Alexandre Kojève

Western Philosophers 20th-century philosophy
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Name: Александр Владимирович Кожевников, Aleksandr Vladimirovič Koževnikov
Birth: April 28, 1902 (Russia)
Death: June 4 1968 (Brussels)
School/tradition: Hegelianism/Marxism
Main interests
Idealism
Notable ideas
Influences	Influenced
Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Martin Heidegger, Alexandre Koyré, Karl Jaspers, Vladimir Soloviev, Wassily Kandinsky, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Werner Heisenberg	Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Andre Breton, Sartre, Jacques Lacan, Raymond Aron, Foucault, Derrida, Allan Bloom, Francis Fukuyama, Giorgio Agamben

Alexandre Kojève (Александр Владимирович Кожевников, Aleksandr Vladimirovič Koževnikov) (April 28 1902 – June 4 1968) was a Marxist and Hegelian political philosopher, who had a substantial influence on Twentieth-Century French Philosophy.

Life

Kojève was born in Russia, and educated in Berlin and Heidelberg, Germany. He completed his Ph.D. under the direction of Karl Jaspers. Early influences included the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the historian of science Alexandre Koyré. Kojève would spend most of his life in France where in Paris from 1933-1939 he taught a series of lectures on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's work, Phenomenology of Spirit. After World War II, Kojève worked in the French Ministry of Economic Affairs as one of the chief planners of the European Common Market.

Philosophy

Kojeve is best known for his humanistic reading of Hegel through the lens of Marx.

Hegel's work Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) is called The Phenomenology of Spirit or The Phenomenology of Mind in English; the German word Geist has connotations of both spirit and mind in English. Roughly taking the form of a Bildungsroman, it explores the nature and development of its protagonist—mind/spirit—showing how it evolves through a process of internal contradiction and development from the most primitive aspect of sense-perception through all of the forms of subjective and objective mind, including art, religion, and philosophy, to absolute knowledge that comprehends this entire developmental process as part of itself. Thus it also lays out an entire system of metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy.

For Kojeve, the key section of the Phenomenology is the Master-Slave dialectic (Herrschaft und Knechtschaft in German. It is Hegel's genesis myth which explains how human beings attained self-consciousness, as opposed to mere consciousness. Crucially, for Hegel, self-consciousness cannot come to be without first recognizing another self-consciousness. Such an issue in the history of philosophy had never been explored and the conclusion of which, marks a watershed in European philosophy.

Hegel's myth

In order to explain how this works, Hegel uses a kind of primordial myth about the development of self-consciousness, as two consciousnesses meet. However, Hegel's idea of self-consciousness is not the contoured brain of natural science, but one with a history; one that must have passed through a struggle for freedom before realizing itself.

The abstract language used by Hegel never allows one to interpret this myth in a straightforward fashion. It can be read as self-consciousness coming to itself through a child's or adult's development, or self-consciousness coming to be in beginning of human history, see hominization, or as that of a society or nation realizing freedom.

The myth occurs in a number of stages, and proceeds through Hegel's idea of "sublation" (Aufhebung), the lifting up of two contradictory moments to a higher unity.

Initial encounter

First, the two "consciousnesses" meet and are astounded at coming to see another person. They can choose to ignore one another, in which case no self-consciousness forms and each views the other merely as another object. Or, they become mesmerized by the mirror-like other and attempt, as they previously did with their own body, to assert themselves.

According to Hegel,

"On approaching the other it has lost its own self, since it finds itself as another being; secondly, it has thereby sublated that other, for it does not regard the other as essentially real [real in the concepts a pre-self-consciousness] , but sees its own self in the other."

Reaction

The "I" sees another "I" and finds its own pre-eminence and control as compromised. It ignores this other or sees it as a threat to itself. Its own self-certainty and truth has forevermore been shattered. The only means of re-asserting itself, in order to proceed toward self-consciousness, is by entering into a struggle for pre-eminence.

Death struggle

A struggle to the death ensues. However, if one of the two should die the achievement of self-consciousness fails. Hegel refers to this failure as "abstract negation" not the negation or sublation required. This death is avoided by the agreement, communication of, or subordination to, slavery.

Enslavement and mastery

Truth of oneself as self-conscious is achieved only if both live, the recognition of the other gives each one the objective truth and self-certainty required for self-consciousness. Thus, the two enter into the relation of master/slave and preserve the recognition of each other.

Instability

However, this state is not a happy one and does not achieve full self-consciousness. The recognition by the slave is merely on pain of death. The master self-consciousness is dependent on the slave for recognition and also has a mediated relation with nature; the slave works with nature and begins to shape it into products for the master.

The master only has an evanescent desire/pleasure relation to things whereas the slave sees his work objectified in products.

Only when slavery is abolished and there is mutual recognition will both fully achieve self-consciousness. For Hegel, the further development of self-consciousness in history then passes through the stages of the unhappy consciousness before it finally achieves freedom.

