Alexandre Kojeve

by Shadia B. Drury

Alexandre Kojve (1902-1968) was Hegel's most famous interpreter, reading Hegel through the eyes of Marx and Heidegger simultaneously. The result was a wild if not hypnotic mlange of ideas. In this book, Drury reveals the nature of Kojve's Hegelianism and the extraordinary influence it has had on French postmodernists on the left (Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, and Michel Foucault) and American postmodernists on the right (Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, and Francis Fukuyama). According to Drury, Kojve followed Hegel in thinking that reason has triumphed in the course of history, but it is a cold, soulless, instrumental, and uninspired rationalism that has conquered and disenchanted the world. Drury maintains that Kojve's conception of modernity as the fateful triumph of this arid rationality is the cornerstone of postmodern thought. Kojve's picture of the world gives birth to a dark romanticism that manifests itself in a profound nostalgia for what reason has banished - myth, madness, disorder, spontaneity, instinct, passion, and virility. In Drury's view, these ideas romanticize the gratuitous violence and irrationalism that characterize the postmodern world.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction

286 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 1994

Reviews

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll give this four stars, though I really intend to give it only three and a half . The book is pretty good and it is useful. I have a special need for it, since I am surrounded in the Academy – or at least, in MY academy…, where I often feel like the “last gasp of the Enlightenment” myself… with people who are inspired (if that’s the word) by thinkers like Strauss and Kojève…, ideas that I, quite frankly, despise. I’ve not read Kojève at first hand and so cannot comment, but Strauss is a writer that I *have* had to read and one that has not one redeeming feature, in my opinion. (Needless to say, what he writes has NOTHING to do, from a scholarly point of view, with Plato… or with ANY of the philosophers he writes about.)

It’s not only that their politics are repulsive – Strauss, in my opinion, is unquestionably a fascist of some sort – but that the very categories in which they present their analyses are of little value. Their language is all wrong. Marx is useful, for example, even when he’s off the wall…; but Strauss is useless, even when he’s right.

This particular book is good, as I’ve said; but not nearly as good – nor as rigorously analytical – as her Strauss book (The Politics of Leo Strauss). That one is really masterful. If it’s a tedious read, it’s only because Strauss himself is tedious, and the book sticks closely to an analysis of Strauss. But it repays careful studies… in multiples.

This one, by contrast, reads almost like a collection of set pieces written at different times, with the Kojève piece being the longest and the anchor of the collection…. The other pieces deal with Bataille, Foucault, Strauss, Bloom, and Fukuyama. It is all quite familiar stuff, and these pieces are themselves somewhat fragmentary, not systematic or complete – undertaken entirely from the point of view of her departure: Kojève’s analysis of the end of history. Moreover, and what is worse, she cannot restrain herself from offering asides – some amounting to little more than snark. Success has gone to her head… .

She also takes a big risk here – and I have to question the wisdom of it – of interpreting Kojève almost *entirely* in the light of his premises, and then arguing that: as his conclusions do not (in her opinion) follow from those premises, they can safely be ignored. The Kojève she presents is thus the antithesis of the Kojève that Kojève himself often presents (as Drury admits). This is a methodologically dubious position to maintain.

On the other hand, I am quite sympathetic to her general position on these figures. These are writers who put me in mind of a single phrase: intellectual onanism. An image which I can’t get out of my head whenever I think of Leo Strauss is this one of Wolfowitz….




Anyway, I personally get little from reading these types of writers. At least Drury makes the unpalatable more or less palatable. Hence..., the extra (just barely deserved) star.

[Andrew Schirmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't yet read Kojève's lectures on Hegel, so I can't comment on her fealty or accuracy, though the polemical tone throughout this compact and readable guide raised my eyebrow a few times. Essentially, this book purports to analyze Kojève's interpretations of Hegel and their influence on other influencers in France and in the United States. Drury should write a book on Hegel--her lucidity and memorable metaphors make ideas stick.

[Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely prescient! It blows my mind to know this book was published in 1994. I always just sort of assumed that people were hypnotized by the EOH all through the 90's up until 9/11 inflected all future experience. I suppose that wasn't the first time the world ended. Seems to be happening more frequently. Much recommend if you like Matt McManus or as a prequel to Liberalism Against Itself.

[Brett Fujioka · Rating 5 out of 5]

A persuasive book about a(n) (relatively) obscure philosopher and the hell that he made.

[Jeff Samuelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally a writer that can make Kojeve, Hegel, and Heidegger comprehensible to me. Would give 6 stars if possible