In my opinion it is not only Xenophon who is important in the book Strauss has devoted to him. 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’s dialogue, as interpreted by Strauss, sets a disillusioned tyrant who claims to be discontented with his condition as a tyrant, against a wise man who has come from afar to advise him on how to govern his State in a way that will provide him with satisfaction from the exercise of tyranny. Xenophon makes these two characters speak, and he tells us between the lines what to think about what they 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 the 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.
It is about some of these problems explicitly or implicitly raised by Strauss in the preceding pages that I should like to speak in what follows.
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Let us first take up the question of tyranny.
Let us note that it is not Hiero who asks Simonides for advice on how to exercise tyranny. Simonides gives him that advice spontaneously. Still, the fact remains that Hiero listens to it (in a moment of leisure, it is true). And having heard it, he says nothing. That silence shows us that he has nothing to say in response. We may therefore conclude that he judges, as we ourselves do, following Xenophon and Strauss, that Simonides’s advice is full of wisdom. But since he does not say so, and since he does not say that he will follow it, we assume that he will do nothing of the kind. And that was probably Simonides’s own opinion, for according to Xenophon he does not even ask whether Hiero intends to implement the advice he has just given him.
Faced with this situation, we are naturally inclined to be shocked. We do, to be sure, understand why Hiero was willing to listen attentively to Simonides’s advice since, by his own admission, he was unable to exercise his tyranny on his own in a way that was satisfying, if only to himself. But we, if we had been “in his place,” would spontaneously have asked for advice just as soon as we became aware of our inability. We would even have done so “long ago;” and not in a moment of leisure, but “dropping everything.” Above all, as soon as we had realized how excellent the advice was which we had received, we would have loudly proclaimed it, and done everything in our power to implement it. And, once again, we would have done so “dropping everything.”
But before yielding to this natural impulse, I believe that we ought to reflect. Let us first ask ourselves whether it is really true that “in Hiero’s place” we could have carried out our noble intentions by “dropping everything.” Hiero himself does not think so, since he says to Simonides (end of ch. 7): “In this too is tyranny most miserable: it is not possible to be rid of it.” And he may be right. For the tyrant always has some “current business” which it is impossible to drop without first completing it. And it may well be that the nature of this business is such that to attend to it proves incompatible with the measures that would have to be taken in order to implement the wise man’s advice, or more exactly, in order to institute the ideal state of things which he recommends. It may also be that it takes more years to conclude “current business” than there are years in the tyrant’s own life. And what if some of it required centuries of effort to conclude fully?
Hiero draws Simonides’s attention to the fact that in order to come to power, the tyrant necessarily has to take, let us say, “unpopular” measures (in fact, Hiero considers them “criminal”). Simonides does not deny it, but he asserts that the tyrant could maintain himself in power without recourse to violence, by taking appropriate measures to achieve “popularity.” But Simonides does not say how to go about abrogating the “unpopular” measures without immediately imperiling the tyrant’s life or power (and hence also imperiling the very reforms which he was ready to introduce as a result of the wise man’s intervention), or even the State’s existence as such. Nor does he explain how the nonviolent “popular” regime could have been established without abrogating the measures in question.
Yet that is obviously what Simonides should have explained to Hiero if he had really wanted him to follow his advice. By not doing so, Simonides seems to have behaved not so much like a wise man as like a typical “Intellectual” who criticizes the real world in which he lives from the standpoint of an “ideal” constructed in the universe of discourse, an “ideal” to which one attributes an “eternal” value, primarily because it does not now exist and never has existed in the past. In fact, Simonides presents his “ideal” in the form of a “utopia.” For the ideal presented in the form of a “utopia” differs from the same ideal presented as an “active” (revolutionary) idea precisely in this, that the utopia does not show us how, here and now, to begin to transform the given concrete reality with a view to bringing it into conformity with the proposed ideal in the future.
Strauss may therefore be right in telling us that Simonides, who believes he is a wise man, is really only a poet. Confronted by a poetical vision, a dream, a utopia, Hiero reacts not like a “tyrant,” but simply like a statesman, and a “liberal” statesman at that. In order not to encourage his critics, he does not want to proclaim openly that he recognizes the “theoretical” value of the ideal Simonides depicts to him. He does not want to do so not only because he knows that he could not actualize this ideal (in the present state of things), but also, and above all, because he is not told what first step he would have to take in order to move toward it. Hence, like a good liberal, he leaves it at remaining silent: he does nothing, decides nothing, and allows Simonides to speak and to depart in peace.
According to Strauss, Xenophon was perfectly well aware of the necessarily utopian character of the sort of advice Simonides offers. He presumably thought that the “enlightened” and “popular” tyranny he has Simonides depict is an unrealizable ideal, and that the aim of his Dialogue is to convince us that it would therefore be better to renounce tyranny in any form before even having tried to establish it. Strauss and Xenophon thus appear to reject the very idea of “tyrannical” government. But that is another question entirely and, what is more, it is an extremely difficult question. Advice against tyranny would no longer have anything to do with the advice a wise man might give a tyrant with a view to an “ideal” tyranny.
In order to gauge the meaning and true import of this new advice, one would have to know whether, in certain specific cases, renouncing “tyranny” would not be tantamount to renouncing government altogether, and whether that would not entail either the ruin of the State, or abandoning any real prospect of progress in a particular State or for the whole of mankind (at least at a given historical moment). But before we take up that question, we have to see whether Hiero, Simonides, Xenophon, and Strauss are really right in asserting that the “ideal” tyranny sketched by Simonides is only a utopia.
Now, when one reads the last three chapters of the Dialogue, in which Simonides describes the “ideal” tyranny, one finds that what might have appeared utopian to Xenophon has nowadays become an almost commonplace reality. Indeed, here is what is said in those chapters. First of all, the tyrant should distribute all kinds of “prizes,” especially honorific ones, in order to establish “Stakhanovite” emulation in his State in the fields of agriculture, industry, and commerce (ch. 9). Next, instead of maintaining a mercenary corps of bodyguards, the tyrant should organize a State police (which will “always be needed”), and a permanent armed force which would serve as the nucleus of the army mobilized in case of war (ch. 10). Besides, the tyrant should not disarm his subjects, but introduce compulsory military service, and resort to general mobilization if necessary. Finally, he should spend a part of his “personal” fortune for the common good and construct public buildings rather than palaces. Generally speaking, the tyrant would gain his subjects’ “affection” by making them happier and by considering “the fatherland his estate, the citizens his comrades” (ch. 11).
It is understandable that Xenophon should have considered all this utopian. Indeed, he knew only tyrannies exercised for the benefit of an already established social class, or for the sake of personal or family ambitions, or with the vague idea of doing better than anyone else, though wanting the same thing they did. He had not seen “tyrannies” exercised in the service of truly revolutionary political, social, or economic ideas (that is to say, in the service of objectives differing radically from anything already in existence) with a national, racial, imperial, or humanitarian basis. But it is surprising to find our contemporary, Strauss, apparently sharing this way of looking at things. Personally, I do not accept Strauss’s position in this matter, because in my opinion the Simonides-Xenophon utopia has been actualized by modern “tyrannies” (by Salazar, for example). It may even be that what was utopian in Xenophon’s time could be actualized at a later time precisely because the time needed to conclude the “current business” I spoke about has elapsed, and that that “current business” had to be concluded before the measures needed to actualize the ideal advocated by Simonides could be taken. But does 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?
I will try to answer the second question below. As for the first, in order to answer it we will have to go to the heart of the matter.
At the culminating point of the Dialogue (ch. 7), Simonides explains to Hiero that his grievances against tyranny are worthless because men’s supreme goal and ultimate motive is honor and, as regards honor, the tyrant is better off than anyone else.
Let us briefly pause at this argument. Simonides adopts, in full self-awareness, the “pagan” or even “aristocratic” existential attitude which Hegel will later call that of the “Master” (as opposed to the attitude of the “Slave,” which is that of “Judeo-Christian” or even “bourgeois” man). And Simonides states this view in an extremely radical manner. Indeed, when he says that “honor is something great, and human beings undergo all toil and endure all danger striving for it,” his point is not simply that man struggles and labors exclusively for the sake of glory. He goes very much further, asserting that “a real man differs from the other animals in this striving for honor.” But like any consistent “pagan,” “aristocrat,” or “Master,” Simonides does not believe that the quest for glory is the distinctive feature of all creatures with a human form. The quest for glory is specifically and necessarily characteristic only of born Masters, and it is irremediably missing in “servile” natures which, by that very fact, are not truly human (and deserve to be treated accordingly). “Those in whom love of honor and praise arises by nature are the ones who already far surpass the brutes, and who are also believed to be no longer human beings merely [in appearance only], but real men.” And these “real” men who live for glory are to a certain extent “divine” beings. For, “no human pleasure comes closer to what is divine than the joy concerning honors.”
This “aristocratic” and “pagan” profession of faith would no doubt have shocked the “bourgeois” who did (or do) live in the Judeo-Christian world. In that world neither philosophers nor even tyrants said such things, and insofar as they wanted to justify tyranny, they used other arguments. It would be vain to enumerate them all because, in my opinion, only one of them is really valid. But that one deserves our full attention. I think it would be false to say, with Simonides, that only the “desire to be honored” and the “joy which comes from honor” makes one “endure any labor and brave any danger.” The joy that comes from labor itself, and the desire to succeed in an undertaking, can, by themselves alone, prompt a man to undertake painful and dangerous labors (as is already shown in the ancient myth of Hercules). A man can work hard risking his life for no other reason than to experience 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. Indeed, a “legitimate” monarch who attains and retains power without effort and who is not susceptible to glory could, nevertheless, avoid sinking into a life of pleasure, and devote himself actively to the government of the State. But that monarch, and in 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.”
In my opinion, this “bourgeois” way of looking at things and of justifying tyranny (a way that, to some extent and for some time, made it possible to live in the “Judeo-Christian” political world in which men were in theory asked to renounce glory) must complement the “aristocratic” theory of which Simonides makes himself the spokesman, and which only accounts for the attitude of the idle “aristocrat” devoting the best of his powers to (possibly bloody) struggles with other men for the sake of the honor victory will bring him.
