Alexandre Kojève

Alexandre Kojève (of his true name АлександрВладимировичКожевников ), born with Saint-Pétersbourg the April 28th 1902 and died in Brussels the June 4th 1968, is a Philosophe French of Russian origin which renewed the study of Hegel in France. Hegel had been introduced in France by the efforts of Victor Cousin, at the 19th century. But one can say that it is in Kojève which one owes the eminent place that Hegel in France occupies today. Kojève occupies a rather singular place in the French Philosophie of the 20th century, since it is that by which Hegel will be read by the French elites, thanks to the courses that it will ensure of 1933 1939 the practical École of the high studies Paris (where it replaces Alexandre Koyré) and that it gives up any activity of Enseignement after the war to occupy a strategic station with the Ministère of the Economy and Finances, where it will hold GATT on the baptismal font. Discussed and mysterious character (it is suspected of having been a Soviet agent a long time), Kojève remains an important figure in the reflection on political philosophy.

Biography

Born in Russia in a very easy family (her mother will send a long time money to him after the Révolution of 1917), with for uncle the painter Kandinsky. Student with Berlin as of 1920, it meets there Alexandre Koyré, Leo Strauss, and much of other students who will become later Intellectuel S of foreground. After a thesis on Soloviev with Karl Jaspers, Alexandre Kojève comes to France (it will be naturalized in 1937), where it completes to lose his fortune because of bad financial placements. Constrained to find work, it will give conferences on the Phénoménologie of the Spirit of G.W.F. Hegel with the École practices high studies in Paris of 1933 with 1939. These conferences will be followed by Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, André Breton and Raymond Aron. It is told that the public was if not very many (though faithful), that it was necessary to make come the wives and the husbands, so that the quota of listeners is reached.

After the Second world war, period during which it is with Marseilles with Leon Poliakov and Nina Ivanoff (and where it writes its text on the concept of authority , in 1942) and where he takes part in a maquis based with Gramat, close to Souillac, in the south of France, Kojève is désœuvré.

It is recruited at the end of the war to the Direction of research and the economic studies (DREE) by Robert Marjolin, listener in 1938 and 1939 of the famous seminar (1933 - 1939) at the practical School of the high studies on the Phenomenology of the Spirit of Hegel. He was secretary of the European Organization of economic cooperation (OEEC) starting from 1948. All its second career consisted, until its death to Brussels at a meeting of the Common Market, with advising the French governments on the most important files. He will play a considerable part in 1950 in the continuations of the plan Schuman concerning the program of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). He will occupy a position of foreground in all the international negotiations, with UNCTAD or GATT.

He gives up a wavering university career thus and while continuing its philosophical reflection, he changes vocational guidance. It is at the time of the one of the international meetings that he dies in June 1968 with Brussels, of a Heart attack. He is buried not far from the seat of NATO.

Work

The conferences of Kojève on the Phénoménologie of the Spirit of Hegel are published in 1947 under the title: Introduction to the Reading of Hegel . It east its more precisely seems T most known work (, it is not a question, strictly speaking , of a work; it is Raymond Queneau who wrote the greatest part of it, starting from the notes taken at the time of the seminar, like some texts of A. Kojève itself). It is the first which will seek to combine Marx, Hegel and Heidegger, and of this fact it is looked like the most important source of the Radicalisme French of post-war period, at the sides of Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, etc, although the official positions of Kojève were generally marked by the provocation ( “I am only Stalinist truth” , “I am an alive god” , etc were formulas which did not make fear with Kojève).

Reading that made Kojève of Hegel stresses the Dialectique of the Master and the slave , while reformulating all the system of Hegel around the concept of Reconnaissance , exchange in this dialectical. The Dialectique of the Reconnaissance occupies only one small section in the Phénoménologie of the Spirit, but in the first systematic work of this one, the Ethical Way of life (1802), the Reconnaissance plays a central role in the development of the Médiation. In this direction, one can say that Kojève exposes in a very powerful and very convincing way the thought of Hegel.

