136). This is more than allowance for ideas during the “germ” of the end state.45 Rather, it is Kojève searching for a lifeline, a concession to the view that, in the “germ”, philosophy as the relation of human time to Strauss’s treasured eternal is possible, thus yielding an idea in the “germ”, albeit one in the Straussian terrain of the eternal. But as Strauss cautions, the timelessness must be that of his classics; the timelessness of Kojève that points to the non-relational rather than the eternal means ideas falling on the ears of the unthinking, those not engaging. In short, as both Kojève’s text and that of Strauss illustrate, timelessness is the broad common denominator with which we must deal, before any consideration of the end of time. And both attest that we cannot be left with the idea of timelessness, for its non-relational quality that corrodes any other idea from Kojève’s perspective. This not only exemplifies, but epitomizes, a perpetual condition of merely the “germ” of the end state. This need not mean bartering the Kojèvian Real, so much as acknowledging that it is tested by confronting the predominance of timelessness. Loyal Kojèvians might still gravitate to Kojève for his strength: the ability to somehow make sense of events, despite the murkiness of the “germ” of the end state, and especially despite the Potemkin village of a Kojèvian time phenomenology that does not seem to give an accounting of a politics that includes plausible relations between rulers and the ruled. Even this unsettling “germ” commands our attention for its ability to encircle and enthrall. There is the Future of the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant emphasizing grand projects, as recalled by Simonides in chapter 11 of Xenophon’s Hiero, in which the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant is summoned to forego private pleasure in favor of admirable public spaces and works. Yet, being in the “germ” means a blur of public and private interests, as the intimately self-interested desire for desire diminishes. One need only think of the impulse from the ruled generated by Zucotti Park and the Occupy Wall Street movement. It turns out to have been less an agenda for rule of and by the “99%,” and grand public efforts, than a communal soul-searching as to whether a Future featuring a project on behalf of public life is even possible. As it turns out, life in the “germ” makes the challenge less in moving to the public good, and more

being nimble enough to negotiate the constantly changing frontiers between the public and private spheres. The globalized investment banks ensconced in the steel stockades surrounding Zucotti Park no doubt have a different view of universality and homogeneity than those in the movement challenging them. But life in Kojève’s “germ” means that global capital is less inclined to look down on its critics, and more inclined to simply look beyond them. The global for-profit crowd in the City, the Taunus, and Wall Street finance state capitalism, wherever, and for whomever, Left, Right, and Center, in a free-for-all world where desire for desire, and the place it ineptly assigned rulers and the ruled, is bygone. The frustrating Future of the trusty warrior side of the Master-tyrant of the Introduction fares no better dealing with the idea of timelessness and the “germ” than the bourgeois side. The time-tyrant dilemma may have illustrated the frustrations of heroism, bravado, and the desire for desire, but they at least had their moments. Europe’s largest border adjustment, recently wrought as to Ukraine and Russia over Crimea, is foreseen by Kojève’s “Note to the Second Edition” as a geopolitical hiccup. However, it is so not because time has ended, but rather because a return to animality actually means that economic interdependence might be outcome determinative, with the clout of international commerce contracts and access to finance having more influence in the Kremlin than the arms of NATO. In the blink of a Hegelian eye, seventy years after the Normandy invasion to topple a Master-tyrant, the headlines in Le Figaro and Le Matin, and their worthy successors, are much more nuanced and complicated than those reflecting the foreboding of the third Franco-German conflagration in a century, just as Kojève presented the essentials of the Introduction at the Sorbonne. Thus, above all, the disruptive character of timelessness as an idea, naked without true Kojèvian fights and works, predominates. At its core is the characteristic of non-relation. Hence, there is the inability of the hapless temporary residents of Zucotti Park to formulate an agenda – who would execute it? And hence the bewilderment of their more well-fixed permanent neighbors on Wall Street beholding the spectacle below but wondering how to respond. Timelessness means a failure to agree on how to even discuss relation. Let us take the universality and homogeneity Kojève sees as hallmarks for a Hegelian end state. Indeed, one suspects that the “99%” would have a great deal to say about homogeneity and its evidence in solidarity. Yet, their affluent erstwhile neighbors would no doubt tout universality as evidenced by the mobility of international capital and risk-taking to create and, yes, enrich. This split message carried by the motley crew of social movement protestors and investment bankers is a rather less-than-integrated workforce for the projects espoused by

the great public works by the bourgeois in the Master-tyrant in “Tyranny and Wisdom” and the precursor in the model Master-tyrant of Xenophon’s chapter 11. It is a far cry from Kojève’s compact definition of the universal and homogeneous given in the exchange with Strauss: “the outcome of the collective labor of all and of each” (OT, 146). A fair guess is that the affluent would dispute a reference to the all, while reformists would not countenance the individualism suggested by the each. The perpetual “germ” gives rise to such split messages, suffering as the “germ” does from social isolation and nonrelation. Timelessness similarly frustrates the classic warring side of the Master-tyrant presented in the Introduction. Of course, the “Note to the Second Edition” foresees that the goosestep so in fashion in Berlin in the late 1930s may make a return in the Moscow of eighty years later. Shifting boundaries, with the accompanying political narratives and their propaganda set pieces, will come and go in the post-Jena world recounted by Kojève. The real problem for the classical warring Master-tyrant plagued by the demise of the desire for desire and the time-tyrant problem remains a familiar one: the non-relation of the postfight Master-tyrant and timelessness. Yes, in a sense this side of the Mastertyrant is quite used to the problem. But with the “germ,” recurring desire for desire is hard to come by and, therefore, so is the insatiability driving Mastertyrants. Stalinistic Soviet authoritarianism shrinks to Russian adventurism abroad shrinks to a tinhorn Russophile separatist sheriff maintaining order in Donetsk. As the stage is smaller, actualizing what idea of authority is left46 seems a puny exercise. This book has fashioned the proposition that, rather than a prophet, and even a proponent of the end of history, Kojève is fundamentally a political theorist concerned with rule, and the conditions for rule. This appears to make Kojève more ordinary as a political scientist. But he is far from that – for if his time phenomenology does Kojève in, his times rescue him. Strauss may largely refute Kojève for the “atheism and tyranny” implicit in the time-tyrant problem. But the residue from Kojève’s final definition of tyranny leaves us with remote Master-tyrants and their ubiquitous subordinate citizen-henchmen, the profile for the dynamism of what might be termed today’s “illiberal democracies.” There is no need to set forth an end of history to make Kojève fascinating or, as it turns out, poignant. There is plenty in Kojève to trouble Kojève, but his depictions are too timely to ignore. Kojève remains with us despite, not because of, his phenomenology of time. Freed of this, we are left with Kojève’s powerful vignettes, those of ill-informed oafs who used to bestride the world stage in Kojève’s heyday, and now seem

more noisy and persistent aberrations on the wrong side of non-Kojèvian history. With the caveat that Kojève never seems to come up to his time phenomenology, the bourgeois in Kojève’s tyrants is recognizable in the Real he would have us examine. These Master-tyrants broker deals with ephemeral voting blocs at the UN clamoring for ‘human rights” one day, and menace inconvenient minority populations on the domestic front the next. Second, infirmities on the phenomenological level aside, the two-sided tyranny introduced by Kojève in “Tyranny and Wisdom” again seems to expand the Master-tyrant’s political agenda beyond desire for desire and the classical tyrannical concern for expansionism. Current realities bear this out. The “life or death” decisions confronting many of the world’s current tyrannies deal with the more mundane, workaday tasks of resource allocation, propaganda, public relations, and coalition-building, both at home and abroad. These are matters of Kojèvian work, not the fight, and, in fact, provide the sinews running from the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant to Kojève’s imposing citizens to sustain the political order. While a not-insignificant portion of the residents of Florida’s Dade and Broward Counties until quite recently believed that a man residing ninety miles off their shore is a would-be voracious aggressor threatening the Western Hemisphere, a significant number of America’s diplomats argued for the need to engage, to “work with,” the bourgeois side of Castro the Mastertyrant on a host of issues across the board. The world will have to be adroit enough to deal with two-sided, or two-faced, Castros. In fact, he alternately and quite accurately posed as an expansionist desirous of desire Master-tyrant, but one whose current longevity is more attributable to being a shifty, calculating bourgeois. The message resonated again when, even in the shadow of the Arab Spring, dogged Lybians were deprived of the immediate prize of Gaddafi, whose varied projects, in the Kojèvian sense, secured enough bargaining chips amongst local warlords to secure safe harbor for some time in the face of domestic and international retribution. This may actually be an equal, if not greater, political accomplishment. Not all work is economic; rather, it has profound political consequences. We return to Kojève in the “Kitchen Debate.” The lesson of the “Kitchen Debate” from Chapter 3 leads us to suspect the usual Kojèvian diversionary tactic through appeal to the Kojèvian Real. The appeal has the capacity to hoodwink us into thinking that we may disregard Kojèvian time phenomenology. For all his problems reconciling time phenomenology and a political order, aspects of Kojève resonate with political phenomena at surface level. However, as this book hopes to have illustrated, Kojève’s bourgeois side of the Mastertyrant seems to join the Kojèvian philosopher, the amalgam of Kojève’s