But we should not isolate the “bourgeois” point of view by forgetting or denying the “aristrocratic” theory. We should not forget that, to return to our examples, the “desire to be honored” and the joy that arises from “honors” come into play and become decisive as soon as the child makes his sand-patties in the presence of adults or of his friends, and as soon as the painter returns home and exhibits the reproduction of his cliff-drawings, as soon, generally speaking, as that emulation among men appears which, in fact, is never absent, and which, according to Simonides (ch. 9), is necessary even for agriculture, industry, and commerce truly to prosper. But for this proposition to apply to the statesman, there has to be a struggle for power and emulation in the exercise of power, in the strict sense of “struggle” and “emulation.” To be sure, in theory the statesman could have done away with his rivals without thinking of glory, just as a laborer, absorbed in his labor and indifferent to what surrounds him, almost unconsciously does away with the objects that disturb him in his labor. But in fact, and this is particularly true of those who aspire to “tyranny,” 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. In cases involving “emulation” or “competition” one does in fact act for the sake of glory, and it is only in order to justify oneself from a “Christian” or “bourgeois” point of view, that one believes or claims that one is doing so exclusively because one is or imagines that one is more “capable” or “better equipped” than the others.
Be that as it may. Hiero, in his role as an authentic “pagan aristocrat,” accepts Simonides’s point of view without reservation. However, he rejects Simonides’s argument as a justification of tyranny: while he grants that man’s highest goal is honor, he holds that the tyrant never attains that goal.
Hiero explains to Simonides (ch. 7, second paragraph) that the tyrant rules by terror, and that therefore the honors paid him by his subjects are dictated only by the fear he inspires in them. Now, “services of those under fear are not honors… . [such acts] would probably be regarded as acts of slavery.” And the acts of a Slave give no satisfaction to that aristocratic Master, the ancient tyrant.
In describing his situation, Hiero describes the tragedy of the Master analyzed by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Mind (ch. iv, section A). The Master enters into a struggle to the death in order to make his adversary recognize his exclusive human dignity. But if his adversary is himself a Master, he will be animated by the same desire for “recognition,” and will fight to the death: his own or the other’s. And if the adversary submits (through fear of death), he shows himself to be a Slave. His “recognition” is therefore worthless to the victorious Master in whose eyes the Slave is not a truly human being. The victor in this bloody struggle for pure prestige will therefore not be “satisfied” by his victory. His situation is thus essentially tragic, since there is no possible way out of it.
Truth to tell, Xenophon’s text is less precise than Hegel’s. Hiero confuses spontaneously granted “sexual love” with the “affection” of subjects who “recognize” him. Simonides corrects him by making him see that the tyrant as such is interested not in his “lovers” but in his subjects taken as citizens. But Simonides does retain the idea of “affection” (ch. 11). Moreover, Hiero would like to be happy by virtue of his tyranny and of “honors” in general, and Simonides, too, says that he will be “happy” (last sentence of the Dialogue) if he follows his advice, and thus gains his fellow citizens’ “affection.” Now, it is perfectly obvious that tyranny or political action in general cannot, as such, engender “love” or “affection” or “happiness,” for these three phenomena involve elements that have nothing to do with politics: a mediocre politician can be the object of his fellow citizens’ intense and authentic “affection,” just as a great statesman may be universally admired without arousing love of any kind, and the most complete political success is perfectly compatible with a profoundly unhappy private life. It is therefore preferable to stay with Hegel’s precise formulation, which refers not to “affection” or “happiness,” but to “recognition” and to the “satisfaction” that comes from “recognition.” For the desire to be “recognized” in one’s eminent human reality and dignity (by those whom one “recognizes” in return) effectively is, I believe, the ultimate motive of all emulation among men, and hence of all political struggle, including the struggle that leads to tyranny. And the man who has satisfied this desire by his own action is, by that very fact, effectively “satisfied,” regardless of whether or not he is happy or beloved.
We may, then, grant that tyrants (and Hiero himself) will seek Hegelian “recognition” above all else. We may also grant that Hiero, not having obtained this recognition, is not effectively “satisfied” in the strong sense of the term. We therefore understand why he listens to the advice of the wise man who promises him “satisfaction” by pointing out to him the means of obtaining “recognition.”
In any case, both Hiero and Simonides know perfectly well what is at issue. Hiero would like his subjects “willingly to give way in the streets” (ch. 7, second paragraph) and Simonides promises him that if he follows his advice his subjects will be “willing men obeying.” (ch. 11, twelfth paragraph). That is to say that both of them are concerned with authority.1 For to get oneself “recognized” by someone without inspiring fear (in the final analysis, fear of violent death) or love in him, is to enjoy authority in his eyes. To acquire authority in someone’s eyes, is to get him to recognize that authority. Now a man’s authority (that is to say, in the final analysis, his eminently human value, though not necessarily his superiority), is recognized by another when that other follows or carries out his advice or his orders not because he cannot do otherwise (physically, or because of fear or of any other “passion”), but because he spontaneously considers them worthy of being followed or carried out, and he does so not because he himself recognizes their intrinsic value, but only because this particular person gives this advice or these orders (as an oracle might), that is to say, precisely because he recognizes the “authority” of the person who gives them to him. We may therefore grant that Hiero, like any political man, actively sought tyranny because (consciously or not) he wanted to impose his exclusive authority on his fellow citizens.
We may therefore believe Hiero when he says that he is not “satisfied.” He has indeed failed in his enterprise, since he admits that he has to have recourse to force, that is to say that he has to exploit his subjects’ fear (of death). But Hiero surely exaggerates (and, according to Strauss, he does so deliberately, in order to discourage potential rivals, and Simonides in particular, from tyranny) when he says that tyranny does not provide him any “satisfaction” because he enjoys no authority and governs solely through terror. For, contrary to a rather common prejudice, such a situation is absolutely impossible. Pure terror presupposes force alone, which, in the final analysis, is to say physical force. Now, by physical force alone a man can dominate children, old men, and some women, at the outside two or three adults, but he cannot in this way impose himself for long on a group of able-bodied men, however small it may be. That is to say that “despotism” properly so called is possible only within isolated families, and that the head of any State whatsoever always has recourse to something besides force. In fact, a political chief always has recourse to his authority, and it is to it that he owes his power. The whole question is to know by whom this authority is recognized, who “obeys him without constraint”? Indeed, the authority of a head of State may be recognized either by a more or less extensive majority of the citizens, or by a more or less restricted minority. Until very recently it was not thought possible that one could speak of “tyranny” in the pejorative sense of the term, except where a minority (guided by an authority it alone recognizes) rules the majority of the citizens by force or “terror” (that is to say, by exploiting their fear of death). Of course, only citizens recognized as such by the State were taken into account. For even nowadays, no one criticizes the governing of children or criminals or madmen by force, and in the past governing women, slaves, or aliens for example, by force, was not criticized. But this way of seeing things, while logically possible, does not in fact correspond to people’s natural reactions. It was finally realized that it does not correspond to them, and recent political experiences, as well as the current polemics between “Western” and “Eastern” democrats, have enabled us to provide a more adequate definition of tyranny.
In fact, there is tyranny (in the morally neutral sense of the term) when a fraction of the citizens (it matters little whether it be a majority or a minority) 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 account of their ideas and desires (determined by another authority, which those others recognize spontaneously). Clearly this fraction can do so only by “force” or “terror,” ultimately by manipulating the others’ fear of the violent death it can inflict on them. In this situation the others may therefore be said to be “enslaved,” since they in fact behave like slaves ready to do anything to save their lives. And it is this situation that some of our contemporaries label tyranny in the pejorative sense of the term.
Be that as it may. It is clear that Hiero is not fully “satisfied,” not because he has no authority and governs solely by force, but because his authority, recognized by some, is not recognized by all of those whom he himself considers to be citizens, that is to say men worthy of recognizing it, and hence supposed to do so. By behaving in this manner, Hiero, who symbolizes the ancient tyrant for us, is in full agreement with Hegel’s analysis of “satisfaction” (achieved by emulation or action that is “political” in the broad sense of the term).
Hegel says that the political man acts in terms of the desire for “recognition,” and that he can be fully “satisfied” only if he has completely satisfied this desire. Now this desire is by definition limitless: man wants to be effectively “recognized” by all of those whom he considers capable and hence worthy of “recognizing” him. To the extent that the citizens of a foreign State, animated by a “spirit of independence,” successfully resist the head of some given State, he must necessarily recognize their human worth. He will therefore want to extend his authority over them. And if they do not resist him, it is because they already recognize his authority, if only the way the Slave recognizes his Master’s authority. So that in the final analysis, the head of State will be fully “satisfied” only when his State encompasses the whole of mankind. But he will also want to extend his authority as far as possible within the State itself, by reducing to a minimum the number of those capable of only a servile obedience. In order to make it possible for him to be “satisfied” by their authentic “recognition” he will tend to “enfranchise” the slaves, “emancipate” the women, and reduce the authority of families over children by granting them their “majority” as soon as possible, to reduce the number of criminals and of the “unbalanced” of every variety, and to raise the “cultural” level (which clearly depends on the economic level) of all social classes to the highest degree possible.
At all events, he will want to be “recognized” by all those who resist him out of “disinterested” motives, that is to say out of “ideological” or “political” motives properly so called, because their very resistance is the measure of their human worth. He will want to be recognized by them as soon as such a resistance manifests itself, and he will give up wanting to be recognized by them (and give it up regretfully) only when, for one reason or another, he finds himself forced to kill the “resistants.” In fact, the political man, acting consciously in terms of the desire for “recognition” (or for “glory”) 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 (with allowances for irreducible physiological differences), that is to say of a State that is the goal and the outcome of the collective labor of all and of each. If one grants that this State is the actualization of the supreme political ideal of mankind, then the “satisfaction” of the head of this State may be said to constitute a sufficient “justification” (not only subjective, but also objective) of his activity. Now, from this point of view, the modern tyrant, while in fact implementing Simonides’s advice and thus achieving more “satisfying” results than those of which Hiero complained, is not fully “satisfied” either. He is not fully satisfied because the State he rules is in fact neither universal nor homogeneous, so that his authority, like Hiero’s, is not recognized by all those who, according to him, could and should have recognized it.
Since he is not fully satisfied by his State or by his own political actions, the modern tyrant thus has the same reasons as Hiero for lending an ear to the advice of the Wise. But in order to avoid the tyrant’s having the same reasons for not following that advice, or for reacting to it with a “silence” that might be infinitely less “liberal” than Hiero’s, the new Simonides would have to avoid his “poetic” predecessor’s error. He would have to avoid utopia.
The description, even the eloquent description, of an idyllic state of things lacking any real connections with the present state of things, will touch a tyrant or a statesman in general as little as would “utopian” advice that lacked any direct relation to current concerns and business. Such “advice” will interest the modern tyrant all the less as he, having perhaps been instructed by some wise man other than Simonides, might very well already know the ideal which the “advisor” is ready to reveal to him, and he might already be consciously working toward its actualization. It would be just as vain to try to oppose this “ideal” to the concrete measures this tyrant is taking with a view to actualizing it, as it would be to try and carry out a concrete policy (tyrannical or other) which explicitly or tacitly rejects the “ideal”on which it is based.
