Danilo Scholz Read Bio Collapse
Danilo Scholz is a historian and postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen, Germany. His work focuses on modern European political thought, including concepts and critiques of the state, theories of technocracy, debates on geopolitics, and the history of international institutions. He is currently completing an intellectual biography of Alexandre Kojève, with a particular emphasis on the Hegelian philosopher’s diplomatic career.
# 150
Kojève’s journey from philosophy to diplomacy was not a case of accidental wandering but the outgrowth of his Hegelian convictions. He held that critique without action is frivolous, dismissing the “fundamentally nihilist elements, known as ‘intellectuals,’ for whom non-conformity is in itself an absolute value”—those who, like Albert Camus, reveled in moral dissent yet sidestepped the arduous institutional work needed for durable change. A critique, Kojève said, that wants to be taken seriously cannot operate at a distance from the state.