The Black Circle

by Jeff Love

  This immense work is an incredibly, obsessively involved elaboration of the suite of three lectures (8, 9, and 10) from the Introduction dealing with the relation of the concept to time, which I discussed in some detail in chapter 5. Indeed, it seems that Kojève dedicated the rest of his philosophical career to developing the basic schema he discussed in the Hegel lectures, a fact that attests to the significance Kojève attached to this analysis as the cornerstone of his interpretation of Hegel, if not of his entire philosophical career.

  The Concept, Time, and Discourse consists of two separate introductions to the Hegelian system of knowledge. Kojève indicates that three introductions to the Hegelian system are in fact required to allow the contemporary reader access to it as a phenomenological account (in the Hegelian sense) of the relations of the concept to time, which culminates in the identification between the two declared by Hegel. This temporalizing of the concept, or the introduction of time into the concept, is the primary event that creates the history of philosophy as the history of the concept included in the identity of the concept itself. The concept is history and history is the concept.

  I am not going to discuss The Concept, Time, and Discourse in any detail.31 Suffice it to note that the first two introductions describe the concept and time, respectively, as mediated by the philosophical tradition—by Aristotle, in the case of the concept, and by Plato, in the case of time. The third introduction, which we will discuss in detail below, deals with the interrelation between the two, which Kojève then proceeds to describe in laborious detail in the history of philosophy that follows upon that introduction. These introductions are all a concerted and detailed defense of Kojève’s interpretation of 1938–1939. Perhaps their most distinctive departure from these lectures is the heightened emphasis on the centrality of discourse. These introductions contain none of the pathos of the 1938–1939 lectures. Gone are the disturbing accounts of the post-historical state in favor of an enhanced account of repetition, both in the sense that the introductions themselves are intended to prepare the reader for an updated repetition of the Hegelian system and in the sense that repetition is the consequence of the end of history.

  THE UNFINISHED END: ATTEMPT AT A RATIONAL HISTORY OF PAGAN PHILOSOPHY

  The crowning work of Kojève’s philosophical career, and the only book he published himself, is indeed the third introduction, the unfinished Attempt at a Rational History of Pagan Philosophy, the first volume of which appeared shortly after Kojève’s sudden death in 1968. Two subsequent volumes appeared in 1971 and 1973, for a total of 1,292 pages of text. According to some accounts, Kojève planned to add a history of Christian philosophy as well, but it may well be that the volume on Kant discovered among Kojève’s papers after his death was the final volume in the series, since Kojève almost never speaks of Christian philosophy.32 Whatever the case may be, the scope of the work is forbiddingly monumental, a philosophical opus whose size matches or surpasses that of the great Russian novelists Kojève so admired.

  The Attempt has not received anything near the attention of the Hegel lectures of the 1930s, and even allowing for the historical significance of the latter, it is not hard to see why.33 Whereas the Hegel lectures are, for the most part, luminously clear and sharply formulated (in marked contrast to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit itself), the Attempt is a wholly different text that makes very few concessions to its readers. The detailed descriptions of the Hegel lectures simply pale in comparison to the elaborate, playful, and precious constructions of the Attempt. This preciosity is in evidence in the florid title itself, which, like many other aspects of the Attempt, is at once comprehensive and tentative.

  The word essai comes from the French verb essayer, “to try” or “to attempt,” and is most celebrated in French literature because of Michel de Montaigne’s Essais, itself a large and involved text. In Montaigne’s hands, the essay is truly tentative, unsure, an exploration that does not come to certain, final conclusions, an exploration that does not cancel itself. But a “rational history” (histoire raisonnée) is quite a different genre that has a far stronger identification with totality, though not to the extent of an encyclopedia. Indeed, the histoire raisonnée could be quite an eclectic compendium—even an eccentric one. This combination of differing generic identities seems to be singularly ill-suited to the task the Attempt undertakes—a complete history of Western thought, showing that it has and must come to an end. The first formal signpost in the text is itself a sign of a differing or opposed intention that seems to be a wry comment on the ambition of the text.34

  Nothing in the first few pages of the text dissuades us from this irony. The opening paragraphs develop a set of related problems. To begin with, Kojève notes that the history of the evolution of philosophy is also at the same time a philosophical comprehension of history that includes itself in that comprehension. This latter assertion is the troubling one, because it assumes that the philosophical comprehension of history can include itself in itself.35 The nerve of the problem here is this: How can my comprehension of X be also a comprehension of my comprehension of X? There seems to be an illicit doubling, for how can I comprehend one thing and my comprehension of that thing without suggesting that I am comprehending from yet another perspective, which is itself not comprehended? In other words, if the doubling is illicit, we have the makings of an infinite regress that from the outset undermines the very possibility of completion and finality held out by the history itself.

  We may draw on a mathematical analogy: the problem of the biggest set, the set holding all sets. If there is a set of all sets, it cannot belong to itself. For if it did belong to itself, then it would not be the set of all sets but rather a subset of itself. A similar concern seems to apply to Kojève’s philosophical comprehension—if it includes all aspects of the history of philosophy, should it not include itself as well? But if it includes itself, the inclusion indicates that that history is not over.

