The Black Circle

by Jeff Love

    8.    This is one of Kojève’s innovative readings of Hegel insofar as Kojève views dialectic not as a method but as the form through which the philosopher—or, better, the sage—merely describes the “Real,” the struggle and work that lead to the final truth of “universal History,” at the end of history. See ILH 455, 462, 466; IRH 179, 186, 191.

    9.    ILH, 143. Again commenting on Hegel, Phenomenology, chapter 6, part B.3.

  10.    Tom Rockmore, Cognition: An Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 179. The notion that the Phenomenology brings philosophy to an end in the attainment of absolute knowledge (or, as Kojève implies, Sophia) may seem a commonplace. But the exact result of the Phenomenology is a subject of considerable debate; it seems anything but clear. Indeed, it may be fair to say that one’s view of the Phenomenology (and thus of its impact on philosophy) depends on how one interprets the finality announced in this chapter, and there are many differing interpretations. For various views of the chapter and absolute knowledge, one may consult Michael Forster, Hegel’s Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Robert Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); and Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic (New York: Routledge, 2005). But there are many other signal works: Jacques Derrida, Glas, trans. John P. Leavey Jr. (Lincoln: Nebraska University Press, 1986); Joseph C. Flay, Hegel’s Quest for Certainty (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Martin Heidegger, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988); Martin Heidegger, Hegel, trans. Joseph Arel and Niels Feuerhahn (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015); Jean Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. S. Cherniak and J. Heckman (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974); Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Also, as a supplement, see Robert Pippin, “The ‘Logic of Experience’ as ‘Absolute Knowledge’ in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,” in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Critical Guide, ed. Dean Moyar and Michael Quante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 210–217.

  11.    See Allen Speight, Hegel, Literature, and the Problem of Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 12. For discussion of the Phenomenology as a bildungsroman, see Michael Forster, Hegel’s Idea, 437; and H. S. Harris, Hegel’s Ladder (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1997), 1:10. Whether bildungsroman or biography (of man or God), the subject appears to be spirit itself and not the peculiar Kojèvian Godman, the sage, as the personification or incarnation of spirit.

  12.    Kojève is clear that the philosopher or sage merely describes the slave’s self-overcoming: “This is to say that the attitude of the philosopher or the “savant” (= Sage) vis-à-vis Being and the Real is that of purely passive contemplation, and philosophical or “scientific” activity confines itself to a simple description of the Real and Being” (ILH, 449).

  13.    Kojève, “Tyranny and Wisdom,” in Leo Strauss, On Tyranny, ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael Roth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013),153.

  14.    Kojève, “Tyranny and Wisdom,” 153–154.

  15.    In this respect, Kojève brings his own status into question. If a philosopher or sage merely describes what is the case, then he does not try to influence or shape it. Yet Kojève’s pedagogy is clearly active and seeks to bring about “conversion.” That being so, Kojève takes on an interesting role as the one who proclaims the truth in order to implement it; he is the prophet of the new religion. Better: he is prophet of the truth that will replace religion. “Man … achieves the absolute Philosophy, which replaces Religion” (ILH, 114).

  16.    Kojève, “Hegel, Marx and Christianity,” trans. Hilail Gildin, Interpretation 1, no. 1 (1970): 42.

  17.    ILH, 279; IRH, 85.

  18.    The “unthought” or “unsaid” is a cliché of Heidegger’s thinking. See, for example, the prefatory comments to Heidegger’s celebrated essay “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,” in Martin Heidegger, Pathmarks, ed. William McNeil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 155.

  19.    ILH, 280; IRH, 86. Kojève identifies the Platonic view with theism and Hegel’s with atheism, the Platonic affirming the impossibility of attaining wisdom and, thus, the necessarily zētētic nature of the philosophic life, the Hegelian insisting on the attainability of wisdom through human reason alone. Kojève places himself in the Hegelian line, against those, such as Heidegger, to whom he attributes theism in this broad sense. Perhaps his clearest discussion of this difference is in one of the excerpts from the as yet not fully published manuscript Sofia, filo-sofia i fenomeno-logia (278–284); autograph manuscript in Fonds Kojève, Bibliothèque nationale de France (box no. 20).

