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ОглавлениеIntroduction to the French Edition
François Terré
Alexandre Kojève exerted a major influence on philosophical thought, and his is a fascinating career. Originally from Russia, born in 1902, he left the land of the Soviets in 1919 or 1920 for the Berlin of Brecht and expressionism. In 1926, as things started taking a turn for the worse in the Weimar Republic, he settled in the Paris of the roaring twenties. The 1929 economic crisis, coming on top of previous bad investments, left him bankrupt. He decided to take up philosophy for a living. In the meantime, he had studied ‘the ultimate ends of the ethics of Christianity and Buddhism’ and published in 1931 an essay on ‘atheism’.1 The lure of oriental philosophies led him to learn Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan. He defended his dissertation on Vladimir Soloviev (1853–1900) at Heidelberg in 1926.
Strains on his financial means, and a good word from his friend Alexandre Koyré, whom he later succeeded in his teaching post, led to Kojève finding himself running a seminar at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. Last but not least of the many philosopher–educators before him, he undertook a paragraph-byparagraph commentary on The Phenomenology of Spirit. While access to the seminar was initially limited, it subsequently attracted a number of fascinated listeners as diverse as the directions their respective careers would later take: Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, Éric Weil, Robert Marjolin, Gaston Fessard, Raymond Aron, Raymond Polin, Pierre Klossowski, Maurice Merleau-Ponty … even Raymond Queneau. It was under the aegis of the latter that Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, a text based on lecture notes taken during Kojève’s seminar,2 was published in 1948. Kojève’s teaching was an ongoing flirtation with spectacle and play. In Raymond Aron’s Memoirs, Kojève’s ‘talent’ and ‘dialectical virtuosity’ are explicitly acknowledged, but ‘there still remains a question that [Aron] cannot evade. When [Kojève] described himself as a “strictly observant Stalinist” in 1938 or 1939, was he serious, or more precisely, in which sense was he serious?’3 Aron, however, insists right away that in private conversation Kojève did not deny the fact that Russia was governed by brutes. ‘I’m still wondering’, adds Raymond Aron, ‘which side of Kojève was mere intellectual or existential play.’4
Kojève’s thought was a decisive stage in the return to Hegel which, since 1945, marked ‘most of the protagonists of the three-H generation named after Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger’. This was paralleled, in the same vein of ‘the humanisation of nothingness’, by a ‘revolt against neo-Kantianism’ and the ‘eclipse of Bergsonism’.5 It matters little that subsequently we have witnessed the ebb and flow of this line of thought. This sequence still shows the extent to which Hegel’s thought remained an obligatory route even for those who sought to shield themselves from it. In this respect, whether faithful to Hegel or not – but what does such faithfulness mean? – Kojève’s influence was capital in terms of the expansion of the realm of reason. This is excellently formulated by Vincent Descombes in the following terms:
any thinking which aspires to be dialectical must, by definition, induce in reason a movement towards what is entirely foreign to it, towards the other. The whole issue now rests upon whether the other has been returned to the same in the course of this movement, or whether (so as to embrace rational and irrational, the same and the other at once) reason will have to transform itself, losing its initial identity, ceasing to be the same and becoming other with the other.6
Hence reason’s obligatory passage via excess or aberration on its path towards wisdom; and via cynicism, violence or terror where, according to Kojève, both the philosopher and the tyrant act similarly, or at times even together. From Hegel, Kojève borrows an immanent teleology that guides the dialectical movement of negativity, the very force of ideologies of progress;7 but its essential contribution rests on the idea that there comes a moment, with the contradictions of history ultimately resolved, when this teleology itself comes to an end. The end-of-history thesis is added to the famous Hegelian master–slave dialectic; the one and the other are knit together.
Hegel published The Phenomenology of Spirit in 1807, the year following Napoleon’s victory at Jena. Shaped by the turbulent history of his time, Hegel discerned a movement based on definitive achievements which, in the opinion of many, could trigger the perpetual movement of a system capable of verifying its own totality. Hegel’s 1821 Principles of the Philosophy of Right was his last philosophical work published before his death. When, 122 years later, Kojève finished his Esquisse d’une phénoménologie du droit, this was in the midst of the Second World War. No sooner had he been naturalized as a French citizen than he was called up to take part in the ‘phony war’, but in 1940, like many others, he lost his regiment. In 1941 he settled in the so-called zone libre, where Nina Ivanoff8 managed to reach him, even though she did not have a French passport. They lived in Marseille, where they were joined by Léon Poliakov, a Jew of Russian origin, childhood friend of Nina Ivanoff, and organiser of resistance movements in coordination with the clandestine resistance group led by Jean Cassou.9 Kojève participated actively in the Resistance. He had long known what the risk of death meant in theory, and when one day this risk materialised, the well-understood and well-practiced master–slave dialectic helped save lives.10 When Kojève went to visit Éric Weil’s family in Gramat, a small village in Lot, in the Midi Pyrenees region of France, he settled in a small hotel with Nina Ivanoff during the summer of 1943. There he wrote his Esquisse d’une phénoménologie du droit, which would be published posthumously, thirteen years after his death.11 Received with immense interest by many legal scholars and philosophers, the Esquisse is an essential contribution to contemporary philosophy precisely in so far as it is an informed treatment of the question of right. Overcoming the enigma that has long been inherent in the definition of right, Kojève undoubtedly brought to this subject a groundbreaking perspective, re-contextualising and then surpassing both the exclusive focus on values and the contemplation of a formal construction claiming that its origin, nature, and justification are to be found nowhere outside itself. More than twenty years after its publication, the Esquisse has remained intact in the face of the excesses of analytic philosophy, probably in part because it assumes and transcends the ambivalence of right in its relations with practical facts. It also identifies a circular movement – from the real to the rational and from the rational to the real – inherent in the very essence of right.