On the other hand, if the wise man, granting that the tyrant seeks “glory” and hence could only be fully “satisfied” by the recognition of his authority in a universal and homogeneous State, were prepared to give “realistic” and “concrete” advice by explaining to the tyrant who consciously accepts the ideal of “universal recognition” how, starting at the present state of things, one might attain that ideal, and attain it better and faster than one could by this tyrant’s own measures, then the tyrant could perfectly well have accepted and followed this advice openly. In any event, the tyrant’s refusal would then be absolutely “unreasonable” or “unjustified,” and it would not raise any questions of principle.
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The question of principle that remains to be resolved is whether or not the wise man, in his capacity as a wise man, can do anything but talk about a political “ideal,” and whether he wants to leave the realm of “utopia” and “general” or even “abstract ideas,” and to confront concrete reality by giving the tyrant “realistic” advice.
In order to answer this twofold question, we must carefully distinguish between the wise man properly so called, and the philosopher, for the situation is far from being the same in the two cases. In order to simplify things, I will speak only about the latter. Anyway, neither Xenophon nor Strauss seem to admit the existence of the wise man properly so called.
By definition, the philosopher does not possess Wisdom (that is to say full self-consciousness, or—in fact—omniscience); but (a Hegelian would have to specify: in a given epoch) he is more advanced on the road that leads to Wisdom than any non-philosopher or “uninitiate,” including the tyrant. Also by definition, the philosopher is supposed to “dedicate his life” to the quest for Wisdom.
Taking this twofold definition as our point of departure, we must ask ourselves: “can the philosopher govern men or participate in their governance, and does he want to do so; in particular, can and does he want to do so by giving the tyrant concrete political advice?”
Let us first ask ourselves whether he can do so, or, more precisely, whether, as a philosopher, he enjoys any advantage over the “uninitiate” (and the tyrant is an uninitiate) when it comes to questions of government.
I believe that the negative answer that is usually given rests on a misunderstanding, on a total misconception of what philosophy is and of what the philosopher is.
For the purposes at hand, I need only recall three traits that are distinctive of the philosopher in contrast to the “uninitiate.” In the first place, the philosopher is more expert in the art of dialectic or discussion in general: he sees better than his “uninitiate” interlocutor the inadequacies of the latter’s argument, and he knows better how to make the most of his own arguments and how to refute the objections of others. In the second place, the art of dialectic enables the philosopher to free himself of prejudices to a greater extent than the “uninitiate”: he is thus more open to reality as it is, and he is less dependent on the way in which men, at a given historical moment, imagine it to be. Finally, in the third place, since he is more open to the real, he comes closer to the concrete than does the “uninitiate,” who confines himself to abstractions, without, however, being aware of their abstract, even unreal, character.2
Now these three distinctive traits of the philosopher are so many advantages he in principle enjoys over the “uninitiate” when it comes to governing.
Strauss points out that Hiero, realizing Simonides’s dialectical superiority, mistrusts him, seeing in him a potential and formidable rival. And I think that Hiero is right. Indeed, governmental action within an already constituted State is purely discursive in origin, and whoever is a master of discourse or “dialectic” can equally well become master of the government. If Simonides was able to defeat Hiero in their oratorical joust, if he was able to “maneuver” him as he pleased, there is no reason at all why he could not defeat and out-maneuver him in the realm of politics, and in particular, why he could not replace him at the head of the government—if he should ever desire to do so.
If the philosopher were to take power by means of his “dialectics,” he would exercise it better, other things being equal, than any “uninitiate.” And he would do so not only because of his greater dialectical skill. His government would be better because of a relative absence of prejudices and of the relatively more concrete character of his thought.
Of course, when it is simply a matter of maintaining an established state of things, without proceeding to “structural reforms” or to a “revolution,” there is no particular disadvantage to unconsciously relying on generally accepted prejudices. That is to say that in such situations one can, without much harm, forego having philosophers in or near power. But where “structural reforms” or “revolutionary action” are objectively possible and hence necessary, the philosopher is particularly suited to set them in motion or to recommend them, since he, in contrast to the “uninitiate” ruler, knows that what has to be reformed or opposed is nothing but “prejudices “that is to say something unreal and hence relatively unresistant.
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.” But there is no reason to suppose that the philosopher could not do so as well. He would deserve the reproach commonly leveled at philosophers, that they have a predilection for “general ideas,” only if these general ideas prevented him from seeing the particular abstractions which the “uninitiate” wrongly calls “concrete cases.” But such a reproach, if it were justified, could only pertain to someone’s contingent defects, not to the specific character of the philosopher. As a philosopher he handles abstractions as well as the “uninitiate,” if not better. But since he is aware of the fact that he has performed an abstraction, he will be able to handle the “particular case” better than the “uninitiate” who believes that what is involved is a concrete reality which really is isolated from the rest, and can be treated as such. The philosopher will thus see the implications of the particular problem which escape the “uninitiate”: he will see farther in space and in time.
For all these reasons, to which many more could have been added, I believe, with Hiero, Xenophon, and Strauss, and contrary to a widely held opinion, that the philosopher is perfectly capable of assuming power, and of governing or participating in government, for example by giving political advice to the tyrant.
The whole question then is whether or not he wants to do so. Now, one need only to raise this question (keeping in mind the definition of the philosopher) in order to see that it is exceedingly complex, and even insoluble.
The complexity and the difficulty of the question are due to the banal fact that man needs time to think and to act, and that the time at his disposal is in fact very limited.
It is this twofold fact, namely, man’s essential temporality and finitude, that forces him to choose among his various existential possibilities (and that accounts for the being of liberty by, incidentally, also making for its ontological possibility). In particular, it is on account of his own temporality and finitude that the philosopher is compelled to choose between the quest for Wisdom and, for example, political activity, even if only the political activity of advising the tyrant. Now, at first sight, and according to the very definition of the philosopher, the philosopher will devote “all of his time” to the quest for Wisdom, that being his supreme value and goal. He will therefore renounce not only “vulgar pleasures,” but also all action properly so-called, including that of governing, either directly or indirectly. Such was, at all events, the attitude taken by the “Epicurean” philosophers. And it is this “Epicurean” attitude that has inspired the popular image of the philosophical life. According to this image, the philosopher lives “outside the world”: he retires into himself, isolates himself from other men, and has no interest in public life; he devotes all his time to the quest for “truth,” which is pure “theory” or “contemplation” with no necessary connections with “action” of any kind. To be sure, a tyrant can disturb this philosopher. But such a philosopher would not disturb the tyrant, for he has not the slightest desire to meddle in his affairs, even if only by giving him advice. All this philosopher asks of the tyrant, his only “advice” to him, is not to pay any atttention to the philosopher’s life, which is entirely devoted to the quest for a purely theoretical “truth” or an “ideal” of a strictly isolated life.
Two principal variants of this “Epicurean” attitude can be observed in the course of history. The pagan or aristocratic Epicurean, who is more or less wealthy or in any case does not work for a living (and as a rule finds a Maecenas to support him), isolates himself in a “garden,” which he would like the government to treat as an inviolable castle, and from which he can be expected not to make any “sorties.” The Christian or bourgeois Epicurean, the more or less poor intellectual who has to do something (write, teach, etc.) to secure his subsistence, cannot afford the luxury of the aristocratic Epicurean’s “splendid isolation.” He therefore replaces the private “garden” by what Pierre Bayle so aptly describes under the heading “the Republic of Letters.” Here the atmosphere is less serene than it is in the “garden”; for here “the struggle for existence” and “economic competition” reign supreme. But the enterprise remains essentially “peaceful” in the sense that the “bourgeois republican,” just like the “aristocratic castellan,” is ready to renounce all active interference in public affairs in return for being “tolerated” by the government or the tyrant: the government or the tyrant would “leave him in peace” and permit him to exercise his trade of thinker, orator, or writer unimpeded, it being understood that his thoughts, speeches (lectures), and writings will remain purely “theoretical”; and that he will do nothing that could lead, directly or indirectly, to an action properly so called, and in particular to a political action of any kind.
Of course, it is practically impossible for the philosopher to keep this (generally sincere) promise of noninterference in the affairs of the State, and that is why rulers, and above all “tyrants,” have always looked upon these Epicurean “republics” or “gardens” with suspicion. But that is of no interest to us at the present. What concerns us is the philosopher’s attitude, and at first sight the Epicurean attitude appears to us irrefutable, and indeed even implied by the very definition of philosophy.
But at first sight only. For in fact the Epicurean attitude follows from the definition of philosophy as the quest for Wisdom or truth only if one assumes, regarding that quest, something that is not at all self-evident and that, from the perspective of the Hegelian conception, is even fundamentally mistaken. Indeed, in order to justify the philosopher’s absolute isolation, one has to grant that Being is essentially immutable in itself and eternally identical with itself, and that it is completely revealed for all eternity in and by an intelligence that is perfect from the first; and this adequate revelation of the timeless totality of Being is, then, the Truth. Man (the philosopher) can at any moment participate in this Truth, either as the result of an action issuing from the Truth itself (“divine revelation”), or by his own individual effort to understand (the Platonic “intellectual intuition”), the only condition for such an effort being the innate “talent” of the one making this effort, independently of where he may happen to be situated in space (in the State) or in time (in history). If such is indeed the case, then the philosopher can and must isolate himself from the changing and tumultuous world (which is nothing but pure “appearance”), and live in a quiet “garden” or, if necessary, in a “Republic of Letters” where intellectual quarrels are at least less “unsettling” than are the political struggles on the outside. The quietude of this isolation, this total lack of interest in one’s fellows and in any “society” whatever, offer the best prospects of attaining the Truth to the pursuit of which one has decided to devote one’s entire life as an absolutely egoistical philosopher.3
But if one does not accept this theistic conception of Truth (and of Being), if one accepts the radical Hegelian atheism according to which Being itself is essentially temporal (Being=Becoming) and creates itself insofar as it is discursively revealed in the course of history (or as history: revealed Being=Truth=Man=History), and if one does not want to sink into the skeptical relativism which ruins the very idea of Truth and thus the quest for it or philosophy, then one has to flee the absolute solitude and isolation of the “garden” as well as the narrow society (the relative solitude and isolation) of the “Republic of Letters” and, like Socrates, frequent not the “trees and cicadas” but the “citizens of the City” (cf. Phaedrus). If Being creates itself (“becomes”) in the course of History, then it is not by isolating oneself from History that one can reveal Being (transform it by Discourse into the Truth man “possesses” in the form of Wisdom). In order to reveal Being, the philosopher must, on the contrary, “participate” in history, and it is not clear why he should then not participate in it actively, for example by advising the tyrant, since, as a philosopher, he is better able to govern than any “uninitiate.” The only thing that could keep him from it is luck of time. And so we come to the fundamental problem of the philosophical life, which the Epicureans wrongly believed they had disposed of.
