On Spiritual Crisis, Globalization, and Planetary Rule

Chapter 3

On Spiritual Crisiso Globalization,and Planetarv Rule

Tom Darby

Because of the incessant chatter we have heard about what is in store for us as weenter a new century and cross the threshold into the third millennium of Westerncivilization, one must apologize for bringing up this subject. Yet apology does notjust have to be a plea for forgiveness. An apology also can be the offering of anexplanation, a defense, or, literally, a going forth with words (apo-logosl-withnew words about the way things are, or are not. Apologies are about forgiving thepast and therefore about new beginnings. And new beginnings come when one hascrossed over that threshold, that boundary that separates a world where experiencecan be taken for granted, in that its parts tacitly can be related and hence madesense of in a broader context or whole. This boundary itself is a no-man's land, anin-between that is both tenible and magical. The experience of crossing thisboundary constitutes the true meaning of crrsls. A crisis occurs when the categoriesfor making sense ofour experience no longer work for us and our experience isrendered meaningless.

A crisis, in the above sense, is at the same time a spiritual crisis, or, if you will,a crisis of the spirit, in that spirit has to do with purpose. Crisis is about an acutedisjrurction between that which most concems us and the common or overarchingmetaphors we embrace to find something common in the manifold of this variedand dense experience. Crisis then occurs whenour shared oroverarchingmetaphorbecomes uprooted from our shared underlying concerns-when, as we might sayfiguratively, the sky above us no longer connects to the earth below us. It seemsthat in the West there always has been a relation between crisis and new ways ofseeing and doing, thinking and acting, knowing and making. But it is the crisisitself that has given rise to the new perceptions and practices, summed up as an"apology."

36 Tom Darby

Plato's own dialogue on Socrates' apology comes to mind, as does his moreextensive apology,his Repub lic,his attempt to address Athens' spiritual crisis. Andthen there is St. Augustine's City of God, his apology as an explanation to theRomans who thought the sacking of the "Etemal City" was a result of the wrath ofthe pagan gods for Rome's having forsaken them for Christianity. Plato's apologyis the beginning of philosophy, and Augustine's apology-his blending ofHellenism and Hebrewism-marks both the beginning of Western time and thedefining explanation of the West itself: time as history and history as progress.

At the end of this period we call the West stands Hegel and Nietzsche, whoprovided their own apologies, and in doing so, when considered together, set thetemplate for both the upheavals ofthe twentieth century and the reflections on thiscentury by such thinkers as Alexandre Kojdve, Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt, andMartin Heidegger. These four are the most important thinkers of the last and ournew century, for just as the thoughts of Hegel and Nietzsche have best informedus as to what our own time is about, the thoughts of these four will define theboundaries of thought for the future.

The hinge that holds the thoughts of these four together is the Hegel-Nietzscherelation itself, and it is this relation that leads to the heart of their commonreflections, reflections that center on the question: "who has the right to rule theplanet?" It is well-known that for Hegel the slave has won the right to rule, but forNietzsche the rule of the slave is the greatest of all scandals, for it is tantamount tothe transformation of the planet into the vulgar world of the Last Man. But thistension between Hegel and Nietzsche has proved to be more than a merephilosophical disagreement, for their conflicting theoretical visions were to becomethe theater of the actual contest for the rule of the planet in the twentieth century.I refer to that which best describes this passing century-to that which Nietzscheforetold in Beyond Good and Ew7-global technological warfare.

Global war is impossible without global technology. Technology is theindependent variable of modernity, and the contest for the planet is impossiblewithout technology. Whether in the form of global exploration, conquest,colonialization, or in this century, world war, the contest always has been aboutwho has had the best means-the best technology-to rule the planet. This contesthas been justified and explained in various ways throughout modemity, but nowit has entered a phase that we, only in the last decade of this century, have come tocall "globalization."

Just as the destruction of Hellenic culture was brought about by Athenianimperialism-the "globalization" of the smaller world of Socrates' day-and themany sackings ofRome spelledthe endto Romancivilization-the "globalization"of that day-the visions of Hegel and Nietzsche pertain both to the eclipse of theWest and to the eclipse of the notion of unilinear time: time as history and historyas progress. Likewise, it is during the actual and spiritual disaster of the twentiethcentury that Kojdve, Strauss, Schmitt, and Heidegger both begin a search formeaning at the heart of such calamity and makc an it l lcl lpt lo rnovc heyorrd.

These four contemporarics---and, to all cxlclrl, coll lr lrolrrlols irr tr l lcrnpting to

( ) r r Slr i r r t r r ; r l ( l : ; i : ; , ( ikr l r ; r l rz:r l rorr , ; r r r t l l ' l ; r r r t . l : r ry l l r r le \ l

r r r , ' r ,c l rcyont l , r r l l l rcct lct l Nictzschc's wol t ls : . .onc nrust stop hack hcl i l rc oncl, ,r|r; " ( 'orrsidorirrg to wlrcrer caclr stcps hlck or. bcgirrs and t6 whcro each leaps"i ' r l y()rl wil l, l i lnds, wc slx)uld l irst consitlcr Alcxanclrc Ko-iive because it is herrlrrr rr.sr dircctly and concrctoly addrcsscs qucstions that are at the background, ' l Fhr l r r l crrr tcst :quest ionsconccrning ( l )howandwhyhistoryended,(2)whor rrlt ' ' , :rr rhc cnd ol'history, and (3) what this means in terms of the transformation,,1 rlrr' pLurct tlrrough global technology. Thus, we begin this essay in three partsrr rtlr l'..jcvc, who begins with Hegel, for like Hegel, who came with the dawn ofrlr, l.r:;r ct:'rury, and Nietzsche who came with its dusk, Kojdve opens the door torlr', ( ('rrury as we cross the threshold into the third millennium according to the\\ r'.11'111 way of recognizing time. Strauss and Schmitt close it, and as we careenrrrrr r rlrt' nL:xt millennium, Heidegger then cracks open the door to the next.

The End of History: Kojive's Serious Joke

\ li r;rrrtl't: Ko.ieve's original name was Alexandre Kojdveikoff. He was bom inlr r ."r.r rr l()02, fled the Bolshevik Revolution, was imprisoned in poland, and in| 't 'u rrr:rtlc his way to Germany, where he studied with Karl Jaspers at Heidelberg'r,, I rr r I lcr lirr was exposed to Husserl and Heidegger. He received his doctorate inl"'(, I'v('.tually, Kojdve went to paris and there became known as a man ofl' tt{ r'.. ir tclcher of philosophy, and later, as a bureaucrat.

\ ' .r r*r of letters, Kojdve's musings on subjects ranging from politics,l ir i r;rrrrrt ' . ;rrd even to the painting of his day made him a public f igure in the',:rrrr, | ,'l voltaire, yet he was more playful, more ironic, and more radical thant l r r , ' l l r l l i rX.

| 'I 'r, \ (' lrr-:ciuns a serious teacher in 1931 when he took over a course on Hegelf i' 'rrr lrr', f r icrrd Alexandre Koyre atthe Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes, section!,

", r, ttr't'.\ Religieuses. There his reflections on the particular events of his time

=ir'l "l r11qlf in general defined much of what was to become fwentieth-cenfury1'l, i l , ' . , ' | , lrv. Many of Kojdve's sfudents would become luminaries, some betterI r', ',r s; r11.111 K..idve himself. But in the last decade of this century this has changed' 'r, rrlr.rr, tluc largely to Francis Fukuyama's popular book about the end of| ' i i ' ' i \ | I r rs book was popular because Fukuyama tord westerners in general and'. ! !,, I ri .rr r:i in particularwhat they wantedto hear. Ironically, although F-ukuyama's",, lii.rlrrs rrhout the Americanized "future" has already begun to look rather

rr!:,,,,r tlr. lransformation of this serious (and for some, grim) notion intoi t, ii, \ r '.{rrc cntertainment has given "the end of history" the cache of an urban': ' r lr 1., ' ; i 'vc-who died during the high seriousness of the student revolts ofi " . ' r , ' r rk l have loved this. l

! |,, r,,rr t' r lrrce more serious reasons why Kojeve became better known during, l , i . i r , l , r ; r t lcof thelastcentury.First , i thasbeendiscoveredthatthesfudentsofri'i '1q1 , .hscure Marxist-atheist joke teller were all reacting to his startling' 'i liiiri' , tlrrrt lristory was over and that his erstwhile students were either timidlv

38 'l 'om Darby

maneuvering around Kojdve's conclusions or brazenly trying to further elaboratethe logic ofthese conclusions. In the camp of the former I refer to his students suchas Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and in the latter camp, the likesof Raymond Aron and Georges Bataille. Furthermore, by extension, I also refer tostudents of students. There was Louis Althusser, who studied with Merleau-Pontyand whose student was Michael Foucault, and then there is Jacques Derrida, whowas much influenced by Bataille, names we have come to associate with post-structuralism or postmodemism. Ah, what incestuous business! But then incest isthe story of philosophy.2 To be clear, without an understanding of the teachings ofKojdve, postmodernism not only makes no sense, it is impossible. This explains theembarrassing academic fad of "postmodernism," a fad mercifully now out offashion.

And then there is the third reason Kojdve became well-known during the lastdays of the last century. I will be blunt. In October of 1999 it was revealedby LeMonde that according to the French Secret Service Alexandre Kojdve had been aspy for the U.S.S.R. since the 1940s. I will return to this on several occasions.However, for now I will say that this was one ofKojdve's jokes. And Kojdve lovedjokes-well, ironic jokes.

