Alexandre Kojève (1902–1968)

Russian-born French philosopher, anthropologist of Hegel, the dominant figure of the French Hegel-Renaissance of the 1930s. Author of the Introduction à la lecture de Hegel (Gallimard, 1947, ed. Raymond Queneau) — the published form of his 1933–39 EPHE seminar on Hegel's Phänomenologie des Geistes. The 1947 publication is the philological anchor that Dalissier uses to date MP's PPH course to 1947–48 (the course must be later than April 1947, when Introduction à la lecture de Hegel was achevé d'imprimer). MP's heavily annotated copy of the Introduction is preserved at the ENS rue d'Ulm.

Key Points

  • Born Aleksandr Vladimirovič Koževnikov (Moscow, 1902); emigrated post-1917 Revolution; studied with Karl Jaspers in Heidelberg (PhD on Vladimir Soloviev, 1926); naturalized French.
  • 1933–1939: EPHE seminar on Hegel's Phänomenologie, Section des sciences religieuses. Auditors: Raymond Aron, Georges Bataille, André Breton, Roger Caillois, Henry Corbin, Jean-Toussaint Desanti, Gaston Fessard, Jean Hyppolite, Jacques Lacan, Emmanuel Lévinas, Raymond Polin, Raymond Queneau, Éric Weil, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (and others). Sartre did not attend. MP's cousin Jacques Georges Albert Merleau-Ponty was also a student.
  • The 1939 Mesures article ("Autonomie et dépendance de la Conscience-de-soi: Maîtrise et Servitude") is the only published trace of the seminar before 1947 — and the published Introduction (1947) places it as introduction.
  • Kojève's reading: Hegel as dialectique du réel (in the line of Koyré's earlier seminar on Hegel's religious philosophy) — and as phenomenology in Husserlian-Heideggerian sense. Master/slave is the paradigmatic dialectic. The end-of-history thesis (Napoleonic and Stalinist).
  • Post-WWII: leaves academic work for the French Foreign Ministry (Conseiller pour les affaires économiques internationales). Critical role in early GATT negotiations and European common-market framing. Dies of heart attack at a 1968 GATT meeting.

Role in This Wiki

MP's annotated copy of Introduction and the "Entre autres choses?" marginalia

MP's ENS-archived copy of Kojève's Introduction à la lecture de Hegel is the philological pivot of the wiki's reading of MP's relation to Kojève. On Kojève's claim (Introduction p. 25):

"L'histoire universelle, cette histoire doit être l'histoire de l'interaction entre Maîtrise et Servitude: la 'dialectique' historique est la 'dialectique' du maître et de l'Esclave."

MP writes in the margin: "Entre autres choses?" This is MP's quietly resistant reading of master/slave: not refused, but de-totalized — master/slave is one dialectic among others, not the dialectic.

The PPH course (1947–48) operates on this de-totalization: MP includes a substantial master/slave detour at the heart of the Greek world (PPH pp. 128–137) but also includes stoïcisme/scepticisme/conscience malheureuse (Wahl/Hyppolite anchorings), Christianity (Trinity), the Roman world, and the Germanic world. Kojève's anchoring is taken seriously as one anchor but not as the anchor.

The single explicit citation

MP cites Kojève exactly once by name in the PPH course (PPH p. 132: "Kojève, p. 25" — the master/slave passage). Beyond that, the entire Introduction is operative implicitly but never thematized. MP's relation to Kojève is therefore characterizable as: deeply read, never explicitly engaged, structurally resistant to totalization.

MP's 1948 Temps Modernes N.D.L.R. on Kojève's Introduction

In September 1948, MP (as TM gérant) commissions Trần Đức Thảo to write a recension of Kojève's Introduction. MP signs an anonymous N.D.L.R. response that takes a position on three of Thảo's points:

  1. Hegel's "matérialisme" — MP rejects this as the right vocabulary for Hegel; prefers ambiguïté.
  2. Hegel's "athéisme" — MP is silent on this point (neither endorses nor rejects).
  3. Master/slave totalization — MP is implicitly on Thảo's side: "Il nous a semblé exagéré de vouloir interpréter le contenu de la Phénoménologie tout entière par la dialectique du maître et de l'esclave." This matches MP's PPH marginalia "Entre autres choses?"

The N.D.L.R. itself contains MP's earliest published use of "déhiscence" in connection with Hegel: "il faut en regarder en face l'énigme centrale, cette déhiscence qui ouvre à la nature et à l'histoire, mais qui a déjà son analogue à l'intérieur de la nature, et ne s'explique donc pas 'par en bas', mais pas davantage 'par en haut'." Sept 1948 is the earliest documented Hegel-as-déhiscence in MP — predating V&I by 16 years.

After 1948: silent eclipse

Beyond PPH and the N.D.L.R., MP almost never refers to Kojève again — neither in the 1955 AD (which would be expected) nor in the 1961 Philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel course. Hyppolite remains in MP's vocabulary; Kojève fades. The "Entre autres choses?" marginalia is the structural marker of why: MP found in Kojève's reading something to learn and something to resist, but the resistance won.

Connections

  • Hegel-commentator parallel of Hyppolite — but with different anchors (master/slave vs phenomenology-genesis).
  • teacher of (auditors of his seminar): Aron, Bataille, Lacan, Lévinas, Queneau, Hyppolite, Weil, MP (via attendance), MP's cousin Jacques Georges Albert.
  • recensed by Trần Đức Thảo in Temps Modernes September 1948 — with MP's anonymous N.D.L.R. response.
  • quietly resisted by MP — the marginalia "Entre autres choses?" on master/slave totalization.

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-2022-inedits-ii-1947-1949 — Dalissier's editorial introduction (pp. 63–69) on Kojève's role in the Hegel-Renaissance and MP's specific responses; the marginalia at PPH p. 132 (citing Kojève p. 25); the September 1948 TM N.D.L.R. on Trần Đức Thảo's recension (cited p. 67).