The Notion of Authority by Alexandre Kojeve

Author:Alexandre Kojeve [Kojeve, Alexandre]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781781680957
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2014-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

II. METAPHYSICAL ANALYSIS

Let us now move on to the metaphysical analysis of the phenomenon of Authority; this analysis can only be sketched out here.

There is no doubt that Authority is an essentially human (non-natural) phenomenon – which means (without our being able to demonstrate this here) it is social and historical: Authority presupposes a society (or the State in a broad sense,9 that is to say something other than an animal horde where ‘reaction’ is not possible). In addition, society presupposes (and implies) history (and not just a biological and natural evolution).

In other words, Authority can ‘manifest’ itself (become a ‘phenomenon’) only in a World with a temporal structure. The metaphysical foundation of Authority is therefore a ‘modification’ of the entity ‘Time’ (to be understood as ‘human’ or ‘historic’ Time with the rhythm: Future, Past, Present, as opposed to ‘natural’ Time, with the predominance of the Present in the ‘physical’ sphere, or the Past in the ‘biological’ sphere). Since there is the primacy of the Future, there is also (as we shall see) the primacy of the Authority of the Leader. Authority par excellence is that of the (political, religious, and so on) ‘revolutionary’ Leader with a universal ‘project’ (Stalin). There is no Authority in the Eternal as such. And if, as we shall see, a type of Authority is metaphysically founded on Eternity, it is only in its relations with time that the Eternal ‘manifests itself’ in the guise of Authority.

There is no doubt that Time therefore has the value of an Authority. And, curiously enough – and this may also seem at first sight paradoxical – it has this in all its three modes.

First of all, the Past. A Past is always ‘venerable’; tampering with it is ‘sacrilegious’; to neglect it is ‘inhuman’. The Authority of an institution has always been ‘justified’ (explained) by its antiquity (especially in pagan Antiquity). Similarly, the seniority of a family, of a State, has always been not only a title of glory, but also a very real foundation of Authority.

But there is, on the other hand, an equally indisputable Authority, that of the Future. The ‘man of the future’ has an Authority from the mere fact of having ‘everything before him’. It is from the Future they embody that the ‘young’ derive their Authority, which, at times, can be considerable. We recognise voluntarily the Authority of the ‘man of tomorrow’. And one can also claim for one’s own self millennia to come (see Hitler) as well as past millennia (see Mussolini).

Finally, the Present itself has an Authority as Present. We want to be up to date,10 we do not want to be ‘behind the times’. The enormous – and ‘tyrannical’ – Authority of ‘fashion’ is an Authority of the Present, of the ‘actual’. The Authority of the ‘man of the moment’ pertains to the fact that it is he, par excellence, who represents ‘actuality’, the Present, the ‘real presence’ of something in the world (Hegel’s Gegenwart), as opposed to the ‘poetic’ unreality of the past and the ‘utopian’ unreality of the future.

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