Napoleon, Kojève’s revealed and revealing wise man, and Leo Strauss as a wise man in the “germ” of the end state, as each and all casualties of Kojève’s “philosophy first, politics later”47 approach. It may be that greatest genius of “Tyranny and Wisdom” lies in Kojève’s calling attention to himself, without seeming to do so. As we have seen, being in the “germ” of the end state and confronted with perpetual timelessness means deviation from the models created in the Introduction. Kojève may have it that Strauss is a wise man in the remaining kernel of human time we have in the “germ”. Yet, as Chapter 4 indicates, the wise man must be revealed as well as revealing. In fact, the ultimate ambiguity of the “germ” of an end state is that no single revealed and revealing wise man is to be had. The absence of a genuinely cumulative force of the historical Present means that ideas cannot be exchanged; one is left with citizen-henchmen and enforcers but not the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant. Hence, at best a wise man is content, but unable to truly transmit ideas. We are left with the merely reflected Kojève of the “Note to the Second Edition” providing a preview of the state of his timelessness, the “return to animality,” and exemplifying the revealed but never revealing. On the other hand, in Strauss we arguably have a wisdom that is revealing but not revealed, for the Straussian emphasis on pursuit of wisdom, but never its attainment. “Tyranny and Wisdom” and the “Restatement” ultimately bear this out. Kojève never quite attests that Strauss is revealed, in fact characterizing him in the guise of a “detective” who “lays bare,” a merely revealing and surreptitious operative.48 Strauss thus needs a revealed partner to complete the role of the wise man in the “germ”. There is but one alternative: Kojève himself. And Strauss acknowledges this. Although Strauss salutes Kojève as a philosopher who thinks, this is not really the ground on which he fundamentally takes on Kojève. Rather, repeatedly throughout the “Restatement,” Strauss keys on how Kojève is revealed as a passive observer, on what he takes “for granted.” And, to remind, this is primarily and fundamentally for a passivity in and during time in which Kojève is revealed as acquiescing to “atheism and tyranny,” that is to Kojèvian timelessness (OT, 185, 211). Kojève’s compliments of Strauss are cautions: as Strauss “tells us not what to think about … but only what to think about” (OT, 136). In presenting and praising Strauss, Kojève thus wryly and, yes, ironically reminds that history has not ended. But the way we think about history has forever ended after, or – as Kojève tacitly and perhaps disingenuously would have it – because of Kojève as the wise man. The pairing of Strauss the revealing and Kojève the revealed thus works no better than the other duos Kojève presents: Napoleon and Hegel, wise man and intellectual, warring and bourgeois Master-tyrant. It simply underlines the

perpetual in Kojève’s longstanding problem: timelessness, which cannot be eluded by the end of time. To be a modern’s modern in and during the “germ” is to accept that which is important, central, yet irresolute. It appears that aligning tyranny to a major philosophical variable like time is an indulgence Kojève would have allowed no one but himself, the modern’s modern of the double dare. In light of the last century, we are best advised not to hurry to the Kojèvian end state, but, rather, to linger over the views of time and politics that promise to take us there. Strauss, after all, penned his analysis of Xenophon in the temporal and intellectual shadow of the Nuremburg of the 1930s in order to explore how it was transformed into the Nuremburg of the 1940s – to see how a mass parade celebrating a fatherly master could lead to the parade of masses to slaughter and the resulting judgment of the community of nations condemning, but perhaps not fully understanding, the phenomenon. The transition proposed by Kojève, from human time to an end state, should invite no less scrutiny. If tyranny has a soft touch, a kind voice, as suggested by the utopian Simonides, we must locate it, not to be mesmerized but, rather, to best position ourselves to shun it. It is in this spirit that Strauss insists that the time-tested is the timely, and that philosophy engages in pursuit during time, not in speculation as to its end. As Mr. Strauss has it, there is a need to reread Xenophon, Hegel, Strauss, Kojève, and indeed Kojève’s commentators, not for the solutions they offer, but for the problems they perpetually, and perhaps eternally, raise. This means getting at the real Kojève, rather than just the Kojèvian Real. As Kojève would have us reread everyone else through the prism of Hegel, we are best to reread Kojève.

Notes 1 Compare IRH, 42, 48 with OT, 140. Even the Outline seems to concede the difference between bourgeois and Slave, with the former concerned with contract, equivalence in value and the Slave stuck in the static status-oriented view of social hierarchy given by Master-tyrants (OPR, 178). See explanations in text infra. 2 Kojève rarely, if ever, employs the term “tyrant” in the Outline. But this is only because the Outline is mostly inclined to look at the proverbial “other side of the same coin” moving from the Master of the fight to the authority of the state. The closest the Outline comes to concepts traditionally associated with tyranny are the “Governor-imposter” acting for private advantage and the “revolutionary” challenging the state politically as a citizen. As the former involves a private encroachment on public life, Kojève holds it a judicial not a political phenomenon that can be resolved by Droit – by state intervention as a third party on behalf of the governed. See discussion in text infra. The revolutionary, in contrast, is involved in the entirely political act of a challenge to state power as a citizen (OPR, 338–40). Here again, the Outline informs Kojève’s later “Tyranny and Wisdom,” with the latter’s

3

4

5

6

7

8 9

10 11 12

praise for the political figure of the revolutionary tyrant taking the helm of state and, as such, a Master-tyrant (compare OT, 175 with OPR, 429). Though not explicitly stated, one might think of the connection between the Master and the tyrant in this way: both seek to alter the preceding order thought of as a universal, be it through the empire expanding tendencies of the Master or the penchant for disregard of the law by the tyrant. See Chapter 1, note 22 supra. Eventually in The Notion, Kojève states that the choice between tyranny and liberty is between what he terms the “Master” and the Chief. Of course, this confirms the usage of the term Master-tyrant as most descriptive in Kojèvian parlance. LNA, 140n; see Chapter 1 and note 2 supra. But it also attests to the irreducible choice of these two archetypes of authority in society. Kojève will eventually combine the warlike Master and the Chief into two sides of the Master-tyrant in “Tyranny and Wisdom.” But he will sharply distinguish them according to his basis for classification: that of time phenomenology. See discussion infra. Kojève maintains that time is how man is manifest, both in the Introduction and The Notion. The latter continues Kojève’s abiding interest in making phenomenology fundamental, even over metaphysics and ontology. LNA 118, compare LNA 56 with LNA 117, 131. The Chief and the Master-tyrant are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, The Notion labels Stalin both a Chief and a revolutionary (LNA, 118–19). “Tyranny and Wisdom” strongly suggests that Stalin had a fighting warrior side as a Master-tyrant and conducted affairs consistent with the desire for desire (OT, 138–39). Kojève emphasizes the need for considered yet quick action on ideas (OT, 164–67). This only underlines the point that bourgeois and desirous of desire Master-tyrants need not mean two tyrants, but two sides of the same tyranny, offering the fulfillment of Kojève’s wish expressed at the commencement of “Tyranny and Wisdom.” OT, 164, 174. Kojève suggests that both sides of the Master-tyrant may be combined in one, with Stalin linked to laboring, bourgeois revolutionary action, as well as force. Compare LNA, 118–19 with OT, 138–39. This is a translation of Kojève’s “Esquisse d’une doctrine de la politique française,” herein cited as ODFP. Commentators tend to view Doctrine as written not only for the Chief, but for a specific Chief, Charles de Gaulle. Auffret, 401; Howse, “Interpretive Essay,” ODFP. The Chief and the Mastertyrant are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, The Notion labels Stalin both a Chief and a revolutionary (LNA, 118–19). One commentator understands the project less that of Europe, more that of the Latin Empire, but a project nonetheless. Auffret, 402. Compare IRH, 162 n6 with IRH 160 n6. Interestingly, The Notion classifies the murderous expansionist Stalin as a Chief. LNA, 118–19. Another way of looking at the superior viability of Kojève’s juridical economic homogeneity is that, each being able to engage each by contract, equivalence lends credence to the social phenomenon of homogeneity. A definitive intellectual biography of Kojève hints at this but does not elaborate (Auffret, 30–31). Kojève’s time-tyrant problem precludes the political Master-tyrant from doing so. For example, Kojève’s Introduction attributes to the ultimate Master-tyrant Napoleon “Absolute Knowledge” for having transformed societies. Yet, homogeneity would seem to assume a view on Napoleon’s part that Napoleon would recognize all others as equal or at least equivalent; Napoleon’s own words reveal that nothing could have been further from the truth. They show that he believed himself a throwback to the ancients and even a replica of Louis XIV (compare IRH, 34–35 with Klonsky, The Fabulous Ego, 412, 424 containing extracts from Napoleon’s remarks as noted in The St. Helena Journal of Baron Gourgaud). Kojève tries to rectify the complication by identifying Hegel as the objective voice of Napoleon’s new society, but in the end the Introduction relents and appears to assign to Napoleon the interpretive, subjective role as the voice for his own work (compare IRH, 35 with OT, 303, Kojève to Strauss, Paris, May 15, 1958). This subjective-objective polarity is but