Kojève questioned the definition of right, and how it is to be grasped, identified, and recognised – most vexing questions whose ambiguities have been noted by legal scholars for centuries. According to Kojève, the juridical phenomenon necessarily implies, during the interaction between two human beings, the intervention of an impartial and disinterested third party. This third party is, in its diverse functions, legislator, judge, or law officer; but it is mainly in so far as the third party intervenes as judge that the juridical, as such, is revealed. Moreover, this third party necessarily exists because there is in Man a desire to realise justice and even a pleasure in pronouncing judgements as particular as sexual or aesthetic pleasure. There is a specifically juridical interest proper to Man, and inspired by the idea of justice. According to Kojève, as for Hegel, work presupposes the idea of the other, since economic man is always coupled with a conceited man who aspires to recognition, the very condition of selfconsciousness – starting with the consciousness of pronouncing a judgement and proceeding to the consciousness of being judged. From this there follow essential distinctions between the juridical, on the one hand, and the religious, moral, economic, and political, on the other. In other words, if it is still the development of the idea that lies at the heart of Kojève’s philosophy of right, it is henceforth the idea of justice that is at stake and no longer the Hegelian idea of freedom.
The question of authority is not overlooked in the Esquisse. Evidently, Kojève looks at the question of authority in the context of his analysis of ‘Right in the familial society’. A footnote on page 411 reads: ‘See my “Brief Article on Authority” (which needs to be completed in its application to the familial sphere) (In the State, the Authority of the Master seems to prevail above all in foreign policy, in relations with the Enemy; that of the Leader in domestic policy, in relations among Friends).’12 The body of the text contains an important passage marking the link in Kojève’s thought between the phenomenology of right and Authority, or more precisely with regard to its diverse types: ‘It is still the Authority of being and not action to which one will have to resort in the Family’. Kojève then adds:
Now, the Authority of being is the Authority of the ‘Father’ type: the Authority of the cause, of the author, of the origin and the source of what is; the Authority of the past which maintains itself in the present by the sole fact of the ontological ‘inertia’ of being. In the political sphere, it is the Authority of action (of the present) and consequently of the project (of the future), i.e. the Authority of the ‘Master’ and ‘Leader’ type, that is primary. In the familial sphere, by contrast, the first Authority, the grounding Authority, is of the ‘Father’ type (of the past). The Authorities of Judge (of ‘eternity,’ i.e. of impartiality), of Leader (who foresees and guides), and of Master (who decides and acts) are derived from that of the Father (who generates being and assures the perpetuity of the past identical with itself). In the State, on the contrary, it is the Authority of the Father (and of the Judge) that is derived from those of Master and Leader (that of the Master being primary). One therefore sees here again an essential difference between the Family and the State. On the one hand, the Kinsmen are not Friends opposed to a common Enemy. On the other hand, they are not the Governed who recognise the Authority of the Master and the Leader of the Governors. They are kinsmen who love another according to their degree of kinship, who therefore love above all their common kin, their ancestors, the source and origin of the being to which they attribute a positive value. And if they recognise an Authority (which gives them an appearance of political unity, but in fact only a familial unity), it is the Authority F, of that ‘kinsman’ par excellence, that they recognise, and it is this Authority F of being as such who is recognised also by non-kindred members of the Family: by slaves, servants, and so on, and – if the case arises – by other Families. Familial organisation of the Family is therefore something entirely different from the political organisation of the State: the kinsmen subordinate themselves to kinsmen (by love or authority) according to the kinship that determines their being, but they are not properly speaking governed by them.13
These passages corroborate the thesis that ‘the brief article on authority’ was written before the Esquisse, even if it mentions in passing another ‘article on right’ and even a ‘special article on the state’.14 While the first typed page of the manuscript that was subsequently published as the Esquisse d’une phénoménologie du droit is signed and dated ‘Marseille, 1943’, the last page of the Notion de l’Autorité is signed at the end as follows: ‘A. Kojevnikoff, Marseille, 16/V 42’. Five months separate this date from the Allied invasion of French North Africa (9 November 1942) and the occupation of the zone libre by the German army. It was not until early in 1943 that von Paulus capitulated at Stalingrad, and, even closer, there was Pierre Laval’s famous speech of 22 June 1942 in which he declared that he ‘hoped for a German victory because without it, tomorrow Bolshevism will be everywhere’.