Typical ofKojdve, hejoked that he had grown tired ofteaching philosophy andso became a bureaucrat, for after all, why would one want to be a teacher ofphilosophy when he could stay at the finest hotels and drink the finest wines, so hejoined the Ministry of Finance. In 1948 Kojdve was posted to Japan, and after along sojourn there, he went on to begin the negotiations for what would become theWorld Trade Organization (WTO) and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade(GATT). Eventually, Kojdve went to Brussels and became one of the architects forwhat was to become the European Union (EU). As we shall see, although it appearscontradictory, this self-professed Stalinist-Marxist practiced what he preached. So,to this also, we shall retum.

Although he wrote on varied subjects, Kojdve is best known for the collection ofhis and his students' notes taken from his seminar on Hegel. The notes werepublished under the title Introduction a la Lecture de HegeLt It is significant thatKojdve did not bother to write a book on this subject and rather left it to hisstudents to document his thoughts. But even more important, Kojdve was-by hisown seemingly flippant admission-lazy. Surprisingly, Kojdve's laziness is aninterpretive key to his work. Kojdve, like the gods who lived on timeless Olympus,saw himself as living at the end of time or history, and that as a philosopher his taskwas to explain the world that had come to be in terms of the complete and finalphilosophy-the Science ofHegel. This world for Ko.icvc was posthistorical in thatthere was nothing left to do except to complcto lhc ttrsk tt l ' t ttt ivcrsalizing andhomogenizingtheplanet. C)ras Kojdvclr inrscl l 'prr t i l i t t r rn i r t lc lv i ( !w. iust bclorehisdcath: "s i r rcc th is datc ( l t t06), whl l l r i rs l r i rppcrrct l ' / Nol l t t t tp ' , r r l i r l l , lhc al ig l t rncnt

On Spiritual Crisis, Globalization, and Planetary Rule 39

of the provinces. The Chinese revolution is only the introduction ofthe NapoleonicCode into China."o

The term "the alignment of the provinces" is a reference to none other than theprogressive elaboration ofthe technological world system, what Kojdve called theUniversal and Homogeneous State (U.H.S.) or what we now call "globalization."The date 1806 refers to the eve of the battle of Jena, when Hegel says that he

realized the significance of Napoleon's historic action, the date when Hegel'srealization that Napoleon's action brought into the concrete, historical world theprinciples that have been elaborated into the global system. Thus, Hegel saw thatNapoleon's action was the last action, in that everything that has come after it has

been, is, and will be a mere elaboration of it. This is what Kojdve means when he

says that nothing new has occurred since 1806. Indeed, what appeared to be a

flippant remark is now seen to be deadly serious, for since there is nothing left to

do or say except to elaborate Hegel's system, like the gods on timeless Olympus,

Kojdve merely plays. And yes, he is playing with us.Long before Kojdve's serious encounter with Hegel he was influenced by thc

thought of Vladimer Soloryov, a fellow Russian, who gave and later published aseries of lectures on what he called "God-manhood" ( 1878) and published his last

work called War, Progress and the End of History (1899). Solovyov's notion of

God-manhood is an extrapolation of his religiopolitical vision of a unified planet

and man becoming god. While Kojdve's Introduction was influenced by

Solovyov's reading of Hegel, Sololyov also influenced Dostoyevsky, who

modeled Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov after him. While Solovyov's visionof the end of history is an obvious influence on Kojdve, above all, Solovyov'sinfluence on Kojdve appears most precisely in Kojdve's filtering Hegel's notions

of time through Solovyov's mysticism and gnosticism found most explicitly in his

unfinished work,The Foundations of Theoretical Philosophy (1899).5 AlthoughKojdve never mentions his erstwhile Russian compatriot in his Introduclfutn,Kojdve wrote his doctoral dissertation on him, and the shadow of Solovyov is

everywhere present in Kojdve's reading of Hege1.6Another early but less profound influence ofKojdve was polymath-philosophor,

physician, science-fiction writer, and embalmer of Lenin-Alexander Bogdanov'Bogdanov, also guided by Sololyov's vision ofplanetary universality, developcdwhat he called "tectology" ( 1922), the guiding principle behind which is that Truth

is the totality of experience and Truth, therefore, becomes a method for organizingexperience, leading to the construction ofa coherent system based on the control

of experience itself. The circular logic is underscored by the fact that Truth hcrc

is spelled with an upper case'oT,n'an eccentricity that Kojdve himself would adopt

to indicate universalify, totality, and circularity. Much that seems esoteric or even

manic about Kojdve's thought becomes clearer and calmer when one considers thc

influence ofSolovyov and to a lesser extent ofBogdanov on Kojdve's work. Thus,

by stepping back to where Kojdve's ctrme from we gain insight into thc vision thatguides his interpretation of Hcgcl, pri lrcipally Kojdve's notion of lhc Univcrsal and

llomggcncous State and its rclir l iorr lo lcclrn<lklgy anii i ts rnystical antl g,noslic

40 Tom Darby

foundation. Many today who call themselves postmodems natter on about howHegel's philosophy is the most totalizing, hence most hegemonic of all Westerndiscourses. But it was Kojeve. the father of late twentieth-century postmodernism,who revealed that Hegel's philosophy indeed is the epitome of logo-centrism inthat it is a discourse that contains all of western discourse. Yet Kojdve also showsus that for it to be rational it must be complete, and if complete, it must contain itsopposite. Hence, the complete discourse at the end of history is undergirded by theirrational.

&&&

Kojdve's reading of Hegel is an interpretation and not a commentary.Interpretation. unlike commentary,T both begins outside its text and transcends it.All interpretation. for this reason, is deliberate misreading, in that it entails playfulrevision, and in Koieve's reading of Hegel, even theiettisoning of large portionsof Hegel's philosophy, such as his philosophy of nature. This is not to say that anytext can be read in any manner one wishes to read it; on the contrary, whilecommentary entails the attempt to faithfully render what an author meant,interpretation is an interplay between what an author meant and what an authormeans. Thus, interpretation is about the past, the present, and the future. This iswhat I meant when I said that interpretation transcends the text, and for this reasonit also is about time-the transcending of time. Kojdve's lnlroduction is not aboutHegel as such, but about Kojdve's reading of Hegel and what it means for thetwentieth century and beyond. It is this to which we are to be "introduced," and thisis captured in the sheer irony of the title itself. It is not an introduction to Hegel butto Kojdve's reading of Hegel. Kojdve's Introduction is a form of "serious play."

Kojdve's own serious introduction to Hegel came when Alexandre Koyreconvinced him that Hegel's philosophy was above all else a philosophy oftime andthat for Hegel to have known this, and in turn for Koyre and then Kojdve to cometo know it, time or history somehow had to have stopped.t Thus, Kojdve'sintroduction to Hegel began with this seemingly absurd claim by Koyre, a claimbased on his own conclusions, conclusions Koyre neither understood nor coulddeny. Koyre's conclusions were the following: (l) that Hegel had experienced inhimself all stages of consciousness by rethinking them, and in doing so had attainedcomplete knowledge or wisdom, or put boldly, nonrelative and therefore AbsoluteKnowledge, (2) since Hegel had experienced these stages ofconsciousness, andsince the experience constituted a totality ofconsciousness, then he, Hegel, had toexist at the moment when actual historical events gave rise to the consciousnessthat he experienced, and (3) since experience is historical, and since Hegelexperienced all moments (the reflections on all previous events) that gave rise tohis experience, then Hegel had to exist, at least in principlc, at lhc cncl of time inorder to know what he knew. In other words, l intc or lr islory luri l crrdcd witht lcgcl 's real iz.at iun. Now I wi l l prcscrr l u skt ' l t ' l t o l . rv l l t l I . .o; i 'vr ' l i r r r r r t l whctt heIrrntcd kr I lcgcl i r r h is at(c lnpl lo rrrr t lcrs l r r r r t l l l r i : ; t orr t lu ' , rorr r ' ; r t l t t ' r l l ry Koylc. l ,c l

On Spiritual Crisis, Globalization, and Planetary Rule 41

us begin as did Kojdve by asking the following question: What are the conditionsthat had to pertain for Koyre to reach such conclusions? And here is a sketch ofthe answer.e

First, if Hegel had to have thought all moments of consciousness, then he wouldhave had to account for the beginning as well as the end ofhuman consciousness.Next Hegel would have to have accounted for all moments of consciousnessbetween this beginning and this end, thereby accounting for how and why onemoment leads to the next. Kojdve explains that Hegel does this by showing thedifference between animals and humans. Humans, like all animals, have bothconsciousness and desire, but unlike other animals humans are conscious of thedifference between themselves and that of which they are conscious, together withthe difference between themselves and the objects of their desire. Humans arethereby self-conscious, conscious ofthe self the desiring conscious self.

Humans also are conscious of the presence of other selves, whose desire theydesire. This is to say that all humans desire to be recognized (recognized, re-membered) and it is from the desire for recognition that both intemal timeconsciousness (past-present-future) and extemal time consciousness (history) arise.The former appears because one must recognize in the future and must remember(in the past) in order to do so. History appears because ofthe fight to the death thatresults from the desire to be recognized. In the fight for recognition both mustremain alive and one must yield to the other. The one who yields becomes the slaveand the victor becomes the master.