13 14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

one side of the time-tyrant problem for illustrating the complications in the Introduction with establishing genuine political homogeneity. OT, 256, Kojève to Strauss, Vanves, France, September 19, 1950. Some adherents to the familiar Kojève posit alternate periods in which Kojève is said to have realized the end of history. Roth, Knowing and History, 85, 134, 141, 143. Others attribute intellectual as well as political significance to the event, in which event identifying the exact beginning of the universal and homogeneous state is less precise. Darby, 158, 170. Commentary by political theorists emphasizing the Kojève of the end state end up in a state of entanglement in the shadow-boxing represented by the “germ” of the end of history and what the Introduction means by it. To be sure, the “Note to the Second Edition” briefly refers to an end of history. But the immediate subsequent discussion in the “Note” of China, the Soviet Union, Germany, and the developing world are a saga of differentiated events interacting with each other. This means viewing politics as the intersection of different Futures, given different projects. IRH, 138. Kojèvian human time in the Introduction moves from future to overcoming the past to define the present. By contrast, in Kojève’s post-Outline work, the Essai, he indicates that the rhythm of animal time is past to future to present. Kojève even suggests a juridical time that more closely resembles those of Kojèvian human time in the Introduction for having the present power of precedent advise future action (compare IRH, 133–35 with EHR, 3: 146). In synthesizing Kojève’s human and juridical perspectives, the actualizing, “temporal Present” is the Alpha while synthesized “historical Present” is the Omega. The past and the future omit themselves as middle terms in both Kojève’s human and juridical formulations. Nowhere is this transformation more apparent than with Kojève’s Alexander, whom “Tyranny and Wisdom” depicts as guided by the “idea” of empire. As the master of “born Masters,” Alexander has a desire for desire such that his claim to universality is driven by the “temporal Present,” the need to appropriate the conquered and assimilate them at once as subjects and extended members of his intimate family. Reread against the backdrop of the Outline, the persona of the voracious Mastertyrant Alexander, as exemplar of such desire for desire, is the “immediate agent” of the principle of universality and homogeneity (compare OT, 170 with IRH, 62). The bourgeois Master-tyrant in Alexander received advice “without a doubt indirectly” (OT, 170) from “ ‘intellectual mediators’,” advice initially in the form of the “historical Present.” See text discussion infra. OT, 165. Kojève’s references to statesmen in “Tyranny and Wisdom” should not be taken as a retraction of the position that man is “either Master or Slave.” As Kojève states: “History is the history of the working Slave” (IRH, 8, 20). It makes most sense to include statesmen who are not Master-tyrants as feckless figureheads who are Slaves of a sort. The most obvious example is the “ ‘liberal statesman’ ” castigated in “Tyranny and Wisdom” (OT, 138). Discussion of Chamberlain at Munich is such an example. See Chapter 3, note 83 and accompanying text infra. OT, 141–42. As noted above, the agenda of Master-tyrants in the expanded politics of “Tyranny and Wisdom” is informed by economics and includes a concern for Slave work. Even desirous of desire Master-tyrants get involved in this. The reason for this is that, just as the goal of the fight is recognition for victory, the goal of economics might in some sense be said to be recognition as well through emulation of one’s work (OT, 141). OT, 135; EHR, 1: 25; EHR, 3: 213–14, 224–25. Kojève sees the juridical analysis as a traditional part of philosophic discourse and, with the advent of the bourgeois, evidence of an increasing tendency to synthesize highly personal supplications by Slaves and orders by Master-tyrants into the impersonal legislative commands that characterize bourgeois society. This cautious remark is entirely in character with Zhou. In fact, Zhou Enlai was accused during the Cultural Revolution of an excessive “empiricism” and a cautious attention to realities at the expense of revolutionary fervor (Keith, The Diplomacy of Zhou Enlai, 6, 103). The same caution led Zhou to both note the ferocity of the French Revolution and prompt the observation by his interviewer that China was proceeding conservatively in comparison (Han, Eldest Son Zhou Enlai and the Making of

22 23

24

25

26 27 28

29 30

31

32

Modern China, 255). See note 24 infra. OT, 145. Kojève refers most to spontaneity in The Notion and also in the Outline. The Outline defines spontaneity as action free from interaction, action without regard to others (OPR, 69–70). It almost invariably contrasts with social relation as Kojève understands it. Kojève does occasionally refer to spontaneity in terms of political events as we might conventionally understand them, events such as a vote of confidence (LNA, 177). But in fact this is fully consistent with Kojèvian time phenomenology. Commonly, Kojève’s spontaneity deals with ideas sui generis or human relation conceived outside the construct of the fight, outside the desire for desire presented in the Introduction. Kojève dismisses external manifestations as indications of spontaneity, instead focusing on even the phenomenon of recognition as conceivably spontaneous, if undertaken free of work and the fight, free of human time. LNA, 95–97. The mainstream reading of Kojève focuses on and associates risk with the external and political act of the fight. This is surely true in assessing the pre-fight dispositions of the fighting sides of Mastertyrants. Commentary has even extended this to the risk associated with the forms of justice in the Outline. Roth, “A Note on Kojève’s ‘Phenomenology of Right’,” 449. But this is not especially the subject of “Tyranny and Wisdom,” Kojève’s later and more nuanced treatment of tyranny postIntroduction. As noted, it is a treatment in which Master-tyrants and their citizen minions deal not only in acts, but in imposing ideas, ideas the source of which are recognized “spontaneously” which for Kojève means outside the context of the fight and the desire for desire. See note 35 and accompanying text supra. As Kojève’s definition of tyranny makes clear, it is directed less at the establishment of tyranny, and more at post-fight regime maintenance, a maintenance dependent entirely on the successful intersection of ideas and acts, which subject occupies the great bulk of “Tyranny and Wisdom.” Even the Introduction notes that absent the future, time may be spoken of as “the coexistence of the Present and the Past” (IRH, 144 n34; emphasis supplied). This, of course, portends the synthetic coexistence of the Outline. See text supra. It also suggests the matching, the adaptation of an idea to existing political realities, that is the actualizing present. Accordingly, as “Tyranny and Wisdom” moves forward, Kojève tends to conflate the philosopher and the wise man (OT, 158, 161). Perhaps true to his contention that philosophy is a quest for wisdom, Strauss deflects the question of the wise man, suggesting that Kojève does not advocate the existence of the wise man (OT, 194). (OT, 149–50). Esoteric writing need not be contrary to the importance Kojève places on space. In fact, Kojève has suggested that reading between the lines means to probe and to determine whether the writer has written all that the writer thought, and thought all that is written (Kojève, “The Emperor Julian and His Art of Writing,” 96). This is identical to the wise man’s capacity to reflect the totality of reality. See Chapter 4 supra. Cf. Cooper, 270 (suggesting the identity of the wise man and “ ‘intellectual mediators’ ”). Kojève was equally adamant in making Strauss a wise man in his essay preceding “Tyranny and Wisdom,” and forming the basis for it, indicating that Strauss “lays bare great moral and political problems that are still ours,” a clear reference to revelation (Kojève, “L’action politique des philosophes,” 46); Auffret, 628. Actually the question of modernizing Xenophon was the subject of what appears to have been goodnatured teasing by Strauss of Kojève. Kojève seems up to the task of responding with equal humor, indicating, “[W]here ‘eternal questions’ are involved, excessive haste is out of place,” thereby defending the suspension that comes with the “historical Present” (compare OT, 257, Strauss to Kojève, Chicago, September 28, 1950, with OT, 260–61, Kojève to Strauss, Paris, August 11, 1952). In this regard, Strauss seems to acknowledge that it is not only the bald circumstances of the Kojèvian Real, the fight and work, that change, but that these circumstances may be said to alter ideas, seeming to allow that Stalin is, for example, advised by “a Simonides” recast by the tyrannical tools of modern

33

34

35

36 37

38 39

40

41

42

43

technology and communication (OT, 188–89). OT, 175. In fact, even strong advocates of Strauss maintain that his strenuous effort to revive the classical seeks the esoteric and timeless but nonetheless results in “a ‘posthistoricist’ relegitimization of reason.” Melzer, “Esotericism and the Critique of Historicism,” American Political Science Review, 280, 286–87. OT, 198, 200. Among the externalities emphasized in the mainstream reading of the Strauss–Kojève exchange are the discussion of philosophic motivation in love versus recognition and the size of the philosophic audience. Nichols, 123–24; Roth, Knowing and History, 126–27. At bottom, however, these are really discussions of the relevance of desire for desire, the presence of Kojèvian human time, in the life of the thinker. To emphasize the buffer provided for and by timelessness, in discussions of size of audience and love versus recognition, both Strauss and Kojève go so far as to invoke the assumption of a God as to behaviors and motivations (OT, 161 as to Kojève; OT, 197 as to Strauss). This conclusion is perfectly consistent with Kojève’s intellectual biography. Kojève praises both Strauss and Jacob Klein as the source of his understanding of the ancients as philosophy and at the same time refers to Hegel as but the “premier Sage” (“Préface à la Mise à jour du Système hégélien du Savoir,” 133–35). Kojève biographer Auffret indicates that Kojève clearly believed Klein a wise man, and we therefore have little reason to believe Strauss was not held in the same esteem (Auffret, 463–64). A more detailed treatment of the Strauss use of history in a positive sense is presented later in this chapter. There are some aspects of Kojève’s post-Outline correspondence with Strauss that suggest an inclination to consider ideas independent of history, apart from explicit political dimensions (OT, 284, 291–92, from Kojève to Strauss, Paris, July 1, 1957; from Strauss to Kojève, Chicago, September 11, 1957). In fact, correspondence with Strauss occasionally demonstrates some interesting role reversals, with Strauss at times preoccupied with placing ancient philosophy in the context of the tumultuous Kojèvian fight and Kojève more inclined to describe the evolution of ideas in a more conventional philosophic context (compare OT, 286–87 from Kojève to Strauss, Paris, July 1, 1957 with OT, 293, Strauss to Kojève, Chicago, September 11, 1957). The more conventional philosophical aspect of Kojève was in evidence even before Kojève wrote Essai d’une histoire raisonnée de la philosophie païenne, the work Roth holds as exemplar of a more philosophical Kojève, one less attached to the desire for desire and the political realm (Roth, Knowing and History, 144). “Living Issues of German Postwar Philosophy,” reprinted in Meier, 132–33. OT, 165, emphasis Kojève’s. “Tyranny and Wisdom” aside, Kojève’s post-Outline work suggests both that the future and the past “codetermine” the present, in the synthetic mode of the Outline, and that the “primacy” of the present lay in its legality (EHR, 2: 249–51; EHR, 3: 140–41). The Strauss reference to the universal and homogeneous as planetary and spatial is fully consistent with the Introduction’s view that universality is in history, in time, and usually associates tyrannical acts with spatial, territorial expansion. Compare OT, 208 with IRH, 95. Of course, the post-fight features depletion of the desire for desire. In this sense, the suicide of Kojève’s samurai Japan, a society free of desire for desire, echos to some extent the Strauss critique. See discussion of this aspect of the “Note to the Second Edition” in Chapter 3. The text of the Introduction at times does refer to “the end of History.” But such comments are preparatory to his ultimate announcement in the text of the Introduction as to the “germ” of the end state (compare IRH, 95 with IRH, 97). Subsequent to the exchange with Strauss, Kojève describes “an administrator, a cog in the ‘machine’ fashioned by automata for automata” as the “tyrant” in an end state. As happens, the automaton represents the worst, not the best, of the fighting and bourgeois sides of the Master-tyrant, which worst is very much the product of Kojèvian human time and the time-tyrant problem. True to the fighting Master-tyrant of the Introduction, the automaton is remote, faceless. True to the bourgeois