I shall return later to this Hegelian problem of the philosophical life. For the moment we must take a somewhat closer look at the Epicurean attitude, for it is open to criticism, even allowing the theistic conception of Being and Truth. Indeed, it involves and presupposes a most questionable conception of Truth (although it is generally accepted by pre-Hegelian philosophy), according to which “subjective certainty” (Gewissheit) everywhere and always coincides with “objective truth” (Wahrheit): one is presumed to be effectively in possession of the Truth (or of a truth) as soon as one is subjectively “sure and certain” of having it (for example, by having a “clear and distinct idea”).
In other words, the isolated philosopher necessarily has to grant that the necessary and sufficient criterion of truth consists in the feeling of “evidence” that is presumably prompted by the “intellectual intuition” of the real and of Being, or that accompanies “clear and distinct ideas” or even “axioms,” or that immediately attaches to divine revelations. This criterion of “evidence” was accepted by all “rationalist” philosophers from Plato to Husserl, passing by way of Descartes. Unfortunately, the criterion itself is not at all “evident,” and I think that it is invalidated by the sole fact that there have always been illuminati and “false prophets” on earth, who never had the least doubt concerning the truth of their “intuitions” or of the authenticity of the “revelations” they received in one form or another. In short, an “isolated” thinker’s subjective “evidence” is invalidated as a criterion of truth by the simple fact that there is madness which, insofar as it is a correct deduction from subjectively “evident” premises, can be “systematic” or “logical.”
Strauss seems to follow Xenophon (and the ancient tradition in general) in justifying (explaining) the isolated philosopher’s indifference (“egoism”) and pride by the fact that he knows something more—and something different—than does the “uninitiate” whom he despises. But the madman who believes that he is made of glass, or who identifies with God the Father or with Napoleon, also believes that he knows something the others do not know. And we can call his knowledge madness only because he is entirely alone in taking this knowledge (which, incidentally, is subjectively “evident”) for a truth, and because even the other madmen refuse to believe it. So too, it is only by seeing our ideas shared by others (or at least by an other) or accepted by them as worth discussing (even if only because they are regarded as wrong) that we can be sure of not finding ourselves in the realm of madness (without being sure that we are in the realm of truth). Hence the Epicurean philosopher, living strictly isolated in his “garden,” could never know whether he has attained Wisdom or sunk into madness, and as a philosopher he would therefore have to flee the “garden” and its isolation. In fact, the Epicurean, recalling his Socratic origins, does not live in absolute isolation, and he receives philosophical friends in his “garden” with whom he engages in discussion. From this point of view there is, then, no essential difference between the aristocratic “garden” and the bourgeois intellectual’s “Republic of Letters”: the difference consists only in the number of the “elect.” Both the “garden” and the “Republic” where one “discusses” from morning till night, provide a sufficient guarantee against the danger of madness. Although by taste, and by virtue of their very profession, the “lettered citizens” never agree among themselves, they will always be unanimous when it rightly comes to sending one of their number to an asylum. One may therefore be confident that, perhaps in spite of appearances, one will meet in the “garden” or in the “Republic” only persons who, although they may occasionally be odd, are essentially of sound mind (and sometimes mimic madness only in order to appear “original”).
But the fact that one is never alone in the “garden” is not the only feature it has in common with the “Republic.” There is also the fact that the “many” are excluded from it. To be sure, a “Republic of Letters” is generally more populated than an Epicurean “garden.” But both are populated by a relatively small “elite” with a marked tendency to withdraw into itself and to exclude the “uninitiated.”
Here again Strauss seems to follow Xenophon (who conforms to the ancient tradition) and to justify this kind of behavior. The wise man, he says, “is satisfied with the approval of a small minority.” He seeks only the approval of those who are “worthy,” and this can only be a very small number. The philosopher will therefore have recourse to esoteric (preferably oral) instruction which permits him, among other things, to select the “best” and to eliminate those “of limited capacity” who are incapable of understanding hidden allusions and tacit implications.
I must say that here again I differ from Strauss and the ancient tradition he would like to follow, which, in my opinion, rests on an aristocratic prejudice (perhaps characteristic of a conquering people). For I believe that the idea and the practice of the “intellectual elite” involves a very serious danger which the philosopher as such should want to avoid at any cost.
The danger to which the inhabitants of various “gardens,” “academies,” “lyceums,” and “Republics of Letters” are exposed stems from what is called “sectarianism.” To be sure, the “sect,” which is a society, does exclude madness, which is essentially asocial. But far from excluding prejudices, it tends, on the contrary, to foster them by perpetuating them: it can easily happen that only those are admitted in its midst, who accept the prejudices on which the “sect” believes it can pride itself. Now, Philosophy is, by definition, something other than Wisdom: it necessarily involves “subjective certainties” that are not the Truth, in other words “prejudices.” The philosopher’s duty is to turn away from these prejudices as quickly and as completely as possible. Now, any closed society that adopts a doctrine, any “elite” selected in terms of a doctrinal teaching, tends to consolidate the prejudices entailed by that doctrine. The philosopher who shuns prejudices therefore has to try to live in the wide world (in the “market place” or “in the street,” like Socrates) rather than in a “sect” of any kind, “republican” or “aristocratic.”4
“Sectarianism,” while dangerous on any hypothesis, is strictly unacceptable for the philosopher who with Hegel, acknowledges that reality (at least human reality), is not given once and for all, but creates itself in the course of time (at least in the course of historical time). For if that is the case, then the mbembers of the “sect,” isolated from the rest of the world and not really taking part in public life in its historical evolution, will, sooner or later, be “left behind by events.” Indeed, even what at one time was “true,” can later become “false,” change into a “prejudice,” and only the “sect” will fail to notice what has happened.
But the question of the philosophical “elite” can be dealt with fully only in the context of the general problem of “recognition,” as that problem bears on the philosopher. Indeed, that is the perspective in which Strauss himself raises the question. And it is about this aspect of the question that I should now like to speak.
According to Strauss, the essential difference between Hiero, the tyrant, and Simonides, the philosopher, consists in this: Hiero would like “to be loved by human beings as such,” while Simonides “is satisfied by the admiration, the praise, the approval of a small minority” It is to win his subjects’ love that Hiero must become their benefactor; Simonides lets himself be admired without doing anything to gain this admiration. In other words, Simonides is admired solely for his own perfection, while Hiero would like to be loved for his benefactions, even without being himself perfect. That is why the desire for admiration, independently of the desire for love, is “the natural foundation for the predominance of the desire for one’s own perfection,” whereas the need for love does not impel one to self-perfection and hence is not a “philosophical” desire.
This conception of the difference between the philosopher and the tyrant (which is, indeed, neither Strauss’s nor, according to him, Xenophon’s) does not seem to me to be satisfactory.
If one accepts (with Goethe and Hegel) that man is loved solely because he is, and independently of what he does (a mother loves her son in spite of his faults), while “admiration” or “recognition” are a function of the actions of the person one “admires” or “recognizes,” it is clear that the tyrant, and the statesman in general, seeks recognition and not love: love thrives in the family, and the young man leaves his family and devotes himself to public life in search not of love, but of recognition by the State’s citizens. Simonides rather <than Hiero> would have to be said to seek love, if he truly wanted to have a positive (even absolute) value attributed, not to his actions, but to his (perfect) being. But, in fact, it is simply not the case that he does. Simonides wants to be admired for his perfection and not for his being pure and simple, whatever that may be. Now love is specifically characterized by the fact that it attributes a positive value to the beloved or to the being of the beloved without reason. So that what Simonides seeks is, indeed, the recognition of his perfection and not the love of his being: he would like to be recognized for his perfection and therefore desires his perfection. Now, desire is actualized by action (negating action, since the aim is to negate existing imperfection, perfection being only desired and not yet attained). Hence it is by virtue of his actions (of self-perfection) that Simonides in fact is and wants to be recognized, just as Hiero is and wants to be recognized by virtue of his actions.
It is not true that the tyrant and the statesman in general are by definition content with a “gratuitous” admiration or recognition: just like the philosopher, they wish to “deserve” this admiration and recognition by truly being or becoming such as they appear to others to be. Hence the tyrant seeking recognition will also make an effort at self-perfection, if only for safety’s sake, since an impostor or hypocrite always runs the risk of being “unmasked” sooner or later.
From this perspective there is therefore in principle no difference whatsoever between the statesman and the philosopher: both seek recognition, and both act with a view to deserving it (imposture can, in fact, be met with in both cases).
There remains the question of knowing whether it is true that the statesman seeks recognition by the “many,” while the philosopher seeks to be recognized only by the “elect” few.
First of all, it does not seem that this is necessarily so with respect to the statesman as such. It is, indeed, for the most part so with respect to “democratic” leaders, who are dependent on the opinion of the majority. But “tyrants” have not always sought “popularity” (Tiberius, for example), and they have often had to be satisfied with the approval of a small circle of “political friends.” Besides, there is no reason why the acclaim of the “many” should be incompatible with the approval of competent judges, and there is no reason why the statesman should prefer that acclaim to this approval. Conversely, it is not at all evident why the philosopher should systematically eschew the praise of the “many” (which undoubtedly gives him pleasure). What matters is that the philosopher not sacrifice the approval of the “elect” to “popular” acclaim, and that he not adapt his conduct to the demands of the “worst.” But if a statesman (tyrant or not) were to behave differently in this matter than the philosopher, he would immediately be called a “demagogue”; and nothing says that statesmen are, by definition, “demagogues.”
In fact, a man is fully satisfied only by the recognition of those he himself recognizes as worthy of recognizing him. And that is as true of the statesman as it is of the philosopher.
Now, to the extent that a man seeks recognition, he should do everything in his power to make the number of those “worthy” of recognizing him as large as possible. Consciously or not, statesmen have often assumed this task of political pedagogy (the “enlightened despot,” the “pedagogical” tyrant). And philosophers have generally done the same, by devoting a portion of their time to philosophical pedagogy. Now, it is not clear why the number of the philosopher’s initiates or disciples necessarily has to be limited or, for that matter, smaller than the number of the political man’s competent admirers. If a philosopher artificially limited this number by proclaiming that he does not, under any circumstances want many initiates, he would only prove that he is less conscious of himself than the “uninitiated” political man who consciously strives for an unlimited extension of his recognition by competent judges. And if he maintained a priori and without empirical evidence that the number of people to whom philosophy is accessible is smaller than the number of people who can knowledgeably judge a political doctrine or a political action, he would be speaking on the basis of an undemonstrated “opinion” and thus be prey to a “prejudice” that is at best valid under certain social conditions and at a particular historical moment. In either case he would, therefore, not truly be a philosopher.
