Reflexões sobre a mentira

by Alexandre Koyré, Diogo Paiva (translator)

Réflexions d’une lucidité et d’une clarté exemplaires sur le mensonge politique, constitutif des régimes totalitaires.Exilé à New York pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Alexandre Koyré a publié en 1943 ces réflexions sur la place du mensonge dans les sociétés totalitaires. Le fonctionnement de ces régimes d'un type nouveau repose d'après lui sur la transformation de la vérité. Le jugement moral porté sur le mensonge se trouve remis en cause en période de guerre. Le mensonge devient une arme nécessaire pour vaincre l'ennemi, voire une obligation. Or, c'est bien un climat de guerre que les régimes totalitaires instaurent constamment. Ces régimes fonctionnent comme des sociétés secrètes, pour la survie desquelles le mensonge est indispensable. A la seule différence qu'ils le pratiquent "en plein jour", en plantant une barrière entre la classe gouvernante et la "masse" qu'ils entendent diriger et asservir.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

44 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1945

About the author

Aleksandr Vladimirović Kojre, published as Alexandre Koyré was a philosopher and historian of science. He contributed to the development of the history of science in France and to its diffusion in the United States after the Second World War.

In the 1930's, Koyré began the research that made him one of the most eminent historians of twentieth century scientific thought, the first phase of which ended before the Second World War with the publication of the three volumes of Galilean Studies. Koiré became one of the protagonists of French historical epistemology, a new discipline that claimed to study the history of scientific thought as such and as a whole.

Reviews

[José Simões · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ensaio tão breve quanto lúcido sobre a mentira, a verdade, as «conspirações às claras» dos propagadores de ódio (racista, fascista, discriminatório) dos dias de Hitler que, infelizmente, se parecem tanto com os dos nossos dias. É fundamental ler esta meditação de um pensador único e que poucas vezes temos acesso na nossa língua. Também por isso, uma nota especial para a VS, editora que se vai tornando incontornável no nosso panorama editorial.

[Ali Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read , described somewhere by Derrida (in the issue of the Cahiers de l'Herne dedicated to him) as one of the most important philosophy book on truth & lying.

Very short & very accessible (even for people not used to reading philosophy), this book was written immediately after World War II, and is a political and philosophical reflexion on the uses of lying, especially in totalitarist contexts, but also in cults (indeed, nazism is characterized as a sort of cult, in which conspiracy theory is used to instrumentalize followers, who believe to be in "the known", and therefore believe not to be manipulated by the lies their leaders publicly give to the world).

It is therefore a useful add to Hannah Arendt's classical writings on these themes, and one could speculate on Debord having read it to write his classical La société du spectacle.

[Dina Rahajaharison · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Si rien n'est plus raffiné que la technique de la propagande moderne, rien n'est plus grossier que le contenu de ses assertions, qui révèlent un mépris absolu et total de la vérité. Et même de la simple vraisemblance. Mépris qui n'est égalé que par celui - qu'il implique - des facultés mentales de ceux à qui elle s'adresse."

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tracked this down because Arendt cites it alongside "The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies" to make a point about the organization of the upper echelons Nazi Party of which I have now long since lost track. The author's analysis of the political use of mendacity far presages the less deliberately totalitarian approach of On Bullshit , and goes farther in fewer pages to show the pernicious effect of its application, which we are again seeing today from the U.S. to Eastern Europe to Russia and beyond in a way that Frankfurt seems not to have contemplated, or at least not to have articulated. The very post-postmodern concepts of "truthiness" and "fake news" would seem to have their origin in Koyré's observations that "the ability to distinguish the true from the false, to make decisions and judgments […] is the concern of the elite, not of the mob," while "The mob believes everything it is told, provided only that it be repeated over and over." Meanwhile, that the totalitarians' "criterion of "truth" […] is not agreement with reality, but agreement with the spirit of a race or nation or class," meshes with Kasparov's more recent characterization of the most ridiculous and obvious lies being most useful as loyalty tests: "dear leader" need simply watch to see who ignores consensual reality and contorts themselves most vigorously to uphold the party line against all counter-evidence to know who remains on the team.