The publication of Kojève’s study of the ‘notion of authority’ had to wait even longer than that of the Esquisse. Dominique Auffret refers to the manuscript, noting that ‘it has not yet been located’. It remained in the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale, later the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Thanks to the fortunate attention of Florence de Lussy, chief librarian at the department of manuscripts, and to the donation by Nina Ivanoff of Kojève’s unpublished writings, this manuscript has finally seen the light of day. It completes, in the areas of phenomenology, metaphysics, and ontology, Kojève’s already published work on right, politics, and philosophy. In the years after writing this text in 1942, Kojève played a major role in the construction of Europe, on the fringes of administrative hierarchies. The wealth of knowledge and experience he gained is best illustrated by his controversy with one of his preferred interlocutors, Leo Strauss. The latter had just published a commentary on one of Xenophon’s dialogues: Hiero the Tyrant. The 1954 French translation of the book included a substantial critical study by Kojève on ‘Tyranny and Wisdom’. This is a seminal text for those who wish to know how Kojève carried on his essential investigation, history being in his opinion a succession of political actions guided by philosophers, themselves assisted by ‘intellectual mediators’.
Kojève titled his study The Notion of Authority. From the outset, he notes that ‘It is a curious fact that the problem and notion of Authority have been little studied’:
Questions pertaining to the transfer of Authority and its genesis have been the main concern, while the actual essence of this phenomenon has rarely attracted any attention. However, it is obviously impossible to tackle political power or even the structure of the State without knowing what Authority is as such. A study of the notion of Authority, albeit provisional, is therefore essential, and must precede any study of the question of the State.
In relation to what he could not have overlooked in writing these lines, particularly the controversy between Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt on the subject of dictatorship and the state of exception,15 Kojève’s introductory observation deserves great attention, even though, between 1942 and the present publication, philosophical reflection has made significant progress on the subject of authority, as it did already in Kojève’s lifetime. Even ignoring studies that do not touch upon or even address the subject except in a peripheral aside, we cannot overlook other works in relation to which, anachronisms notwithstanding, Kojève’s findings are and will remain fundamental.
Firstly, Kojève’s argument throws light on and supplements the achievements of sociological development.16 The latter acknowledges that the decline of traditional authority is partly linked with the retreat of old institutions such as guild, neighbourhood, parish, and the family – institutions that formerly acted as intermediaries between power and the masses.17 In the course of this development, the distinction between (social) authority and (political) power became more marked. Social authority reflects the attachment of conservatives, or even radicals, to intermediary bodies, while political authority is seen as the foundation of a model inherited from the French Revolution, and by implication from the Enlightenment, especially Rousseau, characteristically hostile to ‘partial associations’ existing within the state. Subsequent development, marked by the return of communities, will be distinguished by a certain divide focused on the place and role of authority in its relation to power in the works of Tocqueville, Marx, Durkheim, Simmel, and many others. The natural persistence of authority in large-scale industry was confirmed by Engels,18 while bureaucracy played an important role in Weber’s theory of authority. Whether perceived in terms of integrative triangular relations (states, groupings, individuals), or in the guise of a circular relation between domination and obedience, dominations and subordinations, and so on; authority is defined in relation to that which it is not, i.e. as a negative. It is in this respect that Kojève’s argument is crucial.
