Alexandre Kojève

Philosophy

Hegel lectures

Although not an orthodox Marxist, Kojève was known as an influential and idiosyncratic interpreter of Hegel, reading him through the lens of both Karl Marx and Martin Heidegger. The well-known end of history thesis advanced the idea 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". Kojève's end of history is different from Francis Fukuyama's later thesis of the same name in that it points as much to a socialist–capitalist synthesis as to a triumph of liberal capitalism.

Kojève's lectures on Hegel were collected, edited and published by Raymond Queneau in 1947, and published in abridged form in English in the now classic Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit. His interpretation of Hegel has been one of the most influential of the past century. His lectures were attended by a small but influential group of intellectuals including Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, André Breton, Jacques Lacan, Raymond Aron, Michel Leiris, Henry Corbin and Éric Weil. His interpretation of the master–slave dialectic was an important influence on Jacques Lacan's mirror stage theory. Other French thinkers who have acknowledged his influence on their thought include the post-structuralist philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.

Friendship with Leo Strauss

Kojève had a close and lifelong friendship with Leo Strauss which began when they were philosophy students in Berlin. The two shared a deep philosophical respect for each other. Kojève would later write that he "never would have known [...] what philosophy is" without Strauss. In the 1930s, the two began a debate on the relation of philosophy to politics that would come to fruition with Kojève's response to Strauss' On Tyranny.

Kojève, a senior statesman in the French government, argued that philosophers should have an active part in shaping political events. On the other hand, Strauss believed that philosophy and politics were fundamentally opposed and that philosophers should not have a substantial role in politics, noting the disastrous results of Plato in Syracuse. Philosophers should influence politics only to the extent that they can ensure that philosophical contemplation remains free from the seduction and coercion of power.

In spite of this debate, Strauss and Kojève remained friendly. In fact, Strauss would send his best students to Paris to finish their education under Kojève's personal guidance. Among these were Allan Bloom, who endeavored to make Kojève's works available in English and published the first edition of Kojève's lectures in English, and Stanley Rosen.

Political views

Marxism

According to his own account shortly before his death, Kojève was a communist from youth, and was enthusiastic regarding Bolshevik revolution. However, he "knew that the establishment of communism meant thirty terrible years", so he ran away. From now on, he once claimed in his letter to Tran Duc Thao, dated October 7, 1948, that his "course was essentially a work of propaganda intended to strike people's minds. This is why I consciously reinforced the role of the dialectic of Master and Slave and, in general, schematized the content of phenomenology." His articles from 1920s talked positively about the USSR as a new development. In an article to the magazine Yevraziya, a left Eurasianist journal, he praised the CPSU's struggle against bourgeois philosophy, arguing that it would lead to something new, whether one calls it proletarian or not:

"[…] Marxist philosophy can express the world view of the new ruling class and new culture, and every other philosophy is subject to destruction. […] Everything currently taking place in the USSR is so significant and new that any assessment of the Party's cultural or 'philosophical' politics cannot be founded on preconceived cultural values or preformed philosophical systems. […] the question of the Party's 'philosophical politics' can be assessed, it seems, not entirely negatively. […] Toward the end of the nineteenth century Western thought effectively concluded its development […] turning into a philosophical school of 'scholasticism' in the popular, negative sense of the term. […] being a philosopher, one can nevertheless welcome 'philosophical politics' leading to the complete prohibition of the study of philosophy. […] The Party is fighting against bourgeois culture in the name of proletarian culture. Many find the word 'proletariat' not to their taste. This is after all only a word. The essence of the matter does not change, and the essence consists in the fact that a battle is raging with something old, already existing, in the name of something new, which has yet to be created. Anyone who will welcome the appearance of a truly new culture and philosophy – either because it will be neither Eastern nor Western, but Eurasian, or simply because it will be new and lively in contrast to the already crystallised and dead cultures of the West and East – should also accept everything that contributes to this appearance. It seems to me, for the time being of course, that the Party's policies directed against bourgeois (that is, ultimately Western) culture is really preparation for a new culture of the future."

Mark Lilla notes that Kojève rejected the prevailing concept among some European intellectuals of the 1930s that capitalism and democracy were failed artifacts of the Enlightenment that would be destroyed by either communism or fascism.