As slaves cunningly observe their masters, it appears to them that their masterscan do whatever they desire. This the slave calls "freedom," and this freedom arisesbecause ofthe slave's bondage and the fact that the slave is forced to transformnature as the master desires. This hansformation of nature is called "labor." Thus.freedom is tied to bondage and labor. Furthermore, it is the labor of the slave thatallows the master'freedom to do what masters do: to eat, drink, copulate, andfight. Masters are good at fighting, but fighting, if it has no point, is even moremeaningless than eating or drinking or sex, which at least sustain or produce life.But fighting that has a point (a purpose, an end, hence a meaning) is called "war."War is organized fighting directed toward an end, and politics is a subspecies ofwar. But politics must occur in a common space, and this common space is calledthe "city." Slaves build cities through "work." Thus, it is the work ofthe slave thatconstructs the relatively permqnent common space called the city, a theater wheremasters exercise power through speaking and acting before their peers and are intum recognized and perhaps even remembered to the extent that they becomeimmortalized. It is through and because of politics that freedom increasinglyappears. This progressive appearance of freedom resulting from politics is what wecall the "historical process."

Having sketched the above, Kojdve's interpretation of Hegel reveals that iflieedom is the engine that powers history, then it is the slave whose powerprogresses along with his liccdurn as hc drives history to its final battle betweenslavcs and thcir nrastcrs. ' l 'his l lnirl battlc is thc Frcnch Rcvolution. with its

42 l ,orrr l ) r r rhy

principles summed up in thc battle cry, "riberra, ag(rrirc,.fiurarnitc.,,,ilrcbattre isfinal because its principles, when ma<te con.r"G, do away with aotual mastcry andslavery, and because everything that fotows is just an elaboration of theprogressively actualized principles themselves. Alas, ihe French Revolution, on itsown, fizzled out. But t{r ir yf{ it took Napoleon to make the principles actual,concrete, or historical, for it is Napoleon's dnal action and Hegel's reilization ofthe meaning of it that bring knowLag" u.ra'u"ilon together.

Since Hegel's knowledge is inal k:nowing -

nonrelative knowing orwisdom-and Napoleon'r a"tion is final action, the system is, in pnnciple,complete. So all there is left to do is to make the system progressively comprete.And complete means concrete, ergo, real.This eralorafi* "?tn"

,yrt'.ri i, ,nud"possible through that copenetration of knowing and making *" "uil

tectrnotogy.Through technology the abstract (possible) and"the actual (concrete) become one.

t r**

classically, the difference between theory and fantasy is that, with the former, ourdesires, our ideas or ideals, our principles, are possible. But there is nothing oftheclassical today. The classical pertains to defi'nitive uou"o*i"r. fo ,f"* or rrr"classical is to speak ofa realitylhat can be classified. Thus, to sfeak o?ctass is tospeak of boundaries. Today class does not exist, *'i"rr ir i" ,"v that thoseboundaries separating the possible flom the actual have been erased. Asked if onethought it possible that everyone on the planet could be made free from want, ableto reach his or her potential, could be made equal despite differences, and livetogether like the members of a happy family, one might answer that yes, given theright conditions, this is possible. b.unt"a, ihis couta entail removing from theplanet all those who could not be transformed into happy ,.humans.', This is notlikely. Prozac would be more efficient.

By whatever method, it would be possible because our technorogy is that which,by my definition, is capable of mating both the unequal equal and the equalnonequal-and by its ability to etat" und to reconstruct boundaries, to arter therelation between the actuar and the possibre. Technology can transform literallyanything. Without technology (or modern science, wtriCtr is but its other name)Kojdve's vision of the u.H.s. wourd be but a rantasy. So what did Kojdve thinkthis globalized world-his u.H.S-would rook iiL.z R, one mightguess, Kojdvedescribed this concept.Kojdve's clearest pictyg of the u.H.s. is prcsented in a now famous footnoteappearing onpage 157 ofthepresent Engrish cdition of hisln troduction.He writesof what he calls the "re-animalized mrir," rcscrnbring Nietzsche,s last man andNietzsche's description of the timelcss lirL.t'animars as found inhis ]lses and

ltyadvlntases of History for Li/'e. ilis dcscription is not too far from theDisneyfied consumer democracy chanrpi.rrcd hy r.'ukuyama. But then, in typicalform, after having lived in Japan *l,it., tcrrtliirg to his duties as a high_level

( ) t t Spir t l r r t r l ( ' r r ' , r . , , t i lo l r ;1117;1111y11,;ut( l l , l lutel i t r . .y l ( l t lc . l I

l r t r tc i t t tcrat wi th thc Mirr is l ry ol l " i i l r i l r ( 'c , i l r i r sul)sequcrr t c( l i t ioD, wi t l r0ut i l l lcr ingt l rc or ig inal notc by a. iot , Kr l icvc i rppcrr t ls l l rc: note . I lc tc l ls us about wlrat hc cul ls' ' lrrPil l t izcd man," a posthiskrricit l crcit lurc wlro has fi lr sonrc ccnturics l ivctl al rhct'rt l . l 'history, a creature somchow ass.ciarod with the code ol. honor .1. lhcsrrrrurai warrior and who is capable o|committing a,.perfectly graiuit.-, suicidc.,,s. who lives after history, the re-animalized man i.;upunrr_""J,nuni u,,t', ,r,,.I lrc rc-animalized man and the japanized man are posthistoricar archctypcs ,r.vrcrrrious slaves and nonreconstructed masters. usuaily taken as o* nr-rn";cu",,llrPpant riddles, this again is one of Kojdve's serious;ot"r. H"." rr" gives us t'c

'ierure of what lies between the end of history and its concrete realizition. Ars.,rlris is but an echo ofthe tension between Hegei's slave and Nietzsche,s master thatlrrrs played itself out during this century orgtouat technologicar .'ui.

--

S. contrary to professor Fukuyama's greeful conclusio"ns ."ruiiinn from ourvictory of the cold war, that war was but a civil *u.-u a,nili?ii. tsut aras,cclroing a statement of Heidegger's in The Introduction n urtopnyri"s, Kojdvcrlrirnself said that "Americans are just rich Russians, and R,irriunr, p,u,,.Arrericans."r0 onthebasisofthisandttherstatementsbyKojdve,it isnosurprisc,rh.the was a Soviet spy. I think his political action is *rroily

"*ri*", with histcaching and would make even more sense if we someday learn that Ko.ydvc hirrlhccn a double agent.

As we shall see, what Kojirlg was describing in the above quote is the tcnsi.rrI)otween re-animalized man and Nietzsche's last man as that which lies in betwconthc globalizing slaves and the remnant of masters who refuse to ue gtotarizcabetween civilization and culhue, between totalitarianism ano ty.uiivl rrri, *irrr.ke us to Strauss and his discussion with Kojdve of this very ,rt:""i, a Schnrittrrs related to both Kojdve and to Strauss, and ihen to Heidegger una *nut hc calrsour "age of the world picfure."

Power and Wisdom: politics as Destiny

As noted in the first part of_this essay, Kojdve, Strauss, Schmitt, and Heideggcrwere, by varying degrees, collaborators. This clearly is true for Kojd;; una sr.uurr,whose association began in Berrin and paris in the 1930s. There is a record of theirsustained conespondence beginning in r932and ending in r965. anJ, or"ourr",there is the "strauss-Kojdve Debatei'published in strauis's o, iir"rri.r, As weshall see, despite their fundamental differences, Kojdve and strauss sharedconcems' passions' and even visions. There are nrmors of an extant body ofcorrespondence between schmitt and Kojdve, but as of yet notrring-tas beenpublished. However' Kojdve had commented that-along witt' i?uu* unaHeidegger-schmitt was among his few contemporaries with whom he cared todiscuss philosophy.'2 And then there was the shorter but intense relation betweenSchmitt and one who soon was to become his erstwrrile pupil, tr,rtrr"i-yo*g I_*Strauss. This relation is documented by Strauss's publisheo .oo,r.nt, ori ichmitt,s

44 Tom Darby

best known work, The Concept of the Political (1932).t3 This collaboration tookplace at the time Kojdve was beginning his lectures in Paris, roughly at the sametime Heidegger was writing his essays on technology, and, of course, at the timeHitler was coming to power. It was a time of unprecedented danger andanticipation.

So, let us begin here by stating the obvious: twentieth-century politics isunprecedented in human history. Western global exploration, leading to globalconquest, and then to the global wars of the twentieth century, has made way forthe planetary transformations that we now are experiencing with increasingrapidity and thoroughness. This tmly global politics-what Kojdve called theU.H.S. and what we now have come to call the process of globalizationra-is theparticular context for those questions pertaining to the status and relation ofpoliticsand philosophy and their effect on man. So from such observations arise thefollowing questions: If Aristotle was correct when he said that man was a zoonpolitikon, or a political animal, and if epistemic or philosophical man constituteshumanity's most developed, and therefore highest form, then what happens tohumans if politics and philosophy (1) change their relation, (2) disappearaltogether, or (3) metamorphosize?