Later studies on the subject of authority, however, must not be overlooked, especially that of Hannah Arendt. In a study published in 1958, entitled ‘What is Authority?’, Arendt precisely went beyond reflections related to the definition and notion of authority as such.19 After noting ‘a more or less general, more or less dramatic breakdown of all traditional authorities’, Arendt moved on to underline the fact that this crisis
has spread to such pre-political areas as child-rearing and education, where authority in the widest sense has always been accepted as a natural necessity, obviously required as much by natural needs, the helplessness of the child, as by political necessity, the continuity of an established civilisation which can be assured only if those who are newcomers by birth are guided through a pre-established world into which they are born as strangers.20
According to Arendt, Greco-Roman tradition, extended and relayed by Christianity, has transmitted a concept that rests on the combination of three components: tradition, religion, and authority. At the same time, its history has been marked during recent centuries by the disappearance of tradition and the loss of religion. More stable, and yet fatally undermined in its very foundations, authority is also destined to disappear, even though its disappearance is only that of a ‘very specific form which had been valid throughout the Western World over a long period of time’. It is for this reason that ‘practically as well as theoretically, we are no longer in a position to know what authority really is’. Arendt adds that ‘the answer to this question cannot possibly lie in a definition of the nature or essence of “authority in general”.’21
However, this is exactly where the rest of her argument unintentionally leads; and it is here that an expectation is revealed which is more or less conscious and to which Kojève’s argument now responds. What lies at the origin of this tradition in decline, which offers, after all, and despite its vicissitudes, an ideal type born from a lasting conjunction in which tradition, religion, and authority converge? The premonitory signs are to be found, once again, in Greek philosophy. If authority necessarily goes hand-in-hand with the obedience that it always requires, it nevertheless does not exclude constraint or persuasion, which, when used, both render authority useless. In this particular strand of universal history, authority is something else. Plato saw this when he drew on the relations between the shepherd and his flock, the steersman and the passengers on a ship, or on the doctor–patient relationship. However, it is in Rome, in the sacred foundation of the city, the house and the home, that ‘the word and concept of authority’ are to be found.22
This return to Roman law constituted already, through the expansion it entailed, a valuable addition to previous studies by classicists, including those who did not believe it possible to ‘reduce the different juridical aspects of the notion of auctoritas to a unifying concept’.23 On the side of private law, it is by virtue of his auctoritas that the father or the guardian – auctor derived from augere (increase) – exerts his authority: ‘whether it authorises, or whether it ratifies, it supposes a foreign activity which it validates’.24 It is ‘an attribute related to the individual, and originally to the physical person … the privilege, the right, belonging to a Roman in prescribed conditions to serve as foundation for the juridical situation created by others’.25 In the context of Roman public law, at the time of the Law of the Twelve Tables, towards the middle of the fifth century BCE, the Roman people secured a role in the res publica and the making of law. For a long time, however, laws had to be ratified by the patrician senators in order to obtain the auctoritas patrum. Auctoritas subsequently became a preliminary senatorial agreement, before it developed into mere opinion, though laws were passed only rarely against the view of the Senate.26 This visible reduction promoted the rise of the notion of authority in line with its etymology, in such a way that an increase in the very foundation of religion and the city parallels the augmentation of the mystical and sacred foundation of authority! In a way, it is for this reason that it remains distinct from both imperium and potestas. As Mommsen explains, it is ‘less than an order and more than advice’.27 It is that which does not imply constraint in order to be heard or obeyed; on the contrary, it is the ‘force which confers legitimacy’,28 which ‘seems to act as a force that suspends potestas where it took place and reactivates it where it was no longer in force’.29 Its legacy would be revisited a long time later, when Max Weber linked charismatic power to the concept of auctoritas and the Führerprinzip doctrine.
Frequently, the author expresses the modesty of his ambitions, contenting himself here and there with tracing general outlines for further development. No less frequently does he use, in an enlightening manner, the infinite resources of punctuation, resorting to capital letters, parentheses, footnotes, consistently observed throughout the text, to present an outline of the notion of authority, both on the basis of and beyond the four irreducible theories proposed in the course of history – besides the theological theory, there are those of Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel. Kojève’s argument is organised in terms of analyses followed by their concrete application.
The first and most important analysis, with which Kojève begins, is the phenomenological one – an approach that those who are familiar with his Outline of a Phenomenology of Right will not find surprising. From the outset, the author follows a holistic approach. As a social phenomenon, ‘Authority is the possibility that an agent has of acting on others (or on another), without these others reacting against him, despite being capable of doing so.’ ‘By acting with Authority, the agent can change the outward human given without suffering a repercussion from such action, i.e. without himself changing as a result of his action.’ Clarification: ‘If, in order to make someone get out of my room, I have to use force, I have to change my own behaviour to realize the act in question, and I show through this behaviour that I have no authority.’ A consequence of this is the isolation of the notion of authority, which ‘excludes force, [whereas] right implies and presupposes force while being something different from it.’ Necessarily ‘recognised’ by its subjects, ‘every human Authority that exists must have a ‘cause’, a ‘reason’ or a ‘justification’ for its existence, a raison d’être’. In other terms, why is it consciously and willingly recognised, endured without reaction? What is this authority?
The phenomenological approach consists in setting out facts and then indicating the result without providing any proof, properly speaking, to demonstrate them. This leads Kojève to distinguish four types that are ‘simple, pure or elementary’: authority of the father over the child, of the master over the slave, of the leader over the gang, and of the judge over the person or persons he judges. Various kinds of authority are subsequently linked to the four pure ones. For example: to the authority of the father, that of tradition; to the authority of the master, that of the nobility; to the authority of the leader, that of the boss; to the authority of the judge, that of the confessor, and so on. This shows that there can exist mixed authorities that can pertain to several types.
