Reviews for On tyranny

The average rating for On tyranny based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-01-18 00:00:00 Eron Tierson The first half of the 20th century made fools of politicians, political scientists and political philosophers in more or less equal measure. The radical dangers posed by rising extremist ideologies like National Socialism, existentialism and Bolshevism went unrecognized by most 20th century students of government until far too late. Given a choice, much of humanity had spurned democracy and embraced totalitarianism, the most insidious form of tyranny that humanity had seen since the Inquisition. The consequences were catastrophic. Basic notions of government that had sustained Europe and the New World for generations seemed obsolete. Especially in Europe, the Enlightenment’s assumed improvement of the human condition was cast into grave doubt. At mid-century, standing at the intersection of the ending Second World War and the dawning Cold War, the political philosopher Leo Strauss posed the question, why did we not see it coming? What is it about modern political science that explains why it was so late to recognize profound tyranny even as it grabbed large portions of the West by the throat? To explore that question, Strauss turns to the ancients and, in particular, to Xenophon’s dialogue HIERO or THE TYRANT. HIERO is the only surviving classical Greek writing that is devoted to an express discussion of the nature of a tyrant. Strauss seems to suppose that Xenophon can teach us something useful about recognizing tyranny in our own time. To execute his notion, Strauss gives us his own new translation of HIERO, his explanatory essay dissecting HIERO, a critique of Strauss’s explanatory essay written by Alexandre Kojeve, Strauss’s response to Kojeve’s critique and, in later editions, Strauss’s editors have added the Strauss-Kojeve correspondence. Xenophon’s dialogue divides into two parts. In the first part, Hiero complains to Simonides that being a tyrant is not what it’s cracked up to be. A tyrant’s lot is not a happy one per Hiero. In the second part, Simonides counsels Hiero that he might be happier if he made an effort to be a benevolent tyrant and offers concrete examples for how to be benevolent. All in all, this is a pretty thin gruel. This dialogue of Xenophon’s has long been regarded as a minor work, and there is nothing about Strauss’s new translation that should cause readers to regard it anew. Strauss’s explanatory essay displays his remarkable talent for interpreting the text of an ancient writer. Strauss can squeeze all of the juice from such a lemon and he does so tediously at times in his essay. But his take on tyranny as posited by Xenophon is disappointingly shallow. What distinguishes a tyrant from a king is ‘legitimacy’. What confers legitimacy is the rule of law. Therefore, what makes a tyrant a tyrant is that he has acquired power (or maintained it) outside legal means. But what makes law? Sometimes, the illegitimate can be transformed and become law by becoming accepted. How does this happen? It happens through benevolence (at least some of the time). In effect, there is an algorithmic relationship between power, legitimacy, law and benevolence that defines the difference between a tyrant and a king as Strauss interprets Xenophon. Kojeve disputes all of this. For him, there is no significant distinction between tyrants and kings (or other leaders). They all act from a desire to be recognized, a basic human impulse. There is no reason why a dictator cannot be a good leader just as a legally chosen leader can be good. But what Kojeve really wants to talk about is the universal state or the end of history. In particular, given that the universal state is inevitable in his Hegelian-Marxist opinion, do individuals make a difference anyway? Strauss’s response to Kojeve’s critique is uninspired, it seemed to this reader. He is like an expert witness testifying in a trial to respond to the opinion of another expert. He is all about criticizing the first opinion but fails to give a plausible or complete opinion of his own. This may be harsh, but I was disappointed that the exchange progressed in the way that it did between these two brilliant men. My issue may be that Kojeve hijacked the discussion and the hijacking does not work because Kojeve’s take on Hegel is misguided. I lack sufficient understanding of Hegel to certify of my own knowledge that this is what went on. I can say this. The questions that Strauss and Kojeve debate are important and deserve our attention. But ON TYRANNY is a flawed forum for sorting out the answers to those questions. I recommend that before you decide to read ON TYRANNY that you read Robert Pippin’s review of ON TYRANNY that published under the title: “Being, Time and Politics: The Strauss-Kojeve Debate”. Pippin’s 20 pages review will give you an excellent sense of whether you want to tackle ON TYRANNY.