Colloquium: Kojeve: NTUT 2007b

Introduction to Alexander Kojève

Life and backgrounds

Not Jean Paul Sartre, but Alexandre Kojève is the most influential philosopher in France in the 20th century. This is the case even though he never developed an original philosophy. He simply lectured on Hegel. He was a teacher par excellence. His power as a teacher/lecturer was emulated by Jacques Lacan and was so spellbinding that, like Saussure (also, primarily, a teacher) his influence is difficult to measure. No less than George Bataille said that to listen to K is to listen to death itself speaking. Hegelians at the time refuse to listen to him or take him seriously because they felt he had ‘anthropomorphized’ a real philosophy and thus was not Hegelian “enough”; anti-Hegelians despised him because they felt he remained too Hegelian. (In fact, he was “importing” the ideas of Heidegger into Hegel in a way that was to influence French philosophy for the next 50 years.) It was the new post-existential thinkers who came to him.



K was born in 1902 in Moscow to an extremely well-to-do family. His uncle was the great painter Kandinsky and the two of them were close. They leave behind a lifetime of correspondence on philosophical issues. K’s father was killed in 1905. His mother married a friend of the family who was also wealthy. The young K grew up in a palace among the cream of the Russian intelligentsia. At 15, in 1917, the revolution kills his father and appropriates the family’s wealth. Resourceful and independent, K survives on the Black Market but is captured and sentenced to death. He watches as a close friend is executed before his eyes. K himself is spared at the last minute through the intercession of Kandinsky who had associated himself with the Bolsheviks. He flees to Poland but cannot find work. He then returns secretly to Moscow to secure family jewels, escapes, and lives on the money.

He studies philosophy with Karl Jaspers but not Husserl or Heidegger. He studies Russian literature, Chinese, and Sanskrit. He marries Alexandre Koyré’s sister-in-law and moves to Paris. (Koyré is a teacher familiar with Hussarl, Heidegger, and is a specialist in Hegel. He instructs K in them. It is Koyré’s goal to introduce German philosophy to the French who at the time were entrenched in neo-Kantism and epistemology. The appearance of a more “concrete” philosophy became popular. (At this same time Emmanuel Lévinas is at work in the same way as Koyré).) K--alive, rich through investments from moneys he received for his family’s jewels,, happily married, and now entrenched among the Paris and Russian ex-patriate intelligentsia--pursues studies of chemistry and physics at a Paris university and writes a dissertation on the theory of determinism in physics. In the evenings he attends Koyré’s seminars and meets George Bataille and Jacques Lacan. Then comes 1919 and he loses his entire fortune. He needs a job and is allowed to teach in Cairo. Koyré then required a leave and asked K to take over his evening seminars on short notice. He has 3 months to prepare. He reads and re-reads Hegel daily without understanding anything until the very last moment. The “reading” of Hegel is actually only a very narrow focus on certain chapters from Phemonenologie des Geistes on self-consciousness, desire, and the Absolute Idea. This was what K “got” at the last minute in Cairo while preparing to teach. He felt this was the kernel of Hegel’s entire philosophy and, because of K, it is now difficult to read Hegel otherwise. His seminars are extremely well attended. Bataille, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Raymond Queneau, Levinas, Levi-Strauss,Breton, other surrealists, all attend them regularly. Bataille was seen to have taken verbatim notes. The book we have is the from the class notes of Queneau. In his lectures he announces that history has ended; all that remains is the epilogue.

Then came WWII; K tries to flee to America but cannot escape. He fights for the Resistance. After the war he does not return to teaching but becomes involved in the formation of the Common Market. He plays a decisive role in its constitution and also helps to design the Marshall Plan. His advice on political matters is sought out and he becomes a philosopher-advisor to powerful leaders. He ultimate sought to have established a “universal state”. At a European meeting in Brussels in 1968 he is stricken by a heart attack and dies. On his death bed he is asked about the events of May. He replies that they were “insignificant” because no blood had been spilled. These were his final words.

Introduction to the Reading of Hegel

[Classical conceptions of human being should be kept in mind. For Aristotle, man is essentially speaking being or being who possesses logos (Gr. Word that is root both of speech and logic or thought in general). Only insofar as he speaks/is rational is the creature human. For Descartes, as we have discussed, man essentially thinks; man is man insofar as he is self-certain of himself in the cogito ergo sum. For Heidegger, man is only man insofar as he is being-toward-death. The “humanity” of the living creature rests entirely in the “movement” toward death. For Hegel human being is human only insofar as he negates the animal life in himself and become the negation of the animal, becomes negativity in general. Only in death (the death of the animal in him) or toward-death is man truly man. Human being is not living being. (Note: philosophy’s peculiar aversion to life is the issue involved in Giorgio Agamben’s recent work.) Traditionally, entire philosophies are generated out of how one conceives of the definition of human being at the outset.]