Besides, the prejudice in favor of an “elite” is all the more serious as it can bring about a total reversal of the situation. In principle the philosopher should only seek the admiration or approval of those he deems worthy of “recognizing” him. But if he never leaves the intentionally narrow circle of a deliberately recruited “elite” or of carefully chosen “friends,” he runs the risk of considering “worthy” those and only those who approve of him or admire him. And it has to be acknowledged that this particularly disagreeable form of limited reciprocal recognition has always prevailed in Epicurean “gardens” and intellectual “sects.”
Be that as it may. If, with Simonides, one grants that the philosopher seeks recognition (or admiration), and if, with Hegel, one recognizes that the statesman does so as well, then one has to conclude that, from this perspective, there is no essential difference between the tyrant and the philosopher. That is probably why Xenophon (according to Strauss), and Strauss himself, do not side with Simonides. According to Strauss, Xenophon contrasts Simonides with Socrates, who is not in the least interested in “the admiration or the praise of others,” whereas Simonides is interested in nothing else. And one has the impression that Strauss agrees with this “Socratic” attitude: to the extent that the philosopher seeks recognition and admiration, he should exclusively give thought to his own recognition of his own worth and to his admiration for himself.
As for myself, I confess that I do not understand this very well, and I do not see how it could enable us to find an essential difference between the philosopher (or the wise man) and the tyrant (or the statesman in general).
If one takes the attitude of the Xenophon-Strauss Socrates literally, one is brought back to the case of the isolated philosopher who is utterly uninterested in other people’s opinion of him. That is not a self-contradictory (“absurd”) attitude, if the philosopher is prepared to grant that he may attain the Truth by some direct personal vision of Being or by an individual revelation proceeding from a transcendent God. But if he does grant this, then he will have no philosophically valid reason to communicate his knowledge (orally or in writing) to others (unless it be with a view to gaining their “recognition” or admiration, which is excluded by definition), and he will therefore not do so if he is truly a philosopher (who does not act “without reason”). We will therefore not know anything about him; we will not even know whether he exists, and hence whether he is a philosopher or simply a madman. What is more, in my opinion he will not even know it himself since he will be deprived of every social control, which is the only way to weed out “pathological” cases. In any event, his “solipsist” attitude, excluding as it does all “discussion,” would be fundamentally anti-Socratic.
Let us therefore grant that “Socrates,” who does engage in “discussion” with others, is in the highest degree interested in the opinion they have or will have about what he says and does, at least to the extent to which they are, in his view, “competent.” If “Socrates” is a true philosopher, he makes progress in Wisdom (which implies knowledge and “virtue”), and he is conscious of his progress. If he is not perverted by the prejudice of Christian humility to the point of being hypocritical with himself, he will be more or less satisfied with his progress, that is to say with himself: let us say, without being afraid of the word, that he will have more or less self-admiration (above all if he considers himself more “advanced” than the others). If those who express opinions about him are “competent,” they will appreciate him in the same way he appreciates himself (on the assumption that he is not deluding himself), that is to say that, if they are not blinded by envy, they will admire him to the same extent that he admires himself. And if “Socrates” is not a “Christian,” he will acknowledge (to himself and to others) that being admired by others brings (a certain) “satisfaction” and (a certain) “pleasure.” Admittedly, that does not mean that the mere fact of (consciously) making progress on the road to Wisdom gives “Socrates” no other “pleasure” and “satisfaction” than he gets from being able to admire himself and being admired by others: everyone knows the “pure joy” one derives from the acquisition of knowledge, and the “disinterested satisfaction” that comes with the feeling of “having done one’s duty.” Nor does it follow that it is in principle impossible to seek knowledge and do one’s duty without being motivated by the resulting “pleasure.” Indeed, is it not possible to engage in sports just for the “love” of it, and without particularly seeking the “pleasure” of the “victor’s crown” in a competition?
On the contrary, it is evident that, in fact, all these things are absolutely inseparable. It is certainly possible to draw subtle distinctions “in theory,” but “in practice” it is impossible to eliminate one of the elements while retaining the others. That is to say that there can be no verifying experiment in this realm, and that therefore nothing regarding this question can be known in the “scientific” sense of the term.
It is known that there are pleasures that have nothing to do with knowledge or virtue. It is also known that men have at times renounced these pleasures in order to devote themselves fully to the quest for truth or to the exercise of virtue. But since this quest and this exercise are in fact inseparably linked with sui generis “pleasures,” there is absolutely no way of knowing whether what makes men act that way is in fact a choice between different “pleasures,” or a choice between “pleasure” and “duty” or “knowledge.” Now these sui generis “pleasures” are in turn inseparably linked with the specific “pleasure” that comes from self-satisfaction or self-admiration: regardless of what Christians may say, one cannot be wise and virtuous (that is to say, in fact wiser and more virtuous than all, or at least than some others) without deriving a certain “satisfaction” and a sort of “pleasure” from it.5 There is therefore no knowing whether, in fact, the “primary motive” of conduct is the “pure” joy that comes from Wisdom (knowledge + virtue), or whether it is the sometimes condemned “pleasure” that comes from the wise man’s self-admiration (regardless of whether it is influenced by other people’s admiration of him or not).
The same ambiguity is apparent when one considers “Socrates” in his relations with others. We have granted that he is interested in the opinion others have of him to the extent that it enables him to test whether or not the opinion he has of himself is well founded. But everything else is ambiguous. One can maintain, as Xenophon-Strauss seem to do, that Socrates is interested only in other people’s “theoretical” judgments of him, and that he is completely uninterested in their admiration of him: he derives his “pleasure” solely from self-admiration (which either determines his philosophical activity, or merely accompanies it). But one can just as well say that the self-admiration of a man who is not mad, necessarily implies and presupposes admiration by others; that a “normal” person cannot be truly “satisfied” with himself without being not only judged, but also “recognized” by all or at least some others. One might even go further, and say that the pleasure involved in self-admiration is relatively worthless when compared with the pleasure one gets from being admired by someone else. These are some possible psychological analyses of the phenomenon of “recognition,” but since it is impossible to perform experiments that separate its various aspects, it is impossible to settle the issue conclusively in favor of any one of these analyses.
It would certainly be wrong to suppose that “Socrates” seeks knowledge and practices virtue solely for the sake of “recognition” by others. For experience shows that one can pursue science for the pure love of it on a desert island without hope of return, and be “virtuous” without witnesses (human or even divine), simply out of fear of falling short in one’s own eyes. But nothing prevents our asserting that, when “Socrates” communicates with others and practices his virtue in public, he does so not only in order to test himself, but also (and perhaps even above all) with a view to external “recognition.” By what right can we maintain that he does not seek this “recognition,” since he necessarily finds it in fact?
Truth to tell, all these distinctions make sense only if one accepts the existence of a God who sees clearly into men’s hearts and judges them according to their intentions (which may, of course, be unconscious). If one is truly an atheist, none of this any longer makes sense. For it is evident that in that case only introspection could provide the elements of an answer. Now, as long as a man is alone in knowing something, he can never be sure that he truly knows it. If, as a consistent atheist, one replaces God (understood as consciousness and will surpassing individual human consciousness and will) by Society (the State) and History, one has to say that whatever is, in fact, beyond the range of social and historical verification, is forever relegated to the realm of opinion (doxa).
That is why I do not agree with Strauss when he says that Xenophon posed the problem of the relationship between pleasure and virtue in a radical way. I do not agree for the simple reason that I do not think that (from the atheistic point of view) there is a problem there which could be resolved by some form of knowledge (epistēmē). More exactly, the problem admits of several possible solutions, none of which is truly certain. For it is impossible to know whether the philosopher (the wise man) seeks knowledge and practices virtue “for their own sakes” (or “out of duty”), or whether he seeks it for the sake of the “pleasure” (joy) he experiences in doing so, or, finally, whether he acts this way in order to experience self-admiration (influenced or not by other people’s admiration). This question obviously cannot be settled “from outside,” and there is therefore no way to assess the “subjective certainty” achieved by introspection, nor to decide among these “certainties” if they should disagree.6
What is worth retaining from what has gone so far, is that some philosophers’ “Epicurean” conception is not in any way justified by a comprehensive and consistent system of thought. That conception becomes questionable as soon as one takes the problem of “recognition” into account, as I have just done, and it is problematic even when one restricts oneself to the problem of the criterion of truth, as I did at first.
To the extent that the philosopher looks upon “discussion” (dialogue, dialectic) as a method of investigation and a criterion of truth, he necessarily has to “educate” his interlocutors. And we have seen that he has no reason to place an a priori limit on the number of his possible interlocutors. That is to say that the philosopher has to be a pedagogue and has to try to extend his (direct or indirect) pedagogical activity indefinitely. But in so doing, he will always sooner or later encroach on the field of action of the statesman or of the tyrant, who themselves also are (more or less consciously) “educators.”
As a rule, the interference of the philosopher’s pedagogical activity with the tyrant’s takes the form of a more or less acute conflict. Thus “corrupting the young” was the principal charge brought against Socrates. The philosopher-pedagogue will therefore be naturally inclined to try to influence the tyrant (or the government in general) with a view to getting him to create conditions that permit the exercise of philosophical pedagogy. But in fact the State is itself a pedagogical institution. The pedagogy practiced and controlled by the government is an integral part of governmental activity in general, and it is a function of the very structure of the State. Hence to want to influence the government with a view to introducing or to administering a philosophical pedagogy is to want to influence the government in general, it is to want to determine or to co-determine its policy as such. Now, the philosopher cannot give up pedagogy. Indeed, the “success” of his philosophical pedagogy is the sole “objective” criterion of the truth of the philosopher’s “doctrine”: the fact of his having disciples (either in a narrow or in a broad sense) is his guarantee against the danger of madness, and his disciples’ “success” in private and public life is the “objective” proof of the (relative) “truth” of his doctrine, at least in the sense of its adequacy to the given historical reality.
So that if one does not want to leave it at the merely subjective criteria of “evidence” or of “revelation” (which do not exclude the danger of madness), one cannot be a philosopher without at the same time wanting to be a philosophical pedagogue. And if the philosopher does not want artificially or unduly to restrict the scope of his pedagogical activity (and thereby risk being subject to the prejudices of the “sect”), he will necessarily be strongly inclined to participate, in one way or another, in government as a whole, so that the State might be organized and governed in a way that makes his philosophical pedagogy both possible and effective.
It is probably for this (more or less consciously acknowledged) reason that most philosophers, including the greatest, gave up their “Epicurean” isolation and engaged in political activity, either by personal interventions or through their writings. Plato’s voyages to Syracuse, and the collaboration between Spinoza and De Witt, are familiar examples of direct intervention. And it is well known that nearly all philosophers have published works dealing with the State and with government.7
But here the conflict that stems from man’s temporality and finitude, and about which I spoke earlier, comes into play. On the one hand, the philosopher’s supreme goal is the quest for Wisdom or Truth, and this quest, which a philosopher by definition never completes, is supposed to take all of his time. On the other hand, it also takes time, and even a great deal of time, to govern a State, however small it may be. Truth to tell, governing a State also takes all of a man’s time.