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-07-16 00:00:00 Michael Pierce "On Tyranny" consists of a helpful foreward that frames the dense writings of Strauss and Kojève, Strauss's reprint and commentary on Xenophon's Hiero (an obscure Greek dialogue), Kojève's critique, and Strauss's response to the critique, as well as letters between the two, who, despite occupying vastly different philosophical positions, maintained a close friendship. Strauss (and Kojève, for that matter) can be a frustrating read. In my estimation, there were two main points of contention in the Strauss-Kojève debate: firstly, the relationship between philosophy and society (both believe that the two are in conflict, but for different reasons and with different upshots) and secondly, implications on the philosopher's relationship to political action, and by extension, the two writers' concept of meaning in history. In a word, the book could perhaps be summarized by the notion that, where Strauss's patron saint is Plato (and the ancient Greeks, generally), Kojève's is Hegel. Kojève believed that philosophers can only enjoy subjective certainty in private, so must prove their ideas in the "marketplace" of the world, both to gain recognition as well as an epistemic criterion of validity. Public verification, according to him, is necessarily political, since it involves convincing others. Thus, the philosopher finds him or herself caught between their desire to contemplate the Good and the need to become a ruler. Kojève resolves this apparent conflict by invoking Hegelian dialectic, whereby philosophical ideas express themselves politically through history. Somewhat rigidly, he applies the Hegelian system in arguing that the end state of history is the "universal, homogeneous state", wherein the totality of the earth's population subscribes to and recognizes a final philosophy. To Strauss, this universal state was a disquieting conclusion. Where Kojève invokes Hegel, Strauss appeals to the ancients, who believed that only an elect few could hope to achieve true understanding and virtue (a view that Kojève and many view as an aristocratic elitism). A few select quotes, since Strauss will say it better than I could ever hope to paraphrase it: “Did Hegel not say something to the effect that the state in which one man is free is the Oriental despotic state? Is the universal and homogeneous state then merely a planetary Oriental despotism?” “But if the final state is to satisfy the deepest longing of the human soul, every human being must be capable of becoming wise. The most relevant difference among human beings must have practically disappeared. We understand now why Kojève is so anxious to refute the classical view according to which only a minority of men are capable of the quest for wisdom. If the classics are right, only a few men will be truly happy in the universal and homogeneous state and hence only a few men will find their satisfaction in and through it.” “Kojève in fact confirms the classical view that unlimited technological progress and its accompaniment, which are indispensable conditions of the universal and homogeneous state, are destructive of humanity.” “But neither the wise men nor the philosophers will desire to rule. For this reason alone, to say nothing of others, the Chief of the universal and homogeneous state, or the Universal and Final Tyrant will be an unwise man, as Kojève seems to take for granted. To retain his power, he will be forced to suppress every activity which might lead people into doubt of the essential soundness of the universal and homogeneous state: he must suppress philosophy as an attempt to corrupt the young.” One can never be sure of exactly what Strauss thought of the two contentions I outline above, since he allegedly wrote as esoterically as he believed the ancient Greeks to have written. In my estimation, Strauss viewed philosophy as inherently and necessarily subversive of society. As such, the two could never integrate as Kojève suggested, since, the moment philosophy is accepted, it ceases to be philosophy. Indeed, the Hegelian "final state" is one in which philosophy (and, as a result, humanity) is destroyed, once and for all. Strauss, however, agreed with Kojève that the philosopher should seek to communicate his views through the marketplace – but only for the purpose of finding like-minded, elite individuals. Though not explicitly written in the book, it can be inferred that the means through which philosophers accomplish this seeking is through oblique, esoteric writing. An open question for me is whether or not Strauss saw any responsibility of (or, indeed capacity for) philosophical subversives to impact society and history. He, true to his style, omits commentary here, leaving the reader to simply infer. Unsurprisingly, the two bards lived out their respective worldviews and each chose a characteristic medium of influence: where Kojève was instrumental in the formation of the EU (what modern conservatives might see as a universalist, globalist project), Strauss became a professor of political philosophy at the University of Chicago.