Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève on Tyranny and Theory

McIlwain, David

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-13381-8_6

David McIlwain⁴

Part of the book series: Recovering Political Philosophy ((REPOPH))

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Abstract

The debate between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève in On Tyranny is most often approached in terms of the quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns—Strauss having sought a philosophical opponent capable of making a consistent and intransigent case for modern thought against which his revival of Socratic political philosophy might appear in the greatest clarity. However, McIlwain argues that the debate can also be understood in terms of Strauss and Kojève’s shared interest in Heidegger’s interpretation of the “Call of Conscience” and its connection with the state of nature as the starting point for the moral and political thought of Hobbes and Hegel. This approach better reveals the stark differences between Strauss and Kojève on the relationship of the philosopher to political history.

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Notes

1.
Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 204.
2.
Leo Strauss, On Tyranny: Corrected and Expanded Edition, Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence, ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 24–25.
3.
Leo Strauss, Letter to Jacob Klein, February 16, 1939, cited in William H. F. Altman, The German Stranger: Leo Strauss and National Socialism (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011), 506.
4.
Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. James H. Nichols and ed. Allan Bloom (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), 75–76.
5.
Stanley Rosen, G. W. F. Hegel: An Introduction to the Science of Wisdom (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2000), 272. In the footnote attached to this statement Rosen refers to the “hypnotic” quality of Kojève’s system.
6.
Alexandre Kojève, “Tyranny and Wisdom,” in Strauss, On Tyranny, 139.
7.
Alexandre Kojève, Letter to Leo Strauss, September 19, 1950, in Strauss, On Tyranny, 255.
8.
Robert Howse, Leo Strauss: Man of Peace (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 72–74.
9.
Mark Lilla, Reckless Minds: Intellectuals in Politics (New York: The New York Review of Books, 2001), 118.
10.
Waller R. Newell, “Kojève’s Hegel, Hegel’s Hegel, and Strauss’s Hegel: A Middle Range Approach to the Debate about Tyranny and Totalitarianism,” Philosophy, History, and Tyranny: Reexamining the Debate between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève, ed. Timothy W. Burns and Bryan-Paul Frost (New York: SUNY Press, 2016), 247.
11.
Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 193.
12.
In 1935 Strauss congratulated Kojève for embracing his sterner views of the Parisian philosophes and warned him once more against slipping into the life of the café philosopher. Leo Strauss, Letter to Alexandre Kojève, May 9, 1935, in Strauss, On Tyranny, 229–230.
13.
Leo Strauss, Letter to Alexandre Kojève, September 11, 1957, in Strauss, On Tyranny, 291.
14.
Leo Strauss, Hobbes’s Critique of Religion and Related Writings, trans. Gabriel Bartlett and Svetozar Minkov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 154.
15.
Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics, 16.
16.
Strauss, On Tyranny, 196.
17.
Corey Abel, “Oakeshott’s Wise Defense: Christianity as a Civilization,” in The Meaning of Michael Oakeshott’s Conservatism, ed. Corey Abel (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010), 28 n. 15.
18.
Strauss considered ideology to be evidence that man needs right and that he is aware that “not everything is permitted.” Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 129–130.
19.
Strauss, On Tyranny, 208, 210.
20.
Cited in Timothy W. Burns, “The Place of the Strauss- Kojève Debate in the Work of Leo Strauss,” in Philosophy, History, and Tyranny, 18–19.
21.
Leo Strauss, Letter to Alexandre Kojève, August 22, 1948, in Strauss, On Tyranny, 236.
22.
Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics, 103.
23.
Leo Strauss, “An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism,” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 42. See also Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? (New York: Free Press, 1959), 38.
24.
See Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, trans. Marcus Brainard (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 45–51.
25.
Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 21.
26.
Burns, “Place of the Strauss-Kojève Debate in the Work of Leo Strauss,” 19.
27.
Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 20–21, 53.
28.
Strauss made reference to this common background in the final words of his “Restatement.” However, the significance and status of this paragraph (which was removed from the first American editions) is ambiguous.
29.
Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, 48–49, 51 n.
30.
Strauss, What is Political Philosophy, 40.
31.
Strauss, On Tyranny, 207.
32.
Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 61.
33.
Burns, “Place of the Strauss-Kojève Debate in the Work of Leo Strauss,” 31.
34.
See Luc Foisneau, “Authoritarian State Vs Totalitarian State: Leviathan in an Early Twentieth-Century French Debate,” in Leviathan Between the Wars: Hobbes’s Impact on Early Twentieth Century Political Philosophy, ed. Luc Foisneau, John-Christophe Merle, and Tom Sorell (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005), 77–94.
35.
Kojève, “Tyranny and Wisdom,” 161.
36.
Ibid., 175.
37.
Alexandre Kojève, “Interpretation of the General Introduction to Chapter VII [The Religion Chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit],” trans. Ian Alexander Moore, Parrhesia 20 (2014): 29.
38.
