Just Curious

The proper point of departure in our inquiry of human conditions, Xenophon, Hegel, Kojeve and Strauss

I have mentioned several days ago that I was going to write a coherent account on how I think philosophers and legal theorists should treat the human individual. I did write one out, and emailed it to Hilary Ellis, a friend from Penn and a most wonderful person, and Prof. Dennis DeTurck, my math professor during college days. I'm not sure I want to publish it on this blog at this point though. I hope I could one day write a more detailed account of it.

Aside from this, I had some very interesting conversations with Prof. DeTurck and Jeff Segurit, another friend from Penn, regarding the recent "rear window incident" at Penn. It reinforced my interest in alternative forms of dispute resolution, and my understanding that social norms, rather than law, sometimes provide better frameworks (or "shadow," to steal Prof. Bob Mnookin's phraseology) under which parties may resolve their disputes.

Right now I've just started working on Xenophon's "Hiero," or "Tyrannicus," Leo Strauss' "On Tyranny" and the debate and correspondences between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojeve. Despite being a quasi-Marxian, many of Kojeve's claims, such as those regarding the consummation of human history, the universality of Robespierrien-Bonapartist notions of democracy, and the possibility of one "comprehensive, coherent account" for wisdom and its condition precedent, the "end of history," all sound quite suspicious. Is this supposed to be a return to vulgar Hegelianism/Marxism and Historicism? In which the "Spirit" of history determines how each "stage" of history shall evolve into the next? In which every human event is "historically inevitable"?

On the other hand, I do share his notion on how the mutual recognition of each individual's equal freedom of opportunity and dignity should be the ultimate end of all human endeavor. I also share with him this longing for a homogenous society, in which everyone is essentially the same, in which the prophecy in Isaiah 25 could be realized. (A society comprised of the "last men"?)

(And here it goes. The term "diversity" has become some kind of mantra these days. But as long as our Idea of the "true man"/"last man"/ is truly a priori, as long as we don't (as Kojeve sneakily did) smuggle empirical notions such as Bonapartism in, homogeneity means true equality, not "hegemony." To be honest with those of you who bother to read this blog, I just don't see the beauty of diversity. Instead I celebrate the one-ness of humankind. Whether such homogeneity should, as Kojeve claimed, be achieved by a totalitarian state is another question. It seems to me that Kojeve made here the big mistake of attempting to force a social revolution through political institutions, the same mistake the Jacobins made in the French Revolution...)

Furthermore, Kojeve's notion of praxis as verification of theory is also peculiar. Just why the "recognizing by others of our theory" has become the chief end of praxis is never clear to me.

Now there is one thing which I do side with Kojeve against Strauss. Strauss maintained that it is impossible for a philosopher to be political, and that philosophers should try as hard as they could to escape from politics. Kojeve, on the other hand, argues that it is through praxis that the philosopher realizes his theory, thereby not only vindicating but also realizing his own being. I'm totally with Kojeve on this.

If Kojeve's account is suspicious, Leo Strauss gets worse. He rejected the Kojeveian worldview by arguing that it runs counter to "human nature," a nature to be sublime, good and outstanding. Strauss argued that any political theory must take "human nature" into account. One wonders what he means by "human nature." If by human nature
Strauss meant "human essence" then I bet Kojeve would agree with him on this, since the Marxian "human essence" really pertains to men's proper relationships with his fellow beings, as well as his longing for self-expression, his longing to "be." But I'm not sure what Strauss really meant. Kojeve took it that Strauss really was a God-d-mn supporter of "Biologism," of eugenics and other sh-t of that sort. I doubt that this is the case. Now if we demarcate the human individual into his rational and natural self as Kant did though, we could easily reconcile the two. What man's "spiritual nature" would naturally prompt him to act on, by virtue of his being rational, becomes an obligation on the natural man.

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Back to the baseline. I've also been thinking about the moral implications of Richard Dawkins' version/brand of Darwinism. Now that's Biologism in its most naked form, and my friends do not be mistaken: Prof. Dawkins, together with Prof. Peter Singer, etc. are out there to put us human beings back in our proper moral place, alongside chimps, gorillas and other cute little creatures, and the fast and dirty way of achieving this is to argue that all our moral sentiments, etc. originate from our genes. Any individual basis for rationality is denied. Our mind is no more than our brains.

This should make all the rest of us think. What are these professors up to? Hmm..the denial even of the existence of a human society ("Kingdom of Freedom") apart from the natural world ("Kingdom of Nature/Necessity")...what does this mean? I'm sure the readers (there there's any :)) know where I'm getting at...voila! The abolition of all bases of morality independent from nature. Everything becomes justifiable, this time not as historically inevitable but as "naturally inevitable." No wonder animal rights people never pay any attention whatsoever to animal welfare. (Note the difference between animal rights and animal welfare, a distinction stressed repeatedly by both animal rights advocates and their opponents.)

posted by James Chang @ 1:16 AM