44

45

46

47

48

side of the Master-tyrant in “Tyranny and Wisdom,” the person of a leader vanishes and the ruled are confronted with “ideas and actions guided by an authority” and a relatively anonymous authority, according to Kojève’s definition of tyranny as a political condition very much in time. The uncertainty as to Master-tyrants and Futures attests to the “germ” of an end state that will persist in perpetuity. OT, 255, Kojève to Strauss, Vanves, France, September 19, 1950. Indeed, when outside human time exploring ideas, the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant is as irresolute and indecisive as the feckless liberal statesman roundly criticized in “Tyranny and Wisdom.” Indeed, Kojève’s text suggests that absent the eventual return of desire for desire, the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant will become exactly that (OT, 138, 141). The solution for Kojève is that the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant is a temporary tyrannical condition that will revert to the fighting side of the Master-tyrant as soon as the bourgeois side of the Master-tyrant attempts to implement ideas in human time (OT, 141). Kojève in the Introduction does cling to the idea that ideas may be held in an end state. He allows that “Wisdom” and the “necessary and sufficient conditions for the end state might be appreciated, as there is “no need to abandon Philosophy” (IRH, 97). Kojève emphasizes that the idea of the end state “in principle” as idea apparently exists in the end state (IRH, 97). In yet another sign of the ambiguities of the “germ” of an end state, Kojève seems to suggest that there is a positive correlation between near universal recognition of authority and the intensity of desire for desire, meaning that perhaps the desire for the desire of a remaining few not yet extending desire is the sweetest to Master-tyrants. Conversely, those possessing little authority have a less intense, more diffuse, desire for desire (OT, 145). In this sense, the time-tyrant problem might be thought a consequence of a more general trend described in twentieth century French thought, the elevation of philosophy to undo the underpinnings of traditional political philosophy. Lilla, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics, 161–62. This characterization of Strauss is found in the initial exchange printed in 1950, as Kojève’s “L’action politique des philosophes” and is reprinted in OT, n135–36.

Bibliography

Primary Sources Kojève, Alexandre. “Capitalisme et socialisme, Marx est Dieu, Ford est son prophète.” Commentaire 9 (printemps, 1980): 135–37. Kojève, Alexandre. “Colonialism from a European Perspective.” Translated by Erik de Vries. Interpretation 29 (Fall, 2001): 115–30. Kojève, Alexandre. Correspondence with Carl Schmitt. Translated by Erik de Vries. Interpretation 29 (Fall, 2001): 91–115. Kojève, Alexandre. “Das Selbstbewusstwerden des Geistes.” Recherches Philosophiques 6 (1936–37): 395– 6. Kojève, Alexandre. “Der verstandene Tod: Eine Untersuchung zu Martin Heideggers Existentialontologie.” Recherches Philosophiques 4 (1934–35): 400–2. Kojève, Alexandre. “Die Existenzphilosophie Martin Heideggers.” Recherches Philosophiques 6 (1936– 37): 395–6. Kojève, Alexandre. “Die logischen Gesetze und das Sein.” Recherches Philosophiques 4 (1934–35): 402–3. Kojève, Alexandre. “The Emperor Julien and His Art of Writing.” In Ancients and Moderns: Essays on the Tradition of Political Philosophy of Leo Strauss. Edited by J. Cropsey. Translated by James H. Nichols. New York, London: Basic Books Inc., 1964. Kojève, Alexandre. Essai d’une Histoire Raisonnée de la Philosophie Païenne. Vols. I–III. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1968, 1972, 1973. Kojève, Alexandre. “Essai sur quelques caractères des notions d’espace et de temps.” Deutsche Literaturzeitung 1 (Januar, 1933): 12–17. Kojève, Alexandre. “Hegel, Marx et christianisme.” Critique 3–4 (août–septembre, 1946): 339–65. Kojève, Alexandre. “Husserls Phaenomenologie und Schuppers Logik. Ein Beitrag zur Kritik des antimistischen Ontologismus in der Immanenzicher.” Recherches Philosophiques 2 (1932–33): 477–80. Kojève, Alexandre. Interview by Gilles Lapouge. “Les philosophes ne m’intéressent pas, je cherche des sages.” La quinzaine littéraire 53 (juillet, 1968): 18–20. Kojève, Alexandre. Introduction à la Lecture de Hegel: Leçons sur la “Phenomenologie de l’Esprit.” Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1947. Kojève, Alexandre. Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the “Phenomenology of Spirit.” Edited by Allan Bloom. Translated by James H. Nichols. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1993. Kojève, Alexandre. Kant. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1973. Kojève, Alexandre. “L’action politique des philosophes.” Critique 41 (octobre, 1950): 46–55. Kojève, Alexandre. “L’action politique des philosophes.” Critique 42 (novembre, 1950): 138–55. Kojève, Alexandre. L’athéisme. Translated by Nina Ivanoff. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1998. Kojève, Alexandre. “La métaphysiqueréligieuse de Vladimir Soloviev.” Revue d’histoire et de philosophie

réligieuse 14 (novembre–décembre, 1934): 534–54. Kojève, Alexandre. “La métaphysiqueréligieuse de Vladimir Soloviev.” Revue d’histoire et de philosophie réligieuse 15 (janvier–avril, 1935): 110–52. Kojève, Alexandre. La notion de l’authorité. Edited by François Terré. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2004. Kojève, Alexandre. “La spécificité et l’autonomie du droit.” Commentaire 9 (printemps, 1980): 122–30. Kojève, Alexandre. “Lebensphilosophie und Phaenomenologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung der Dilthey’schen Richtung mit Heidegger und Husserl.” Recherches Philosophiques 2 (1932–33): 474–5. Kojève, Alexandre. Le Concept, le Temps et le Discours. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1990. Kojève, Alexandre. “Le dernier monde nouveau.” Critique 111–12 (août–septembre, 1956): 702–8. Kojève, Alexandre. L’idée du déterminisme dans la physique classique et dans la physique moderne. Paris: Livre de Poche, 1990. Kojève, Alexandre. “Marx est son Dieu, Ford est son prophète.” Commentaire 9 (printemps, 1980): 135–7. Kojève, Alexandre. “Max Schelers phaenomenologische Systematik.” Recherches Philosophiques 4 (1934– 35): 398–400. Kojève, Alexandre. “Objektivitaet, voraussetzungslose Wissenschaft und wissenschaftliche Wahrheit.” Recherches Philosophiques 5 (1935–36): 419–21. Kojève, Alexandre. “Outline of a Doctrine of French Policy.” Translated by Erik de Vries. Policy Review 126 (August–September, 2004): 3–40. Kojève, Alexandre. Outline of a Phenomenology of Right. Edited by Bryan-Paul Frost. Translated by Bryan-Paul Frost and Robert Howse. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000. Kojève, Alexandre. “Préface à la mise à jour du Système hégélien du Savior.” Commentaire 9 (printemps, 1980): 131–5. Kojève, Alexandre. “Préface à l’oeuvre de Georges Bataille.” L’Arc (printemps, 1971): 36. Kojève, Alexandre. “A Study of Hegel’s ‘Logic’.” Critique 54 (juillet–décembre 1951): 1003–1007. Kojève, Alexandre. “Tragische Existenz. Zur Philosophie Martin Heideggers.” Recherches Philosophiques 5 (1935–36): 415–9. Kojève, Alexandre. “Tyranny and Wisdom,” in On Tyranny. Edited by Allan Bloom. Translated by Michael Gold. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1963. Kojève, Alexandre. “Tyranny and Wisdom,” in On Tyranny. Edited by Victor Gourevitch and Michael Roth. Translated by Michael Gold and Victor Gourevitch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Kojève, Alexandre. “Von Husserl zu Heidegger.” Recherches Philosophiques 2 (1932–33): 475–7.

Secondary Sources Auffret, Dominique. Alexandre Kojève: La philosophie, l’État, la fin de l’Histoire. Paris: Éditions Grasset & Easquelle, 1990. Axell, John. The Making of Princeton University: From Woodrow Wilson to the Present. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2006. Bloom, Allan. Giants and Dwarfs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. Boesche, Roger. Theories of Tyranny from Plato to Arendt. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. Burns, Timothy, ed. After History? Francis Fukuyama and His Critics. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1994. Butler, Judith P. Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Butler, Nicholas Murray. “The Paradox of Despotism, Address at the Opening of the 184th year of Columbian University.” New York: Columbia University Press, 1937. Carlton, Eric. Faces of Despotism. Aldershot, Hants, England: Scolar Press, 1995.