Coming back to the four philosophies mentioned above, Kojève notes their correspondence to four pure types of authority. That of the master is in line with Hegel’s thought and with the relation between master and slave, which is, apparently, considered a ‘general theory of authority’, even though it does not account for the authority of the father, leader, or judge types. Following Aristotle, another type of authority becomes central – that of the leader who is more apt than others to foresee, who is more intelligent and intuitive; the leader is he who conceives of a project and who guides and commands. Platonic thought is again different, every authority being founded, or needing to be founded, on justice or equity. In this respect, it is the authority of the judge that is central and exclusive. Thus, it is ‘the claim to impartiality, objectivity, disinterestedness, and so on, that always gives rise to an authority’. Similarly, the ‘“just” or “honest” man possesses an unquestionable authority, even if he does not hold the position of an arbiter’. The scholastic or theocratic theory, itself having a universal and exclusive dimension, corresponds to the authority of the father, which is in reality, like the three other types of authority, endowed with a divine essence because its authority is derived from God via the transmission of hereditary essence. ‘God the Father’, ‘our Father which art in heaven’ considered as ‘creator of man and the world’, ‘“Father of men” because he has effectively “engendered” them by “creating” them (ex nihilo).’
Despite the fact that each of these philosophical theories aspires to exclusivity, none of them manages, according to Kojève, to account for the four pure types of authority. This line of analysis leads him to take for granted the plural aspect of authority. Consequently, all controversies ensuing from the dominating tendencies are repressed. And it should not be forgotten that the retained typology, reminiscent of Weber’s theory of ideal types, does not exclude in any way the possibility of multiple combinations – each simply marked by the predominance of one of them. Kojève even drafts a comprehensive list of all the possible types of authority, refining once again the phenomenological approach by distinguishing ‘the total authority, which encompasses all four pure types’ from ‘selective authorities, which integrate only one, two or three of these types’, every concrete authority being ‘in fact, more or less total.’ ‘Obviously, absolute authority in the strong sense of the word is never realized in fact. Only God is held to possess it (or more precisely, God should have possessed it)’ [p. 31].
The attention paid to the authority of the father, as well as to its other forms, makes it possible to comprehend certain dislocations that are apprehended, especially nowadays, in terms of decline. Going beyond certain recurrent grievances about family or education, it allows for a better grasp of what is really in question, this concealed or repressed authority of the father. The debated contribution of psychoanalysis, however, is outside the present field of discussion. Conversely, the rediscovery of the place of authority in family or para-family relations, requiring a dépassement of the reductionist distinction between public and private law, cannot be overlooked. In Rome, the term auctoritas designated the formal guarantee given by the guardian to the acts of his ward. As such, it is distinguished from validity, and even more from effectiveness. It is something other than the manifestation of power. The evolution of legislative expressions consolidates the persistence or return of a notion subject to eclipse in certain cases. Thus, the expression of paternal power, long dominant in characterising the power of parents over their children, and inherited – in both content and spirit – from the Napoleonic codification, was replaced by parental authority. This substitution, enacted by the law of 4 June 1870, corresponded to profound changes in family relations. But we can only grasp it properly when we refer to the symbolic value and meaning of the notion of authority as understood by Kojève.
Whichever authority we are talking about, its genesis is spontaneous, including that of the father who, in order to be endowed with authority, still has to ‘become a father (or, in the derivative case, reach a more or less advanced age)’. This means that there is no conditioned authority that comes into being ‘as a result of acts other than those of he who will maintain it’. This is why Kojève distances himself from Rousseau and social contract theory, since in this context the authority that comes from the contract is ‘conditioned by something other than itself’ – by the preliminary existence of another authority. Phenomenological analysis excludes the possibility of the coming into being of authority by the effect of a social contract and an ‘erroneous interpretation of the existence of (political or other) elections’, which cannot result in the generation of an authority that does not already exist. Neither the majority nor the minority can invoke an original, pure, and sui generis authority. More fundamentally, the pretentions to a total and absolute authority of the whole over the parts, of the majority over the minority, only took shape artificially from the moment when the general will ‘ceased to have a divine character (or even an “ideological” one, interpreted by “spiritual” leaders)’, and the idea was conceived that the ‘“general will” is expressed through the will of the Majority’. Thus Kojève does not attribute any original place to social contract theory in relation to the genesis of authority. And it becomes impossible to disregard his analysis in political science and political philosophy.
It is the same with his analyses of the transmission of authority, whether this takes place by way of heredity, election, or nomination. The term ‘transmission’ expresses the idea that authority exists – the same and in itself – without being linked to a determinate person. If it is realised by heredity, a correlation with the authority of the father is the most adequate – as is the case with the authority of tradition. The other two forms of transmission, similar as they are, are nevertheless distinct:
there is transmission of Authority by nomination when the candidate for Authority is designated by the person (or persons) who already possess an Authority, and one of the same type (a Leader nominated by a Leader, for example); there is transmission by election when the candidate is designated by a person or persons who either have no Authority or have an Authority of another type (a Judge nominated by a Leader, for example).’ [p. 45]
This last analysis even leads the author to claim that, since the elector does not have a proper authority and his choice does not have any value for others, therefore, ‘strictly speaking, election does not differ in essence from the drawing of lots’. In fact, ‘The random choice of jurors is a kind of spontaneous genesis of the authority of the judge’. As Kojève notes, the consequence of this would require, in phenomenological terms, a number of supplementary analyses.