With the rise of the social movements after the Second world war in Europe, this topic of the recognition will be the central axis of philosophy known as continental . Kojève follows the movement of formation of the philosophy of Hegel since Aristote and Plato, and includes/understands the dialectical one of Hegel like the increase in the development of the objective products of the human Culture, more than the result of the work of the Spirit, this last interpretation being that of Hegel. Kojève insists on the question of the Fin of the history and on the fact that nothing again can truly emerge in the world - reality became really rational. One can think quickly that Kojève drew this conclusion towards the practice by giving up philosophy and by devoting the remainder from its life to economic planning.

At the time of the death of Kojève, the edition of the reasoned History of pagan philosophy is about to succeed. The first of three volumes appears in 1968, the second in 1973 and the last two years later. These volumes come from the notes of readings that Kojève had made especially on the philosophers of the Néo-platonisme. Its interest for Soloviev, and in general for the conflict between Philosophy and Théologie had prepared it to read the philosophers of late Antiquity with a precise glance, in particular on the emperor Julien, on whom Kojève wrote an impertinent text, published in a volume of homages to Leo Strauss ( the Julien emperor and its art to write ). It is besides because of Leo Strauss, met in the Années 1920 in Berlin (Strauss works there with die Akademie für die Wissenschaft of Judentums , under the crook of Julius Guttmann), that Kojève translates and to publish in French, via Raymond Queneau, the comment of Strauss on the Hiéron of Xénophon. This comment is followed of an answer of Kojève, entitled Tyrannie and Sagesse , answer itself followed by a developped at the point . Volume appears in 1954 under the title of Of Tyranny . The topics of the political life and the authority hold a great place in the reflections of Alexandre Kojève: it is thus not astonishing that it was in conversation with Leo Strauss, of which it is the major axis of thought. Strauss, in its correspondence, makes fun the posted tendency of the Kojève young person to sentimental instability and carries particularly severe criticisms to the place of certain knowledge of Kojève, of which the philosopher Eric Weil; Strauss and Kojève will remain in correspondence all their life. Kojève tended to scorn the the United States, also truly never made it efforts to meet there his/her Berliner friend, who had emigrated there, to teach initially with New York, then with Chicago. This one sent some pupils however to him, in particular Allan Bloom and Stanley Rosen.

The marked taste of Kojève for the thing Politique made him hold a correspondence with the lawyer constitutionnalist Carl Schmitt, who with leaving the Second world war, because of his affinities in 1932 with the party National-Socialist, was passably discredited. However Kojève held Schmitt for a thinker of foreground. Whereas he answered the question of Rudi Dutschke: “What to make? ” by this abrupt answer: “To learn the Greek! ” , this philosopher who passed to be savagely Stalinist would have said to Jacob Taubes, which was astonished to see Kojève being on the point of returning visit in Schmitt to Plettenberg: “Which thus of other is worth the sorrow to be met in Germany? ” .

Ideas

the Fine of the history

the end of the history took place in 1806, as Hegel said it, with the victory of the ideas of the Revolution (freedom and equality) with Iéna. Since the way continues towards the homogeneous universal State (liberal and democratic) but it does not have there more improvement of the basic principles, which are only wide and thorough.

the end of the history is already carried out, especially with the the United States (classless society). The China, the the USSR and the United States do nothing but explore different ways towards the same goal.

the end of the history marks the end of the historical man, of the Action to the strong direction. From now on the man devotes himself to the Art, the Amour and the Jeu. He (Re) becomes animal.

the only alternative is the Japanese snobbery, which could extend to the rest of the world.

This hesitation between two possible destinies (return to the animality or maintenance in the certain shape of humanity) is expressed in the long notes - very often quoted - pp. 464-7 of the Introduction to the Reading of Hegel.

Works

Introduction to the reading of Hegel . Paris, Gallimard.
History reasoned of pagan philosophy . Paris, Gallimard, 3 volumes (collection “Such”).
Tyranny and Sagesse , in Leo Strauss, of Tyranny . Paris, Gallimard.
“novels of wisdom”, in Critical , LX, 1952. (in connection with three novels of Raymond Queneau).
the Julien Emperor and his art to write . Paris, Furbished. (Article initially published in a volume of homages to Leo Strauss).
Atheism . Paris, Gallimard, 1998.
the Idea of the determinism in traditional physics and modern physics . Paris (1990)
Concept of authority . Paris, Gallimard.
Draft of a phenomenology of the right (1981). Paris, Gallimard.

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Alexandre Kojève

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