Human being is conscious of himself, of his reality, dignity and freedom. In this he differs from animal who have only a sentiment of self. Man is conscious of himself in the “I” of speech; the origin of the “I” is the subject of the lectures. Self-consciousness is essentially different from Subjectivity, or consciousness in general, which merely contemplates an object. (Descartes ego cogito, e.g.) The man who contemplates is absorbed by what he contemplates. He is passive, a spectator who at best wishes to uncover the rule by which and through which consciousness is able to be conscious of something or other. Right away K shifts away from philosophies of subjectivity and epistemology. For, to return to himself and become conscious of himself requires Desire. Man is not merely someone who knows. He also eats, for example. He eats, he desires to eat and he is conscious of this desire. In Desire, “I want…” In Desire Man is brought out of his contemplative attitude and returns to himself. It is Desire that reveals an object to a subject, not knowledge: “I want to eat that.” Desire dis-quiets the contemplative attitude, interrupts it. But what is specifically human Desire?



Man, the self-conscious being, presupposes Desire. Desire is born and is maintained within a natural being, within an animal, biological reality. But animal Desire is not sufficient for Self-consciousness, it is merely necessary.



Desire is action. “I want to eat that” so I eat it, I act, I make it possible to eat, and I eat. That is, I destroy the given object, or transform it into what it was not, into amino acids in my stomach. All action is negating. This is abstract negativity. The being that eats creates and preserves his own reality by devouring another reality. He transforms, alienates, assimilates another reality. Essentially, Desire is an emptiness that reveals itself as real in the act of negation, transformation, assimilation.



If Desire is directed at a natural not-I then the I of Desire would also be natural. An animal eats, and eats, and eats—then, it itself is eaten by another animal. Animal Desire remains within nature. It is merely living. For there to be Self-consciousness there must be directed toward a non-natural object. That which is par excellence non-natural is Desire. Desire is but revealed nothingness, emptiness that realizes itself only in action. Human Desire is directed toward another Desire. Man appears on the earth as a herd animal with multiple Desires. But for the herd to become a society, multiple Desires are not sufficient. Animal Desire is directed toward an object, Human Desire toward another Desire—i.e. not an object, a nothingness. Something must redirect the herd’s multiple Desires away from things and toward each other. Humans must Desire each other, not as objects, however. Humans must Desire each other’s Desire. Human Desire desires Desire. An enemy’s flag has value not in its materiality but in the fact that it is desirable to the enemy. In love I do not Desire the other person as a body, I Desire that she Desire me. I Desire her Desire. Human history is the history of desired Desires.



To be truly human, human Desire must win out over animal Desire. Desire is desire for a value. To the animal the value is life. Man comes to be Man when he risks his animal life for a non-vital end. Human being comes to be Human is risking life. Now, to desire the Desire of another is in the final analysis to desire that the value that I am or that I represent is the value desired by the other: I want him to recognize my value as his value. Thus the truly human Desire the generates Self-consciousness is a function of the desire for recognition. Specifically, to be recognized as he who is willing to risk life in order to be recognized: this is what is truly Human Desire. Human Desire is only realized in the purely gratuitous fight to the death. To each the life of the other has no more, or less, value than his own. Man separates himself from the herd in this fight and becomes truly human and at the same moment History is born, but on one condition.



The fight to the death cannot end in death. If both die, there is no consciousness at all. If one dies, there is no one to recognize the other’s value. There is only a corpse. Instead, during the battle one side surrenders. One side realizes mortal fear and decides to stay alive. He becomes a Slave. The winner becomes the Master. Both adversaries remain alive but one fears the other, gives in, and recognizes him as superior, as truly human, as Master. Further, the loser recognizes himself as inferior, animal, dependent. In this nascent state, man is no longer herd animal, he is either Master or Slave.



Now, K will demonstrate that the true victor is the slave. Why? Because the master remains at the level of abstract negativity. The master does not fear death. The slave will achieve concrete negativity, in the end, at the end of history, he will master the master and become truly free.

The master is recognized by the slave as the truly human being. The slave is still contaminated by the animal desire merely to stay alive. No one resists the master. He is feared as death itself is feared. The master consumes the slaves’ freedom. The master enjoys himself. He consumes what the slave works for. The master does not work—why should he? He does not fear death, he does not merely want to stay alive. He terrifies other ‘half humans’ who do want to stay alive. The master’s abstract negativity depends on the slave’s concrete negativity. The slave negates the given reality and builds the palace for the master who uses it, consumes it, enjoys it. The work of the slave is the truth of the master’s enjoyment. Moreover, the slave is still tied to nature: he works in it, transforming it for the master, and he fears death and thus retains his animal desire. Hence, the master cannot recognize the slave as a human being. The slave has proven in his cowardice that he is still part animal. This part human creature recognizes the master as master, but, all in all, the slave is a mere thing. That which the fight was all about, the fight for pure prestige, was a fight to be recognized by another human desire. That’s why it must be a fight to the death. But the result is that the master is now only recognized by a thing. Poor master. The master certainly has achieved freedom from his animal desire, but there is no one to recognize this hence he remains only subjectively free. He is at the same level as the consciousness that gazes at the pyramids because only another human self consciousness can recognize a human self consciousness.