Kojève certainly does not intend to limit himself to this field of investigation. In this respect, he adopts an attitude similar to that which he followed in the Esquisse. Already there, he mentioned the need to divide all human phenomena into juridical and nonjuridical ones in order to find
a satisfying definition – that is, applicable to all the phenomena in question and to them only. And it would still be necessary to complete the phenomenological description by an analysis of the metaphysical (cosmological) and ontological substructure of the phenomenon being described in order to ward off the risk of the advent in the future of a new case, forcing the revision of the definition that was conforming to the cases realised in the present and the past … It should be understood that I have not even tried to reach this ideal in the pages that are going to follow … I have deliberately avoided a metaphysical or ontological analysis.30
Kojève adopts a different approach with regard to the notion of authority, since he follows phenomenology with metaphysics and ontology, though not without emphasising the very cursory character of his reflections. These two further developments indicate what a similar investigation of the question of right and its essence would have been, if he had had the time for this. As for authority, we see clearly that phenomenology, despite nourishing philosophical reflection, nevertheless leaves the mind eager for more in-depth knowledge and comprehension. The existence of four pure types corresponding to four philosophical theories does not excuse us from looking into what they have in common, what corresponds to the use of the same term. This search manifests a centripetal movement of thought.
Reflection then continues on its path towards metaphysics from a conception of authority that is necessarily social and historical, implied by the possibility of a reaction, in relation to a society, or even better, in relation to a state, that may be religious or political, and so on. The author, adhering to this latter form, thinks that the foundation of authority pertains to a ‘modification of the [human or historical] entity “time”’. As distinct from natural times that correspond to the primacy of the (physical) present or the (biological) past, the time of authority is linked to the primacy of the future so much so that ‘authority par excellence is that of the … “revolutionary” leader (whether driven by political, religious or other motives) with a universal “project”.’ But the fact remains that undoubtedly ‘time has, as such, the value of an authority … in all of its three modes.’
The primacy of the (‘venerable’) past speaks for itself. Arendt has argued this point in terms of foundation and tradition. The passing of time, which, added to the belief and imagination of men, founds the compulsory character of customs, is also a basis of the legitimacy both of a people and of monarchs. From this common foundation may result disputes over frontiers or identity that are subsequently overcome in the further course of events. There is in fact also for Kojève an authority of the future, that of ‘tomorrow’s man’, that of the ‘young’. As for the authority of the present, it is lived on a daily basis, as with ‘fashion’ for instance, or more generally, with the ‘“real presence” of something in the world … as opposed to the “poetic” unreality of the past and the “utopian” unreality of the future’.
What is revealed here is the primary importance of metaphysical analysis and the taking into account of temporality. ‘[A]ll these “temporal” Authorities are set against the Authority of eternity … the negation of Time’ – that is to say, one of its modes of time. The key question that presents itself at that point is whether the Authority of eternity is a ‘sui generis Authority’ or a direct ‘manifestation’ of the metaphysical bases of the four ‘pure’ types of Authority’ [pp. 49–50]. Kojève believes that this second analysis is correct, which leads to a fundamental conclusion asserting the primacy of eternity. The latter is authoritarian only in and through its relations with time: ‘[B]eing the negation of the particular modes of Time, [it] can be considered as the totality or the integration of the latter’ [p. 52]. Now, this integration leads to ‘the idea of seeing the authority of the judge as closer to the eternal’. At the same time, the place of the judge is in a way magnified: ‘[T]he Authority of the Judge (“justice”) can be interpreted as the “integration” of the three others – the latter being unable to form a harmonious unity, not even one that is stable or “eternal”, except on condition of subordinating themselves en bloc to the Authority of the Judge or to that of “Justice” ’ [p. 52].
Kojève’s analysis proceeds on two levels. First, by way of an increasing comprehension of what is truly behind the primary (visible?) authorities of the past, future, and present considered as such. No explanation is acceptable that would disregard the existence of the eternal in terms of causality: ‘[I]f Eternity is realized by a “formal cause”, Time realizes the Past qua “material cause”, the Future qua “final cause” and the Present qua “efficient cause” (see Aristotle)’ [p. 55], without the metaphysical analysis ceasing to ‘justify’ the phenomenological one.