Since they cannot devote all of their time both to philosophy and to government, philosophers have generally looked for a compromise solution. While they wanted to be involved in politics, they did not give up their strictly philosophical involvement, but only agreed to limit somewhat the time they devoted to it. They therefore gave up the idea of taking over the governance of the State, and left it at devoting the little time they set aside from philosophy to giving the rulers of the day (oral or written) advice.
Unfortunately, this compromise has proven unworkable. To be sure, Philosophy has not particularly suffered from the philosophers’ political “distractions.” But the direct and immediate effect of their political advice has been strictly nil.
Truth to tell, the philosophers who left it at giving written, indeed “bookish” advice, did not look upon their failure as a tragedy. For the most part they had enough good sense not to expect the powers that be to read their writings, and to expect even less that they would be guided by them in their daily work. In resigning themselves to being active exclusively through writing, they resigned themselves to being politically ineffectual in the short run. However, those who did deign to go to some personal trouble in order to give political advice may have taken the lack of readiness to follow that advice rather ill, and they may have had the impression of really having “wasted their time.”
Of course, we do not know Plato’s reactions after his Sicilian failure. The fact that he renewed his abortive attempt suggests that, in his view, both sides were to blame for it, and that if he had acted differently, he could have done better and accomplished more. But in general, the common opinion of more or less philosophical intellectuals heaps opprobrium and contempt on reluctant rulers. I nevertheless persist in believing that it is entirely wrong to do so.
First of all, there is a tendency to blame the “tyrannical” character of a government unresponsive to philosophical advice. Yet it seems to me that the philosopher is in a particularly poor position to criticize tyranny as such. On the one hand the philosopher-advisor is, by definition, in a great hurry: he is entirely prepared to contribute to the reform of the State, but he would like to lose as little time as possible in the process. Now, if he wants to succeed quickly, he has to address himself to the tyrant rather than to the democratic leader. Indeed, philosophers who wanted to act in the political present have, at all times, been drawn to tyranny. Whenever there has been a powerful and effective tyrant contemporary with the philosopher, it is precisely on him that the philosopher lavished his advice, even if the tyrant lived in a foreign country. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine a philosopher himself (per impossibile) becoming a statesman, except as some sort of “tyrant.” In a hurry “to have done” with politics and to return to more noble occupations, he will scarcely be endowed with exceptional political patience. Despising the “great mass,” indifferent to its praise, he will not want patiently to play the role of a “democratic” ruler, solicitous of the opinions and desires of the “masses” and the “militants.” Besides, how could he implement his reform programs, which are necessarily radical and opposed to the commonly received ideas, rapidly, without resorting to political procedures that have always been taxed with being “tyrannical”? In fact, as soon as a philosopher who was not himself involved in affairs of State steered one of his disciples in that direction, the disciple—for example Alcibiades—did immediately resort to typically “tyrannical” methods. Inversely, whenever a statesman openly acted in the name of a philosophy, he did so as a “tyrant,” just as “tyrants” of a certain grandeur have generally had more or less direct and more or less conscious and acknowledged philosophical origins.
In short, of all possible statesmen, the tyrant is unquestionably the most likely to receive and to implement the philosopher’s advice. If, having received it, he does not implement it, he must have very good reasons for not doing so. What is more, in my opinion these reasons would be even more cogent in the case of a non-“tyrannical” ruler.
I have already indicated what these reasons are. A statesman, regardless of whether he is or not a tyrant, simply cannot follow “utopian” advice: since he can act only in the present, he cannot take into account ideas that have no direct connection with the concrete given situation. So that in order to obtain a hearing, the philosopher would have had to give advice about “current business.” But in order to give such advice, one has to keep up with current business on a daily basis, and hence to devote all of one’s time to it. Yet that is precisely what the philosopher does not want to do. In his capacity as a philosopher he even cannot do so. For to do so would mean to abandon the very quest for truth that makes him a philosopher and that, in his eyes, is his only authentic claim to being the tyrant’s philosophical advisor, that is to say to being an advisor entitled to something more than and different from an “uninitiated” advisor, regardless of how intelligent and capable that uninitiated advisor might otherwise be. To devote all of one’s time to government is to cease to be a philosopher and hence to lose any advantage one might have over the tyrant and his “uninitiated” advisors.
As a matter of fact, that is not the only reason why the philosopher’s every attempt at directly influencing the tyrant is necessarily ineffectual. For example, let us suppose that Plato had remained in Syracuse to the end of his days, that he had climbed (rapidly, of course) the various rungs leading to a position whose holder may make decisions and hence influence the general political direction. It is practically certain that, in that case, Plato would have had the tyrant’s ear, and could in effect have guided his policy. But what would happen in that case? On the one hand, Dionysius, eager to carry out the “radical” reforms suggested by Plato, would surely have had to intensify the “tyrannical” character of his government more and more. His philosophical advisor would then soon have found himself faced with “cases of conscience” as his quest for an “objective truth” embodied in the “ideal” State came into conflict with his conception of a “virtue” at odds with “violence,” which he would nevertheless like to continue to practice. On the other hand, Plato, conscious (in contrast to Dionysius) of the limits of his own knowledge, would soon have become aware of having reached these limits: whereupon he would grow hesitant in his advice, and hence unable to give it in time. Now, these theoretical uncertainties and moral conflicts, against the background of the “guilty conscience” aroused by the fact that he no longer has the time to devote himself to philosophy, will soon have disgusted the philosopher with all direct and concrete political action. And since, in the meantime, he will have understood that it is either ridiculous or hypocritical to offer the tyrant “general ideas” or “utopian” advice, the philosopher, upon submitting his resignation, would leave the tyrant “in peace,” and spare him any advice as well as any criticism: most particularly if he knew that the tyrant is pursuing the same goal he himself had been pursuing during his—voluntarily aborted—career as advisor.
Which is as much as to say that the conflict of the philosopher confronted with the tyrant is nothing else than the conflict of the intellectual faced with action, or, more precisely, faced with the inclination, or even the necessity, to act. According to Hegel, that conflict is the only authentic tragedy that takes place in the Christian or bourgeois world: the tragedy of Hamlet and of Faust. It is a tragic conflict because it is a conflict with no way out, a problem with no possible resolution.
Faced with the impossibility of acting politically without giving up philosophy, the philosopher gives up political action. But has he any reasons for giving it up?
The preceding considerations can in no way be invoked to “justify” such a choice. And by definition the philosopher should not reach a decision without “sufficient reason,” nor assume a position that “can not be justified” within the framework of a coherent system of thought. It therefore remains for us to see how, in his own judgment, the philosopher could “justify” giving up political action in the precise sense of the term.
The first “justification” one might be tempted to offer is easy. The fact that he has not solved a problem need not disturb the philosopher. Since he is not a wise man, he, by definition, lives in a world of questions which, for him, remain open. All that is required for him to be a philosopher, is that he be aware of the existence of these questions, and that he … seek to solve them. The best method to use in that search (at least according to the Platonists), is “dialectics,” that is to say “meditation” tested and stimulated by “dialogue.” In other words, the best method is “discussion.” So that, in our case, instead of giving the tyrant of the day political advice or, alternatively, abstaining from all criticism of the government in power, the philosopher could leave it at “discussing” the question of whether he himself should govern, or whether he should only advise the tyrant, or whether he should not rather abstain from all political action and even from all concrete criticism of the government by devoting all his time to theoretical pursuits of a more “elevated” and less “mundane” kind. Now, discussing this question is what philosophers have been doing forever. In particular, that is what Xenophon did in his dialogue, what Strauss does in his book, and what I myself am doing in the present critical essay. Thus everything seems to be in order.
Yet one cannot help being somewhat disappointed by the fact that this “discussion” of the problem at hand, after having gone on for more than two thousand years, has not resulted in some kind of solution.
Perhaps one might try to resolve the question by going beyond discussion with philosophers and using the “objective” method Hegel used in order to reach “indisputable” solutions.
That is the method of historical verification.
*
For Hegel, the outcome of the classical “dialectic” of the “dialogue,” that is, the victory won in a purely verbal “discussion,” is not a sufficient criterion of the truth. In other words, discursive “dialectic” as such cannot, according to him, lead to the definitive solution of a problem (that is to say, a solution that remains unchanging for all time to come), for the simple reason that, if one leaves it at talking, one will never succeed in definitively “eliminating” the contradictor or, consequently, the contradiction itself; for to refute someone is not necessarily to convince him. “Contradiction” or “controversy” (between Man and Nature on the one hand or, on the other hand, between man and man, or even between a man and his social and historical milieu) can be “dialectically done away with” (that is to say, done away with insofar as they are “false,” but preserved insofar as they are “true,” and raised to a higher level of “discussion”) only to the extent that they are played out on the historical plane of active social life where one argues by acts of Work (against Nature) and of Struggle (against men). Admittedly, Truth emerges from this active “dialogue,” this historical dialectic, only once it is completed, that is to say once history reaches its final stage <terme final> in and through the universal and homogeneous State which, since it implies the citizens’ “satisfaction,” excludes any possibility of negating action, hence of all negation in general, and, hence, of any new “discussion” of what has already been established. But, even without wishing to assume, with the author of the Phenomenology of Mind, that history is already virtually “completed” in our time, one can assert that if the “solution” to a problem has, in fact, been historically or socially “valid” throughout the entire period that has elapsed since, then, short of (historical) proof to the contrary, one has the right to regard it as philosophically “valid,” in spite of the philosophers’ ongoing “discussion” of the problem. In so regarding it, one may assume that, at the opportune moment, History itself will take care to put an end to the endlessly ongoing “philosophical discussion” of a problem it has virtually “resolved.”
Let us therefore see whether understanding our historical past enables us to resolve the problem of the relation between Wisdom and Tyranny, and thus to decide what should be the Philosopher’s “reasonable,” that is to say “philosophical,” conduct with respect to government.
