Julius Kovesi
Does one who wishes to have been Napoleon wish not to be himself? There would be no point in his wish then, for it is he who wants to be Napoleon. How is this possible? I am not challenging the impossibility of someone else than Napoleon being Napoleon, but ask: How, in spite of this impossibility one’s wish to have been Napoleon is sometimes significant, or sometimes one believes it to be significant, or that others understand the wish.
Is the word ‘Napoleon’ a name just because it is used more often than not to refer to a person? Words are not names or adjectives, etc., but tools to serve our purposes. And in a special context most words can be used for many different purposes.
‘Gardener’ is used referentially in the expression “The gardener looks after the roses”, but when I say “I wish I were a gardener” I may simply wish to look after the roses. The article helps us to see that ‘gardener’ is not used referentially here. But the grammatical form does not always help us in differentiating between these two uses. In the situation when I see one gardener digging, and another cutting the roses, I may tell my friend, pointing to the second: “I wish I were that gardener,” or if we know him “I wish I were N”. But still these last two expressions are not used to refer to a person, but to an activity. I use ‘N’ only if my friend also knows him by name. I maintain that the better a person is known in public and the more he is associated with an activity, the more we are able to use the phrase usually referring to him, to refer to an activity; and the more effective it is. (E.g. Quisling, McCarthy.)
An ambitious cadet reads military history. For him “I wish to have been Napoleon” means “If I had had those powers on that particular occasion (or sometimes just in general)!” and then he could go on saying “I would have done so and so”. He may not mean more than this, for if we reminded him, “You know he died in exile”, he could answer “I do not mean that”. The similar wish of a politician or law student could be analysed on the same lines. Their wishes involve a physical impossibility, but not a logical one, and their wish is quite legitimate, for it is just this physical “handicap” that they would like to overcome.
But there could be a logical impossibility involved in the wish, if it is the wish of a person whose ambition is not military or political, etc., but an ambition to become a “personality”. What gives plausibility to his wish is that he regards his ambition to be something similar to the ambition of the cadet, etc. To have the military powers of Napoleon can be reconciled with keeping your identity (disregarding the effects of that power on your personality). But to have the personality of Napoleon is not the same as to have his military powers. Only by assuming that it is, do people wish to have his personality. Of course the cadet makes an assumption too; he assumes that without Napoleon’s personality he could have that power over his soldiers. But the cadet’s mistake is not a logical mistake.
There are persons whose wish to have been Napoleon is of somewhat different sort. Someone may have the development of European history so much at heart that he thinks less of his own life (and still less of Napoleon’s) than of a desired different turn in history. For him the wish may be expressed e.g. “I wish France had not invaded Russia”.
Most of these wishes involve a naivety which is illustrated by this story: The rabbi of Krakow was said to be very wealthy. The rabbi of a small community said that if he were the rabbi of Krakow he would be still wealthier. “How?”, they asked. “Why”, he said, “I would keep my own money too.”