by Jeff Love
Of course, Hegel has a famous response to this: becoming (das Werden) offers the reconciliation of rest and motion, being and nothing, eternity and time.29 While Kojève begins with the final two terms, he in effect refers them back to another venerable relation, between space and time. The spatial is self-sufficient; it is complete, at rest. What is in time is not self-sufficient; it is incomplete and in motion. Kojève refers to eternity as space and to time as the transformation of space, thus recasting Hegelian becoming as a spatiotemporal relation, an evolution in the relation of space and time.
Kojève nests his account of the problem within the context of omniscience as the full and final truth; one is reminded of the famous phrase from the preface of the Phenomenology: “The truth is the whole” (das Wahre ist das Ganze). There is good reason for Kojève to do so, since it is possible to think of a sage as being satisfied or morally perfect—both qualities being applicable to the Stoic sage, as Kojève admits—but not omniscient.30 Omniscience is a “quality” that no one before Hegel has dared to apply to a being living in time, a finite individual. Kojève notes that the truth—and there is no truth for Hegel until it is complete and, in this sense, eternally static—has not for that reason been taken to coincide with time. As a result, Kojève’s account examines the relation of the various oppositions associated with eternity and time in relation to the concept as the vehicle of knowing, of acquisition of the truth. By proceeding this way—with the concept—Kojève anticipates the correlate claim that one need not rely on something akin to intuition in order to claim a total grasp of existence. Kojève wants to insist that it is Hegel’s daring innovation to maintain that a complete discursive account of the whole—that is, an inherently temporal account—is possible. Kojève lists four primary possibilities of relation between the concept and time:
The concept (C) is eternity (E). As Kojève shows it: C = E (as in Parmenides/Spinoza).
The concept is eternal (E'). C = E', with two variants: either C relates to E' outside of time (T) (as in Plato) or in T (as in Aristotle); or C relates to T (as in Immanuel Kant).
The concept is time. C = T (as in Hegel).
The concept is temporal (T'). Kojève sets this off in square brackets as impossible: [C = T'].31
Kojève brackets the last relation as rendering knowledge impossible—pure or nonrepeating flow being somewhat like an irrational number—and focuses his attention on the others. He notes that the relations set out in (1) and (3) are relations of the concept to itself, the first being characteristic of Parmenides and Spinoza, the second of Hegel. Relation (2) has two subgroups that describe the relation of the concept to another, either eternity or time. In the first subgroup, the concept relates either to an eternity outside of time, this relation being characteristic of Plato, or to an eternity inside of time, this relation being Aristotelian. In the second subgroup, the concept relates to time itself, a relation Kojève attributes to Kant’s philosophy.
With typical concision, Kojève reduces all possible relations of the concept to time to these five possibilities, and this is an important move, since it thereby reduces the basic shapes of consciousness down to this limited group of possibilities, it being simply impossible to conceive of consciousness without concepts. To attempt to do so would force us into reliance on the kind of intuition that Heidegger describes in connection with the divinity, and the requirement of such intuition is that it have no relation to time at all, thus no language, no conceptuality, nothing but “pure” being—that is, nothing.32
If the delimitation of the possible forms of the concept’s relation to time is an extremely important move, suggesting as it does that the possible shapes of consciousness are necessarily finite, the exact interpretation of each is far less clear. One can readily imagine complaints about the stunning reductiveness of Kojève’s account and the simplification that goes along with it.33
Kojève meets this concern by providing two complex sets of diagrams that purport to describe all possible forms of the five relations to time, first in the context of temporality itself and then as a taxonomy of the forms of consciousness that result from these temporal relations. This is classic Kojève—even his students made sport of his penchant for diagrammatic explanations. And when one casts a glance at some of the extraordinarily complex diagrams in the manuscripts—both the third volume of Attempt at a Rational History of Pagan Philosophy and the book on Kant stand out—one can certainly sympathize with the bewilderment they seem to have felt, at least initially. There is also a peculiar irony at play in the first set of diagrams (set out in lecture 6), which purport to translate temporal relations into spatial ones as a means of clarification. Yet, for Kojève, a spatial grasp of things avoids or flattens the temporal effect of incompleteness. Indeed, this is one of the interesting aspects of Kojève’s diagrammatic approach—that he seeks to find an appropriate pedagogic means to convey the completion of time in time, thus mirroring the basic problem at issue in the explanation itself. While this may seem far-fetched to some, or an example of an overly heightened sensitivity to rather minor points, it is well to keep in mind that Kojève’s entire enterprise is an exercise in self-consciousness. Thus, even the most picayune points cannot be accidental; they can only be wrong due to interpretational misprision or incompetence.