Conclusions

One interpretation of this dialectic, is that neither a slave nor a master can be considered as fully self-conscious. A person who has already achieved self-consciousness could be enslaved, so self-consciousness must be considered not as an individual achievement, or an achievement of natural and genetic evolution, but as a social phenomenon.

Another interpretation is that Man was born and history began with the first struggle, which ended with the first masters and slaves. Man is always either master or slave; and there are no real humans where there are no masters and slaves. History comes to an end when the difference between master and slave ends, when the master ceases to be master because there are no more slaves and the slave ceases to be a slave because there are no more masters. A synthesis takes place between master and slave: the integral citizen of the universal and homogeneous state created by Napoleon.

Influence of the master-slave dialectic

The master and slave relationship was much discussed in the 20th century, especially because of its supposed connection to Karl Marx's conception of class struggle as the motive force of social development. (Chris Arthur has argued that this connection was falsely instigated by Sartre under the influence of French Hegelian, Alexandre Kojève, but it is dubious whether this claim is universally applicable). This idea also provided the inspiration for Søren Kierkegaard's conception of the God – sinful bondsman relationship and for Friedrich Nietzsche's Master-slave morality.^{[citation needed]} It has also been influential in the social sciences and in psychoanalysis.^{[citation needed]} Furthermore, Hegel's master-slave trope, and particularly the emphasis laid on recognition, has been of crucial influence on Frantz Fanon's description of the colonial relation in Black Skin, White Masks.

Kojève argued that Hegel's intentions were to illustrate that overcoming the fear of death was the only way to achieve true freedom. This was not actually stated by Hegel (in truth at points in this work he makes a direct argument against the use of force as the manner in which history develops). A recent work that uses this argument is Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man. Fukuyama admits in the work that his understanding of Hegel is mostly Kojèvian, in particular his conception of the end of history as an ultimate stage of history, while it is, according to Georg Lukacs' interpretation, not a transcendent end but an aim immanent to the never-ending process.

Kojève is best-known for his "End of History" thesis, which stated that ideological history in a limited sense had ended with the French Revolution and the regime of Napoleon and that there was no longer a need for violent struggle to establish the "rational supremacy of the regime of rights and equal recognition."

Francis Fukuyama, drawing heavily on Hegel as seen by Kojève, developed his own End of History thesis, which states that Liberal capitalism has proven to be more efficient than other economic and political systems in garnering the technological requirements necessary to master nature, banish scarcity and meet the needs of humanity. This theory sparked much controversy when published by Fukuyama in his work The End of History (1992),

Kojève's response was reprinted in the Spring 1980 (Vol. 9) edition of the French journal Commentaire in an article entitled "Capitalisme et socialisme: Marx est Dieu; Ford est son prophète." ("Capitalism and socialism : Marx is God; Ford is his prophet")

Kojeve's version of the "End of History" is more nuanced and points as much to a socialist-capitalist synthesis as to a triumph of Liberal capitalism.

The End of History does not itself resolve the tension within the idea of equality—the ideal of equal recognition that is rationally victorious with the End of History embodies elements of market justice, equal opportunity, and “equivalence” in exchange (the “bourgeois” dimension of the French Revolution). But it also contains within it a socialist or social democratic conception of equality of civic status, implying social regulation, welfare rights, and the like.

Some of Kojève's more important lectures on Hegel have been published in English in Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on Phenomenology of Spirit. Kojève's interpretation of Hegel has been one of the most influential of the past century. His lectures were attended by intellectuals including Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Andre Breton, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan and Raymond Aron. Other French thinkers have acknowledged his influence on their thought, including the post-structuralist philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. His most influential work was Introduction à la lecture de Hegel (1947), which summarized many of his lectures and included, in full, some others.

Kojève also had a lifelong friendship and correspondence with the US political philosopher Leo Strauss; their correspondence has been published along with a critique Kojève wrote of Strauss's commentary on Xenophon in Strauss, Leo On Tyranny: Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence (edited by Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth). Several of Strauss's students went to Paris to meet Kojève in the 1950s and 1960s. Included in those was Allan Bloom, who endeavored during his lifetime to make Kojève's works available in English language translations. It is worth noting, however, that some of the Straussian interpretations of Kojève remove some of the nuance and even some of the irony from his work: Kojève is sometimes presented as a Machiavellian Mephistopheles, a grand and ingenious defender of evil, and at other times as an unambiguous Leftist. In the 1950s, Kojève also befriended the noted Rightist legal theorist (and former Nazi) Carl Schmitt, whose "Concept of the Political" he had implicitly criticized in his analysis of Hegel's text on "Lordship and Bondage." Another close friend was the Jesuit Hegelian philosopher Gaston Fessard.