  20.    For Kojève, circularity is very important, the criterion that distinguishes Hegel from Plato—or philosophy from theology, in Kojève’s terms. As he puts it, “This idea of circularity is, as it were, the only original element brought forth by Hegel” (ILH, 287). He also states, “There is thus for Hegel a double criterion for the realization of wisdom: on the one hand, the universality and homogeneity of the State in which the Sage lives and, on the other, the circularity of his Knowledge”(ILH, 289). As to the state, Kojève notes, “The Sage is only possible in the State that finishes this evolution and where all citizens “suppress” themselves … where there are no particular interests that mutually exclude each other” (ILH, 301).

  21.    Martin Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, trans. Michael Heim (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 45.

  22.    Kojève divides chapter 8 into three parts. His divisions do not exist in the original Hegelian text. He divides his own account as follows (English pagination and paragraphing, followed by pagination of the German text): lectures 1 and 2 are introduction; lectures 3 and 4 cover part 1, roughly six pages in the German text (479–485, §788–797 [516–522]); lectures 5, 9, and 10 cover part 2, roughly five pages in the German text (485–490, §798–804 [523–528]); lectures 6 through 8 are an “excursus” on time and the concept, based on two pages of the German text (486–487, §801 [524–525]); and lectures 11 and 12 cover part 3, comprising the final three pages of German text (490–493, §805–808 [528–531]).

  23.    ILH, 319. This lecture is omitted from the English translation.

  24.    ILH, 300. This lecture is also omitted from the English translation.

  25.    See Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 8–9.

  26.    Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Marion Faber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4.

  27.    Michael Roth’s fine study brings this point to the fore. Roth, Knowing and History: Appropriations of Hegel in Twentieth-Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 83. Also see Kojève, ILH, 289: “Hegelian philosophy is a theo-logy; only its God is the Sage.”

  28.    Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 103–104.

  29.    I refer here of course to the celebrated opening of the Science of Logic. See G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, trans. George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 45–82. Also see Kojève’s interesting treatment of this beginning in Le concept, le temps et le discours, ed. Bernard Hesbois (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), 229–260.

  30.    ILH 61, 287; IRH 93.

  31.    ILH, 337; IRH, 101. As a helpful guide to basic concerns about the equation of time and concept, see Paul Livingston, The Logic of Being: Realism, Truth, and Time (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017), xi�
�xv, 129–131. Livingston suggests that the “constructivist” equation of time and concept (which seems most germane to Kojève’s reading of Hegel) is seriously flawed for reasons of consistency and completeness. The concerns Livingston addresses have considerable bearing on the problems with Kojève’s thinking with regard to the completion or end of history. I take up this question throughout, but in greater detail in the discussion of Attempt at a Rational History of Pagan Philosophy in chapter 8.

  32.    Heidegger, Metaphysical Foundations, 42–69.

  33.    Kojève was obviously sensitive to this himself. His final major work, Attempt at a Rational History of Pagan Philosophy, is an exhaustively detailed examination of the temporalizing of the concept, stretching to more than 1,200 pages. What was a “note” consisting of three lectures in 1938–1939 becomes the major philosophical content of this immense and unfinished work. If nothing else, this late work provides ample evidence that Kojève’s “reductions” are not reckless or superficially provocative speculations. His often nonchalant manner leads some to conclude that he is not as careful or serious as he in fact is—he wears his learning lightly and rarely displays the breadth of his knowledge. When one looks at his notebooks for the Hegel lectures, however, an entirely different image emerges. They are astonishingly detailed and careful, constituting more than two thousand pages of minute notes. The texts that we have are in this sense all fragments, the tip of a grand iceberg.