***

By the time Leo Strauss met Alexandre Kojdve he already had begun to take theposition that despite the sweeping changes modemity had brought to the humancondition, humans essentially have remained the same, and for this reason are ableto find access to truths that remain more or less constant. Thus, this classicalapproach to reality, whether it be the reality of the antique world or the globalizingworld of the late twentieth century, could reveal certain truths about man, hispolitics and his philosophy, and the interrelatedness ofthe two. rs The first completestudy Strauss published of a work of classical pfrilosophy was his interpretation ofXenophon's dialogue, Hiero or Tyrannicus. To some extent we already havebecome familiar with Kojdve's position about the relation of action to thought,together with his vision of the future; however,'when we contrast what we alreadyhave learned about Kojdve's perspective with that of Strauss, the questions askedabove concerning the status ofpolitics and philosophy today, and hence questions

conceming the status of humanity, become sharp and grave. It is the sheerseriousness ofthese questions that kept this "debate" between Strauss and Kojdvefrom becoming partisan. Despite the stark difference between Strauss's andKojdve's positions, both realize that the other's position is the only other plausibleone besides his own. Thus, both Strauss and Kojdve exhibit an urgency to findanswers to these questions that arise from their ex<;hangc and a dcterminedopenness to understand what ever answers thcy rniglrt .yicltl.

Strauss's c l ro icc ol ' Xonophon's shurt d ia logtrc provir lcs l r i r r r wr l l t i r t l i rcct way

l i t r ra is i r rg lhc t ; r rcsl iorr o l ' (hc nalrrrc lnt l rc l i r l iot to l l to l t l t t ' : r : r r r t l p l r i losol thy. ' l 'h is

( ) r r SPir i l r r : r l ( 1r . , r . , , ( i lo l l r l iz : r t iorr , ; r r r t l I ' l : r r r t . l l r ry l { r r l t : .15

rs thc thcnlc ol 'Xcrurpl l rn 's ( l i i t loguc. l 'hc t l i l logur: is bctwccn the tyrant olSyracusc, l l ioro, atrd Sirrrotridcs, a p()ct who was rcputcd to bc wise, hence akindol l.roct-phikrsophcr-' l lreir discussion is l irst about the burdens of rulership andrvhat the tyrant can d<l to makc his rule more satisfactory to himself and to his:;rrl'r.jccts, thereby bringing himself and his subjects more happiness. But while thetlrrrlogue also is about the lessons a wise teacher may bring to a corrupt pupil, the:rrlvise is not given for the purpose of transforming Hiero into another kind ofruler

'r about transforming his regime into another kind ofrule. Rather, it is advice that

r:i supposed to make him a "better" tyrant, hence a happier or more satisfied tyrant,rrrrtl in this way, a more virtuous tyrant. I say "supposed," for we never leam if,rrtlced, Hiero becomes 'obetter," that is, more satisfied or virtuous, for the lessonsrrrcrcly are dispensed by the teacher and the results simply promised to the pupil,rrrtl to readers such as ourselvgs.

So the dialogue is about the relation of theory to practice, knowledge to virtue.l lrc poet-philosopher thus acts as advisor to the young tyrant, thereby guiding hisirr'tions. And what kind of guidance does the wise man offer the unhappy tyrant?I lrc advise can be described as a combination of the pedeshian and the abstract.I lrc advise is pedestrian in that it would not take a wise man to imagine thatrt'rvarding subjects for actions that increase the wealth and honor of the regimervorrld both please (satisff) and honor (recognize) them, and honor and thereby1'lt'rrsc the tyrant. While recognizing subjects, and in tum having the subjectsrt'tognize the tyrant, may make both happier, this does not make either better.I I r r rs, happiness does not necessarily beget virtue. The advice is far from deliveringtlrt' r'csults it promises, thus it is abstract, or as we might say today, ideological orr rt' )l)ian. The real question is this: is there any advice pertaining to action that can1.,'r 'p its promises?

Stnruss does not think so. He holds that there always must remain a distancelrr'lrvcon theory and practice, and furthermore, that this relation is a constant, as is| | r r' | 1 I I ldap"ntal nature of such practices as tyranny and virtue. Tyranny and virtue

'r( t):rrticular manifestations of the political, which is a Westem perception of a

' rrr,llnt human experience. No tyrant can leam to be virtuous no matter who hisI' ir( hcr might be. There has not been and cannot be a good tyranny. Yet this is nott. ,;1y 11.tu1 for Strauss theory has no relation to practice, that there is nothing1 ', 'lrt rcal about philosophy or anything philosophical about politics. For Strauss,; r, rl 1l 1g5 is always philosophical and philosophy always political. Philosophers arel,irrrrrn and humans live in cities and cities are communities that are held together1,1 , 'pirrions that sooner of later will become threatened by philosophy. This is solrr r ,urSo philosophers are skeptics and skeptics question everything, including that'.lrrtlr lhe city takes for granted and is likely to hold dear, if not sacred. This,.'trl.rirrs both why there must remain a gap between the philosopher and the, ' r\ lhcory and practice, philosophy and politics-and why the two must exist

r, '1.r 'r lrr:r for either to exist at all.| .r Strauss, the gap between theory and practice is not permanently bridgeable.

i r,,1. .lt lcast, for a few, it is temporally leapable. It is the rhetorician who teaches

46 Tom Darby

the few who are fit for philosophy to leap over this gap, and in doing so, gainlimited insights into the relation of theory to practice. I do not refer to the rhetoricof those who are reputed to be wise, such as Gorgias, but to the philosophicalrhetoric employed by Socrates in the dialogue named for Gorgias himself. Oneleams from this nonreflective and self-satisfied Gorgias that his kind of rhetoricis used for the single purpose ofincreasing one's power. Socrates' philosophicalrhetoric makes possible what becomes the classical understanding of politics. Itbegins there, but it does not end by bringing philosophy and politics together insuch a way as to cancel their differences. Philosophical rhetoric begins in the city,hence it begins with commonsense observations, expressed as opinions. Thus,philosophy itself begins with opinion, and, for a few, transcends the city and leadsto a quest for wisdom. But the philosopher, because he is a man, never leaves thecity for long, and it is to the city that always he must return. Thus, the thinker andthe actor remain forever apart. This is why philosophy is a love of wisdom, for weonly love that which we do not possess. Thus, the philosopher by definition cannever possess wisdom, for if he does, his quest is over, and, like Gorgias, hebecomes nonreflective and self-satished.

Let me state unequivocally that we concluded in the first part of this essay thatfor Kojdve the history of man is also the progressive cancellation of the differencebetween thought and action. For Kojdve, the gap between philosophy and politicsis bridged by Hegel. Hegel is the possessor of wisdom, the wise man, and afterHegel, the principles of the U.H.S. become elaborated in reality. But whereasStrauss and his classical approach employ the rhetorician for a limited form oftranscendence, the gap between theory and practice, or philosophy and politics, isbridged, and the difference between them eradicated. According to Kojdve, this isaccomplished by the "political intellectual." But the political intellectual does notuse rhetoric. He uses technology to replace deeds and propaganda to replacespeech. Unlike the poet-philosopher Simonides, the political intellectual can bothaccount for his words and deliver his promises. He is a thinker-actor. Plato'sPhilosopher-King comes to mind, as does the twentieth-century thinker whodescribed the process of globalization before we invented the name, that architectof the EU and archspy, Alexandre Kojdve himself. Oh well, if not Alexandre atleast Alcibiades.

Let me repeat: for Strauss it is impossible either to be a good tyrant or to havea good tyranny. For Strauss and his classical perspective tyrants and tyranny arealways bad. But this is not so for Kojdve and his modem (Hegelian) perspective.Indeed, good fyrants and good tyrannies are possible. But the best and thereforefinal tyranny is the U.H.S. It is good because in it everyone is (or at least can betransformed into) a free citizen. The citizen is free in the negative sense in that heis provided with at least the necessities of life. First, he is free fiom need andsooner or later, fiom want. And he is fiee in the positive sense as well, in that eachcitizen is capable of realizing his potential. FIe is free to pursrrc thc "lif-e-style" hewishes (providcd he can pay for it). All choiccs errc cclrurl, l lrrrs lhc worth of cachindiv idual is honorcd (rccognizcd) cqual ly. l1 is th is l icct lorrr l l r r r l r r r r rkcs thcse

On Spiritual Crisis, Globalization, and Planetary Rule 47

citizens of the U.H.S. happy, and for them happiness is virtue. Since there are noexternal standards such as the Good or God by which can be measured either thetruthfulness of what we say or the virtue or wickedness of what we do, then bothphilosophy and politics are over. Thus, the end ofhistory is beyond good and evil.So the question becomes: what of man?

So now we will tum to Carl Schmitt. Schmitt was a jurist and political theoristwho taught at the University of Berlin, joined the Nazi Party in 1933, and who,despite the fact that he later was denounced by the parfy, rightly has beenassociated with the Hitler regime in particular and with antiliberal thinking ingeneral. It is understandable why Schmitt's political theory largely had beenignored from the time of the Allied victory until almost the last decade of thetwentieth century.16

But not only does the passage of time erode prejudices, it also seems that thegreat shifts in global politics that led up to the collapse of the U.S.S.R., togetherwith the eroding of the categories with which we, for so long, have attempted tomake sense of political life, have cleared the way for the legitimation of interest inthis "theorist of the Reich."r? The single best example of Schmitt's recentlegitimation came in 1987 when Telos, the long-standing premier English-languagejournal of the "left," published an issue featuring the thought of this erstwhilearchpariah of the "right." Since the beginning of the decade, like a great well ofrevelation pent up for half a century, mounting interest in Schmitt has burst forth,giving buoyancy to theorists of whatever political stripe. The journals----especially

the English-language ones-are inundated.r8Schmitt's early concerns are reflected in his works that first lay the ground for

and then developed into a theme that would serve as the underpinning for hissubsequent writings-the theme of sovereignty and his famous Friend/Enemydistinction, the base for the extension of his theory of sovereignty into a generaltheory of politics. The political fate that had befallen Germany between the wars,the humiliation of defeat, the economic woes, and most of all the "WeimarImposition," was the experiential ground for the development of the theory. In hisPolitische Romantic, Political Romqnticism (1919)'e Schmitt sought the roots ofGermany's troubles in the nineteenth century with thinkers such as Shelling andNovalis. These thinkers Schmitt named "Aesthetic Romantics," who despised themodem world and sought to escape it by immersing the "self in the medieval orclassical past. However, these Aesthetic Romantics only were interested in theirprivate experience and were incapable of action. Alas, while the AestheticRomantic may experience a sovereignty of the self, this sovereignty was (is) a deadletter. It was (is) a self-indulgent, impotent, and unmanly sovereignty. It was (is)personal, thercby private and antipolitical.