Alexandre Kojève, “Hegel, Marx, and Christianity,” trans. Hilail Gildin, Interpretation 1, no. 1 (1970): 22.
39.
Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 259 n.
40.
Alexandre Kojève, “The Idea of Death in the Philosophy of Hegel,” trans. Joseph J. Carpino, Interpretation 3, nos. 2/3 (1973): 124.
41.
Richard L. Velkley, “History, Tyranny, and the Presuppositions of Philosophy,” in Philosophy, History, and Tyranny, 258–259.
42.
Cf. Rosen, G. W. F. Hegel, 164 and Steven B. Smith, Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism: Rights in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 163.
43.
Kojève, “Death in the Philosophy of Hegel,” 155.
44.
Strauss, On Tyranny, 192.
45.
Ibid., 191.
46.
Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 291.
47.
Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 291. Strauss’s contrast with Machiavelli in this regard is striking. Socrates is named at least 12 times in Thoughts on Machiavelli, and after On Tyranny Strauss’s work on Xenophon was focused on his Socratic writings.
48.
Michael Oakeshott, “Dr. Leo Strauss on Hobbes,” in Hobbes on Civil Association (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), 158.
49.
Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, trans. Elsa M. Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 57–58. See also 20–22.
50.
Strauss, On Tyranny, 192.
51.
Cited in Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 247.
52.
G. W. F. Hegel, Outlines of a Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox and ed. Stephen Houlgate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 307.
53.
Leo Strauss, “Notes on Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political,” in Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, trans. J. Harvey Lomax (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 91–119.
54.
Alexandre Kojève, Letter to Leo Strauss, November 2, 1936, in Strauss, On Tyranny, 231–234.
55.
G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baille (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2003), 107.
56.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (London: Penguin, 1985), XX, 255.
57.
Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 20–21.
58.
According to Kojève the clarification of this aspect of Hegel’s philosophy had been achieved by Heidegger in Being and Time. Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 259 n.
59.
Kojève, “Hegel, Marx, and Christianity,” 42.
60.
Lilla, Reckless Minds, 135.
61.
Hobbes, Leviathan, XX, 255.
62.
Strauss, On Tyranny, 192.
63.
Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 125 n. 2.
64.
Alexandre Kojève, Letter to Leo Strauss, November 2, 1936, in Strauss, On Tyranny, 232.
65.
G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. John Sibree (Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2001), 426.
66.
Leo Strauss, “Seminar in Political Philosophy: Hegel’s The Philosophy of History,” delivered March 9, 1965 at the University of Chicago. Leo Strauss Center, University of Chicago.
67.
However cf. Patrick Riley, “Introduction to the Reading of Alexandre Kojève,” Political Theory 9, no. 1 (February 1981): 46–47 n. 188.
68.
H. S. Harris, “Review: The End of History: An Essay on Modern Hegelianism,” Dialogue 24, no. 4 (December 1985): 742.
69.
Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics, 15–16.
70.
Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 47–48.
71.
Strauss, What is Political Philosophy, 180.
72.
Strauss, Hobbes’s Critique of Religion, 26.
73.
Cited in Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 153.
74.
Strauss, Natural Right and History, 168–169.
75.
Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic: Part I, Human Nature, Part II, De Corpore Politico, ed. J. C. A. Gaskin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 19.
76.
Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 150; Strauss, Hobbes’s Critique of Religion, 161–162.
77.
Strauss, On Tyranny, 192.
78.
Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 57.
79.
Strauss, On Tyranny, 192 [emphasis added].
80.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 307.
81.
Smith, Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism, 164.
82.
Strauss, Natural Right and History, 197–198.
83.
Leo Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 167.
84.
Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 298–299.
85.
Heinrich Meier, Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion, trans. Robert Berman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 105 n. 156.
86.
Strauss, City and Man, 140.
87.
See Strauss, Natural Right and History, 323.
88.
A more moderate expression is provided in Alexandre Kojève, Outline of a Phenomenology of Right, ed. Bryan-Paul Frost and trans. Bryan-Paul Frost and Robert Howse (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).
89.
Leo Strauss, “Progress or Return?” in Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 239.
90.
Strauss, What is Political Philosophy, 311.
91.
Strauss, City and Man, 5.
92.
See Howse, Leo Strauss, 153.
93.
Alexander Wendt, “Why a World State is Inevitable,” European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 4 (2003): 523.
94.
Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 293.
95.
Strauss, On Tyranny, 192.
96.
Strauss, “Heideggerian Existentialism,” 29.

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Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, Australia
David McIlwain

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McIlwain, D. (2019). Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève on Tyranny and Theory. In: Michael Oakeshott and Leo Strauss. Recovering Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13381-8_6

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13381-8_6
Published: 15 March 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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