  34.    See Heidegger, Metaphysical Foundations, 47.

  35.    ILH, 364; IRH, 131.

  36.    This is a Kojèvian commonplace: mathematics is a form of silence, neither a language nor a discourse. The problem of mathematical analogy for Kojève rests with his insistence on the nontemporal essence of mathematics as opposed to the very temporal existence of the things to which mathematics might apply. Indeed, it would seem that mathematical analogies (which Kojève uses not infrequently) are at best inadequate, at worst impossible. Kojève’s attitude toward mathematics in this respect is intriguing, especially given his considerable competence. As I have noted elsewhere, I am not aware of any reference in Kojève to the great advancements in mathematical logic, the pioneers of which, such as Kurt Gödel, John von Neumann, and Alan Turing, were contemporaries of Kojève. One can only speculate as to the reasons why, since Kojeve’s avid interest in quantum physics offers a sharp contrast to his apparent disinterest in the mathematical logic that would lead to the computer revolution. My surmise is that Kojève found mathematical logic as logic deeply problematic for the same reason he dismisses Spinoza: the mathematization of logic for Kojève would likely amount to the eradication of the temporal dimension of language. Hence, for Kojève, modern mathematical logic is a defensive or reactionary logic that turns away from the revolutionary character of Hegelian logic, the accounting for time. This is of course not the case in quantum physics, and that difference may explain Kojève’s interest in quantum physics as well as his neglect of modern mathematical logic. There is likely another reason as well, stated with utmost concision by Hegel himself: “As I have remarked elsewhere, inasmuch as philosophy is to be a science, it cannot borrow its method from a subordinate science, such as mathematics, any more than it can remain satisfied with categorical assurances of inner intuition, or can make use of argumentation based on external reflection.” See Hegel, The Science of Logic, 9.

  37.    ILH, 366; IRH, 133. In a note, Kojève qualifies this judgment somewhat, claiming, “It may be that it is actually impossible to do without Time in Nature; for it is probable that (biological) life, at least, is an essentially temporal phenomenon” (ILH 366; IRH 133). This distinction muddies Kojève’s association of temporality with human labor. It is at best an equivocation and at worst a contradiction.

  38.    ILH, 366; IRH, 133. The Hegelian text reads, “Was die Zeit betrifft, von der man meinen sollte, daß sie, zum Gegenstücke gegen den Raum, den Stoff des andern Teils der reinen Mathematik ausmachen würde, so ist sie der daseiende Begriff selbst.” See Hegel, Phänomenologie, 34; Phenomenology, 27 (§46).

  39.    ILH, 366, 368; IRH, 133, 135.

  40.    Kojève, Essai d’une histoire raisonnée de la philosophie païenne (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 1:104.

  41.    ILH, 368–369; IRH, 136.

  42.    ILH, 371; IRH, 139.

  43.    ILH, 540. As Kojève puts it elsewhere, “It is by resigning himself to death, by revealing it through his discourse, that Man arrives finally at absolute Knowledge or at Wisdom, in thus completing History.” Kojève, “The Idea of Death in the Philosophy of Hegel,” trans. Joseph Carpino, Interpretation 3, no. 2/3 (Winter 1973): 124.

  44.    ILH, 287. For Kojève, returning to the beginning, reading the Book is the silence of repetition, since the “new word” is impossible.

  45.    ILH, 293.

  46.    Kojève associates this with the theological attitude or with a theistic attitude in philosophy.

  47.    As Kojève’s friend Leo Strauss argues, there is no possibility of an argument between faith and philosophy since the central assumption of faith is to believe “in spite of.”