This is even more clear in so far as the authority of the judge is isolated in relation to the three others, and considered superior to them: a singularly revealing route for a philosophy bringing innovative and convincing answers to questions raised since the dawn of time by judges and their institution. We have as evidence the existence of at least two visible enigmas. The first of these pertains to the profound reticence aroused in political philosophy by the assertion of a judicial power situated on the same plane as the legislative or executive ones. Undoubtedly, the historical legacy is of great importance here. The famous Article 16 of the 1789 Declaration states that ‘any society in which no provision is made for guaranteeing rights or for the separation of powers, has no Constitution’. If the distinction between the separation of powers and the separation of functions is important, the division of tasks is equally fundamental. However, the existence of a hierarchy is notable especially, but not uniquely, in relations between the legislature and the judiciary. This is why the legislature is prohibited from interfering in the function of judging, in the judicial function, though it can do so by enacting retroactive or interpretative laws, or even by means of ex post facto laws. Conversely, the law of 16–24 August 1790 still charges the courts with abuse of power if they are found ‘taking any part, directly or indirectly, in the exercise of legislative power, obstructing or suspending the execution of the decrees of the legislative body’. While the 1958 Constitution of the Fifth Republic was partly driven by the desire to strengthen the executive, it is understandable that, not having the same legitimacy, it did not use, in relation to justice, the term ‘power’, preferring instead the phrase ‘judicial authority’, and so placing this in a rank subordinate to both government and parliament. This political will could not, in itself, really damage the authority of the judge as understood by Kojève. Subsequent history has verified this in every respect. And if we have witnessed justice coming gradually into a certain disrepute, this is less an effect of the latter’s frailty than a result of the deviant behaviour of some of those whose mission is to render it. Besides, if they do render justice, it is because they have captured it. But from whom? We could in fact extend the reflection on the decisions of judges: the authority of the matter being judged has, in practice, a higher significance in terms of relative, but pronounced, judicial truth than that of the background.
Even though Kojève confirmed in the Esquisse of 1943 that he would limit himself to a description of the juridical phenomenon, he also pursued his research on the foundation of right in line with Hegelian thought. What is important from a Hegelian perspective is the development of right founded on the movement of the concept: ‘the principle of right is not to be found in nature. The sphere of right is the sphere of freedom …’ In other words, it is the development of the idea of freedom that lies at the heart of Hegel’s philosophy of right. However, if the development of the idea is likewise at the heart of Kojève’s philosophy of right, it is here the idea of justice.
Kojève postpones the ontological analysis of the notion of authority, limiting himself to ‘a few brief historical remarks’. It is a question of discerning the structure of being as such, as a structure corresponding to the four phenomena of authority, and showing the metaphysical existence of eternity and time. In this respect, none of the four philosophical theories (Hegel, Aristotle, Plato, Scholasticism) supplied a satisfying ontological analysis, since each was conceived as universal, that is to say, neither of them covered all four notions of authority in a total theory, which was to Kojeve’s mind indicative of their respective inadequate ontological foundations. Reflection has therefore to be pushed further. Without coming to a standstill, Kojève’s discourse is overly brief and leaves the reader somewhat disappointed. The lines that he indicates allow us, nevertheless, to discern what must be, in this case, the ontological search for authority ‘after having elaborated the main lines of ontology’. From this ‘supposedly definitive’ approach, the analysis returns towards phenomena, and from there ‘towards being as being’, and, following a ‘perpetual back and forth’ motion, it is possible to arrive at ‘a truly definitive philosophy, that is to say, one that is true in an absolute manner’. If the approach is presented only in the form of a programme, it will not be an exaggeration of Kojève’s thought to consider that the reference to eternity, otherwise to the eternal – even for the non-believer, agnostic, or atheist – ultimately indicates, well beyond the sacred of the auctoritas, a resort to an irreducible transcendence.
The rest of the book, devoted to deductions from the previous analyses, is meant to consolidate their validity as applications. Here, too, the reader is warned that, whether it is a question of political, ethical, or psychological applications, what is presented is not an exhaustive investigation but developments that have as their framework the political sphere and not, for instance, the religious one.
Concerning political applications properly speaking, the place of the state is obviously central. Its authority is one, but its support can be individual or collective, which leads to an innovative and shrewd description of several combinations of the ‘pure’ types since antiquity, through medieval times and especially in the modern context. Evidently, a key place is reserved for the division of the three powers (executive, legislative, and judicial), for the various theories of revolutions, for the role of the bourgeoisie as dominant political power (an influence and position that can be explained only in relation to the three modes of time), for tradition as bearer of political value, for the opposition between conservative and radical-liberal parties, the Kantian ‘antinomies of political theory’ pertaining to the position of the judge, and so on. In all these spheres, the significance of the diverse variants resulting from the combinations of the ‘pure’ types is verified with concrete facts.
Unsurprisingly, the distinction between the three powers of the state, as the antiphony of both constitutional right and political philosophy, occupies a central place. The conservation of the traditional tripartite division in relation to the four kinds of authority is a problem, as if including the authority of the father were a sensitive point. We have also seen how the authority of the judge is also singular, simply because the political is envious of the judiciary, which it needs, and that ‘the (political) element of judge must be “separated” from the elements leader and master.’ It is mainly the analysis of the relations between legislative and executive ‘powers’, which, regardless of whether they are repositioned in a current context or not, shows all its potentialities: authority of the leader based on the future, authority of the master based on the present, and, we would be tempted to add, authority of the judge based on the past. Three powers, three temporal modes. But should this trinity be retained at any cost? We can consider a movement in the direction of either retreat or expansion, as there are powers that do not fit into the familiar pre-established structures and that take their revenge for this isolation or ignorance either in the shadow of the law or at least on its margins, such as economic power or the power of the media. In short, no general theory of the state in the future can disregard the various developments relating to the unity or plurality of forms of political authority, as well as its transmission, whether within the same type or from one type to another.
