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I was really surprised when I learned that Anton Alikhanov, a highly placed public official (the ex-governor of Kaliningrad and now the Russian Minister of Trade and Industry), replied to my critique,1 although I have some doubts about his text: Alikhanov accuses me of practicing “Ricoeur’s ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’,” a term, today half-forgotten, used by Paul Ricoeur critically, targeting the post-Hegelian triad of Marx-Nietzsche-Freud who (to quote Rita Felski) “share a commitment to unmasking ‘the lies and illusions of consciousness’; they are the architects of a distinctively modern style of interpretation that circumvents obvious or self-evident meanings in order to draw out less visible and less flattering truths,”2 in contrast to hermeneutics proper, which tries to bring out the deeper authentic meaning of a text. Here disagreement begins… I think today there is no great need for “hermeneutics of suspicion”: the big powers openly show their cards, not even trying to mask their brutal acts with ideological justifications – and in my readings I take this into account. I will also not deal with my suspicions that somebody more versed in philosophy helped him to write his reply – I will simply take the text as it is. But first, here are the two paragraphs I wrote apropos Alikhanov:
“So Anton Alikhanov, the governor of the Russian exclave Kaliningrad, was right when he recently said that Kant, who spent his entire life in the region of Kaliningrad (German Koenigsberg), has a ‘direct connection’ to the war in Ukraine. According to Alikhanov, it was German philosophy, whose ‘godlessness and lack of higher values’ began with Kant, that created the ‘sociocultural situation’ that led, among other things, to the First World War:
‘Today, in 2024, we’re bold enough to assert that not only did the First World War begin with the work of Kant, but so did the current conflict in Ukraine. Here in Kaliningrad, we dare to propose – although we’re actually almost certain of it – that it was precisely in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals […] that the ethical, value-based foundations of the current conflict were established.’”3
The governor went on to call Kant one of the “spiritual creators of the modern West,” saying that the “Western bloc, which was shaped by the US in its own image,” is an “empire of lies.” Kant, he said, is referred to as the “father of almost everything” in the West, including freedom, the idea of the rule of law, liberalism, rationalism, and “even the idea of the European Union.”[iv] And if Ukraine resists Russia on behalf of these Western values, Kant is effectively also responsible for the Ukrainian resistance to Russia. “Crazy” as they may sound, Alikhanov’s statements are thus a useful reminder of the high metaphysical stakes of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Alikhanov is also right in another sense: Kant brutally dispelled the myth of the sacred origins of the rule of law; he made it clear that the origin of every legal order is illegal violence – a lesson unacceptable for the Russian spiritualism advocated by Alikhanov. One cannot but quote here a remark misattributed to Otto von Bismarck: “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.”4
Alikhanov is also right that I didn’t cover his entire text – but why should I? I was interested just in his claim that Kant is to blame for the Ukrainian war. So here is Alikhanov’s reply, translated into English by a friend of mine.
Dear Mr. Žižek,
public officials do not usually engage in polemics with philosophers. But when a philosopher reads a text through the prism of Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of suspicion,” seeing hidden ideological subtext in every word instead of its clear, open meaning, silence becomes complicity in the distortion of truth. In your critique, you repeat arguments that have been directed at my report for the past two years. Therefore, I have decided to respond to you.
There is irony in my Kantian speech: most critics, including you, Mr. Žižek, heard only half of it. This resembles the modern way of consuming information: a clickbait headline is read (“Kant is to blame”), but the substance of the argument is ignored. I had thought that philosophical critique requires not a reaction to an information trigger, but careful engagement with the text.
My 2024 report was titled “Responsibility and Irresponsibility: Political Values as Preconditions for War and a New World.” For a political science conference, the title was dry, but the thesis was provocative. It was conditionally labeled “Kant is to blame,” and this has been debated for two years. However, its essence is a diagnosis of the era. No one intended to criticize Kant directly. He was to be freed from captivity.
My real thesis was the idea of the instrumentalization of Kantian ethics. This was expressed through a metaphor: Kant has been captured by Hoffmann’s characters – the impure forces of the modern West. I called them pragmatists. You, Mr. Žižek, project onto me your favorite themes about the “violence of law,” but I am speaking about something else: for the West, Kant is merely a screen and a tool. This screen is used to conceal a utilitarian-pragmatist ethic, where the criterion is maximum utility. When you accuse me of defending “tradition,” you fail to see that I am criticizing precisely the hypocritical use of universals to justify global expansion.