To thc Aosthctic Romantic, Schmitl. juxtaposed the "Romantic Polit ician," who

ffi

4t l l i r r r r | ) i r r .by

is not concsrncd with rirc as scr:indurgcnt, cr)btc poctry but with trans*rnninglife-through action-into a work ;i;.'F'rom the actions of the RomanticPolitician is derived- Schmitt's notion oi l.o""isionism,,, an idea based on thcdecisive exercise ofthe wilr resulting in ge;uine action that always entairs risk anddanger. "Decisionism" becomes ",t

"- "oir"rrtone for Schmitt,s theme ofsovereignty,2' which, in turn, is tne rounaation for his concept of the politicar, andas we shall see, his theory. of the poritical alters, to trr" "*t"nioi""""i,,rg out, thedifference between the thinker

""A ,f,.

".io..'Decisionism also forms the basis ror sctrmiu's critique of liberalism, which hesaw as subverting action tfuough incessant defate, comprise, and its obsession withbureaucratic processes. rne irrviteging-;;;ono-ics, securigr, and proceduraljustice he saw as akin to Aesihetic F.oiranticism. It was but another instance offeminization, but worse, it was a systematic form of ..neutralization anddepolitization." For schmin, from a pi""ii."r, ,rgo

"*irlnil stlnapoint, ttreliberalism imposed on Germany au.irs'r;w"imar years constituted a case ofthe"exception," and thus was an-,bmerge"ncy,, requiring action.This reads directrv ro^schmin's"g.ri"*i irr"o.i "r

poiiti"s. Reflecting onHobbes's state of nature, Schmitt ro"u:t", irr. o.igin of sovereignty in poritics andpolitics in "the possibility of combat,"ti;; in t; state ofnatural enmity or war. Butunlike the fearful and solitary "."u*.. or nouu"r,r-rtutJ;;;#", Schmin,screature recognizes danger (a fear that does no.rooks ror arii. n" ,r,*v:;in, u e.oup, un;;ff:l#jj,fri1n#'*l#il;

nonmembers-friends and enemiesl wt "n

tt "r"

friends and enemies glare at eachother from across the creek, politi.r ir uo* -with

the birth of pilitics thesecreatures become ,.dangerous and dynamic.,,22 They b.."r;;r;;;."'Strauss begins his critique by noti;g th;by Schmitt,s own admission Schmitt,stheory, in being political,.it-iot",niclui.-inJ

i"r"-i.s are directed at schmin,senemies, the greatest of wh.ich is riberarism, b'ut after the bellicose words there isa deeper meaning. Thus, Schmitt s theory--i[i uny t u" theory-is about what hemeant and what he means. schmitt ctaims ttrai tnere is no moral dimension to histheory, but Strauss arzugs that this is but tie surfac" ''"uning,-ro#oli,nr"rpr"r,Schmitt correctly on"-*ill nnc tr,at i"r,-itt irl""il, concerned with the..order ofhuman things."23 To make his claim ;i"* i;;"rs. anempts to show rhar man is"dangerous" because he has "a neea

"r0".iii"".,,2a Because this will to dominatein the modern (Machiavellian; r.nr" ir "rt ,'uno i" the classical sense, is a viceand the basis of a ty,rannical nature, S"h;;;

:o:neTtolle or ar p jiticar ph'osophy, ;;;;r;;i:1iilj'1,,::!il,.lf il.l*,;llfschmin that it is riberarism ,rt,,*'."ffi .", b;;;,;ffi;?_ says, it"neutralizes and depoliticizes" man an;;;;;,""" world. In a word, liberalismattempts to make man a nonpolitical unirnui,lna as such, ..man,, ceases to behuman' Politics metamorphizes i*" t""rr""i,[r."rh" hu-un world becomes bereftof seriousness. It becomes a world of .,entertlinment.,,25 But this,,virtual world,,is only what we see on the surface, r"r l"li, interior, the obriteration of thedifference between the public lpotiii<;f ,,r,a"i.iuu," (economicsfacting and

Orr Spir i t r r i r l ( ' r is is, ( i lobl l izat ion, nnd l ) l l r rc lary l lu lc 49

tlrrrking-has vanishcd. liurthermore, Strauss claims not only that Schmitt's theorycontains a moral dimension, but also that Schmitt fails to transcend the horizon oflrbcralism. So, at least for now, liberal speech is the only legitimate ,.discourse."I lrrt lbr later? strauss, in his 1932 critique, asked, "which men will rule the world-slrrtc'1"26 And Kojdve in a lg52letter to Strauss answered the question:

If the westemers remain capitalists (that is also to say nationalists),they will be defeated by Russia, and that is how the End_State willcome about. If, however, they ,,integrate', their economies and politics(they are now on the way of doing so) then they will defeat Russia. Andthat is how the End-State will be reached (the same Universal andHomogenous State). But in the first case it will be spoken about in"Russian" . . . and in the second case-in ,.European.'.i7

Agai.n, this sheds light on Kojdve the thinker who acts. Kojdve sees himself aspracticing what Nietzsche calls "Great politics." And Great politics is beyond eoodand evil.

Reading Strauss's critique starkly reminds one that Schmitt was a student of Maxweber, for while there are major differences between him and his teacher, in thedarkest corner of the heart of Schmitt's theory is a profound concem about the"iron cage" of technology and the "disenchantment of the world.,' schmitt'spolitical philosophy is, at least on the surface, an attack on liberalism or on theliberal state; but the deeper meaning is that Schmitt's real enemy is the state thatis everywhere, the world-State, the End-State, the U.H.S. without this process of"globalization" all this would be a fantasy. But it is technology that makes theprocess itself possible. Thus, Schmitt's theory-at its most profound depth-isabout technology: technology, the new sovereign, the thing that authors theappearance of the "new," and the only thing that we do not question. Thus,Schmitt's gravest concem is about technology, this new authority.

schmitt argued in Politicql rheologt that "[a]ll significant concepts of themodern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts." ,t whin puttingSchmitt's own political theory in this context one must conclude the following: thiEnd-State, world-State, or u.H.S. is God, and since technology will save us bybringing us to God, then technology is the new christ. But the new christ is theAntichrist.

while the inference is clear, perhaps it is too clear. on the surface, the Antichrist(technology), like christ, appears to be the Savior. In his essay, "The Age ofNeutralizations and Depolitizations," Schmitt makes a distinction betweentechnolog,t and "the spirit of technicity which has lead to a mass belief in an anti-religious activism." He goes on to say that technicity is an ,.evil" and .,demonic"spirit, and that "[t]he process ofcontinuous neutrarization ofvarious spheres ofcultural life has reached its end because technology is at hand.,,ze He adds that

50 Tom Darby

technology no longer is neutral, and that the way we will eventually understandtechnology will depend on the appearance of a politics strong enough to master it.Thus, Schmitt's stance on technology is ambiguous, but so is technology-at leastprovisionally it is. Technology is our destiny, but it also is our fate, and as we willsee in part 3, this ambiguity is a key to its meaning.

Life in the Age of the World Picture

The above title is taken from Heidegger's 1938 essay, "The Age of the WorldPicture," appearing in English since 1977 as part of the collection called The

Question Concerning Technolog,t and Other Essays.3o But, as you see, I amqualifying the title. I do so to indicate that what a few decades ago was esoteric andabstract now has come to be part of life for an increasing number of people on thisplanet. Our experience ofthis shrinking world and our expanding picture of it, likethe very breath of our lives, have become a kaleidoscope of the real as imaginedand the imagined as real. It is a world in which the non-West is progressivelytransformed into versions of the West, and the West shaped by that very Other ittransforms. But this world, which, not so long ago would have been unimaginable,deludes us. It deludes us because it increasingly embraces us, smothering themysterious under the cloak of the everyday, denying us the experience ofastonishment. In progressively becoming our common, virhral, yet empirical world,it also is becoming a more vulgar world, for in this world everyone is either in oris clamoring to get into the picture.

Heidegger's aforementioned essay is not only about the "world picture"(Weltbild), it also is about what Heidegger calls the New Time (das Neuzeit),thisage3r of the world picture. While rooted in the past of the West, this age----our time,modernity and especially late modemity-is different from previous ages in thatonly in our time can one have a picture of the world as a whole. But this should notsurprise those who recall Alexandre Kojdve's vision of the Universal andHomogeneous State (U.H.S.), Leo Strauss's vision of the World State, or CarlSchmitt's vision of the End State, each examined in parts I and2 of this essay.

