-Caveat Lector- From http://www.nationalpost.com/artslife.asp?s2=life&f=991103/118076.html {{<Begin>}} Wednesday, November 03, 1999 Why tyrants are unhappy How can they be sure anyone loves them? Norman Doidge National Post An extraordinary scandal is brewing in France. The French secret service has received a KGB dossier stating that Alexandre Kojeve, the French philosopher and intellectual architect of the European Economic Union, the Euro and much of what we now call globalization, was a KGB agent for 30 years. Kojeve was born in Russia in 1902. He left for Germany, where he studied Hegel, the philosopher of history, then went on to France. His seminar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, in Paris, blended philosophers Marx, Hegel and Heidegger and attracted many of the best-known intellectuals in Paris. Political philosopher Raymond Aron, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (who took many of Kojeve's ideas), philosopher Merleau-Ponty and surrealist Andre Breton all attended. Kojeve was magnetic, and became known as the cleverest man in France and a walking encyclopaedia of history, philosophy, art, wine, music. Kojeve promoted ideas that are fashionable today. One, stated somewhat simplistically, is that the truth is historically determined. This shows up now as the insistence that our attitudes about gender, race and morality are historically -- as opposed to naturally -- determined. He also spoke much of the importance of "recognition" -- a term that comes up now when ethnic groups and minorities seek it or, increasingly, demand it as a "right." Kojeve, a modern revolutionary intellectual, believed in scientific "progress" and the conquest of nature. He also believed in the conquest of human nature: He asserted that human nature is not fixed, that it can be transformed, and improved, by action -- especially violent revolutionary action that radically alters social conditions. When Kojeve was 46, he appeared to transform himself by action from a teacher into a civil servant in the department of finance. His revolutionary goal was to bring about a universal and homogeneous world state that would provide its citizens with the "recognition" he spoke of. He began promoting the European Economic Community (the EEC) as a first step toward creating a massive continental power -- a centralized superstate between the United States and the U.S.S.R. Though a man of the Left, who openly praised Stalin, he was able, by dint of his brilliance, to persuade the U.S. to drop its objections to the EEC, and to influence the conservative President De Gaulle to oppose British EEC entry. He also influenced future French president Giscard d'Estaing and Prime Minister Raymond Barre. At the height of his power he gave interviews in which he said, half-jokingly, that he was "a god." He thought he could change not only human nature, but the world. But how exactly did he get such access to men of power? Some clues about Kojeve's ideas about the relationship of a "wise" advisor to powerful men come to light in his writing on an ancient book, On Tyranny, by Xenophon. In it, a man of wisdom, Simonides, approaches a Greek tyrant, Hiero, seeking to influence him. Simonides gets Hiero talking about what makes him unhappy, then holds out hope that he can help him. Hiero complains that his subjects envy him his position and think his is the best life because of the power, honours and goods it affords. But he is at an impasse. Though he has much force at his disposal, he can rarely travel freely for fear of assassination. Though he has glamorous lovers, he can never be certain whether they love him or just want something from him. Though he can gorge himself on the finest food, he never enjoys it as much as a poor, hungry man enjoys his meal. His subjects are his prisoners, but he is a prisoner to his passion for power, honour and things. Though he sought his position in order to be honoured, he must hold it by force and, consequently, is never sure he is truly honoured. The tyrant is at an impasse. Simonides, a character conceived in the classical philosophical tradition, sees that this impasse means that the tyrant is blinded by his love of honour. Simonides sets out to moderate the tyrant, but not to change him, because the ancient thinkers didn't believe human nature could be changed. Kojeve thought tyrants can do good, because alongside the quest for recognition as a core human motivation, there is another motivation: the quest for the solitary pleasure that follows the effective execution of a task, as when a solitary child makes a picture. Because even the tyrant wants to execute his governing task effectively, he soon turns to reasonable advisors. Kojeve wrote: "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.' " It's an appalling statement, by a man who was a contemporary of Hitler, Stalin and Mao (who argued that the masses were a blank piece of paper to write on). Kojeve minimized Stalin's violence, which he saw as for a good purpose, and wrote to Stalin seeking an audience ("Let's do lunch"), perhaps hoping to change his nature. But Stalin was no Hiero; his leisure time was occupied efficiently executing 20 million people. His solitary pleasure. In our time, the anti-Kojeve view was most ably represented by philosopher Leo Strauss, who revived the serious study of ancient thinkers and was one of the few thinkers Kojeve respected as an equal. Strauss attacked Kojeve's attempt to defend the tyrant: "One cannot become a tyrant and remain a tyrant without stooping to do base things; hence, a self-respecting man will not aspire to tyrannical power." A good man will not aspire to be a tyrant because it goes against his basic human nature, which is not suddenly transformed when a tyrant decides he wants to do some good things. Time will tell whether Kojeve's status as a Soviet agent simply meant that the KGB chiefs counted themselves lucky that the most famous and admired French mandarin of his time was openly pro-Stalin, or whether this brilliant, flawed aspirant to become modern Europe's first philosopher king passed on secrets to Stalin and undermined NATO. And time will tell whether human nature can be fundamentally changed by historical conditions, or merely channelled in different directions. Copyright © Southam Inc. 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