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

263 Pages·2018·4.404 MB·English

by  Gary M. Kelly

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 misun-
derstood 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 phe-
nomenologist, rather than as a New Age guru. The book shows how Kojève’s
time is inherently political, and indeed tyrannical, for being about his under-
standing 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-t yrant 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 per-
spective 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 justi-
fication 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 twenty-
five 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
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and by Routledge
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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.
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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