The story of a Hegelian sage

Is the myth of an intellectual creation supposed to arise almost ex nihilo conducive to historical approaches to thought? ? Nothing seems less certain. In the case of Alexandre Kojève (1902-1968), a majority of commentators have until now agreed, despite a divergence of horizons, on the enigmatic character of the philosopher’s thought and life. Born in Moscow in 1902, he fled the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 before starting studies in Germany. However, after settling in Paris in 1926, it was the lessons on Hegel, which Alexandre Kojève taught at the École Pratique des Hautes Études from 1933 to 1939, which most captured the interest of posterity. Firstly by its audience which seems to bring together a considerable part of the budding post-war intelligentsia, then by the style and content of the teaching. If Raymond Aron emphasizes in his Memoirs the ease with which Kojève captivated an audience of super-intellectuals prone to doubt or criticism », Georges Bataille goes so far as to affirm that the seminar “ broken, crushed, killed ten times “.

As the choice of their lexicon shows, these testimonies were often at the origin of the “ Kojève myth “. It is, however, surprising that later commentators who never maintained relations with the philosopher share the same tendency. The greatest obstacle to a historical study of his thought has long resided in the difficulty of reconstructing his intellectual journey. In 1990, the publication of the biography written by Dominique Auffret aimed to fill this void. The methodology ofAlexandre Kojève: philosophy, the State, the end of history (Grasset) nevertheless poses more problems than it solves. She displays anachronism and teleology as virtues to go beyond textual documents alone in order to arrive at a psychological portrait. Indeed, Dominique Auffret is not content “ of the overly confident positivity of the documents “. On the contrary, he wants “ avoid only historiography, documentary, events, and especially society chronicles » (Auffret, p. 62). Such “ personal phenomenology » therefore made the work of a historian all the more necessary. Introduction to “ forty-five years of French philosophy (1945-1978) “, The same and the other by Vincent Descombes, published in 1979, was less interested in historical understanding than in highlighting the matrix that Kojève’s reflections constitute for French thought after 1945. Indeed, the more revolt anti-Hegelian in French philosophy of the 1960s proves powerful, the more Kojève’s writings seem important to him because of the reactions they provoke. By emphasizing the context of his production, Marco Filoni therefore uncovers a historiographical aspect that has remained in the shadows until now.

Specialist in the reception of Hegel’s thought in France, author of a study on the political philosophy of Eric Weil and translator of numerous Kojève writings, this young Italian researcher now offers an intellectual monograph of Kojève up to 1945. By a trick of reason, the work which resolutely places the thought and life of the philosopher in its historical context appears in French in the collection “ Library of ideas », inaugurated by Bernard Groethuysen, a friend of Kojève. Thanks to the decisive contribution of the Kojève collection to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, open to researchers since 2003, Marco Filoni reconstructs “ the cultural environments of origin, the studies followed, the fundamental theoretical choices and the intellectual network within which these were developed » (PDp. 8). He also deals, in the three main parts of the book, with the influence that Russian thought had on the young Kojève, the German academic context of the 1920s and the interlocutors who nourished his philosophy from the 1920s onwards. 1930.

Trained in a highly cultured Moscow environment, Kojève was familiar from his youth with what we are accustomed to call “ the Russian spiritual renaissance “. Many of the philosophical and cultural questions addressed by this current will be the same as “ those that Kojève would later face during his intellectual journey » (PD39). Whether it is writers like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky or theologians like Nikolai Berdyaev, this is characterized by a new religious consciousness. From the 1900s, the reception of Nietzsche’s work was added to the picture. It is in Dostoyevsky’s novels that Kojève encounters the idea of ​​man’s irreducible freedom. Despite the harshness of fate, their protagonists possess a lucid awareness of “ sovereignty they have over themselves » (PDp. 51). It was to another representative of the Russian spiritual renaissance, Vladimir Soloviev, that he devoted his thesis, directed by Karl Jaspers at the University of Heidelberg and defended in 1926. There he studied the central paradox of theistic thought which consists in safeguarding the freedom and independence of man without altering the absolute character of God. Although he guesses the aporias, Kojève does not hesitate to take up the importance given to the freedom of the individual, the keystone of atheist anthropology which he will subsequently defend in his course on Hegel.

