Taming Desires---Xenophon as Written by Strauss---Classics and Interpretations of Western Thinkers

Author: Kojève (French), He Zhigang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: "It can almost be said that only in Strauss does Xenophon hold the position of a great thinker. Strauss's interpretation of Xenophon's writings seems quite plain, yet it achieves grandeur, with profound meaning as if to awaken the ears of the wise, and can be called a classical work in modern scholarship." This book is a collection of essays that focuses on papers that help understand Strauss's research on Xenophon. It provides some convenience for the Chinese academic community to re-examine Xenophon and understand Strauss's major issues—such as the relationship between philosophy and politics—through his interpretation of Xenophon. Excerpt: The Advantages of a Universal and Homogeneous State / [American] Hoss / Frost For the English intellectual world, most people know this person only because of Kojève's fame. His fame has two main sources: one is Kojève's discussions with Strauss on tyranny and philosophy, and the other is Fukuyama's adaptation and popularization of Kojève's "end of history" thought. In his dialogue with Strauss, Kojève, with straightforward courage, stated the historical determinism stance of a Marxist, without any confusing sentimentalism of a humanist. He said that violent collective struggles and even brutal periods of tyranny are merely indispensable parts of the historical process moving irresistibly toward the socialist utopia, which Kojève called the "universal and homogeneous state." Any moral judgment beyond history on the means or individuals produced by this process is philosophically incoherent. Decades later, when history seemed to be moving somewhat differently from the path Kojève pointed out—in other words, in the late 1980s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the apparent victory of the market, the policy analyst Fukuyama, who was not yet well-known at the time, won global fame by () subverting Kojève's thought. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the violent political struggles between different social visions also ended, as one vision (in other words, the vision of liberal democracy) had now won, making intense struggles unnecessary. Of course, as Fukuyama wisely admitted before the war in Yugoslavia, violence would persist in many places for a long time, but he also believed that such conflicts only reflect that in some specific countries, there would be a certain degree of regression in the process of moving toward liberal democracy. When Strauss discussed tyranny with Kojève, he made two critical points that struck at the core of Kojève's idea of the universal and homogeneous state. First, such a state would necessarily be a tyranny, because centralized rule over the entire world could only be achieved through brutal means. Second, such a state would not satisfy humanity's fundamental desires, because according to Kojève's own definition, in such a state, there would be no reason for people to struggle or fight desperately for anything higher or more significant than their own animalistic survival. Fukuyama saved Kojève from Strauss's first criticism by reinterpreting the universal and homogeneous state as the American empire after the death of communism, but he still believed in communism. In the universal and homogeneous state, every citizen would be recognized as free and equal, and there would be no need for further violent political struggles. However, what if "human satisfaction (rather than happiness) does not come from the goal itself but from the struggle and work in the process"? The reliability of this objection comes from Kojève's rather famous comment, specifically in the revised edition of his "Lectures on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit." There, Kojève changed his view, believing that at the end of history, humans would either live and play like animals or engage in empty exercises of self-conquest—such as arrogance, the pursuit of formal perfection, etc.—which Kojève claimed to have observed in Japan. Fukuyama's concept of the "end of history" is based on adapting or attempting to perfect the ideas from Kojève's Introduction to Hegel, perhaps more likely derived from Kojève's dialogue with Strauss on tyranny. In this attempt, Fukuyama never tried to grasp Kojève's Outlines of the Phenomenology of Law (［Translation note］hereinafter referred to as Outlines), ignoring the more comprehensive and meticulous treatment of the "universal and homogeneous state" in this work. This led to the entire debate on the end of history that Fukuyama presented appearing impoverished and thin. However, the left-wing sociologist Perry Anderson noted that the extremely different program of action revealed in the Outlines has not been presented in Kojève's exchanges with Strauss (and was completely ignored in Fukuyama's comments on the post-historical "man" that interested him). The universal and homogeneous state proposed in the Outlines is something yet to be realized, and the path to its realization is not through tyranny or empire but through legal integration (or unification) among nations, thereby producing a supranational constitutional order, permeated and united by a single and clear concept of law. The residents of this final order are not brutes, nihilists, or arrogant playboys, but citizens, workers, and family members, who have rights and obligations corresponding to their respective roles and interrelated with each other. Their true human satisfaction is achieved through recognition at work and love within the family. The final order will be the realization of the "supra-free goal": the rule of man will be completely replaced by the rule of law. Indeed, politics and the state in Schmitt's sense will no longer exist—all economic and social relationships, even those traditionally seen as relations between sovereign states, will be regulated by law. Moreover, the concept of law, as the foundation for this universal legal order, will be a synthesis that combines the elements of market justice from the bourgeoisie with the elements of equality from socialism. Anderson aptly considers the Outlines to be the most-rich work in Kojève's writings. This less-discussed work will be indispensable for a complete understanding of the concept of the end of history and its implications for the fate of humanity. Is it possible for humanity to truly transcend the nation-state? Or does globalization necessarily require conflict-ridden (gradual) states to submit to the (chaotic) order of the global market? Must world law sacrifice politics to technocracy? Can or should we prevent the apparent decline of the nation-state from a nationalist-corporatist stance? Or, as Habermas has recently argued, should we try to achieve transnational social justice within the territorial scope demanded by the market itself? These are clearly central issues for contemporary legal theory and social theory, as they concern fundamental choices in commitments and strategies. Kojève's view of the universal and homogeneous state as a completed legal order, particularly the legal concept that makes this state possible—the synthesis of equality (equal status under law) and equivalence (mutually corresponding social and economic interests and burdens)—has great potential to deepen—or fundamentally reconstruct—current discussions on globalization, law, and the fate of politics.