  Thus, Kojève immediately raises a red flag about his project, and a fairly serious one, because it suggests that the totality sought in the work itself may not be achieved. Still, Kojève may respond that the repetitive lack of closure is itself a closing move that can only repeat itself continuously, thus serving as a signal of finality in that sense, as a finite pattern repeating itself continuously.

  If we look back at our other comments about this problem, we see that it raises the issue of perspective we discussed in chapter 7. And it does so fairly obviously at the very beginning of the work. But Kojève does not leave it at that. He brings up, immediately thereafter, in the second paragraph, another problem that is possible only because of an underlying difficulty in identifying the whole.36 This problem is a variant of the hermeneutic circle that asks whether it is possible to examine anything in a way that does not merely reinforce the approach one takes in that examination. The hermeneutic circle suggests that the process of interpretation is essentially shaped by the initial approach, though the reason for interpretation is to get beyond that perspective or to understand its origins in a way that transforms or at least illuminates that original approach.

  Kojève is much more teasing with this second problem. He notes that it is not prudent, at the beginning of one’s work, to discuss why that work is not going to succeed. But he also says that he puts this potentially vitiating critique up front out of honesty, so that we may appreciate the scope of the problem and its impact on how we are to deal with it. He calls this an introduction to his introduction—yet another doubling effect. But if one thinks a bit more carefully, the irony of Kojève’s declaration begins to emerge. How can one discuss the failure of one’s work as a work of sense? Here the venerable problem emerges, the classic critique of a certain notion of skepticism: How is it that the skeptical critique that suggests, say, that sense is in the end indeterminable or fluid makes sense itself? Is it not the case that the skeptical argument contradicts itself insofar as we may understand it, as it is indeed cogent and persuasive? Th
e very fact that the argument is coherent or can be understood seems to work against what it seeks to say. To say “I am not making sense right now” is of course problematic, because the phrase itself makes sense.

  SENSE, NONSENSE, AND PSEUDO SENSE

  The problem of sense becomes the central problem of this exceedingly complicated essay. Kojève’s extravagant beginning emphasizes the problem by the very fact that the essay communicates effectively, or at least purports to do so, a concern that by its very nature puts that communicability at issue. If sense can never really become transparent to itself, if its contours are not capable of being defined once and for all, then what sense we have is either essentially false or misleading, because it is merely a fiction of sense that hides its own fragility or precariousness. This seems to be a central claim of Kojève’s, that sense, if not defined with reference to finality, is either merely an illusion of sense, because the final identity of that sense cannot be attained, or, in this respect, is a kind of fiction or “pseudo sense” that we create. Indeed, we cannot but create fictions if there is no final or ultimate standard.37

  Of course, one may counter that the absence of a final standard does not necessarily entail that what we hold to be the case at a given time is a fiction. If there is no final standard, then there is no standard from which to derive the correctness of a given point of view, but also none from which to derive its falseness. Where there is no falseness, there is no correctness—there is neither the one nor the other. We merely hold certain things “to be the case.” Yet it is difficult to maintain such a position, because any assertion that something is the case seems to carry with it an implicit assertion that we may rely on that assertion, that it may hold for more than one example of that case. Indeed, if the case is not a hapax legomenon, an isolated instance, this shows us that a larger claim is inevitable.

  Kojève argues thus that we cannot help but make broader claims if we make any claims at all. If these claims are merely provisional, claims made without any assurance of reliability, then they essentially undermine themselves as claims. One begins to speak nonsense or “pseudo sense” because sense is not possible; no sense we give to a term can prove itself to be anything but temporary or provisional.38 We return to the beginning with the renewed question about sense, since the problems can be very effectively conveyed to us. Although the problems call the possibility of sense into question, the fact that they may do so effectively, that we can communicate these problems effectively, tends to be at odds with the problems themselves. Kojève’s basic argument is that sense must be fully determinable to be determinable at all. Finality is the crucial precondition of sense; without the possibility of a final judgment that shows us where all things lie, there is no possibility of judgment at all, no possibility of sense.

  Kojève reprises here the madness argument in a much more sophisticated form, though the essential point is the same. If we are unable to ascertain a full and final discourse that by definition binds all, then we have not eradicated subjective certainty, the root element in madness. To put this in different terms: if we cannot eradicate subjective self-certainty, it is not clear how any regime of understanding is possible among differing kinds of subjective self-certainty. The assumption of a generality whereby different discourses can be reasonably brought together cannot be maintained. In its stead, one has a series of differing views, each of which denies any connection with the other. The only way to open that connection is by compulsion, whereby one party forces the other to accept its subjective self-certainty.