[c h r i s · Rating 1 out of 5]

pn1 Dialectical-totality:

“The totality is the product of that process which preserves all of its ‘moments’ as elements in a structure, rather than as stages or phases.” (L. Spencer, A. Krauze, Introducing Hegel, p.79, Icon, 2007)

That is, a unity of the contradictory, yet necessary, mutually-conditioning parts. However, the notion of so-called “totalitarianism”, takes two opposites, and collapses them as the same, despite the negation from one opposite overcoming the other. The notion of so-called “totalitarianism” takes all difference (race-nation-class) to appear as identical, as Koyré the learn-ed squire of the bourgeoisie writes:

“The official philosophies of the totalitarian regimes unanimously brand as nonsensical the idea that there exists a single objective truth valid for everybody. The criterion of 'truth', they say, is not agreement with reality, but agreement with the spirit of a race or nation or class” (A. Koyré, The Political Function of the Modern Lie, p.291, 1945)

All states are the reflex of most dominant economic class. There is nothing more “totalizing” or “totalitarian” than the economy of bourgeois-society (capitalism), in which everything can be bought and sold, even human-bodies, the organ-trade, prostitution, even family-relations are turned into money-relations. If the economy is totalitarian, the state is too. If the defenders of capitalism want the abolition of “totalitarianism”, they would have to abolish themselves. The economic class controlling the state (majority or minority of the population) speaks a reality which is untrue for the classes which are not represented by the state. For the bourgeoisie, owning, buying and selling: the land, banks, properties, and factories, is true, but false for the proletariat. The lie is just then conscious speech deliberately out of accordance or correlation to reality (life-activity of social-being). Political parties which are “controlled-opposition” are only tolerated because a real opposition of parties representing different classes would be an open declaration of civil-war.

“what if war, an abnormal, episodic, transient condition, should come to be permanent” (A. Koyré, p.293)

Bourgeois society can be considered a low-scale civil war as a fact of life (not an event), by the simple fact that bourgeois society is a class society with antagonistic classes:

“The creation of a normal working day is, therefore, the product of a protracted civil war, more or less dissembled, between the capitalist class and the working class.” (K. Marx, Capital: Volume 1 1867, p.303, MECW 35, L&W, 2010)

And dependent on the class of which the state is composed-supported, through national wars, the class struggle can take on a national form.

“in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle.” (K. Marx, F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848, p.47, FLP, Peking, 1975)

Even slavery was a heroic struggle of the universal revolutionary subject of history, the working classes.

“We all know to what lengths the totalitarian regimes go to encourage in their adherents and subjects the idea that they are persecuted” (A. Koyré, p.298)

Except it is not just a “persecution” from moral-linguistic social-stigma, but a real appropriation of economic material values by a private ruling class to be used for private, not social ends, of wages in exchange for a private-product created by social-labour-power.
___________________


“Totalitarianism” is an ideological generalization created to avoid making any definite claims:

Communism ≠ nazism [difference → proletarian vs capitalist rule]
Sun ≠ moon [difference → life awakening force vs dead planet]
Cat ≠ dog [difference → species]
Man ≠ woman [difference → reproductive organs]

They are not the same by the simple fact that they are different. If everything is the same as everything, then we have nothing. “Totalitarianism” is this bourgeois-formalist universalism ignoring the content. Adopting A=A, accepts this indifference:

“the essential category of identity […] everything is identical with itself, A = A.” (G W F Hegel, Science of Logic 1812, p.409, Routledge, 2012)

“If a word, term, symbol, name express only […] abstract similarity […] that is not yet a concept […] merely an abstractly general notion” (E.V. Ilyenkov, The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s Capital 1960, p.26, Aakar, 2008)

“Totalitarianism” is nothing but another one of those empty-abstractions, mindless comparisons, of bourgeois-philosophers:

“German speculative philosophy stands in direct contrast to the ancient Solomonic wisdom: Whereas the latter believes that there is nothing new under the sun, the former sees nothing that is not new under the sun; whereas oriental man loses sight of differences in his preoccupation with unity, occidental man forgets unity in his preoccupation with differences [….] The characteristic element of Hegel’s philosophy as compared to the orientalism of the philosophy of identity is difference.” (L. Feuerbach, Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy 1839, p.1-2)

Arendt also wasted about 500 pages (which amounted to nothing) elaborating endlessly on so-called “totalitarianism”.

[Halia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I probably need to reread it to get everything even if it is a short book,
it is full of informations and ideas that must be further explored by us

[Angústia Existencial · Rating 3 out of 5]

não esperava que isto desse uma volta para os regimes totalitários mas válido ig