In addition to his lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, Kojève has published other articles and books in French, a book on Kant, and articles on the relationship between Hegelian and Marxist thought and Christianity. A book Kojève wrote in 1943 was published posthumously in 1981 by the French publisher Gallimard under the title Esquisse d'une phenomenologie du droit in which he contrasts the aristocratic and bourgeois views of right. Le Concept, le temps et le discours, also published by Gallimard, further extrapolate on the Hegelian notion that wisdom only becomes possible in the fullness of time. Kojève's response to Leo Strauss, who disputed this notion, can be found in Kojève's article 'The Emperor Julian and his Art of Writing' published in Ancients and Moderns: Essays on the Tradition of Political Philosophy in Honor of Leo Strauss, edited by Joseph Cropsey, as well as in the above-mentioned edition of Strauss's On Tyranny. Kojève also challenged Strauss' interpretation of the classics in a 1000+page book "Esquisse d'une histoire raisonnée de la pensée païenne," including one volume on the pre-Socratic philosophers, one on Plato and Aristotle, and one on Neoplatonism. His posthumously published book on Immanuel Kant received little attention. Recently, three more books have been published: a 1932 thesis on the physical and philosophical importance of quantum physics, an extended 1931 essay on atheism ("L'athéisme"), and a 1943 work on "The Notion of Authority;" like "Le Concept, le temps et le discours" these have not been published in English translation.

Prior to going to France, Kojève studied under the existentialist thinker Karl Jaspers, submitting his doctoral dissertation on the Russian mystic Vladimir Soloviev's views on the mystical union of God and man in Christ. Kojève's uncle was the abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky, on whom Kojève wrote and with whom he maintained a correspondence. It is said that Kojève knew Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan dialects alongside his French, German, Russian, English, and classical Greek. ^{[citation needed]}

Kojève died in Brussels in 1968, shortly after giving a talk at the European Economic Community (now European Union) on behalf of the French government. In his later years he had repeatedly expressed the position was that what had, in Marx's time and afterward, been known as a European proletariat, no longer existed, and the wealthy West sorely needed to help developing countries to overcome widespread poverty through large monetary gifts (in the mold of the Marshall Plan).

Claim of espionage

In 1999 Le Monde published an article reporting that a French intelligence document showed that Kojève had spied for the Soviets for over 30 years. The claims of this document (and even its existence) are disputed, and it has never been released. Kojève's supporters tend to believe that if it were true, it was probably unsubstantial as spying per se and a result of his megalomaniacal personality, a pretense to be a philosopher at the end of history influencing the course of world events.

Kojève on Stalinism

In any case, Kojève's contribution to international French economic policy was more than substantial. Though Kojève (ironically or seriously, it is not known) often claimed to be a Stalinist, he also regarded the Soviet Union with contempt, calling its social policies disastrous and its claims to be a classless state ludicrous. He specifically and repeatedly called it the only country living in which 19th-century capitalism still existed. His Stalinism was ironic to the extent Stalin had no political chance to lead the Weltgeist; yet, he was serious about Stalinism to the extent that he regarded the utopia of the Soviet Union under Stalin, and the willingness to purge unsupportive elements in the population, as evidence of a desire to bring about the end of history, and as a repetition of the Revolutionary Terror of the French Revolution.

Books

Books and Essays by Kojeve:

• Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.
• Alexandre Kojève, Outline of a Phenomenology of Right, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000.
• Alexandre Kojève, "The Emperor Julian and His Art of Writing," in Joseph Cropsey, Ancients and Moderns; Essays on the Tradition of Political Philosophy in Honor of Leo Strauss, New York: Basic Books, p. 95-113, 1964.
• Alexandre Kojève, "Tyranny and Wisdom," in Leo Strauss, On Tyranny - Revised and Expanded Edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 135-176, 2000.

Books about Kojeve, his Hegel interpretation and/or the 'End of History':

• Anderson, Perry, "The Ends of History" in his A Zone of Engagement, New York: Verso, p. 279-375, 1992.
• Butler, Judith, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
• Cooper, Barry, The End of History: An Essay on Modern Hegelianism, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.
• Devlin, F. Roger, Alexandre Kojeve and the Outcome of Modern Thought, Lanham: University Press of America, 2004.
• Drury, Shadia B., Alexandre Kojeve : The Roots of Postmodern Politics, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.
• Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man, New York: Macmillan, 1992.
• Niethammer, Lutz, Posthistoire: Has History Come to an End?, New York: Verso, 1992.
• Roth, Michael S., Knowing and History: Appropriations of Hegel in Twentieth-Century France, Ithaca: Cornell, 1988.
• Rosen, Stanley, the title essay in his Hermeneutics as Politics, New York, Oxford University Press, p. 87-140, 1987.
• Singh, Aakash, Eros Turannos: Leo Strauss & Alexandre Kojeve Debate on Tyranny, Lanham: University Press of America, 2005.
• Strauss, Leo, On Tyranny - Revised and Expanded Edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Robert Howse, Kojeve's Latin Empire, 2004. OCLC 96990314 Retrieved December 18, 2007.

External links

All links Retrieved December 18, 2007.

• Alexandre Kojève, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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