Cobban, Alfred. Dictatorship: Its History and Theory. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939. Cooper, Barry. The End of History: An Essay on Modern Hegelianism. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 1984. Darby, Tom. The Feast: Meditations on Politics and Time. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 1982. de Boer, Karin. Thinking in the Light of Time: Heidegger’s Encounter with Hegel. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2000. Delacampagne, Christian. Le philosophe et le tyran: Histoire d’une illusion. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000. Derrida, Jacques. Spectres de Marx. Paris: Éditions Galilee, 1993. Descombes, Vincent. Le même et l’autre: Quarante Cinq Ans de la Philosophie Française. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1979. Drury, Shadia. Alexandre Kojève: The Roots of Postmodern Politics. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Filoni, Marco. Le philosophe du dimanche: La vie et la pensée d’Alexandre Kojève. Translated by Gérald Larché. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2008. Fishkin, James S. Tyranny and Legitimacy: A Critique of Political Theories. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979. Frost, Bryan-Paul. “A Critical Introduction to Alexandre Kojève’s Esquisse d’une Phénoménologie du Droit.” Review of Metaphysics 52 (March, 1999): 595–640. Fukuyama, Francis. “After Neoconservatism.” New York Times Magazine, February 19, 2006, 62. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Avon Books, 1992. Garfinkle, Adam, Kenneth Adelman, Patrick Clawson, Mark Falcoff, Douglas Feith, and Daniel Pipes. The Devil and Uncle Sam: A User’s Guide to the Friendly Tyrant’s Dilemma. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992. Geddes, Barbara, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz. “Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A New Data Set.” Perspectives on Politics 12 (June, 2014): 313–31. Gillespie, Michael Allen. Hegel, Heidegger and the Ground of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Goldford, Dennis J. “Kojève’s Reading of Hegel.” International Philosophical Quarterly 22, no. 4 (January, 1982): 275–93. Gourevitch, Victor. “Philosophy and Politics I.” Review of Metaphysics 22 (September, 1968): 58–84. Gourevitch, Victor. “Philosophy and Politics II.” Review of Metaphysics 22 (December, 1968): 281–325. Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay. The Federalist Papers. New York: New American Library of World Literature, Inc., 1961. Han Suyin. Eldest Son Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994. Hegel, G.W.F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Hegel, G.W.F. The Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1956. Hegel, G.W.F. Philosophy of Right. Translated by T.M. Knox. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967. Hegel, G.W.F. The Preface to the “Phenomenology.” Edited by Walter Kaufmann. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1965. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1996. Heidegger, Martin. The Concept of Time. Translated by Willian McNeill. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. Heidegger, Martin. On Time and Being. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. Higgins, W.E. Xenophon the Athenian. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1977. Howse, Robert. “Kojève’s Latin Empire.” Policy Review 126 (August–September, 2004): 41–8. Janssens, David. Between Athens and Jerusalem: Philosophy, Prophecy and Politics in Leo Strauss’s Early

Thought. Albany, New York: State University New York Press, 2008. Jarczyk, Gwendoline and Pierre-Jean Labarrière. De Kojève à Hégel: 150 ans de pensée hégéliennne en France. Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1996. Keith, Ronald. The Diplomacy of Zhou Enlai. Houndmills, Basingstoke, England: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1989. Kelly, George Armstrong. Hegel’s Retreat from Eleusis. Princeton, New Jersey and Guildford, Surrey, England: Princeton University Press, 1978. Kennedy, John F. The Kennedy Wit. Edited by Bill Adler. New York: Bantam Books, 1964. Khrushchev, Nikita. Khrushchev Remembers. Translated by Strobe Talbott. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company Inc., 1970. Kirkpatrick, Jeanne J. Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics. New York: American Enterprise Institute and Simon Schuster Publications, 1982. Klonsky, Milton. The Fabulous Ego. New York: The New York Times Book Company, 1974. Koivukoski, Toivo and David Edward Tabachnick, eds. Confronting Tyranny: Ancient Lessons for Global Politics. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005. Koyré, Alexandre. Études d’histoire de la pensée philosophique. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1971. Lauer, Quentin, S.J. A Reading of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit.” New York: Fordham University Press, 1976. Lilla, Mark. New French Thought. Edited by Mark Lilla. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994. Lilla, Mark. The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics. New York: New York Review of Books, 2001. Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Marion, Jean-Luc. Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology. Translated by Thomas A. Carlson. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1998. Mead, Walter Russell. “The Return of Geopolitics.” Foreign Affairs 93, no. 3 (May/June, 2014): 69–79. Meier, Heinrich. Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem. Translated by Marcus Brainard. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Mehlman, Jeffrey. “Alexandre Kojève 1902–68.” The Columbia History of Twentieth Century French Thought. Edited by Lawrence Kritzman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Melzer, Arthur M. “Esotericism and the Critique of Historicism.” American Political Science Review (May, 2006): 279–95. Nancy, Jean-Luc. Hegel L’inquiétude du négatif. Paris: Hachette Litteratures, 1997. Nichols, James H. Alexandre Kojève: Wisdom at the End of History. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007. Nixon, Richard M. Six Crises. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1962. Packard, Vance. The Hidden Persuaders. New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1957. Pangle, Thomas. Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Pehme, Kalev. “Review of Outline of a Phenomenology of Right, by Alexandre Kojève, ed. and trans. Bryan-Paul Frost and Robert Howse.” Interpretation 29, no. 3 (2003): 299–310. Pippin, Robert. Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pirotte, Dominique. Alexandre Kojève: Un système anthropologique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2005. Plamenatz, John Petrov. Man and Society: A Critical Examination of Some Important Political Theories from Machiavelli to Marx. Vol. II. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., 1963. Plato. The Republic. Translated by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, Inc. 1968. Riley, Patrick. “An Introduction to the Reading of Alexandre Kojève.” Political Theory 9, no. 1 (February, 1981): 5–48.

Roman, Joël. “Kojève (Alexandre) 1902–68.” Dictionnaire des intellectuels français Les Lieux, Les Moments. Edited by Jacques Juillard and Michel Winock. Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 1996. Rosen, Stanley. “Alexandre Kojève: ‘Essai d’une Histoire Raisonnée de la Philosophie Païenne’.” Man and World 3 (February, 1970): 120–5. Rosen, Stanley. Hermeneutics as Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Roth, Michael. Knowing and History: Appropriations of Hegel in Twentieth-Century France. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988. Roth, Michael. “A Note on Kojève’s ‘Phenomenology of Right’.” Political Theory 11, no. 3 (August 1983): 447–50. Roth, Michael. “A Problem of Recognition: Alexandre Kojève and the End of History.” History and Theory 24, no. 3 (1985): 293–306. Roudinesco, Elisabeth. La bataille de cent ans: Histoire de la psychanalyse en France 1. 1885–1939. Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 1986. Roudinesco, Elisabeth. La bataille de cent ans: Histoire de la psychanalyse en France 2. 1925–85. Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 1986. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Basic Political Writings. Translated by Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis: The Hackett Publishing Company, 1987. Safire, William. “The Cold War’s Hot Kitchen.” New York Times, July 24, 2009, A 25. Sagan, Françoise. “Le Dernier Monde.” Critique 111–12 (août–septembre, 1956): 702–8. Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. The Cycles of American History. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986. Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. The Disuniting of America. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1992. Shirer, William. The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940. New York: Pocket Books, 1969. Shirky, Clay. “The Political Power of Social Media.” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 1 (January–February 2011): 28–41. Shklar, Judith. Freedom & Independence: A Study of the Political Ideas of Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Mind.’ Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Singh, Aakash. Eros Turannos: Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève Debate on Tyranny. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2005. Smith, Steven B. Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Strauss, Leo. “The Living Issues of German Postwar Philosophy,” in Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem. Translated by Marcus Brainard. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Strauss, Leo. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. Strauss, Leo. On Tyranny. Edited by Allan Bloom. Translated by Michael Gold. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1963. Strauss, Leo. On Tyranny. Edited by Victor Gourevitch and Michael Roth. Translated by Michael Gold and Victor Gourevitch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Strauss, Leo. “Reason and Revelation,” in Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem. Translated by Marcus Brainard. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Strauss, Leo. Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Strauss, Leo. What Is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959. Tanguay, Daniel. Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography. Translated by Christopher Nadon. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007. Thao, TranDuc. “La ‘Phénoménologie de l’Ésprit’ et Son Contenu.” Les Temps Modernes 36 (septembre, 1948): 492–519. Westphal, Merold. Hegel, Freedom and Modernity. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1992.

Westphal, Merold. History & Truth in Hegel’s Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. “World Politics Twenty-Five Years after History” Panel at the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington DC, August 29, 2014. Zakaria, Fareed. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003. Zuckert, Catherine and Michael Zuckert. The Truth About Leo Strauss. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Index America 2; and containment of tyranny in twentieth century 4–5; and message of liberal order and democracy 2, 5; as representative of consumer, “now” culture 49, 56–7 animal time 38; and time-tyrant problem 38–40; and wise man 124n31; as exemplified in the case of the Sokolniki Summit (“Kitchen Debate”) 56–9; as manifest by consumerist now culture 56–7; as understood by Kojève 38–40, 156n10; as rooted in Past 47n19, 47n23, 198n16; as rooted in pursuit of physical objects 39, 56–9; Master-tyrants not in 39–40; presence of in American post-war society 49; residual condition at end of human time 51, 56–9, 156n18, 166; Strauss view as end state entailing return to 72, 115 Arab Spring xii; in the face of authoritarianism xii, 195 authority 54; amalgam of types of forms basis for bourgeois and fighting sides of Master-tyrant 161–4; idea and ruler in conferring connection of 149; definition of 160–1; understood as forms, types 160–2; understood in terms of phenomenology 160; selflessness of in definition of tyranny 64, 149; replacement for desire for desire 160; in use of concept of to avoid timetyrant problem 160 Bauhaus 42; rejection of as exemplar of Master-tyrant cultural consumption 42 Bezos, Jeff 49; and American consumer culture of now 49 Blair, Tony 1; in management and containment of tyranny 1 Bonaparte, Napoleon 51; and animal time 51; and human time 51; as exemplar of citizens in a homogeneous temporal end state 60, 94, 100; as exemplar of universal ideals 61–2; as last revolutionary tyrant 60; Hegel as philosopher to 94, 113–14, 116; plausibility of in descent to Slaves 60–1, 95–6; viability of as emblematic of a Kojèvian temporal end state 62–3; uncertain status in Kojève as representative of temporal end state 62–3 Castro, Fidel 195; as exemplar of bourgeois side of Master-tyrant 195