The slave does become truly conscious of his own freedom, however. He does not fear the master per se: he fears himself, his own death. In surrendering to the master, he alienates his freedom. He is an animal. In the master, the slave recognizes his own freedom. Afraid of his own freedom to die (that was what the fight was all about: the desire to be recognized as free to die by another whom the first recognizes as free to die), the slave freely decides not to be free. Not this master, but death itself is the Absolute Master. This master is a free, human desire only because the slave has surrendered his own freedom to him. Servitude is always voluntary. You cannot subjugate someone who does not fear death. The slave decides to be a slave, consciously. He freely negates his own freedom and becomes conscious of it thereby. The master is the slave’s negation which the slave recognizes. In the master is the slave’s death living a human life. But he is but a master. The slave did not fear him, but death itself. Further, the slave alienates abstract desire and hence his own humanity which he too recognizes in the master. That is, the slave lives and experiences his own death and his own humanity—which he freely surrendered—in the master whom he serves. In the master he sees his own humanity outside himself. The dialectic has worked. The master was willing to die but did not die, did not confront death, because the slave gave up too soon. The master now depends upon the slave for his enjoyment. He is only apparently free. The slave really is free, but apparently un-free.

The master is the for-itself of consciousness but his truth is in the slave. The slave has alienated his for-itself to the master. But now the slave begins to recognize himself as the true victor, because he works. K returns to basic Hegel. The slave transforms the given reality into a subjective reality. What was wood is now my table, a human reality, a subjective-object. It is the product. In the transformation of nature into products is history. Because of the slave, nature become history and the slave, in transforming nature also transforms himself. The natural world is slowly transformed into the human world in which the slave sees himself and in which the slave knows himself. The slave lives in the very world that he himself has transformed, built, made. Not just a pyramid being finished but the whole world is transformed in the course of history. The slave educates himself in this way. Furthermore, originally afraid of his own death, his own nature, the slave has now completely transformed natural being and dominates it. It is via work and that the slave lives and thence overcomes his own fear of death. The trick that the slave performs on the master is this: yes he alienates his desire in the original confrontation, but he does not completely abandon the desire. He represses his desire. The slave still desires what the master desired: to be fully human, but the slave is willing to wait. It is precisely in work that “desire is held in check”: that is, in work, not the confrontation, desire is transformed into truly human desire. The slave has capitalized on desire. He is the man of repression. Work requires the sublimation of desire. The artist is satisfied in work, in repression. The artist enjoys repression of desire. In work, abstract desire achieves the aufhebung. The worker who enjoys work enjoys himself because he has alienated his desire in work. For the slave, the concrete world that he himself builds is the realization of himself/desire.



The world itself is entirely transformed. The whole of given reality is now essentially for-man, for the human because of the work of the slave. History has hence ended. There is nothing given left to transform. The slave is now equal to the master because the slave is master of the world the master must live in. The slave comes to know that he never feared the master but only feared his own death—which fear he has transformed into human history—the history of the transformation of given reality into human reality. Nothing fundamentally new can happen. Likewise, philosophy is over: there is nothing fundamentally new to think. That which caused the Slave to fear, his animal or given nature, has now been completely transformed. The Slave has Mastered Nature itself but not by consuming it, by transforming into human reality. And each Slave recognizes in each other the same transformative power as essentially equally valuable. There is nothing more to fight for. Terror is the origin of the wisdom of History which the Slave realizes and the Master never does.



Slight problem, however. There is nothing fundamental left to do. Human being, human desire is “out of a job”. What happens? K was not sure about this. He was convinced that human history had ended. The world would be transformed into a world of liberal democracies that were production oriented. Essentially, the world we live in now. And what do we do at the end of history? We become American. We play golf, watch TV, eat the foods we like, enjoy--life. In short, we become animal again, but now in a world no longer “given”. Bataille prodded his teacher on this question. He asked simply: what happened to abstract negativity? Does it just “go away”? Even if I have nothing fundamental left to do, I still, on the basic definition of human desire, desire nothing. Which is not exactly to be satisfied, hence not exactly animal. Is it possible to envision a purely gratuitous desire? K decided that it was and that at the end of history we become, not American, but Japanese. We live a purely human life of pure prestige that he fids examples of in Japanese gardens, flower arranging, and ritual suicide. We become snobs and k never really could decide if the snob is really human or not. At the end of history the essence of desire is revealed: still to desire when there is nothing to left to desire.