The combined effect of the two sets of diagrams is to provide a compact visual account of the only possible shapes of consciousness. As such, they are a pictorial representation of the Phenomenology itself, tracing the movement of the concept from an essentially theological relation to an external point of reference to the complete self-referentiality of the concept in Hegel. They thus describe the same anthropotheistic movement that Kojève has already asserted in the preceding lectures. That is, if one were to superimpose the first set of diagrams (eleven in all) on the second (merely seven), one would have a complete picture of the governing relations of the concept to time, and a translation of those relations into theological or anthropological terms, for the movement they describe, as I have already suggested, coordinates the transformation of the essential referent of the concept from an external to an internal one, with the assumption by the human being of the identity associated with God.
Let me quickly note a few important details of Kojève’s graphic portrayal of the anthropotheistic narrative. The graphic portrayal emphasizes the distinguishing problem of relation (1), between the concept (C) and eternity (E). Although Kojève identifies this equation with Parmenides and Spinoza, he prefers to use Spinoza’s system to illustrate what he refers to as the absurdity of this equation. The most illuminating term Kojève uses is “acosmism,” and it suggests that the central flaw in Spinoza’s system is that it is impossible to relate it to human minds because the system by definition excludes time. Human minds need to think, and thinking takes place in time. Thus, as Kojève remarks, to attempt to grasp Spinoza’s system is to betray it in that very attempt—or, better, it reveals the impossibility of grasping a system that excludes time discursively, that is, in time. Kojève stresses here one of his fundamental claims: that we need time to think, that we are discursive beings whose horizon of understanding is decisively shaped by a temporal dimension. All the other examples Kojève adduces respect this basic claim, and as I have noted, the assumption of God by man that is the basic narrative thread of Kojève’s lecture series as a whole is most evident in the increasing temporalizing of the concept.34
The next two examples, in relation (2), relate the concept to the eternal (E'). They do not equate the concept with eternity; rather, they suggest that the concept as such relates to the eternal, to something fixed and unchanging. The primary difference between these two relations is in the corresponding relation of the eternal to time (T). For the variant Kojève associates with Plato, the eternal is outside of time—the Platonic idea or ideas do not include time. Thus, we encounter another variant of the problem encountered with regard to Parmenides and Spinoza insofar as the relation of the concept to an
atemporal standard is very problematic, for it is of course not clear how thinking that unfolds in time can convey what is not in time but outside it. While it is problematic as such, however, it is not precluded from the outset, and this is a significant step. One might say that this step coincides with philosophy’s venture into the marketplace where “the existence of man becomes important for knowledge.”35 The Aristotelian variant in (2) places the eternal in time as a way of avoiding the Platonic impasse—the eternal works out as the fixed structure of forms, which substances realize as their proper end or perfection in time a fixed structure that repeats itself in various determinable ways.
Kojève then moves to Kant—thereby avoiding an enormous chunk of the history of philosophy—and this dramatic move underscores the revolutionary importance Kojève ascribes to Kant as the one who begins the decisive transformation that ends with Hegel. In Kant, Kojève identifies the relation of the concept not to the eternal but to time. What exactly does this mean?
