Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-05-27T21:39:35.487Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

States of Violence and Infatuation in Politics: The Idea of Right at the Heart of Their Excesses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Stéphane Douailler*
Affiliation:
Université de Paris-VIII
*
Stéphane Douailler, Université de Paris-VIII, Département de philosophie, 2 rue de la Liberté, Saint-Denis, Paris 93 526, France Email: douailler@gmail.com

Abstract

The idea of the political state as a cluster of stability amidst chaos entails an inflation of legal ties that bind the immoderation of the chaos through an immoderate set of laws. This paper suggests an examination of the opposite approach, one attempted by Alexandre Kojève during the Second World War: an investigation of the practice of disassociation. By presenting four loose figures (the judge, the leader, the father, the master) in his book La notion d’autorité, Kojève pursued his quest for a disinterested operator in Esquisse d’une phénoménologie du droit, where he described its emergence out of the void created by anthropogenic desire in the natural world. As an outcome of this approach, history-laden figures such as the judge, leader, father or master, are replaced by the admission and promotion of the random human being. The quest for other figures starts here: the paper evokes, for example, the case of the misanthrope.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Clark, AN, Mankikar, GD (1975) “The Diogenes Syndrome: A Clinical Study of Gross Neglect in Old Age”, The Lancet, 15: 366368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desanti, J-T (2004) La peau des mots. Réflexions sur la question éthique. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Goureau, J-B (2007) “Un Diogène fou de rage?” in Toudoire-Soulapierre, F (ed.) La misanthropie au théâtre. Paris: PUF.Google Scholar
Hobbes, T (1651) Leviathan or the Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil. London: Andrew Crooke.Google Scholar
Kojève, A (1942) La notion de l’autorité. Paris: Gallimard, re-ed. 2004.Google Scholar
Kojève, A (1943) Esquisse d’une phénoménologie du droit. Paris: Gallimard, re-ed. 1981.Google Scholar
Kojève, A (1947) Introduction à la lecture de Hegel. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Locke, J (1690) “Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government”, in Two Treatises of Government. London: Awnsham Churchill.Google Scholar