Indeed, Kojdve was an ironic, self-professed Marxist, Strauss a Jew whoembraced the "West" and its late heir, liberalism of the American variety, andSchmitt, to his last day, an unrepentant Nazi. I say visions and not-as we are wontto say today-values. Nietzsche, who invented the term "value" (Wert),taughtthatvalue is about willing, while vision is about seeing. And yet, I will argue, whiledifferent, value and vision form part of the same picture. Differences aside, notonly were these three men collaborators, their visions reinforce each other, and, aswe shall see, reinforce Heidegger's own vision, for what they see is the sameworld, albeit from different perspectives.

Perspective has to do with where one stands. These four perspectives of ourworld alf ow us to soc more clcarly where we stand, for they uncovcr the meaningol'thc roccnt, yct alrcady hlckncycd tcrm, "globaliztl iorr," lrrt l ulkrw us to sco our

On Spiritual Crisis, Globalization, and Planetary Rule 51

past, our present, and perhaps our future in a new light-and, alas, in a newdarkness.

,8*{<

In An Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger makes the startling claim that theWest-the Occident-is dis-Oriented.32 This, Ithink, is akeyto ourunderstandingof the meaning of Heidegger's position conceming the origin and destiny of theWest. If the destiny of the West results in the West's disorientation, then the Westat one time must have been oriented, and thus, this destiny-this "loss of itsway"-u1ro is tied to, and lies at, the origins of the West.

As stated in the general introduction to this essay, with the blending ofphilosophy and Judeo-Christian religion, the West appeared as an evolving relationof perceptions and practices that have defined its boundaries by setting it apartfrom how other people on this planet have seenboth the world and have lived init. The origins of the West are to be found in the origins of these other ways ofseeing and doing-the non-West-as objectified and constituted by the West asOther. And the West-from its origins-repeatedly oriented itself in oppositionto everything it deigned non-Western. Thus, its original orientation resulted inincreasing disorientation.

Specifically, metaphysics, as it emerged from Socrates' critique ofthe Olympiangods, andChristianity, emergingas acritique oflate-Hebrewism, gatheredtogetherthe form that was to become the West and set it on its way along its path. This two-thousand-yearjourney that has resulted in the "disorientation" is both temporal andspatial, in that this result is the same cluster of phenomena that has been identifiedhere as "the end of history" and "globalization."

The destiny of the West is to be found in its origins, in that the Westernperception of space lies with metaphysics, and the perception of time with theHebrew notion of history as unilinear time, together with the Christian perceptionthat time as history is providential, thereby has a purpose, and from this is derivedthe notion of progressive ages, culminating in an apocalyptic end (e.g., in the"fullness oftime"). The intersection ofmetaphysical space and Christian time restson our attempt to transform the world in which we live in relation to a projectedbeyond. This results in the copenehation of what we see with what we endeavor todo-knowledge with action, wisdom with power. Thus, with the eruption ofmodernity, time or history becomes progress, and space a merefixed ground plan33for objectified ideas, thereby transforming ideas into ideals, willed projects orvalues. As we have seen in part 2 of this essay, at their origin, knowledge andaction were unbridgeable, but now we see that the dynamic of Westem time andthe eventual uprootedness and consequent malleability ofideas have progressivelybrought them together. Together they culminate in the disorientation and thedissolution of the West. This is the destiny of the West.

Destiny must have both an origin and an end. For Heidegger, the beginning ofthe West lics witlr thr: appcarance of Westem time and space and with our

52 Tom Darby

forgetting that everything that we perceive in time (beings) must have a space inwhich to be (Being), and that Being, empty of beings, is simply nothing.3aMoreover, in forgetting Being, we also have forgotten the beings who we are, andthus busy (auf betriebung) ourselves with the task of transforming whoever wemay be along with the other beings who dwell on the planet, together withwhatever may lie beyond. So, while we may have gained a planet (and perhapsmore), in losing our way we have forgotten Being. But also, because we transformthe beyond (the future) into the present, in turn, we forget the future, and with nofuture, there is no past, and so, with the eclipsing of the future and the past, weforget not only Being but Time as well. Bereft of Being and Time we are left withour present. This present is our legacy, for the present lies with its origins and itsdestiny. This legacy is the concrete appearance ofthe western /ogos incarnated asour technology. Thus, technology is both our destiny and our fate.

{. **

Now we must ask the question: what is our technology? As Heidegger does, wemust begin with a question, rather than with a problem. Metaphysics has led to thetransformation of questions into problems-problems to be solved, things to befixed-but what Heidegger means is that a true question is about what standsbefore us as it is and not otherwise. For those of us living today, the question isabout the presence of our technology, that which defrnes us most, but that whichwe question least. For us, it is technology that is nearest to us, or, as Heideggersays, for us "technology is at hand."3s

Most today take technology to be neutral and thereby "value free," to be, in otherwords, the mere application of those ideas we call "science."36 And, indeed, werewe to perceive of technology differently, it would not work as it does, or it wouldnotbe correct, not efficienr, and thereby would not be technology. But on the otherhand, here we want to question the appearance of the boundaries oftechnology-technology just as it presents itself to us as it ls. Questions are butmeans to ends, in that answers are mere ends or boundaries. But we will notquestion in order to find a way of altering the boundaries of technology-to viewtechnology as a problem to be fixed-and thereby making of ourselves part of theproblem we set out to solve. We question in order to leam of the astonishing(thaumazein) presence of technology, and do so in order to learn what it ls.

So what is technology? One can begin with this thoroughly modern word and tryto recover its meaning synthetically. Technology is a compound of the two Greekwords techne and logos. Techne pertains to making and logos to knowing, topractices and to perceptions. But technology is not a compound in word only, forit is compounded from the copenetration of making and knowing. Technology isthe progressively rational (fficient) arrangement of means and ends (for humans)and cause and effect (for nature). The former, therefore, has to do with practices,and thc lattcr witlr perccptions. Technology has as its pro.iect thc lranslitrnration of

On Soiritual Crisis. Globalization. and Planetarv Rule 53

nature both human and nonhuman. Efficiency, the goal of the projection oftechnology, is and can only be measured as the progressively diminishingdifference between those means and ends or causes and effects. Thus, technologyis (1) self-referential, (2) relatively autonomous, (3) progressively sovereign, and,being so, (4) tends toward the systemization of nature both human and nonhuman.Ifthe relative difference ofmeans and ends (or cause and effect) were ever reducedto zero, or to complete efficiency, then technology would become a totality (i.e.,a total or complete system)37; and here, of course, come to mind the visions of theUniversal and Homogenous State, the World State, the End State, and, as we shallsee, Heidegger's Neuzeit.

Although in our time technology is embraced by not only the West but by the non-West as well, technologt is a compound of Western perceptions and practices.Theperceptions point to the radically revised relations of God, Nature, and Man thatcrystallized in early modemity, but go further back, and to practices of radicallyincreasing prowess,3s which, in turn, dynamically shape and are shaped by thoseradically revised perceptions. First, I refer to the perceptions ofBacon, who urgedus to put nature on the rack and to vex and torture it so as to force its "reasons forbeing," and to Hobbes, who told us that man's artificial creation, the World, issuperior to God's natural creation-the Earth and the beings upon it----except, ofcourse, for man. Bacon was among those whose observations ofnature led to whatwe call the "scientif,rc method," which, in turn, enhanced our control over nature,qua nature, through developing a way of transforming it and eventuallysystematizing it.

But, as Heidegger notes, Bacon's new perception of nature was not enough, inthat it pertained exclusively to perception. What was needed to bring about thescientific method was a practice coupled with this changed perception. Thispractice-a practice that allowed man to act upon nature-resided in imitatingGod's action, in creating the world and His eruption into the Earth and the World,that resulted in His embodiment within the realm of nature (Space) and history(Time). I refer to what lies at the heart of Christianity itseli to the doctrine of theincarnation of Christ. This doctrine became a practice with the medievalSchoolmenwho attempted, throughtheirinterpretation ofthe Word, to embody thedivine Will itself. But I suspect that these roots lie even further back, in thecabalistic and gnostic practices of both Jews and early Christians.re

The perceptions of men such as Bacon, together with those practices rooted inChristianity, result in attempts to systematize nature qua nature, while Hobbessystematizes human nature. Hobbes begins by his attack on God's creation andAristotle's doctrine of causality. His "artificial mann" Leviathan, is a systemizationof human nature, in that it is a system built by man, the Maker who makesFlimscll.a') I lut this "ncw rnan" is a creaturc with ncither c<lnscience nor a longing

54 Tom Darby

for transcendence. He exchanges conscience for the rational calculation of self-interest and the longing for transcendence for his immanent safety. Bacon andHobbes were among the men who discovered that the power of modem science(technology) lay in its tendency toward systemization. Because of this, they areharbingers of the new age for the West.