Rather than making the eternal the condition of the possibility of the concept as the vehicle of discursive understanding, Kant takes the dramatic step of attributing this role to time. Kojève cautions that this does not mean that the concept “becomes” temporal. He claims that, for Kant as for all “true philosophers,” the concept remains eternal, that is, it is itself unchanging. But unlike Plato and Aristotle, Kant relates the concept openly not to the unchanging but to what changes; the concept becomes the fixed or unchanging structuration of change itself whereby Kant seeks to reconcile the concept with movement. While Kojève does not state this directly, the significance of this change is to remove the external standard for conceptual understanding from an essentially theological identification of the concept with the eternal to an essentially atheistic or anthropotheistic standard, that of everyday life: time (and history). The second set of diagrams makes this point quite clear.
In relation (3), the extraordinary equation of the concept and time (C = T) that is, for Kojève, the hallmark of Hegel’s thought takes this movement from eternity or the eternal to time one step further by eliminating any external standard and establishing the temporality of the concept itself as an identity. The concept is not a relation to time but is time itself. This is no doubt a difficult identification, because it seems to undermine the notion that the concept is somehow a fixed mark that either avoids or transforms the flow of time into a fixed pattern, the former being the Platonic, the latter the Aristotelian position, according to Kojève. If the concept is time, how can one avoid the conclusion that the concept as movement is no longer capable of being the basic vehicle of knowledge or truth?
But, according to Kojève, equating the concept with time is the only way to account for change, action, the only way to account for an understanding of the human being as an individual emancipating itself in history as history. Otherwise, the relation of the concept to eternity or the eternal cannot help but assimilate the human to a truth that has little to do with human existence in time, in a world. When Kojève argues, for example, that the Spinozist system is acosmic, he means to suggest that the equation of the truth with eternity precludes the possibility of human involvement in knowledge or truth—the language of mathematics is the equivalent of silence.36 The other options open the door for human involvement in knowledge and truth—“passively,” so to speak, in both Plato and Aristotle, and actively in Kant. This transformation from passive or theoretical to active participation in knowledge and truth is recorded by Kojève as the emphasis on time that is crucial to Kant and Hegel.
According to Kojève, the equation of the concept with time entails the becoming human of the concept as the becoming of the slave. Indeed, that the concept is time implies a further equation, made explicit in Hegel’s thought: the concept is history and history is the concept. Now, it may seem here that I am merely adding one puzzling statement onto another by way of “clarification.” What I mean to emphasize is the assertion that the concept is history, a narrative, and, as may be obvious, that the history that is the concept is the Phenomenology itself as well as Kojève’s account of it. In other words, the narrative set out in Kojève’s discussion of the “descent” of the concept from eternity to time is the concept itself that finally and only comes to itself in the completion of that history through the philosophical process of assuming that history as its own; the completion of the process of understanding is in the understanding of that process itself.
Kojève makes several crucial identifications that subtend this primary identification. He equates time with desire and negation, and, in a crucial gesture, he equates the human with all three—time, desire, and negation—and, finally, with the concept itself. He identifies the concept, in turn, with discourse and work—the work of the slave. Thus, we have a string of remarkable identifications that we need to unpack.
Kojève denies that there is “natural,” “cosmic” or “deep” time.37 He declares that there is only time to the extent that there is history; that is, human existence (and there is only this existence, for Kojève) is the result of the fight that begins history as the story of the slave. The “man who, in the course of History, reveals Being in his Discourse is the ‘empirically existing Concept,’ ” the term Kojève uses to translate Hegel’s “der daseiende Begriff,” in the Hegelian identity Kojève claims between time and this “empirically existing concept.”38 Only man is in time—“indeed, man is time, and time is man.” Without man, “nature would be Space, and Space only.” These statements lead to the conclusion that time is associated only with man, and space only with nature. Kojève underscores this distinction when he refers to man, merely a few pages later, as a “hole” (trou) in space, “a void, a nothingness” in the present.39 This hole in space is the presence of an absence. It is desire understood as dissatisfaction with the present, as a desire precisely to negate the present in favor of a reality to be realized in the future.