A priori it seems plausible that history could resolve the question or conflict which the philosophers’ individual meditations (including mine) have so far been unable to settle. Indeed, we have seen that the conflict itself, as well as its “tragic”character, are due to the finitude, that is to say to the finite temporality of man in general and of the philosopher in particular. If he were eternal, in the sense of not needing time to act and to think, or if he had unlimited time to act and to think, the question would not even arise (as it does not arise for God). Now, history transcends the finite duration of man’s individual existence. To be sure, it is not “eternal” in the classical sense of the term, since it is only the integration with respect to time of temporal acts and thoughts. But if, with Hegel, one grants (and anyone who would like to be able to grant, as Hegel does, that there is a meaning to history and historical progress, should have agreed with him on this point), that history can reach completion in and by itself, and that the “Absolute Knowledge” (=discursive Wisdom or Truth) that results from “understanding” or “explaining” integral history (or history integrated in and by this very Knowledge) by a “coherent discourse” (Logos) that is “circular” or “uni-total” in the sense of exhausting all the possibilities (assumed to be finite) of “rational” (that is to say of inherently non-contradictory) thought, if one grants all this, I say, then one can equate History (completed and integrated in and by this “absolute” discursive Knowledge) with eternity understood as the totality of time (historical, that is to say of human time, that is to say of time capable of containing any “discussion” whatsoever, in deed or in speech), beyond which no one single man could go, anymore than could Man as such. In short, if an individual properly so-called has not yet been able to solve the problem that interests us because it is insoluble on the individual level, there is no a priori reason why the “great individual” of whom Pascal speaks (who will not always learn, but who does learn some things in the strict sense of the term), might not have solved it long ago and “definitively” (even if not a single individual has as yet noticed it).
Let us then see what history teaches us about the relations between tyrants and philosophers (on the premise that so far there has not been a wise man on earth).
At first sight history confirms common opinion. Not only has no philosopher so far in fact ever governed a State, but all political men, and “tyrants” foremost among them, have always despised the philosophers’ “general ideas,” and dismissed their political “advice.” The political action of philosophers thus appears to have been nil, and the lesson they might draw from history would seem to encourage them to devote themselves to “contemplation” or “pure theory,” without concern for what “men of action,” and in particular “rulers” of every kind might be doing in the meantime.
But upon closer examination, the lesson to be drawn from history appears to be an entirely different one. Within the geographic realm of Western philosophy, perhaps the greatest Statesman, and certainly the one whom the great tyrants of our world have imitated for centuries (and who was only recently again imitated by an imitator of Napoleon who imitated Caesar, who was himself an imitator) was Alexander the Great. Now Alexander had perhaps read the dialogues of Xenophon. He had certainly been a student of Aristotle, who had been a student of Plato, a student of Socrates. So that Alexander, without a doubt, indirectly received the same teaching as Alcibiades. Either because he was politically more gifted than Alcibiades, or simply because he came “at the right time,” Alexander succeeded where Alcibiades failed. But both wanted the same thing, and both tried to go beyond the rigid and narrow confines of the ancient City. Nothing prevents our assuming that these two political attempts, only one of which met with failure, can be traced back to the philosophical teaching of Socrates.
Admittedly this is no more than a simple historical hypothesis. But an analysis of the facts about Alexander renders this hypothesis plausible.
What characterizes the political action of Alexander in contrast to the political action of all of his Greek predecessors and contemporaries, is that it was guided by the idea of empire, that is to say of a universal State, at least in the sense that this State had no a priori given limits (geographic, ethnic, or otherwise), no pre-established “capital,” nor even a geographically and ethnically fixed center destined to exercise political dominion over its periphery. To be sure, there have at all times been conquerors ready to extend the realm of their conquests indefinitely. But as a rule they sought to establish the same type of relation between conquerors and conquered as that between Master and Slave. Alexander, by contrast, was clearly ready to dissolve the whole of Macedonia and of Greece in the new political unit created by his conquest, and to govern this unit from a geographical point he would have freely (rationally) chosen in terms of the new whole. Moreover, by requiring Macedonians and Greeks to enter into mixed marriages with “Barbarians,” he was surely intending to create a new ruling stratum that would be independent of all rigid and given ethnic support.
Now, what might account for the fact that it should have been the head of a national State (and not of a “city” or a polis) with a sufficiently broad ethnic and geographic base to allow him to exercise over Greece and the Orient a one-sided political dominion of the traditional type, who conceived of the idea of a truly universal State or of an Empire in the strict sense of the term, in which conqueror and conquered are merged? It was an utterly new political idea that only began to be actualized with the Edict of Caracalla, that is still not anywhere actualized in all its purity, having in the meantime (and only lately) suffered some spectacular eclipses, and that is still a subject of “discussion.” What might account for the fact that it was a hereditary monarch who consented to expatriate himself and who wanted to merge the victorious nobility of his native land with the newly vanquished? Instead of establishing the domination of his race and imposing the rule of his fatherland over the rest of the world, he chose to dissolve the race and to eliminate the fatherland itself for all political intents and purposes.
One is tempted to ascribe all this to Aristotle’s education and to the general influence of “Socratic-Platonic” philosophy (which is also the foundation of the Sophists’ properly political teaching to which Alexander was exposed). A student of Aristotle’s might have thought it necessary to create a biological foundation for the unity of the Empire (by means of mixed marriages). But only the disciple of Socrates-Plato could have conceived of this unity by taking as his point of departure the “idea” or the “general notion” of Man that had been elaborated by Greek philosophy. All men can become citizens of one and the same State (=Empire) because they have (or acquire as a result of biological unions) one and the same “essence.” And in the last analysis this single “essence” common to all men is “Logos” (language-science), that is to say what nowadays we call (Greek) “civilization” or “culture.” The Empire which Alexander had projected is not the political expression of a people or a caste. It is the political expression of a civilization, the material actualization of a “logical” entity, universal and one, just as the Logos itself is universal and one.
Long before Alexander, the Pharaoh Ikhnaton also probably conceived the idea of Empire in the sense of a trans-ethnic (trans-national) political unit. Indeed, an Amarnian bas-relief depicts the traditional Asiatic, Nubian, and Libyan not as shackled by the Egyptian, but as worshiping with him, as equals, one and the same god: Aton. Only here the unity of the Empire had a religious (theistic), not a philosophical (anthropological), origin: its basis was a common god and not the “essential” unity of men in their capacity as humans (=rational). It was not the unity of their reason and of their culture (Logos), but the unity of their god and the community of their worship that united the citizens.
Since Ikhnaton, who failed woefully, the idea of an Empire with a transcendent (religious) unifying basis has frequently been taken up again. Through the intermediary of the Hebrew prophets it was adopted by St. Paul and the Christians, on the one hand, and by Islam on the other (to speak only of the most spectacular political attempts). But what has stood the test of history by lasting up to the present is not Muslim theocracy, nor the Germanic Holy Empire, nor even the Pope’s secular power, but the universal Church, which is something altogether different from a State properly so called. One may therefore conclude that, in the final analysis, it 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.
But the political goal humanity is pursuing (or fighting) at present is not only that of the politically universal State; it is just as much that of the socially homogeneous State or of the “classless Society.”
Here again the remote origins of the political idea are found in the religious universalist conception that is already present in Ikhnaton and that culminates in St. Paul. It is the idea of the fundamental equality of all who believe in the same God. This transcendent conception of social equality differs radically from the Socratic-Platonic conception of the identity of all the beings that have the same immanent “essence.” For Alexander, the disciple of the Greek philosophers, Greek and Barbarian have the same claim to political citizenship in the Empire in so far as they HAVE the same human (i.e. rational, logical, discursive) “nature” ( = essence, idea, form, etc.), or as they identify “essentially” with one another as a result of a direct (=“immediate”) “mixture” of their innate qualities (achieved by biological union). For St. Paul there is no “essential” (irreducible) difference between Greek and Jew because both can BECOME Christians, and they would do so not by “mixing” Greek and Jewish “qualities” but by negating and “synthesizing” them in and by this very negation into a homogeneous unity that is not innate or given but (freely) created by “conversion.” Because of the negating character of this Christian “synthesis,” no incompatible or even “contradictory” (=mutually exclusive) “qualities” remain. For Alexander, the Greek philosopher, no “mix-ture” of Masters and Slaves was possible, because they were “contraries.” Thus his universal State, which did away with races, could not be homogeneous in the sense of also doing away with “classes.” For St. Paul, on the other hand, the negation (which is active inasmuch as “faith” is an act and is “dead” without “acts”) of the opposition between pagan Mastery and Slavery could engender an “essentially” new Christian unity (which, moreover, is also active or acting, and even “affective,” rather than purely rational or discursive, that is to say “logical”) capable of providing the basis not only of the State’s political universality but also of its social homogeneity.
But in fact, universality and homogeneity on a transcendent, theistic, religious basis did not and could not engender a State properly so called. They only served as the basis of the universal and homogeneous Church’s “mystical body” and are supposed to be fully actualized only in the beyond (the “Kingdom of Heaven,” provided one abstracts from the permanent existence of hell). In fact, the universal State is the one goal which politics, entirely under the twin influence of ancient pagan philosophy and Christian religion, has pursued, although it has so far never attained it.
But in our day the universal and homogeneous State has become a political goal as well. Now here again, politics is derivative from philosophy. To be sure, this philosophy (being the negation of religious Christianity) is in turn derivative from St. Paul (whom it presupposes since it “negates” him). But the religious Christian idea of human homogeneity could achieve real political import only once modern philosophy succeeded in secularizing it (=rationalizing it, transforming it into coherent discourse).
As regards social homogeneity, the filiation between philosophy and politics is less direct than it is as regards political universality, but, in return, it is absolutely certain. In the case of universality, we only know that the Statesman who took the first effective step toward actualizing it was educated by a disciple twice removed from its theoretical initiator, and we can only assume the filiation of ideas. By contrast, in the case of homogeneity we know that there was a filiation of ideas, although we have no direct oral tradition to confirm it. The tyrant who here initiates the real political movement toward homogeneity consciously followed the teaching of the intellectual who deliberately transformed the idea of the philosopher so that it might cease to be a “utopian” ideal (which, incidentally, was erroneously thought to describe an already existing political reality: the Empire of Napoleon) and become, instead, a political theory in terms of which one might give tyrants concrete advice, advice which they could follow. Thus, while recognizing that the tyrant has “falsified” (verkehrt) the philosophical idea, we know that he has done so only in order to “transpose it (verkchren) from the realm of abstraction into that of reality.”
I leave it at citing these two historical examples, although it would be easy to multiply their number. But these two examples for all intents and purposes exhaust the great political themes of History. And if one grants that, in these two cases, all that the “tyrannical” king and the tyrant properly so-called did was to put into political practice the philosophers’ teaching (meanwhile suitably prepared by intellectuals), then one can conclude that the philosophers’ political advice has essentially been followed.
To be sure, the philosophers’ teaching, even when it has a political cast, could never be implemented directly or “immediately.” One might therefore view it as by definition inapplicable because it lacked direct or “immediate” connections with the concrete political reality prevailing at the time it appears. But “intellectual mediators” have always taken hold of it and confronted it with contemporary reality by trying to discover or to construct a bridge between the two. This purely intellectual labor of bringing the philosophical idea and the political reality more closely together could go on for a more or less long time. But sooner or later some tyrant always sought guidance in his day-to-day actions from the usable (oral or written) advice issuing from these “mediators.” When history is viewed in this light, it appears as a continuous succession of political actions guided more or less directly by the evolution of philosophy.