Chamberlain, Neville 75; in face of belligerence at Munich by Hitler as Mastertyrant 86n83; understanding of peace with Nazi Germany reflects alternate views of time by 75, 86n83 Chavez, Hugo 3; use of judicial system by to consolidate tyranny 140–1, 143 Chavez, Hugo 3; use of judicial system by to support authoritarian political order 140–1, 143, 154 Chief 160; as attracted to large scale project of Latin Empire 164–5; authority derived from reason, planning 161; authority exercised in combination with that of Master 161–2; as authority figure 161; combination with Master as basis for bourgeois side of Master-tyrant 161; exercise of authority of in time 164–7; pairing with Master common form of authority 161–2 China 137; as exemplar of equity 153–4; as model of socialist equity and corporal economics 151, 153–4, 184; turn to strain of Marxist-Leninism a key Cold War event 68, 158 circularity 89; and return to animality through totality 93; as basis for truth 90; as reflecting dual, instantaneous and totality 89–93, 184; as primarily process rather than end 93; as relates beginnings to ends 90, 101; in examining syllogisms 90; undermining temporal end state 101 citizen 50; and intellectual mediator 147, 153; as acting in time and not end of time 54, 107, 139; as advancing agenda of philosopher 107; as henchman of Master-tyrant compared with mercenaries 70, 188–9; in support of the bourgeois side of Master-tyrant in the mode of henchman 107, 144–5; man as always 139, 143–5; product of synthesis in the evolution of Droit 139, 145; significance of heightened by expansion of political ideas beyond desire for desire 144–5; tyranny as based on 54, 145; truly existing in universal and homogeneous state 152; with intellectual mediator as resolving time-tyrant problem 147 de Gaulle, Charles 164; as exemplar of the Chief in Kojève’s forms of authority 164–5 desire for desire (recognition) 8; absence of in the context of Japanese samurai society 66–7; absence of in the case of Napoleon 60–3; absence of in the context of post-fight Master-tyrants and Slaves 30–6; absence of in the context of post-war American society 56–7; and parity inherent in 30; as basis for homogeneity 112–16; as basis for insatiability 47n13; as communal 34–5; as intimate 34–5; as not involved in the creation of ideas 110; as properly understood as offering better understanding than desire for recognition 33–4; child free of 118; comparison with love based upon view of time 76–7, 200n34; in the context of the fight 29–30, 35; a story of as history 28, 33,

170; understood spatially 33–4 discourse 9; as cutting through timeless 90; as murder of word and formulation of past 91; in time 99–100 Droit 130; and end state 135–7; and society 143; as law 132; as right 133; as to commerce 134–5; as to crimes 133–4; as to property 134; focus on an alternative to political matters 132; history of tracing evolution of justice in time 132–3; Master-tyrant appropriation of 140–1, 143, 146–7; phenomenology of 132; subordinates individuals to principles 132–3; see also justice end of time (history) x; and equity 135; as central idea in mainstream accounting of Kojève 20, 50, 79n10, 79n11, 121n12; as premise, not necessarily attainable goal 93, 121n12; as recounted by Kojève 52–5; compared with end state 70, 138–9, 177, 190–1; depicted by Napoleon 51, 60–3; depicted by samurai Japan 66; “germ” of as mere process of movement toward 53–5; “germ” of as most precise statement concerning 53–5, 84n58, 138–9; importance of subordinate to accounting of time 52–5, 138–9; in contemporary culture x–xii end state 20; as entailing collective labor 149; as equity 135; as possible in principle 175; as universal and homogeneous 146, 181, 193; best expressed as timelessness in human time 57–9, 66–7, 70, 138–9, 177, 190–1; mixing of social interests during 137–8, 192–3; Strauss view of as entailing return to animality 71–3, 177 Enola Gay 165; delivery of atom bomb as ending Asian empire as Kojève wrote of empire in Europe 165 equality 133; and law of property 134; and a stagnant social order 134; and penal law 134; and situation of Master-tyrants and Slaves 134; as basis for classical justice 134; as idea of justice 133–4; as relates to justice 134; based upon mutual consent 133–4; based upon relations between, among likes 133; emphasis on capabilities of parties in 133–4; exemplar of time-tyrant problem 134; parity in 133; within a community of Master-tyrants 134 equity 135; and law of property 136; and a final, synthesized social order 135; and a purported end of time 135; and subsistence economics 136; as end state 135; as idea of justice 135; as elevating but levelling 136, 138; as in part based on equality 135–6, 138; as in part based on equivalence 135–6, 138; as relates to justice 135–8; based upon relations between, among likes 137–8; developing throughout history 139, 143–5; difficult to explain in terms of synthesis 135–6, 167; equivalence of exchange in as leading to parties that are likes in equality 136–7; exemplified in China 151, 153, 166–7; parity in

135–6 equivalence 134; and law of contract 134–5; and a dynamic, interactive social order 134, 146–7, 153, 156n13; and relation of Master-tyrants and Slaves 134–5; as basis for bourgeois justice 134–5; and subsistence economics 136–7; as advancing homogeneity 146–7; as idea of justice rooted in exchange 135, 146, 153; as relates to justice 134–5; based upon relations between, among unlikes 134–5; parity in 135; transition to equity from 135–6 Father 161; authority derived from reverence for tradition 161; as authority figure 161 fight 15; and fighting side of Master-tyrant 161–2; as beginning human time 28–9; as between eventual Master-tyrant and Slave 30–3; as between two parties in parity 30, 131–3; as understood by Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel 28–9; importance of willingness to accept death in 19, 31; initial perception of parties in 30, 131–2, 134; rebuff of Slave by Master-tyrant following 35–6 France 14; as exemplar of Latin Empire 164–6; role of during Third Republic of in Kojève biography as émigré 14–16 Franco, Francisco 92; appeal to collective memory by 92 Fukuyama, Francis x; and end of history xi, 1–2; interpretation of Kojève by 1–2; interpretations of questioned xi, 2, 156n18, 157n22 Future (Kojèvian) 36; and insatiability for other than physical object 47n13; and Master-tyrants 28–9, 30–6, 162–3; and Past 99; as basis for human time 36, 46n13; as basis for Present 36, 163; as central to time phenomenology and time-tyrant problem in view of Strauss 74, 188; as overcoming Past 36, 124n29, 164; in animal time contrasted 39; perspective toward as evidence of desire for desire 29–30, 35–6; that of bourgeois and fighting side of Mastertyrant respectively 162 Gadaffi, Muammar 195; as out of favor and out of time Master-tyrant 195 globalization 166; and time phenomenology 166; as universality 166 glory 111; as desire for desire 125n59; as distinct from desire for desire 111, 125n59 Goebbels, Joseph 69; appeal to memory as willed tradition 96 “Guernica” 92; as reflecting the timelessness of Slave surplus challenging Master-tyrants 92 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 15; and time in Kojève 18–19, 53, 59, 154; as auditor-historian-philosopher 102; as in error but still a wise man 181; as wise man 181

Heidegger, Martin 17; and time in Kojève 18–19, 123n23; importance of facing death in 128n77 Hiero (dialogue of Xenophon) 70; summary of 70–1; time phenomenology in 71–2 Hiero (the tyrannical interlocutor in Hiero) 76; and animal time 70, 189; and desire 70, 189; and desire for desire 71, 189; and human time 71, 189; and rebuff 70, 189; as evoking time-tyrant problem 71, 189; as exemplar of Master-tyrant 71–2; lack of parity in relations of 71–2; significance of proposed suicide in time 70, 187, 190; see also Simonides and Xenophon historical Present 169; appeal of to Master-tyrants 169–72; as basis for fighting side of Master-tyrant 169, 170–2; in relation to temporal Present 169; lack of connection to temporal Present 175, 177; reflective aspect of 171–2; product of bourgeois side of Master-tyrant 169; Strauss critique of 177–8; suspension of time needed to find 170–3 history: as chronicle of desire for desire 28, 33; as determined by Slaves 28, 33, 170, 199n18; as outward manifestation basis for mainstream reading of Kojève 28; as time 28; end of projected as premise 93; end of ill-defined 57–9; end of basis for mainstream understanding of Kojève 121n12; verification through basis for real, truth 186 Hitler, Adolph 16; and racial ideology 88; rebuff by at Munich as to Czechs 86n83 homogeneity 1; and universality as end state rejecting return to animality as basis for irony 66–7; as perverted by Master-tyrants 24; as rooted in interplay of idea and act 177; as understood by Kojève and challenged by Strauss 115–16, 177; promoted through equivalence in politics expanded beyond desire for desire 146–8; supported by subsistence economics and expansion of political agenda 149–50, 156n14 human time 35; absence of in samurai Japan 66–7; and the time-tyrant problem 37; as based on fights and works 27–9; as exemplified in the case of the Sokolniki Summit (“Kitchen Debate”) 55–9; as rooted in desire for desire 33–6; as rooted in Future 46n13; as understood by Kojève 27–36, 156n10; Master-tyrant not in 31–2; parallel to Kojève’s jurisprudence 133–7 ideology 7; absence of in supporting modern tyrannies 7–8; as basis for tyranny 108 intellectual mediator 9; and citizen henchman 147, 153; as distinct from philosopher 176; as distinct from wise man 176, 183–4; as existing during time 108, 171, 175; as helping bourgeois side of Master-tyrant in time 147, 171, 175; Kojève view of Strauss as 177, 180; role of in resolving time-tyrant