But, according to Heidegger, this still is not enough, for in order for it to be,technology requires the advent of research, for without research, there is noprocedure, or way (lo modo), as Machiavelli calls it (mode: the way of today,hence what is the modern, e.g., the present). However, research is not justprocedure, it is the projection into nature (into what ls) of that "fixed grown plan"(Grundriss) mentioned above. The projection draws (wills) the boundaries, inadvance, and the way of knowing must adhere to these orders or boundaries.Heidegger calls this "binding adherence" of research, o'rigor." Projection of thefixed ground plan is the first commqnd of research. "Science becomes researchthrough the projected plan, and through securing that plan in the rigor ofprocedure."al

Its second command is methodology. Methodology is the way of clariffing theknown and relating the unknown to it, thereby increasing the sphere of the knownas facts. This is at the heart of what I call metaphor. This leads to explanation,explanation to law, and law to experiment; the latter itself mirroring-albeit in adisembodied or abstract way-learning itself. "The more exactly the ground planis projected, the more exact becomes the possibility of experiment."a2 Exactnessleads to the objective knowledge we call facts or information, because the groundplan that is willed and projected is controlled before the experiment itself, yetcontinually adjusts itself to its results. Thus, the way of method is what I identifiedabove as the self-referenial, self-adjusting aspect oftechnology.

The third command of research is that it be what Heidegger calls "ongoing"(Betrieb), that its activity both pertain to its proper (ordered : bound = fixed)sphere, that it, in other words, be specialized, and that the facts be coordinated sothat the methodology can be adjusted to the results. This simply means that onemust specialize and that specialists need to communicate and cooperate, This iswhy the business of research must be ongoing.a3

Research brought technology to this point. But because of what became anoverwhelming mass of facts (facts = information = decontexturalized knowledge)generated by it, a new way of ordering, storing, and explaining was necessary.Since explanation is a relation of the known to the unknown, or what I identifiedin our general introduction as the relation of our Underlying Concern to ourOverarching Metaphor, new metaphors were needed for ordering this mass ofinformation.

{.:1.*

Due to the radical and rapid changes compounded into the perceptions andpractices that constitute technology, the modern world has had thrcc phases, or

On Spiritual Crisis, Globalization, and Planetary Rule 55

what I elsewhere have called "waves."aa Each wave has its own metaphor rootedin its own experience and its own symbol that best allow for ordering, storing, andexplaining each phase of the experience of modernity. Each metaphor, along withits symbol, has been technological.

The experiences of Bacon and Hobbes's day required amechanical metaphor,which was encapsulated within the symbol of the clock. Because symbols arewholes, they too are systems, as is the very machine we call the mechanical clock.The day of Kant, Hegel, Marx-and to a lesser extent of Nietzsche-needed anhydraulic metaphor, symbolized by the engine. During all the previous centu4/,

and for most of the twentieth century, the hydraulic metaphor and its symbol, the

engine, have sufficed, and indeed, most people are still stuck with the vocabularybased on these older metaphors and symbols, in that we still describe both natureand human nature in terms of forces, pressures, processes, and movements. Oureveryday assumptions about nature both nonhuman and human are those mechan-ical perceptions granted by Galileo and Newton and the hydraulic perceptions

associated with the second law of thermodynamics.While most people today (including philosophers and scientists) still rely on

these metaphors and symbols for explaining their experience, I think thatHeidegger, Schmitt, Strauss, and Kojdve anticipated a change that did not becomeapparent until the last decade of the twentieth cenfury.

Heidegger, especially, and to a lesser extent the others, realized that, while alltechnology pertained to a summoning forth of energy from nature, transforming it

and storing it for future use, something fundamental had changed. Heidegger callsthis process of extraction and transformation Enframing (das Ge-stell), and its

storage for future use, standing reserve.ot Although still in embryonic form, whatHeidegger saw as so basically different was that energy could be extracted,transformed, and stored differently, and that which in his part of this century wasmanifest only nascently, at the end of this century now is commonplace.

First mechanical energy was extracted from nature and stored in the weights andsprings of the frame of machines such as clocks-machines that held the energy ofnature in reserye until transformed by setting it on its way by winding a spring orreleasing a weight. Next, hydraulic energy was extracted from nature, transformedand reserved within the walls of a frame called an engine and set it on its way byreleasing water, steam, or a regulated explosion to drive a turbine, a piston, a jet

engine, a rocket engine, or, at the end of this wave, crude nuclear power. But what

fundamentally has changed is thatnow we are able to extract, transform, store, and

set ori their way the less apparent, even invisible, yet fundamental energies ofnature. I refer to what lies within our inner space such as the DNA of our bodies

and to that energy within the atomic structure of all bodies (beings),

electricity-the spark of life, and one might say, its spirit.I speak of the wave of

the electric metaphor, the symbol of which is the electric computer, without which

the present phase of the Western project, the "end of history" and "globalization,"would not have become possible, much less apparent.

Thc univcrsal use ofthe elcctrical computer marksthe appearanc:e of the coming

56 Tom Darby

together of perception (knowing) and practice (action : making) through the

colpenetration ofthe computer's superstructure (its software = perception) with its

infrastnrcture (its hardware : practice). I say appearance, as this coming together

only appears to be, in that the space between them is relatively but progressively

invlslUte. This is so because ln the space in between is Time itself. Granted, we see

neither force nor pressure, but we see their effects, relate them to their causes, and

call this change. Iiut the change we see in our time is becoming so swift that we see

it less and less, and we are progressively becoming to see change as normal, for the

normal is precisely what is nearest, and therefore not questioned. Time is Being.

And both Time and Being are progressively becoming invisible'

whereas, the power (efficiency) of mechanism is measured as force, and that of

hydraulicism u, pr"rrur., the power of the computer lies in the difference in

bet*een the on and off pulse o1 a charge of electricity, and thus is measured by

speed. Hence, the technology of mechanism and hydraulicism is manifest in the

ripresentation(Vorstellefi of tne apparent as objective, ergo concrete, in that it

demands the centralization, hence the massification, of force and pressure in

machines; and in human technologies, the massification of money in economies'

the massification ofpeople in societies of large nations in great cities, governed by

extensive bureaucraciei, all protected by great armies' So the power of the

technology of our day is derived from the relative but progressive rate ol'

diminishii time, with tire apparent disappearance of the representation of the time

that the West has called history.Thus, electronic technology demands not the overstatement of appearancc

(representation) that in the time of the mechanical and hydraulic metaphor

il"iA"gg", calls the "gigantic,"a6 but the dissolution of the boundaries in which

po*"r-iu, previously iontained, hence the decentralization and dispersion ol'

po*"r. Ardsls, as usual, realized this first. Witness the dissolution of the imagc itt

impressionist and abstract painting, and then there is our present antireality and

hence reactionary movem.nt-to called postmodemism. While artists need tlol

account for whaithey see and do, unlike those modernists, most "postmodemists"

are not artists, nor are they philosophers. Rather than questioning what ,s, thoy

resent it and so. with their rhitoric, try to conjure it away, but in their reactiott lrt

modemity, they are, in tum, conditioned by it, and hence, unwittingly' are ntt

integral part of it, And sometimes the engine that drives it'

But interms of the serious demands of our technology today, I am thinking ttf

the level of coordination in scientific and humanisticresearch, andhow withorrt tlte

advent of the computer this would not be possible. I am thinking of electrottlu

communications in general, but specifically oftelevision andthe Internet, atld ltow

these two modes oi communication are destined to come together. Antl I ttltt

thinking ofhow all of this makes us witness to the ever swiftly, disorienting ecltltre

of the sivereignty of the nation-state, creating, as it were, a new political arclltt ntltl

a new political actor, the form of which we are yet to imagine, much less to lllllll€

Ah, shades of Machiavel|l,s Prince and Ovid's Mtl|umttlthtt'sis.

Our technology at the end of this ccntury is rnarri lcst hy thc discnrhrldirrre'tt l ttF

On Spiritual Crisis, Globalization, and planetary Rule 57

l)ower in the form of the appearance of the invisible. This is why the power oftcchnology during the time of globalization often is referred to as io0t power, softhccause it is both malleable and boundless. It is a technology the powir of whicht'ither appears benign or, because of its stealth, appears not to exist at all. Its use;rlways is justified by that abstraction called "values." This power is as soft and asrlltrsive as the electronic image itself. Mass communications is both decentralizedrrrd dispersed power. It also is mass illusion and delusion in that tne more,lt'centuralized and dispersed it becomes, the less natural and historical reality, r.ists. Given the "world picfure," more and more people are coming to take the' ' r' rrtual" as an improvement over the "givens" ofnature and history, or they simply,rrt' taking the "virtual" itself as the given, and therefore, not questioning ihelrrr ' l r l r€ thev see.