From the Hegelian perspective, based on the understanding of history, the relations between Tyranny and Wisdom may therefore be described as follows.
As long as man has not become fully conscious of a given political situation at a given historical moment by discursive philosophical reflection, he has no “distance” with respect to it. He cannot “take a stand,” he cannot consciously and freely decide for or against it. He is simply “passive” with respect to the political world, just as the animal is passive with respect to the natural world in which it lives. But once he has achieved full philosophical consciousness, man can distinguish between the given political reality and his idea of it “in his head,” an idea that can then serve as an “ideal.” However, if man leaves it at philosophically understanding (=explaining or justifying) the given political reality, he will never be able to go beyond this reality or the philosophical idea that corresponds to it. For a “going beyond” or for philosophical progress toward Wisdom (=Truth) to occur, the political given (which can be negated) must actually be negated by Action (Struggle and Work), so that a new historical or political (that is to say human) reality be, first of all, created in and by this active negation of the already existing and philosophically understood real, and, then, understood within the framework of a new philosophy. This new philosophy will preserve only that part of the old which has survived the test of the creative political negation of the historical reality that corresponded to it, and it will transform or “sublimate” this preserved part by synthesizing it (in and by a coherent discourse) with its own revelation of the new historical reality. Only by proceeding in this fashion will philosophy make its way toward absolute Knowledge or Wisdom, which it will be in a position to attain only once all possible active (political) negations have been accomplished.
In short, if philosophers gave Statesmen no political “advice” at all, in the sense that no political teaching whatsoever could (directly or indirectly) be drawn from their ideas, there would be no historical progress, and hence no History properly so called. But if the Statesmen did not eventually actualize the philosophically based “advice” by their day-to-day political action, there would be no philosophical progress (toward Wisdom or Truth) and hence no Philosophy in the strict sense of the term. So-called “philosophical” books would of course get written indefinitely, but we would never have the book (“Bible”) of Wisdom that could definitively replace the book by that title which we have had for nearly two thousand years. Now, wherever it has been a matter of actively negating a given political reality in its very “essence,” we have always, in the course of history, seen political tyrants arise. One may therefore conclude that while the emergence of a reforming tyrant is not conceivable without the prior existence of the philosopher, the coming of the wise man must necessarily be preceded by the revolutionary political action of the tyrant (who will realize the universal and homogeneous State).
Be that as it may. When I compare the reflections prompted by Xenophon’s Dialogue and by Strauss’s interpretation with the lessons that emerge from history, I have the impression that the relations between the philosopher and the tyrant have always been “reasonable” in the course of historical evolution: on the one hand the philosophers’ “reasonable” advice has always been actualized by tyrants sooner or later; on the other hand, philosophers and tyrants have always behaved toward each other “in accordance with reason.”
The tyrant is perfectly right not to try to implement a utopian philosophical theory, that is to say a philosophical theory without direct connections with the political reality with which he has to deal: for he has no time to fill the theoretical gap between utopia and reality. As for the philosopher, he too is right when he refrains from elaborating his theories to the point where they speak directly to the questions raised by current political affairs: if he did, he would have no time left for philosophy, he would cease to be a philosopher and hence would cease to have any claim to giving the tyrant politico-philosophical advice. The philosopher is right to leave the responsibility for bringing about a convergence on the theoretical plane between his philosophical ideas and political reality to a constellation of intellectuals of all shades (more or less spread out in time and space); the intellectuals are right to dedicate themselves to this task and, if the occasion arises, to give the tyrant direct advice when, in their theories, they have reached the level of the concrete problems raised by current political affairs; the tyrant is right not to follow (and not to listen) to such advice until it has reached this level. In short, they all behave reasonably within historical reality, and it is by behaving reasonably that, in the end, all of them directly or indirectly achieve real results.
On the other hand, it would be perfectly unreasonable for the Statesman to want to deny the philosophical value of a theory solely because it cannot be implemented “as is” in a given political situation (which, of course, does not mean that the Statesman may not have politically valid reasons for prohibiting this theory within the context of that situation). It would be equally unreasonable for the philosopher to condemn Tyranny as such “on principle,” since a “tyranny” can be “condemned” or “justified” only within the context of a concrete political situation. Generally speaking, it would be unreasonable if, solely in terms of his philosophy, the philosopher were in any way whatsoever to criticize the concrete political measures taken by the statesman, regardless of whether or not he is a tyrant, especially when he takes them so that the very ideal advocated by the philosopher might be actualized at some future time. In both cases the judgments passed on philosophy or on politics would be incompetent. As such, they would be more excusable (but no more justified) in the mouth of an “uninitiated” statesman or tyrant, than in that of the philosopher who is by definition “rational.” As for the “mediating” intellectuals, they would be unreasonable if they did not recognize the philosopher’s right to judge the philosophical value of their theories, or the statesman’s right to choose the theories which he regards as capable of being actualized in the given circumstances and to discard the rest, even “tyrannically.”
In general terms, it is history itself that attends to “judging” (by “achievement” or “success”) the deeds of statesmen or tyrants, which they perform (consciously or not) as a function of the ideas of philosophers, adapted for practical purposes by intellectuals.
*Kojève’s essay first appeared under the title “L’action politique des philosophies,” in Critique (1950, 6: 46–55, 138–155). The expanded version subsequently published under the title “Tyranny and Wisdom” omits the opening paragraphs of the original article.
In a brilliant and impassioned book, but in the guise of a calmly objective work of scholarship, Leo Strauss interprets Xenophon’s dialogue in which a tyrant and a wise man discuss the advantages and disadvantages of exercising tyranny. He shows us wherein the interpretation of a work differs from a mere commentary or an analysis. Through his interpretation Xenophon appears to us as no longer the somewhat dull and flat author we know, but as a brilliant and subtle writer, an original and profound thinker. What is more, in interpreting this forgotten dialogue, Strauss lays bare great moral and political problems that are still ours.
He has searched through the maze of the dialogue for the true meaning of Xenophon’s teaching. Xenophon presumably took care to hide it from the view of the vulgar. Strauss therefore had to resort to the method of the detective who, by a subtle interpretation of the apparent facts, finally finds the criminal…
Truth to tell, the temptation is great in the end to deny the discovery. Indeed, the book cannot end as detective novels do, with the unmasked “criminal’s” confession. Let the reader judge …
However, it matters only incidentally to know whether the interpretation is irrefutable, for the importance of Strauss’s book goes well beyond Xenophon’s authentic and perhaps unknown thought. It owes its importance to the importance of the problem which it raises and discusses.
1 Hiero (ibid.), it is true, would like his subjects to “crown him for his public virtue” and he believes that at the present time they condemn him “for his injustice.” But “injustice” disturbs him only to the extent that it prevents his being “recognized,” and it is only in order to obtain “recognition” that he would practice “virtue.” In other words, “virtue” and “justice” are for him only means by which to impose his authority on his subjects, and not ends in themselves. The sequel shows that Simonides’s attitude is exactly the same: the tyrant must be “virtuous” and “just” in order to win his subjects’ “affection”; in order, that is, to do the thing that will make his subjects obey “without being constrained,” and—ultimately—in order to be “happy without being envied.” This attitude is surely not “Socratic.” We may grant, with Strauss, that Simonides, as an advisor to a tyrant, adopts Hiero’s point of view for pedagogical reasons only, and without himself sharing it (in his capacity as a wise man).
2 This assertion appears paradoxical only if one fails to think about the specific meaning of the words “concrete” and “abstract.” One reaches the “abstract” when one “neglects” or abstracts some features implied in the “concrete,” that is to say the real. Thus, for example, when in speaking of a tree one abstracts everything that is not it (the earth, the air, the planet Earth, the solar system, etc.), one is speaking of an abstraction that does not exist in reality (for the tree can exist only if there is the earth, the air, the rays of the sun, etc.). Hence all the particular sciences deal, in varying degrees, with abstractions. Similarly, an exclusively “national” politics is necessarily abstract (as is a “pure” politics that would, for example, abstract from religion or art). The isolated “particular” is by definition abstract. It is precisely in seeking the concrete that the philosopher rises to the “general ideas” which the “uninitiate” claims to scorn.
3 Strauss, in agreement with Xenophon, seems to grant this radical egoism of the philosophical life. Indeed he says that “the wise man is as self-sufficient as is humanly possible.” The wise man is thus absolutely “uninterested” in other men.
4 As Queneau has reminded us in les Temps Modernes, the philosopher is essentially a “voyou.” <i.e. a hooligan: “Philosophies et voyous,” Temps Modernes, 1951, No. 63, pp. 1193–1205; Kojève’s reference involves a pun: the root of voyou is voie, street or road; so that “the philosopher who lives ‘in the street’” would be a voyou.>
5 As a matter of fact, Christians only succeeded in “spoiling this pleasure” by playing on the disagreeable sentiment that manifests itself in the form of “jealousy” or “envy,” among others: one is dissatisfied with oneself (sometimes one even despises oneself) when one is “worse than someone else.” Now a Christian always has at his disposal an other who is better than himself, this Other being God himself, who made himself man in order to facilitate the comparison. To the extent that this man to whom he compares himself and whom he tries in vain to imitate is for him a God, the Christian experiences neither “envy” nor “jealousy” toward him, but only an “inferiority complex” pure and simple, which does, however, suffice to keep him from recognizing his own wisdom or virtue and from “enjoying” that recognition.
6 Observation of “conduct” cannot settle the question. But the fact remains that in observing philosophers (for want of wise men) one really does not get the impression that they are insensitive to praise, or even to flattery. One can even say that, like all intellectuals, they are on the whole more vain than men of action. Indeed, it is readily understandable why they would be. Men do the specific things they do in order to succeed or “to achieve success” (and not to fail). Now, the “success”’ of an undertaking involving action can be measured by its objective “outcome” (a bridge that does not collapse, a business that makes money, a war won, a state that is strong and prosperous, etc.), independently of other people’s opinion of it, while the “success” of a book or of an intellectual discourse is nothing but other people’s recognition of its value. So that the intellectual depends very much more than does the man of action (including the tyrant) on other people’s admiration, and he is more sensitive than the man of action to the absence of such admiration. Without it, he has absolutely no valid reason to admire himself, while the man of action can admire himself on account of his objective (even solitary) “successes.” And that is why, as a general rule, the intellectual who does nothing but talk and write is more “vain” than the man who acts, in the strong sense of the term.
7 The case of Descartes is too complicated to discuss here.