You claim: “Alikhanov is right about one thing: Kant did indeed destroy the myth of the sacred origin of law, showing that any legal order is rooted in unlawful violence.” The problem is that my speech contains no such argument. I do not refer to the problem of legal legitimacy or “foundational violence.” My critique focuses on the formalism of the categorical imperative, its instrumentalization by a powerful actor, and the substitution of Christian ethics with pragmatism/utilitarianism. It is precisely this kind of ethics that I call post-Kantian.
Anyone who has listened to my speeches as governor will confirm: Kant’s advice “have the courage to use your own reason” (Sapere aude!) has often been my own advice. But the problem is that the large structures of the modern world are willing to tolerate the use of independent thought only as long as the answers align with their narrative. Autonomy is encouraged only in the form of “approved dissent.”
Mr. Žižek, you completely ignore the positive program of my speech – the ethics of responsibility. You do not allow for the possibility that one can arrive at Christian values and an ethics of responsibility precisely through autonomy. Choosing tradition is not blind submission if it is made by a free subject. True autonomy is not necessarily the rejection of authorities, but the courage to take responsibility for choosing one’s authorities. The West imposes its “freedom” as a new dogma, while we defend the right to ethical sovereignty. Christian references are the semantic core of an alternative to the “ethics of irresponsibility,” not rhetorical exercises, as you attempt to portray them. You likely deliberately reduce this aspect because it does not fit your framework.
This attitude toward my speech resembles (by the principle of a fractal) the attitude toward Russia in the modern Western world. Russia, which for years warned of a security crisis and called for a reassessment of values, was perceived as a scandalous element. In our proposals, people searched for “hidden meanings,” “imperial ambitions,” and “undemocratic tendencies.” In reality, the cards were on the table. It was an honest invitation to address a problem, which was rejected because it did not fit into the existing matrix of perception.
Today, Russian émigrés and Western analysts endlessly search for the “real, hidden causes and goals” of the Special Military Operation. Meanwhile, these have been stated as openly as possible within our ethical system. This does not mean there is no complexity, but there is no “secret ingredient” in a conspiratorial sense. Paradoxically, as Deleuze – so beloved by the left – might say, the truth lies on the surface, but Western intellectuals are too absorbed in digging into the “depths” of power to see the obvious. We act precisely in this way: our goals are openly declared; word is not separated from deed. Your refusal to accept this surface-level truth reflects an inability to step beyond your own utilitarian-pragmatist framework.
Russia has acted in the world as precisely the autonomous subject you write about. As have Iran and China – within their own ethical systems. But neither the political establishment, nor academia, nor left-radical intellectuals can see this. Having written thousands of words about the autonomous subject, they fail to recognize it in real life when confronted with it directly. They (including you, Mr. Žižek!) do not see subjectivity where there is no submission to their rules.
This is precisely a sign of intoxication with oneself – an insistence on maintaining illusion, a kind of magical sleep into which the Western world has long and deliberately plunged itself (or has been plunged). Awakening will be painful, because it will require acknowledging that universals were particular, and that the monopoly on truth was a mistake.
Meanwhile, it is written: “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour when the Son of Man will come” (Matthew 25:13). We may not know the hour, but we are obliged to remain vigilant. And to remain vigilant means to see the world as it truly is.
Respectfully,
Anton Alikhanov
With no less sincere respect, and since Alikhanov himself draws attention to the irony in his critique of Kant, I feel obliged to begin with an obvious case of irony that I detected in Alikhanov’s text: he criticizes Western instrumental utilitarian pragmatism, the unreadiness of Western liberal individuals to sacrifice their lives for some higher communal cause, and claims that the reason Ukraine is resisting its russification and joined the West is precisely that it has chosen Western utilitarian pragmatism – really? Is Ukraine’s resistance, which persists in spite of immense suffering, not a clear proof of many Ukrainians’ readiness to move beyond utilitarian pragmatism and die for their country?