During the years of training in Germany from 1921 to 1926, other debates marked the young student. The University of Heidelberg was experiencing an astonishing intellectual proliferation at the time. Neo-Kantianism is represented there by Heinrich Rickert. Embodying the so-called school of the country of Baden, its Wertphilosophie seeks to reconcile the objective, even scientific, sphere of values ​​and the subjective actions which actualize them over time. At the other end of the spectrum, Karl Jaspers develops a philosophy of existence “ which must have been something very different from science » (quoted in PDp. 131). Instead of searching for objective values, the task of philosophy, according to Jaspers, consists of their construction within a vision of the world (Weltanschauung) which is in essence that of an individual. His existence is before him, graspable in and through the limit experience. It is therefore up to the individual himself to embark on a story that only he can write. When he explored Western history in his seminar, Kojève placed himself resolutely on the side of Jaspers, emphasizing the historical and individual character of what he called “ existential attitudes » (stoicism, skepticism, etc.), even if he criticizes Jaspers’ forgetting of the social dimension of human existence.

A third German philosopher brings a particular shift to Kojève’s thought. The presence of the ideas contained in Being and time (1927) by Martin Heidegger has been undeniable since Kojève wrote his manuscript on Atheism in 1931. The importance of finitude for Kojève’s anthropology is clearly announced. Death is without a doubt the central event in the life of man » (quoted in PDp. 216). Here again, Kojève does not take up Heidegger’s ideas without discussing them. He criticizes it in fact for attenuating the value that negative action has in human life. The feeling of anguish in the face of death, a feeling experienced by an individual Dasein, must be externalized and become action. But every action takes place in a social context. This is why the ontology of Heideggerian finitude does not succeed, according to him, in accounting for the socio-historical process. Another theory will solve this problem. If Kojève praises socialism (including that of Stalin), it is at least in part to respond to the individualist impasse of Jaspers’ philosophy of existence and Heidegger’s fundamental ontology.

Marco Filoni chooses to approach the famous seminar devoted to Hegel from its margins. Thus, with regard to Kojève’s intellectual journey in the 1930s, he presents the correspondence with the Catholic thinker Gaston Fessard, the contribution of the work of his best friend, Alexandre Koyré, the writings devoted to physics and the numerous reports written for Philosophical research. This review, which appeared in six issues from 1932 to 1937, served as a privileged vehicle for the importation of contemporary German philosophy.

However, it is the almost unknown course on Pierre Bayle, held by Kojève from November 12, 1936 to May 24, 1937, which receives particular attention. The Russian philosopher even wrote a text entitled Identity and reality in the Dictionary » by Pierre Baylesupposed to appear in the collection “ Socialism and Culture » published by Éditions Sociales Internationales, directed by Georges Friedmann, and which appears for the first time in an edition commented and annotated by Marco Filoni. This writing sheds remarkable light on Kojève’s political positioning before the Second World War. He advocates the historicization of truth and the conception of man as a social being, theories which are already found in Bayle, while expressing reluctance with regard to his doctrine of tolerance. It would result in a State which represses all revolutionary action, distrustful of intellectuals, producers only of opinions. Now, if the truth of man is actively created in history “ she must be able to impose herself » (PD250). As he states elsewhere in his Introduction to reading Hegela tolerant State will never succeed in achieving a regime of mutual recognition on a global scale. Through the paralleling of the confrontation between Protestantism and Catholicism in XVII^e century and that between fascism and communism which is contemporary with it, Kojève, in a letter addressed to Leo Strauss and dated November 2, 1936, castigates the intermediate democratic position. You have to choose, he says, your side.

Although today’s context is very different from that of the 1930s, Kojève’s writings are nevertheless surprisingly current. Following the financial crisis of 2008, the State, more in practice than in theory, made its return as an essential political actor. As such, Kojève’s reflections emphasize the fact that the State is not only a necessary evil whose encroachments risk jeopardizing the freedom of the individual. It is, on the contrary, only the existence of the state form of being together which makes possible the recognition of each by all. It is not the least merit of Marco Filoni’s historical approach to make us see that the wise Hegelian has not yet said his last word.