problem 89, 109; with citizen henchmen as resolving time-tyrant problem 109, 147 Japan 65; as exemplar of time-tyrant problem and timelessness 66–7; in modernity as appropriate example of futuristic, bourgeois side of Mastertyrant 165; inappropriate as exemplar of end of time 66; mainstream reading as to 84n56; samuri culture as based on snobbery and non-relation 66–7 jihadism 64; as form of universality 64 Judge 161; authority derived from value of justice 161; as authority figure 161; based on idea of justice outside time 161; connection to Kojèvian jurisprudence 161 justice 9; ancient understanding of rooted in equality 133–4; and time phenomenology 132, 137; as exemplar of turn to ideas from Master-tyrants 129–30, 143; as human interaction 132, 137; as stabilizing capstone of society 140–1; as understood during Gilded Age at Princeton eating clubs 135–8; based on mutual consent 131; bourgeois understanding of rooted in equivalence 134–5; concern of Master-tyrants for 139–40; considerations of as helping to expand political beyond the desire for desire 145–8, 150; emphasis on in response to time-tyrant problem 131, 134; end of juridical system independent of political 132; historical evolution of 132; nature of in Kojève 131–3; final, synthetic quality exemplified by equity 135–8; juridical systems derivative of benefitting Master-tyrants 140–1; system for parallel to politics 132; phenomenology of 131; system for promoting stability 140–1, 143, 146–7; understood as equity in end state 135–8 Kennedy, John 58; as exemplar of animal survival over animal desire in “germ” of end state 58 Khrushchev, Nikita 56; and desire for desire 56–7; as epitome of human time in confrontation with Nixon in Sokolniki Summit 56–7; as exemplifying rebuff of Master-tyrant 57; emphasis on future-oriented view of time of Mastertyrants 56–7; in denigration of consumerist society of animal time 56–7 Kissinger, Henry 1; in management and containment of tyranny 1 “Kitchen Debate” see Sokolniki Summit Kojève, Alexandre x; and America 49; and atheism 71, 113, 115, 121n10, 186, 189, 194; and end state as opposed to temporal end state 53–5, 70, 84n58, 138–9, 177, 190–1; and modern Europe 13–16, 164–6; and the former Soviet Union 64; and Japan 65–7; appeal as to mainstream reading of 2, 41–2; as revealed and revealing 23, 195–6; as understood on the context of current or recent events 20, 42–5, 63–4, 118–20, 137, 139, 173, 194–5; biography of

13–16, 72n12; concern of for regime maintenance 94, 154, 163; definition of tyranny in 25–6, 26n22, 54, 149–50, 167; end of time (history) in 20, 52–4; evolution in postwar thinking of 45; historical verification in work of 153, 170; irony in referencing phenomenology against events 48n29, 54–5, 79n12, 168; mainstream interpretation of 20, 27, 30, 33, 38, 49, 52, 64, 79n10, 79n11, 122n17, 155n5, 156n18, 181, 199n24; most properly understood as time phenomenologist 27–8, 50, 76, 194; on authority 160–4; on equality 133–4; on equivalence 134–6, 153, 156n13; on equity 135–6, 167; on justice 130, 132, 137; philosophical influences on 16–20; place in the history of thought of 18–24; reading of Xenophon by 75–7, 179, 182–4; relation of philosophy and history in 80n15, 80n17; role of nature, space, the given in works of 21–4; thoughts of as to homogeneity 113–14; thoughts of as to universality 63–5; threat to eternal, universal order and theologico-political problem posed by 69–70; time-tyrant problem a product of view of time of 36–48; tyranny and Master-tyrants in the works of 20, 54–5; understanding of the role of desire for desire (recognition) of 30, 34–5, 190; views on Hegel of 13, 17–18; views on Heidegger of 17–19; views on philosopher of 178–9; views on Strauss of 68–9, 177–80; wartime and postwar revision in thought of time as central to philosophy of 54–8, 129–32, 154–5, 173–4 Koucher, Bernard 1; in management and containment of tyranny 1 Latin Empire 164; as proposed by Kojève 164–6; as representing different views of time 164 “Little Boy” 165; with “Fat Man” as exemplar of devastating physical Present 165 Lysenko affair 42; regarding illustrative of Master-tyrant consumption and culture 42 Machiavelli, Niccolò 22; as modern compared to Kojève 23–4; as using nature as basis for political philosophy 23–4, 114 Master 15; authority derived from desire for desire and risk 162; as authority figure 161; as combined with Chief to avoid time-tyrant problem 161–2; as combined with Chief as exemplified by Hitler and Stalin 162, 197n9, 198n11; combination with Chief as basis for bourgeois side of Master-tyrant 162–3; core of basis for fighting side of Master-tyrant 160–2; more fully understood as Master-tyrant 25–6, 26n22, 45n2, 197n2; pairing with Chief common form of authority 162–3; see also Master-tyrant Master-tyrant 20; and the end state 120n3; and the fight 28–30; and the intellectual mediator 108; and the philosopher 105–12; and the post-fight

rebuff of Slaves 30–1, 86n8; and Slaves 30–6; as commanding but frustrated consumer post-fight 31–2, 42–3, 57; as consumers of modern technology 43–4; as contemporaneous with Kojève 13–17, 68, 158–9; as proxies for ideas of justice 129; as prone to abstraction and in deed of concrete advice 87–8; bourgeois side of implementing ideas and as idea 130, 144–5, 147; dimensions of reformulated in Kojève’s post-war corpus 144–5; equality as reflective as justice as to 133–4; explained as terminology 25–6, 26n22, 45n2, 197n2; fate of as time-tyrant problem 57–8; fighting (warrior) side of 154, 162; in modernity 56–7, 60–3; in political regime 120n3; in rule bourgeois side predominant over fighting side 154, 162; internal struggle within 30–1; regimes of as benefitting from juridical systems 140–1, 143, 146–7; violence of as to both fighting and bourgeois aspects 159–60, 172 memory 91; appeals to through discourse 91, 117; collective as tool for access to and as used by Master-tyrants 96; collective as willed tradition 96 Mussolini, Benito 95; as Il Duce and false aspects of role as Master-tyrant 95 mutual assured destruction 58; as symptomatic of mixture of human and animal time and “germ” of end state 58–9 Nassar, Gamal Abdul 173; as authoritarian in developing country 173 nation-state 6; as supporting tyranny 6 Nazi Germany 14; exemplar of expansionist racist ideology 14; role of in Kojève biography as émigré 14–16, 68 Nehru, Jawaharlal 173; as authoritarian in developing country 173 Nixon, Richard 56; as epitome of animal time in confrontation with Khrushchev in Sokolniki Summit 56–7; as exemplifying desire for objects and consumerism 56–7; emphasis on present-oriented view of time and the “now” society 56–7; turn in dialogue in Sokolniki Summit from animal desire to animal fear 58–9 Niyazov, Sapamurat xi; as strong authoritarian with view of universal to support regime 168 Nyerere, Julius 43; as authoritarian in developing country 43 objectivity 29; and Kojèvian time and the Real 29–30; as required in validation of self-worth 29 Occupy Wall Street 192; as exemplar of “germ” of end state and mixed publicprivate roles 192–3 Past (Kojèvian) 36; and Future 99; as contributing to a historical Present that is cumulative 186; as overcome in human time 36, 164 Peron, Juan 43; as Master-tyrant in developing country 43

phenomenology 2; and other subdisciplines of philosophy 123n23; as foundational in Kojèvian thought over outward political manifestations 33, 33, 35; as understood in the context of justice 131; as understood in the context of time 27–8; see also time phenomenology philosopher 9; as bearer of collective memory 108; as creator of idea free from desire for desire 110; as existing during time 105–7; as distinct from wise man 97, 105–6, 176; as resembling Master-tyrant of post-fight rebuff 107, 110; child as substitute for 117–18; differing views of Strauss and Kojève on 113–14, 178, 183; remoteness of 108–9; role of in resolving time-tyrant problem 89; time of in terms of quantity and quality 107 philosophy 1; and community 30, 34–5; and discourse 105; and time 80n15, 80n16; and the timeless, the eternal 69–70; and tyranny 107–9; as related to ideas, the product of acts and events in time 105–6; as understood by Kojève 105–6, 110–2; as understood by Strauss 113, 115–16, 178; history of as secondary or tertiary relative to the real 94, 106, 108–9; projected end of 54; relation to tyranny, Master-tyrants 105–12; time phenomenology as subdiscipline within 123n23 Place Vendôme 65; and rudderless universality 65 Plato x; individual-city analogy of as seen by Kojève 102; Kojèvian understanding in dialogue of Repubic involving Socrates and Thrasymachus 102–4 Pol Pot 65; and mindless universality 65 political science 44; implications of Kojève in empirical studies of 44–5, 63–5, 142n16 Present (Kojèvian) 36; as concerning Master-tyrants through concern with “current business” 174; as having both front and back ends, through temporal Present and historical Present respectively 170–2, 177; as path to through Future and overcoming Past 163, 168; in animal time contrasted 198n16; path to through Future and Past 36, 119, 162–3, 169, 198n16; physical realm of for Master-tyrants 162; that of bourgeois and fighting side of Master-tyrant respectively 161–2, 170–2 Princeton University 137; dining clubs of as backdrop for transition among forms of Kojèvian justice 137–8; movement to equity as present in dining clubs of 137–8; ultimate resolution of dining club dispute 137–8; see also Woodrow Wilson Real 21; as defined 22–3; as basis for proof by historical verification 88–9; as coextensive with history 28–9; as intersection of idea with act 22–3, 88–9, 184; as manifesting reason 173; consisting of fights and works 29; qualified