  The balance of the introduction to the essay is devoted to an exposition of the possibility of sense as the possibility of philosophy itself. By putting the question so, Kojève sets the main issue as not merely one of finality but also as one of finality that allows us to be free of skepticism and the otherwise wretched tissue of error that comes from not knowing where or what one is. Kojève puts the issue in the simplest of terms: if there is no possibility of attaining to wisdom, then philosophy can be only the study of error. But, indeed, it cannot be even that, because without a final standard, philosophy cannot be a meaningful discourse—or, as Kojève says, it can be only a discourse of pseudo meanings, essentially mendacious or misleading, and indeed infinitely so.39

  Kojève’s discussion here echoes discussions of the identity of philosophy in other works that he left unpublished at the time of his death. Kojève is always concerned to differentiate philosophy from theology and, still further, to distinguish theistic philosophy from atheistic. Both theology and theistic philosophy reach some point where reason alone must falter. Philosophy that is skeptical about the attainment of wisdom is, for Kojève, largely theistic if it still posits truth, because it must locate wisdom not in human reason but in the superior “mind” of another, namely in God. Atheistic philosophy either fails completely, there being no final point at all, or it locates that final point within reach of human intelligence—the final point is available to human reason. Human beings can become wise without a God holding their wisdom for them.

  Kojève sets out to do nothing less than prove that philosophy can attain wisdom and complete itself, that there is no need for theology or theistic philosophy, both of which are expressions of skepticism.40 Kojève seems to go further than this to the degree that he claims that philosophy cannot make sense of itself unless it can be completed, if only in principle. If philosophy cannot be completed, if the whole cannot be made explicable in toto by reason, then we remain enslaved by powers that we can neither understand nor combat. We can never become free of an unclear existence; we can never overcome our lack of instinct by negating the confusions of animal existence through the construction of a self-contained reason. We cannot become masters of ourselves, no matter what ironies may finally accompany such mastery.

  The central difficulty we have discussed, the impossibility of declaring finality consistently, is the central concern of the Attempt, which labors to dispel the doubts occasioned by Kojève’s extravagant claim that Hegel has brought history to an end. Kojève’s approach insists on demonstrating that a final end not only is necessary for any ultimate assertion of sense but also may be achieved through a logic that, if owing a lot to Hegel, seems to go beyond him decisively in its attempt to assert that a final view of history is possible. Thus, the problem brought about in the Introduction emerges once again in the Attempt: How can one reconcile negation with finality? Is there a way in which negation comes to an end “naturally”?

  IS PHILOSOPHY (SENSE) POSSIBLE?

  Kojève’s arguments are extremely involved and possess an almost scholastic technicity which I do not have the space to reproduce in full here, though, according to Kojève, full reproduction may be the only way to communicate these arguments effectively. As a consequence, I confine my account of this immense work to two crucial aspects of it: first, the account of the temporalizing of the concept, the principal “subnarrative” of Kojève’s wisdom narrative; and second, the division of philosophy into three basic elements—ontology, phenomenology, and what Kojève refers to as “energology.”

  The main thrust of the arguments contained in the 162-page introduction to the Attempt should not surprise. Kojève reprises the principal argument of his 1938–1939 lecture course with regard to the relation of the concept to time. He does so, however, by accentuating the dialectic quality of the evolution he sought to outline in the earlier lecture course. The continued focus on the evolution of the concept that Kojève first developed in the Hegel lectures affirms both the importance of that scheme and the inference that Kojève in some fashion sought to write a final account of his account of finality. Before proceeding to that argument, I want to canvas briefly several other arguments that set the scene for Kojève’s much more comprehensive treatment of the evolution of the concept.

  The first of these has to do with the identity of philosophy itself. Kojève identifies philosophy with discourse and the concept. The primary philosophic entity is the concept, and K
ojève works to confer a sense on the concept. As he says himself, the task of philosophy is to grasp the sense of the concept, regardless of its appearance—what Kojève refers to as its morpheme.41 A beginning step in this process is determining the distinctness of the philosophic concept, and Kojève does so by reference to discourse, specifically to the self-consciousness of discourse as a combination of all discourses into a comprehensive whole. Kojève holds that philosophy is, above all, the discourse that asserts the concept and then proceeds to define the concept—to confer sense on it, in Kojève’s definition of “sense” as a complete explicitation of all discursive possibilities constituting the concept.42

  The explicitation of this sense is indeed the history of philosophy itself. All knowledge, insofar as it is discursive, is philosophical and subject to examination in the process of reflection that is the essential movement in the explicitation of sense.43 In a way that recalls Heidegger, Kojève comes very close to suggesting that the various kinds of discourse, from astronomy to literature, are incapable of asking questions about themselves. Indeed, Kojève presents a view of philosophy as the discourse that examines the questions that arise from particular discourses about themselves.44 Unlike Heidegger, however, Kojève insists that this process of questioning is inherently reflective and governed by a specific logic of reflection, which Kojève unfolds in the introduction. This way of approaching philosophy is, Kojève affirms, distinctively Kantian and an immense extension of the authority of philosophy as the governing discourse of all discourses; philosophy is discourse having become conscious of itself as such. Philosophy thus becomes the discourse that clarifies the sense of discourse, no matter what subject matter a specific discourse governs. Philosophy, while no longer queen of the sciences, retains an immense authority as the articulation of what discourse is—insofar as discourse has sense. Philosophy sets the parameters for sense through the concept.