  48.    Indeed, here we see clearly the “corruptness” of the underground man, who is not content purely to act but feels compelled to justify his rejection of rationality. He thus invites contradiction, for he tries (or feigns) to give a rational account of why one cannot give a rational account based on the intrinsic impossibility of the latter. The underground man, as such, is the master of endless talk, and his refusal to end is a direct challenge to any notion of completion. The linguistic equivalent of his declaration that 2 x 2 = 5 is a bending of grammar that ends up in nonsense, as I discussed in chapter 1 and will discuss again in chapter 8.

  49.    Stanley Rosen is perhaps the harshest, declaring that Kojève’s “system was unworthy of his intelligence and even of his illuminating commentaries on the Phenomenology.” See Rosen, “Kojève’s Paris: A Memoir,” in Metaphysics in Ordinary Language (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 277. Rosen’s honesty is refreshing, however, and his view is not to be dismissed, given that Rosen knew Kojève fairly well. Rosen suspects that Kojève’s end of history is somewhat like a regulative ideal or the play of a farceur. If there is clear evidence for the claim that it is a regulative ideal, it is (naturally enough) harder to justify the characterization as a joke or farce, especially given the seriousness of Kojève’s later attempts to defend his views.

  6. THE BOOK OF THE DEAD

    1.    “Briefly: the perfect State and, consequently, all of History, are there only so that the Philosopher can achieve Wisdom by writing a Book (“Bible”) containing absolute knowledge.” Kojève, Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, ed. Raymond Queneau, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 302; see also 326. Hereafter abbreviated as ILH.

    2.    ILH, 289.

    3.    ILH, 410–411. Translation mine; this lecture is not included in the English translation.

    4.    “Man denies survival: the Wahrheit [truth] of man disappears with the disappearance of his animal existence. But it is only in negating this existence that he is human” (ILH, 53).

    5.    Kojève himself seems to anticipate concerns in a long, perhaps parodic note to the eleventh lecture, part of which I reproduce here (retaining Kojève’s unusual hyphenated constructions):

  The role that I attribute to the “Book” can appear exaggerated if one only takes chapter 8 into account. To justify my interpretation, I would thus like to cite a passage that is located at the end of the Preface (Vorrede) of the PhG where Hegel says this (page 58, 1:7–15): “We must be convinced that the truth has as its destiny to make-itself-a-path when its time has come, and that it appears only if its time has come; and that, accordingly, the truth never appears too soon and that it never finds a public that-is-not-ripe [for it]. And [we
must] also [be convinced] that the individual needs this effect [produced on the public] so that what is still only its solitary cause produces-its-proofs-and-declares-itself-true (bewähren) for it [-self] by means of this effect and [so that] it can produce-experience of the fact that the conviction, which at first belongs only to particularity, is something universal.”

  This is quite clear. In order to declare itself true, philosophy must be universally recognized, that is recognized in the final account by the universal and homogeneous State. The empirical-existence (Dasein) of Knowledge—this is not the private thinking of the Sage but his word (parole), universally recognized. And it is evident that this “recognition” can only be obtained by publication of a book. Now, by existing in the form of a book, Knowledge effectively detaches itself from its author, that is, from the Sage or from the Man. (ILH, 414)

    6.    Kojève speaks of the Book as containing the “System der Wissenschaft,” having two parts: the phenomenology and the logic, with the former being an “introduction” and the latter the “science itself” (ILH, 483–484). So it may well be better to speak of the Book as having two mutually implicating parts. It is even more difficult to get around the problem of Kojève’s commentary itself (and his subsequent work), for the reasons mentioned at the end of chapter 5. To add, explain, and elaborate is to indicate the degree to which the end not only is not obviously apparent but also is not yet achieved, since every addition, explanation, and elaboration becomes effectively a new text in the Book (which then threatens to become interminable). Indeed, if a commentary goes no further even than to make explicit what already lies in the narrative of history, it adds to the Book, since something was missing to invite the additional explanation or explicitation in the first place. On the curious identity of the Book, see Dominique Pirotte, Alexandre Kojève: un système anthropologique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2005), 26.