While initially somewhat more sympathetic to the Soviet Union than the United States, Kojève devoted much of his thought to protecting western European autonomy, particularly relating to France, from domination by either the Soviet Union or the United States. He believed that the capitalist United States represented right-Hegelianism while the state-socialist Soviet Union represented left-Hegelianism. Thus, victory by either side, he posited, would result in what Lilla describes as "a rationally organized bureaucracy without class distinctions".

Stalin and the Soviet Union

Kojève's views of Joseph Stalin, while changing after World War II, were positive. Kojève's interest in Stalin, however, might have been continued, whether positive or negative, after World War II. According to Isaiah Berlin, a contemporary of Kojève and his friend, during their meeting in Paris c. 1946-1947, they talked about Stalin and the USSR. Berlin comments on his relations with Stalin, saying: "Kojéve was an ingenious thinker and imagined that Stalin was one too. […] He said that he wrote to Stalin, but received no reply. I think that perhaps he identified himself with Hegel, and Stalin with Napoleon."

The most important result of this era was Kojève's work addressed to Stalin, Sofia, filo-sofia i fenomeno-logia (Sophia, Philo-sophy and Phenomeno-logy), a manuscript of more than 900 pages that was penned between 1940 and 1941. In that manuscript, according to Boris Groys, Kojève defended his thesis that the "universal and homogeneous state in which the Sage can emerge and live is none other than Communism" and "scientific Communism of Marx–Lenin–Stalin is an attempt to expand the philosophical project to its ultimate historical and social borders". According to Groys, "Kojève sees the end of history as the moment of the spread of wisdom through the whole population – the democratization of wisdom; a universalization that leads to homogenization. He believes that the Soviet Union moves towards the society of wise men in which every member will have self-consciousness."

According to Weslati, several versions of Sofia, including a typesetted copy, had been completed in the first week of March 1941, and one of them was given to Soviet vice consul in person by Kojève. The Soviet consul "promised to send the letter with the next diplomatic bag to Moscow." However, "[l]ess than three months later, the embassy and its contents would be put to the torch by Nazi troops." It's not known whether Kojève's work had reached the USSR or was burned with the embassy.

In 1999, Le Monde published an article reporting that a French intelligence document showed that Kojève had spied for the Soviets for over thirty years.

Although Kojève often claimed to be a Stalinist, he largely regarded the Soviet Union with contempt, calling its social policies disastrous and its claims to be a truly classless state ludicrous. Kojève's cynicism towards traditional Marxism as an outmoded philosophy in industrially well-developed capitalist nations prompted him to go as far as idiosyncratically referring to capitalist Henry Ford as "the one great authentic Marxist of the twentieth century". He specifically and repeatedly called the Soviet Union the only country in which 19th-century capitalism still existed. His Stalinism was quite ironic, but 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 Reign of Terror of the French Revolution.

Kojève and Zionism

According to Isaiah Berlin, Kojève was not fond of the idea of a state of Israel. Berlin's several different accounts, like the ones published in The Jewish Chronicle in 1973, in The Jerusalem Report in October 1990, and in his interview with Ramin Jahanbegloo in 1991 (also published as a book), are about his meeting with Kojève.

According to the 1973 account, "ten years ago or more" he was "dining in Paris with a distinguished historian of philosophy who was also a high official of the French Government", namely, Kojève. 1990 account also records that they were talking in Russian. While talking, the issue of Israel and Zionism was also discussed. Kojève, who "was plainly taken aback" at Berlin's defence of Zionism, asked Berlin:

"Jews […], with their rich and extraordinary history, miraculous survivors from the classical age of our common civilisation – that this fascinating people should choose to give up its unique status, and for what? To become Albania? How could they want this? Was this not […] a failure of national imagination, a betrayal of all that the Jews were and stood for?"

In return, according to the interview with Jahanbegloo, Berlin replied: "For the Jews to be like Albania constitutes progress. Some 600,000 Jews in Romania were trapped like sheep to be slaughtered by the Nazis and their local allies. A good many escaped. But 600,000 Jews in Palestine did not leave because Rommel was at their door. That is the difference. They considered Palestine to be their own country, and if they had to die, they would die not like trapped animals, but for their country." "We reached no agreement.", records Berlin.

Critics

In a commentary on Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man, the traditionalist conservative thinker Roger Scruton calls Kojève "a life-hating Russian at heart, a self-declared Stalinist, and a civil servant who played a leading behind-the-scenes role in establishing both the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the European Economic Community" and states his opinion that Kojève was "a dangerous psychopath".