The Black Circle

A Life of Alexandre Kojève

Jeff Love

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780231546706
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosopher Biographies

Alexandre Kojève (1902–1968) was an important and provocative thinker. Born in Russia, he spent most of his life in France. His interpretation of Hegel and his notorious declaration that history had come to an end exerted great influence on French thinkers and writers such as Raymond Aron, Georges Bataille, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Lacan, and Raymond Queneau. An unorthodox Marxist, he was a critic of Martin Heidegger and interlocutor of Leo Strauss who played a significant role in establishing the European Economic Community; a polyglot with many unusual interests, he wrote works, mostly unpublished in his lifetime, on quantum physics, the problem of the infinite, Buddhism, atheism, and Vassily Kandinsky's paintings.

In The Black Circle, Jeff Love reinterprets Kojève's works, showing him to be an essential thinker who challenged modern society and its valuation of individuality, self-interest, and freedom from death. Emphasizing Kojève's neglected Russian roots, The Black Circle puts him in the context of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Russian debates over the proper ends of human life. Love explores notions of perfection, freedom, and finality in Kojève's account of Hegel and his neglected later works, clarifying Kojève's emancipatory thinking and the meaning of the oft-misinterpreted "end of history." Combining intellectual history, close textual analysis, and philosophy, The Black Circle reveals Kojève's thought as a profound critique of capitalist individualism and a timely meditation on human freedom.

INDEX

Page numbers refer to the print edition but are hyperlinked to the appropriate location in the e-book.

the Absolute: in the conditioned, 88–89; embodied, 77; principle, 86–87, 89–90; Soloviev on, 84–85, 88–89. See also the Negative absolute; the Positive absolute

Absolute idea, Christ as, 80

Absolute knowledge, 18–19, 179

Absolute negation, 195–96

Acosmism, 151–53

Action: assertion in, 46; in The Brothers Karamazov, 66–67; contemplation and, 53; desire and, 121, 306n15; force of, 301n7; freedom and, 31; in history, 219; in identity, 114; objectivity and, 125; as production, 114; as project, 67; random, 57–59; repetition of, 255; thinking and, 30–33, 38–39, 200

Active love, 67

Active man, 75–76

Adjudication, 222–23

Adorno, Theodor, 174

Agamben, Giorgio, 323n23

Agency, human, 259–60

Alexei Nilych Kirillov, 18, 214; on God, 50–53; hesitation of, 54–55, 59; nonsense of, 55; Raskolnikov and, 50–51; Stavrogin and, 56–57; on suicide, 51–56

Anamnesis, 36

Animal desire, 114–16, 120–21, 126–27, 175, 180, 307n17

Animality, 113–16, 118–21, 185; Aristotle on, 218; death and, 312n7; evil and, 263–64; freedom from, 188–89, 203; self-preservation as, 187–89, 195, 278; servitude and, 175. See also Incomplete animal, human as

Anthropotheism, 147–48, 151–52

Antithesis, thesis, 245–46, 329n54

Apophatic man, 75–76

Architecture, 207

Arendt, Hannah, 174, 269, 282–83, 333n6

Aristotle, 93, 150, 152–54, 156, 181–82, 218

Art, 207, 276

the Artist, 23–24

Asceticism, 63–64

Assertion: of absolute, 84; in action, 46. See also self-assertion

Assimilation, 184

Atheism, 145–46, 187

Attempt at a Rational History of Pagan Philosophy (Kojève), 10, 215, 218, 221, 315n33; on dialectic, 244–48; on energology, 248–53; on finality, 23...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontispiece
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: A Russian in Paris
• I. Russian Contexts
• II. The Hegel Lectures
• III. The Later Writings
• Epilogue: The Grand Inquisitor
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index