". rvti Zop the TV. There is cNN. well, maybe not. perhaps a talk show in

l' , l;rrrdic, Slovak, or Urdu. But for now, most are in English. Tomorrow? perhaps,r r r ( '11111s5s. crudely put, news or talk about the news is "history as journalism j'a7'r . llt'idcgger termed it. This is the world picture-the world as a picture-the', , 'r L I lrictured as a whole in which the past and future are zapped into an electricalilr',,p't' .l'the present. The specific language matters less and less, for the formati t I r, I I ;1111s) increasingly is the same, for the content is conditioned by the context',i'l rlrt' crlntext by the perspective. "Truth is relative," so they say, but this is not'|l,i r,.rrt. while truth is relative to the perspective from which the world is being" ', , , I . I irn iting, thereby, both what one "sees" and how one interprets it, greater

" ', ' r l 'r'r '; .l' people are seeing versions of the same picfure. Thus, more and more1" , ';rl, ;rr c becoming less and less tied to their "little corners" of their necessarilyl i i ,rrrrrl ' st.ndpoints"-andcomingclosertowhatHeideggercallsa.,standpoint' rrlr,,rrr rrl:rrrt lpoint."as This point is so obvious that it l ikely is to be missed(and

r i i i r r l r r 'p. int) , for i t isaboutthatwhichdef inesusmost,butwhichwequest ionr',r { It r:; ub.ut our "Archimedean point," our technology in general, and! ' , r r , ,q111 tcchnology in part icular.

l ' | .r( 'rcpcat myself from part I of this essay: technology is our common! ' , " ' ' ' , r r . r r . r ,our independentvar iable.Thus, i tbothdef inestheworlduponwhich

'| .,,,1 rr(l orrr view of that world. Simply put, no thought of our world makesr t I r' r r I r u k i ng into account the phenomenon of technology. Its maj or reason

t ' r" ,,'' ,lt'|'1'11115 on our perception that all there rs there is only in relation to us,' i rl'ii r'; rlrr.'rc lilr our a.se. But because of technology, we are able to do/make!, :r , ,, r ' (o rcprcsent a universe as we see fit.ae*i,r ,, l ,r( 'r;(. ' l ; t l ion cntails negation, in that it is the given that is! ' . ! ! r ' i l l ' r r l r t l rc hiskrr ical and natrrral g iven. The magic of negat ion l ies inr ; . ' ; r I , r l r r i . r r rv( ' l ) ( )wcr. wlr i lc g lobal izat ion is about the t ransformat ion of the

, . ' . , , r l l l l r . r t l r : rsbccrr l3 ivcrr lorrs isrrotycl l ransl i r r rncd. ' f l r r rs,usKo. jdvetaught,f ( f r ly f rcrc i l l t , i t t t ' i1t l< ' , r r r r t l l l r t : I ( )99 wrr ' l t l l nrr le ( ) rg i rn izat ion

58 Tom Darby

(WTO) mess proves his point. Under present conditions the various uncoordinated

and contradictory groups protesting in Seattle cannot be represented, transformed,

and hence recognized, for while globalization may be in principle boundless

(universal) much ofthe planethas not been transformed (homogenized) in practice.

Thus, globalization is not everywhere actualized, and this means that under present

conditions these contradictory groups represented at the WTO cannot be

assimilated by the "system." Thus, the U.H.S. is here only in principle. But this is

another way of saying that the "system" does not yet contain everything, and

because of this, is not yet complete. Globalization is the actualization of

technology. It is technology's concrete universal. Hence, globalization, like the

technology that makes it possible, is self-referential, relatively autonomous,

progressively sovereign, and tends toward the systemization of nature both human

and nonhuman.What I am suggesting is that the interests represented both by the spontaneous

protesters, environmentalists, feminists, farmers, labor and NGOs, the Americas,

b*op., and the rest of the planet are now too contradictory to be transformed, and

that while the U.H.S. may well be our future in the sense that we have eliminated

all other possibilities save that one, we are not there yet, and that globalization is

but the process that may take us there.But piocesses, while they are occurring, appear to be without logic. Thus, while

undergoing a process, process appears as randomness, but when it is over, it is

revealed to have been inevitable. And in the sense that it is revealed to be

inevitable, it is logical. But the logic of globalization is meaningless, hence

nihilistic.

In 1946 when Europe was digging itself out from under the rubble, Kojdve wrote

that every good Hegelian knows that the days ofthe nation-state are numbered and

that we titull *ittt"tt yet again the rising star of empire.so

I must confess that I did not understand what Kojdve meant until I read Samuel

P. Huntington's The ctash of civilizations and the Remaking of world order.

Unbeknownst to the rightly celebrated political scientist, however, when you

transform a civilization into a power unit you get an empire. Empires are what his

book is about, not civilizations. Huntington implores us in the West to "hang

together" lest "we hang alone." But the West itself may not hang together, in fact,

it may split into a European'oWest" and a "West" of the Americas. While this is

unthinkable for the likes of Huntington, there are signs that such is already

developing. The first is the afore mentioned WTO mess in Seattle; the next is a

closely related sign. Made moie urgent by the other mess that is Kosovo, a decision

was taken by the European Union (EU) in the Helsinki talks of December 1999 to

establish an EU rapid response corps to be the germ of a future EU military arm.

This marks not only what may likely be the beginning of,thc cncl ol'NATO but also

thc transli lrmatign ol't lrc I. lU into a p()wcr urrit. Lot ttttr be: clt: i tr. I lrrn writ ing about

On Spiritual Crisis, Globalization, and Planetary Rule 59

the EU becoming an empire, and, in response, North American Free Trade

Agreement (NAFTA) becoming the same (AFTA), and perhaps the "rest" of the

non-West forming imperial power units similar to those described by Huntington.

Let us look at the range ofpossibilities: ( I ) the status quo, e.g., nation-states, (2)

radically decentralized power units along cultural (: ethnic) lines, the kind of

balkanization that leads to chaos, (3) civilizational economic and social blocks

transformed into empires, or (4) planetary rule.

At the dawning of the new millennium, the answers appear to be the following:

1. Nation-states have been both the actors in and the stage of politics for four

hundredyears.Butnomore.Thepoliticalquestionofhomogeneity andthenation-

state was first settled when WWI emasculated the European nobility by eradicating

hereditary rule, andhence class, which ledthe way forblack Americans to become

combatants in the next war and then in 1964,"legally equal." And then there waso.Rosieo" who, in wwII, proved herself by doing "man's work" behind the lines.

Yet, the last days of the nation-state marched to the New Speak swan song of

political correctness and multiculturalism called o'class, race' and gender"-the last

gasp ofthe trventieth century, a mere elaboration of, or a concretizing of, our recent

puri. Itt principle, the political questions were answered by the Western global

cirril *ats, wwl and wwIL and, at the century's end, the west's victory in the

third Western global civil war-the Cold War-has settled the economic question

as to whether the state or the market could more efficiently produce more wealth

and afford a higher standard of living (: life-style, i.e., consumerism). This having

been settled, sovereignty and power begins to shift. But where and how?

2. Radical decenhalization of power? Perhaps. But unlikely. why? Because

even though frail, the nation-state is still too strong to allow it. Russia, Canada,

Mexico. and other states with rebel movements are still strong enough to play by

political rules, and power both rules and deftnes politics. As nation-states become

purt of l*g"t civilizational or imperial units they will continue to resist reactionary

popular movements who see themselves as trying to protect thek culture by

resisting globalization.3. But nation-states can begome Huntingtonesque "core States" that can exert

power so as to lead and restrain other "States" in an empire and, at the same time,

ifncientty assimilate groups into a "system" in such a way that globalization on its

own is unable to accomplish at this time. I am proposing that perhaps empires will

be but a stage along the way to the U.H.S. But no one can know how long this

stage will lastorwhatitwill bring. Empire is probablythe onlytemporary deterrent

to planetary rule, and I think this is what Kojdve's statement conceming empire

and his essay on that subject really means.

4. Considering the above, barring the recycling of nation-states as the power

units in our future or the free-fall into chaos, it seems that only a period of empire

stands between us and planetary rule. But, of course, I speak of technological

empires, empires shaped and bound by technology-hence by effrciency-for

effrciency rules technology, and globalization is but the reification oftechnology,

and hencl cflicicncy. I lannah Arcndt said that bureaucracy is the "rulc of nobody'"

60 Tom Darby

Globalization is the process that may lead to the universal and homogeneous ruleof nobody. It is at once Hegel's "Cunning of Reason" (: efficiency) and Marx's"Specter" (: socialism as "each according to his abilities; each according to hisneeds" : If you can pay for it, its yours, if you need it). But reason, howevercunning, is not yet concrete, and Marx's "Specter," while it now looms over theglobe, rather than just over Europe, still merely looms. So, the U.H.S. is still hereonly in the abstract, or, again, it is here only in principle. But this means that theU.H.S. is more than a dream. It now is nossible.

Conclusion

While the West began with the blending of the Greek view of the whole that Platocalled the Good with the Judeo-Christian whole called God, the center of thiswhole, this world (and indeed, of any whole or world) is that in-between where theheavens meet the earth. Previously, because humans were earthbound beings, everyview of the whole was limited to the ground upon which they stood, constitutingtheir various centers, or worlds bound by space and time. Today, because of ourtechnology, the center is wherever man deigns to stand, and thus the boundaries ofour world now are constituted only by whatever we willto do and can do. And wewill do whatever we can. So, for ill or good, our technology provides us with aview of the "patterned change" that is necessary for our picture of the whole.Through technology the planet has become our eternity in non-Time, oureverywhere in no-Where.

So, who has the right to rule the planet? Since rule is about setting limits orboundaries and right depends on adherence to those rules, then our technology hasthe right to rule because it progressively sets its own rules and adjusts its rules towhatever is efficient at any moment. Nobody knows if our time--our Neuzeit-willresult in the complete transformations visioned by Kojdve, Strauss, Schmitt, orHeidegger. Nobody knows if the entire planet eventually will fit into the self-adjusting frame ofthe self-adjusting picture, or if something altogether unforseenwill occur.

But we do know this: at least for this age, and for the life of the West, technologyis here to stay, as are its temporal and spacial offspring-the end of history andglobalization. So we are left only with an old question that is both philosophicaland political-philosophical because it is useless and political because it ispractical. This is the question: how ought we to live and what are we to do? But,then, since our technology rules and has the right to rule, how can we find ananswer to this question when we cannot see a horizon over which an answer mightdawn on us? We can take the safe way and call the darkness light, or we canembrace our destiny and accept our fate, taking the dangerous way, trying to seeand do what we can, and, along whatever way, continue to question.