If we bring time, desire, and negation together here, we may discern an intense interaction between all three. Time is desire and desire is negation and thus time is negation (of eternity, pure presence, the “nunc stans”).40 Time describes the movement of negation of the static present in favor of the future, this negation of the present becoming a past. Time describes the movement of negation that transforms the present into the past of a new present that may in turn be negated in another new present, depending on the orientation of desire to what is not yet. “Thus, in a general manner: historical movement is born of the Future and passes through the Past in order to realize itself in the Present as the temporal Present. The Time Hegel has in view is thus human or historic Time: this is the Time of conscious and voluntary Action that realizes in the present a Project for the future, which Project is shaped on the basis of acquaintance with the past.”41
This triune entity—time, desire, negation—constitutes the very essence of human historicity as the dialectical concept. We are this concept, and this concept describes a specific history as the negation of a given reality—the fixed or eternal reality of the master—in favor of an idea of the future that we have for ourselves. “Thus, man creates and destroys essentially as a function of the idea he conceives of the Future.”42 Accordingly, time describes the way of man-in-the-world as negating the spatial reality of the “given.” In this respect, time as negation is equivalent to work. Time is the work of the slave as he liberates himself from eternity, the impasse of the master, into time itself. In more abstract terms, history is the story of the temporalizing of the concept.
By equating the concept with time, Kojève develops a remarkable account of history as the work of negating a given—the spatial or, in temporal terms, the eternal—which in turn expresses the desire for the realization of a future, an ideal. What, then, is this ideal? If the negation of the given is in turn the creation of an artificial or technical reality, a human or historical reality, as Kojève maintains, then the exact contours of this reality in terms of its content seem rather more el
usive, unless we take the Phenomenology itself as that history. And this is exactly what we should do. The complicated enterprise of the Phenomenology is circular in the sense that the history it describes is its own—it is, as I have noted, an autobiography of sorts, the autobiography of the concept that gives us the concept of autobiography. Put in different terms that bring out the same distinction, the Phenomenology is the history of the concept that gives us the concept of history, and it gives us this latter concept as an equation that history is the concept and the concept is history. The ideal of the slave is the eradication of eternity in favor of time.
Of the many objections one might have to this equation—which seems to create a vicious historicism—is that the notion that there is a paradigmatic or theoretical reality somehow beyond time lies utterly in ruins. Theory, understood as such, loses all sense and authority. Hence, Kojève’s statements about the master-and-slave relation, the concept, negation, and so on are to be understood as applying not to a theory applicable to different situations and circumstances but only to the one history that they help to unfold to the point where that history recognizes itself as such—as complete and, in this sense, as omniscient. They are immanent not transcendent.
Now, the question that occupies us here is this: Is Kojève’s account of the coming into being of omniscience convincing (or Hegelian)? The question reveals the difficulties: How can perfection come into being as time? As we know from Plato, perfection cannot come into being. Perfection does not lend itself to becoming; it is always already there. This is a way of describing Plato’s notion of the concept as Kojève sees it: the definitive relation is to an external standard—the eternal—that cannot possibly be realized in time, that belongs to the impasse of the master, not the slave. Aristotle’s version of this, according to Kojève, is to affirm that perfection can come into being insofar as each being comes to be what it is (its form or essence, the “what it was to be,” or τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) in time. The Kantian variation is to assert that the coming into being of the thing is that thing itself, time being essential to the unfolding of the thing as one of the constitutive conditions of any possible experience. Yet, since time is the horizon of all possible experience, it is evident that experience is essentially incomplete. For Kant, perfection, whether in knowledge or comportment, is not attainable because it is essentially incompatible with time, as the ineluctable limitation of experience by its temporal character attests.