by timelessness 41–2; contrast with time phenomenology as basis for irony 54–5 risk 19; and death 31, 37; as basis for the fight 31, 37, 155n5, 162 “Roukama” 168; as tool of Master-tyrant representing universality 168 Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. 5; in support of assimilation in American model 5 Simonides 70; as evoking time-tyrant problem 71, 188–9; as philosopher 172; as wise man 172; advocate of the bourgeois side of Master-tyrants and great public works 71; defender of lives of Master-tyrants 71; on rebuff by Mastertyrants 70, 187–9; see also Hiero and Xenophon Slave 15; and Master-tyrants 30–6; as proxies for ideas of justice 129, 134–5; diminished desire for desire in 32; equivalence as reflective as justice as to 134–5; fate of in time-tyrant problem 70–1; history as story of 28, 33, 170, 199n18; path of to citizenship 62–3; plausibility of in ascent to example of Napoleon 61–3; post-fight terror in 32; work of as action on idea 32–3; work of as story of history 33, 170, 199n18; work of as action on idea 32 Socrates 90; as capturing time tyrant problem in exchange with Thrasymachus 102–4; as guiding Thrasymachus from timeless to animal and human time and so refuting 103–4; as object of syllogism and action in space 90–1; dialogue with Thrasymachus reflecting transition from Socrates as wise man to Socrates as philosopher 102–4, 106; Kojèvian understanding of insults directed at in exchange with Thrasymachus 103–4; see also Thrasymachus and Plato Sokolniki Summit (“Kitchen Debate”) 55; and doctrine of mutual assured destruction 58–9; as celebrating pursuit of consumer objects and animal time 56–7; as displaying aspects of Master-tyrants 56–9; as exemplifying temporal aspects of the “germ” of the end state 56–9; aspects of human and animal time during 56–9, 195; see also Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon Soviet Union 14; and tyranny 108; collapse of 64; exemplar of scientific collectivism as universality 13–14; role of in Kojève biography as émigré 13–14; nuclearization of key Cold War event 68 Stalin, Joseph 16; and scientific Marxism-Leninism 88; appeal to collective memory by 91, 96, 108; as embodiment of modern tyranny 79–80n13, 88; as model of authority as Master-Chief 197n9, 198n11; as tyrant prominent in Kojève’s intellectual biography 16; as candidate with Napoleon for tyrant ushering in end of history 79–80n13, 81n27 Strauss, Leo x; and end state as return to animality 72, 115; and Kojève’s view of philosophy 113–14, 117; and Kojève’s view of wisdom 184–91; attack by on Kojèvian syntheses to expose time-tyrant problem 72–5, 113; attack on

Kojève’s homogeneity by 112–16, 177; characterizing end state rather than temporal end state 77–8, 177; defense of philosophy key to understanding 178; exchange with Kojève 67–78, 112–17, 176–92; exploitation of timetyrant problem by 70, 185, 188; importance assigned rereading of texts by 182–4, 186, 196; importance of theologico-political problem to 70, 77–8, 177; informed by history 75–8; making charge of Kojève’s atheism 71, 113, 115, 121n10, 186, 189, 194; on internal struggle within Master-tyrants 71, 116, 187–8, 190; on synthetic thinking 72–4, 113; parallels with Kojève in life of 67–8; reading of Xenophon by 72–8; response to view of as intellectual mediator 184; response to view of as wise man 184–91; understanding of history of 69–70, 77–8; understanding of universality and defense of theologico-political problem in exchange with Kojève 177; viewed as thinker by Kojève 177; views on philosopher of 178, 187, 190–1 subjectivity 29; perspective from inadequate for self-worth 29 Tamerlane 139; as using juridical system in support of tyrannical regime 139–40 technology 5; as used by Master-tyrants 5–6, 43–4; as accentuating consumerist now culture 49; and time phenomenology 43–4 temporal Present 169; appeal of to Master-tyrants 169–71; as basis for bourgeois side of Master-tyrant 169–72; as evidence of human time and relation of act to idea 170; commanding aspect of 172; in relation to historical Present 169; lack of connection to historical Present 175, 177; product of fighting side of Master-tyrant 168; Strauss critique of 177–8, 188 theologico-political problem 9; as basis for Western thought and threatened by time-tyrant problem 70; as central to thought of Strauss 70; defense of resting on attack of Kojèvian syntheses and demonstration of time-tyrant problem 72–4; in timeless, eternal 69–70; vitality of challenged by struggle over timetyrant problem on issue of universality 69–70 Thrasymachus 102; and animal time 103; and human time 104; and rebuff 103; as stymied in dialogue by time-tyrant problem 102–4; evolution in argument of reflects transition from timelessness to animal and human time 102–4; dialogue with Socrates reflecting transition from Socrates as wise man to Socrates as philosopher 102–4; see also Plato and Socrates time 2; and desire for desire (recognition) 31–6, 163; and Man 16–20, 164; and Master-tyrants 30–1, 36–40, 161–4; and Nature (Space) 18, 21–4, 25n9, 26n29, 29–30; and tyranny 3, 5–8, 122n16, 161–4; as central to Kojève 13, 16–21, 182–3, 194–5; as cyclical 38–9; as used by Master-tyrants 154, 163, 169; as viewed by Hegel 18–19; as viewed by Heidegger 18–19; as viewed by Strauss 71–8; conventional understanding of 28; defined as animal 38–40;

defined as human 36, 164; Future in 36, 99, 162–3; historical Present in 169–72; in prewar and postwar Kojève 27–40, 54–8, 129–32, 154–5, 173–4; Kojève’s understanding of 16–20, 37–42, 182–3; Past in 36, 99; Present in 36, 162–3; suspension of 170–3; temporal Present in 169–72; understood as Future, Past and Present 36, 119, 162–3, 169, 198n16; understood as Past (animal) 47n19, 47n23; understood of as Future (human) 36, 162–3 time phenomenology 2; as basis for Kojève’s philosophic views 3, 31, 33, 35, 50; as foundational in Kojèvian thought over outward political manifestations 31, 33, 35; as viewed by Kojève 8–9, 27–8, 50; defined 27 timelessness 37; and the eternal or universal 132; as the condition of Mastertyrants 9, 36–40; and wise man 97, 101, 179–82; as exemplified by Japanese samurai society 66–7; as exemplified in the case of Napoleon 62; as exemplified in the conversation between Socrates and Thrasymachus 102–4; as exemplified in the case of the Sokolniki Summit (“Kitchen Debate’) 58; as “germ” of the end state 58, 138–9; as illustrative of time-tyrant problem 38–40; as two Presents, two Futures 164–5, 167–9; contrasted with end of time 51, 66–7, 138–9; in the context of death 37; in Kojève 9, 36–40; mixing of social interests during 137–8, 192–3 time-tyrant problem 9; and views of authority 160, 163–4; as expressed in classical tradition 71, 75–6, 175; as expressed in modern conditions 58, 62; as rooted in Kojève’s time phenomenology 2–3, 37–9, 62–5, 67, 157n20, 175; attention to as central to Kojève’s postwar corpus 3, 130, 132, 140, 145, 148, 175–6; defined and illustrated in terms of human and animal time 37–9, 57–8; expressed as existential impasse 37, 40, 157n20; intellectual mediator and citizen henchmen as helping to resolve 109, 147; recognition by Leo Strauss in exchange with Kojève 70 tyranny xii; ancient 70–8; and philosophy 2, 69–70; as fundamental condition 2; modern xi–xii, 3–8, 56–9, 60–3, 64–5, 92–3, 96, 107–8, 173; defined 54, 64, 149–50, 167, 191; grounded in fight between eventual Master-tyrants and Slaves 28–9; imposition of ideas as central to 54, 64; paradox of as nonrelational 3, 70; ideas from based on force 188–9; status of in end state 60, 63 tyrants xi; see also Master-tyrants Ukraine 193; Russian incursion into as reconfiguration of space in end of end state 193–4 universality 1; and homogeneity as end state and timeless as basis for irony 97–8; as exemplified by globalization 166; as related to the theologicopolitical problem 69–70, 77–8, 176–7; as related to the time tyrant problem 76–8; as rooted in homogeneity 116–7; in modern events 63–5; nature of

contested by Kojève and Strauss 67–78 Wilson, Woodrow 137; and reform of Princeton dining clubs 137–8; as dealing with Kojèvian forms of justice in the Gilded Age 137–8; as participant in the transition from equality as a form of Kojèvian justice to equivalence and equity as forms of Kojèvian justice 138; result in plans of to reform Princeton dining clubs 138 wise man 9; and animal time 101, 124n3, 151–2; and economic subsistence 151–2; and timelessness 176, 179; as active and revealing 98–100; as citizen of end state 97, 179, 181; as existing during time 97–8, 120n4, 122n18, 176, 179; as distinct from intellectual mediator 184; as distinct from philosopher 97, 105–6, 176; as passive and revealed 100–2, 195–6; irony in timelessness of 97–8; Kojève view of Strauss as 177, 179–80, 195–6; role of in resolving time-tyrant problem 89; transformed into philosopher 102–4 work 29; absence of emblematic of animal time 51; and bourgeois side of Master-tyrant 144–6; as part of end state 149–50; defined 32; as action on nature (space) 33 World Trade Organization (WTO) 166; and subsistence economics 166–7; participation in priority in for China 167 Xenophon 70; and internal struggle within Master-tyrants 71, 116, 187–8; application of to modern tyranny and politics 96; demise of tyrannical life in work of 71–2, 187–8; work by central to Strauss- Kojève exchange 70, 115–6; as concerned with inquiry into nature of quality of tyrannical life 70–1, 115–6; irony in for Strauss 189; use of memory by 70; work of as exemplar of time-tyrant problem 71, 188; work of concerned with time 71, 115–16, 187–9; see also Hiero and Simonides Y2K 49; as potential barrier to consumerist now culture providing goods and services in no time 49 Yasukuni Shrine 165; as reflective of collective national memory, and past 165 Yokohama 165; as project reflecting a Future as envisioned by Master-Chief 165 Zhou Enlai 173; as intellectual mediator to Master-tyrant Mao 173; as reflective of long term philosophic perspective 173, 175, 188 Zucotti Park 192; as exemplar of “germ” of end state and blend of public, private roles 192–3