There are of course also ‘ethical applications’ of authority, Kojève writes, with ‘an authoritarian ethics’ serving as its necessary support: this is what has to be done to acquire and exert it, its nature and characters varying according to each type. Traditional reason, however, takes into consideration above all, if not exclusively, the authority of the judge. The return to the past, as well as study of the Japanese or Hindu middle ages, would show that a diversity of approaches becomes imperative, especially on the subject of the authority of the master. Investigation becomes all the more necessary in so far as such knowledge would permit a better understanding of many tragic historical conflicts. Above all, it would make it possible to overcome an incomplete analysis informed by a ‘Christian or bourgeois morality’, bound up, at least in its origins, with a ‘servile’ morality opposed to the morality of the ‘masters’.
Even if there exist on the plane of ethics extensions of the various types of pure authority, it remains that, in all cases, authority implies at the same time a power to resist but also an absence of resistance – better, an obedience, even if by using this notion, to which the author resorts only rarely, we must add something to his line of thought. Right or duty to resist, active or passive obedience, authority or oppression, legality or legitimacy of power, are so many further questions, not to mention the psychological applications of the authority exercised, and, especially, endured, where the powers of propaganda, of ‘rational demagogy’ and education come into play, either together or in conflict.
Rather than pursue this line of analysis, Kojève illustrates his argument by focusing on current events and a study of the ‘authority that exists in France in 1942’. It is then a question of ‘the Marshal’s authority’. Kojève notes in Philippe Pétain a ‘total political authority – that is to say, the order of the four “pure” types of authority that it implies’: that of the master, victor of Verdun; that of the leader; capable of foreseeing events; that of the judge, impartial and disinterested; and that of the father, attached to the traditions of the past. This presentation does not at any point express any attachment of a political nature, and neither does it judge the legality or legitimacy of the power of Vichy or that of London. ‘We have good reasons to think’, writes Dominique Auffret, ‘that Kojève believes that the enemy must be embraced the better to strangle him … we know that [this reflection] theorised a politics of the worm in the bud, susceptible to different interpretations, but which, for Kojève, must be read in a highly sophisticated way. It suggests that he did not exclude the option of having to live with the reality of the Pétainist state.’31 Despite the example selected being a burning question, Kojève’s argument actually pertained to an approach that was mainly methodical, foreign to either Collaboration or Resistance, to right or left, to the activities of the one or the other. What Kojève underscored, again in a profoundly Hegelian manner, was the authority of a man gathering in his person – as seen by those who noted this fact and in line with his philosophical theory – the characters of the four pure types.
Moreover, the author notes that, after two years in power, the authority of the Marshal has not withstood the test of time, as could not have been avoided bearing in mind its very origin. The master, as military leader, was thus necessarily fragile because of his age, which explained the resort to the admiral (François Darlan). As for the father, his reference to tradition was diminished by the necessity to ‘penetrate into the Future’, and Kojève notes a similar weakening of the authority of the judge, with ‘the unfortunate turn that the Riom trials have taken’. The slippages noted here lead us therefore to recognise, in the combination analysed, the primacy of the authority of the leader. But its persistence, subordinated to the necessity of a ‘project’, was supported in this instance only by a programme, or rather a topos – a ‘logical place [that is] still empty’: the Révolution nationale, because ‘in May 1942, France does not yet have a revolutionary idea’. Even so, Kojève does not ‘make any claim to be able to propose a (national) revolutionary idea to France in 1942’ [p. 102]. He nevertheless constructs, precisely out of variants of the different types, the form of a state that realises the political authority corresponding to the analysed combination in terms of constitutional structure – even envisaging, in relation to work, the existence of corporations.
At the same time, when Kojève was conceiving the notion of authority, one of the great minds to have followed his teaching, Father Gaston Fessard, was pursuing a parallel reflection.32 He too asked key questions about legitimacy: Where is to be found the common good of the people and the authority necessary to lead the will of everyone towards this unique goal? The conclusions reached by both authors complement each other.
Master, leader, judge, and father. Kojève reveals and explains a typology that is already present in consciousness and in behaviour, while outlining an enriched philosophy and a programme with a universal susceptibility to further in-depth analysis. His thought surpasses the tripartite schemas discovered in the Indo-European world and in Georges Dumézil’s triad of the flamines33 in Roman religion. It also allows us to understand better in our own time all crises of authority, respect, and obedience. It leads towards a distinction between the four forms of power deduced from the four pure types described. In a world driven by an anguished quest for its bearings, Kojève’s reflection marks a renewed return to reason.
