A Summary of Alexandre Kojève's Introduction to the Reading of Hegel

Know me broken by my master . . . Same old trip is was back then. 

--Alice in Chains, Would? 

           1. Humans are different from other animals in being (potentially) self-conscious.  We are 'brought back' to ourselves by Desire, by the negation of the object or other.  "The human I", says Kojève, "is the I of a Desire or of Desire" (4).  Desire leads to action; "all action is negating" (4); and it is always both a destructive act (eating and digesting an apple, yum) and a constructive act, insofar as a subjective reality is born or constructed out of negation.

           But for self-consciousness, Desire must be for a non-natural object, one beyond the given reality: in short for Desire itself.  Self-consciousness, argues Kojève, is desiring Desire, another's Desire, negating negativity.  And so "human history is the history of desired Desires" (6).  (In a way then, self-consciousness 'feeds' on Desire.)  And in this human Desire, we desire recognition by an/other; we fight to the death for it.  Because our self-certainty that the universe is ours, that we are the universe, experiences a conflict when we encounter another being with consciousness, a fight for recognition begins.  Both adversaries in the conflict fight to the death for mutual recognition, but they must remain alive at the end for truth to persist; in order that they both survive, then, one must give in, recognize the other, and not be recognized.  This is the Slave who gives in to the Master.  While humans, argues Kojève, are thus either Master or Slave, and "the historical 'dialectic' is the 'dialectic' of Master and Slave," this "interaction . . . must finally end in the 'dialectical overcoming of both of them" (9).

           Two levels of 'mediation' occur in the Master/Slave scenario, both for the former: first, the Slave mediates between the Master and the object of desire, since the Slave is the one who handles and transforms the object for him; and second, "since the Master is Master only by the fact of having a Slave who recognizes him as Master" (17), the Master has his Being only 'through' an/other, the slave.  "What is tragic . . . in this situation", writes Kojève,  is that recognition here is "one sided, for he [the Master] does not recognize in turn the Slave's human reality and dignity.  Hence, he is recognized by someone whom he does not recognize" (19).  Thus, in a bit of decidedly Marxist insight, Kojève suggests that:

The complete, absolutely free man, definitively and completely satisfied by what he is, the man who is perfected and completed in and by this satisfaction, will be the Slave who has "overcome" his Slavery.  If idle Mastery is an impasse, laborious. Slavery, in contrast, is the source of all human, social, historical progress.  History is the history of the working Slave.  (20)

           One 'advantage' the Slave has over the Master, though, lies in the fact that he knows "the value and the reality of 'autonomy,' of human freedom"; while he cannot experience this value, as he sees it only in recognizing the 'other' as such, the aspiration to overcome, to supersede the relationship, is there for the Slave.  "Moreover," writes Kojève, "the experience of the fight that made him a Slave predisposes him to that act of self-governing, of negation of himself (negation of his given I, which is a slavish I)" (21).  Yet another advantage for the Slave exists in his ability to 'transform' "the given World by his work"; "hence, he goes beyond himself, and also goes beyond the Master who is tied to the given which, not working, he leaves intact" (23).  

           Kojève is careful to note, however, that "[o]nly after having worked for the Master does he [the Slave] understand the necessity of the fight between Master and Slave and the value of the risk and terror that it implies" (23).  And, as Hegel himself writes, "although the terror inspired by the Master is the beginning of wisdom, it can only be said that in this terror Consciousness exists for itself, but is not yet Being-for-itself."

           2. In this chapter Kojève begins a discussion of Hegel's differentiation of absolute Knowledge from Christian theology and knowledge, or chapter VIII of the Phenomenology. 

           In getting around to the subject of Christianity, though, Kojève traverses the 'series of ideologies' which the Slave 'imagines' to cope with his state of bondage, or "to reconcile the ideal of Freedom with the fact of Slavery" (53).  In Stoicism, says Kojève, "The Slave tries to persuade himself that he is actually free simply by knowing that he is free--that is, by having the abstract idea of freedom" (53).  The 'reality' of the situation matters little apparently, but the Slave eventually becomes bored with Stoicism because it essentially keep him inert and actionless.  Dissatisfied by Stoicism, then, the Slave moves to an attempt at action, at negation of the 'given':

In the Slave's case, to act effectively would be to negate Slavery--that is, to negate            the Master, and hence to risk his life in a Fight against the Master.  The Slave does not yet dare do this.  And with boredom driving him to action, he is content to activate his thought in some sense.  He makes it negate the given.  The Stoic Slave becomes the skeptic-nihilist Slave.  (54)

           This attempt at resolution also fails, this time because of the contradictory nature of denying the existence of oneself.  To be a skeptic-nihilist is effectively to commit suicide, Kojève suggests. But the awareness of the contradiction here is what moves the Slave to another level, for "to become aware of a contradiction is necessarily to want to remove it" (54).  But the Slave still finds he cannot alter his contradictory existence, and (again, instead of fighting the Master) decides that life on Earth is Slavery (even for Masters); and in order to account for the ideal of freedom, he at once conjures a 'beyond' or afterlife to which he can look forward/outward.  This leads to inaction once again, however:

No need to fight to be recognized by the Master, since one is recognized by a God. No need to fight to become free in this world, which is just as vain and stripped of value for the Christian as for the Skeptic.  No need to fight, to act, since--in the Beyond, in the only World that truly counts--one is already freed and equal to the Master (in the Service of God).  (55)

           In his most heretical moment so far, Kojève next argues that only by 'overcoming' Christian theology, i.e. by accepting "the idea of death and, consequently atheism," will we ever realize absolute Freedom.  "[T]he whole evolution of the Christian World," he says, "is nothing but a progress toward the atheistic awareness of the essential finiteness of human existence" (57).  But Kojève notes that for Christianity to be overcome, it must first be "realized in the form of a World" (57).  For this to happen, he says, the Universal and Particular (an historical dialectic corresponding to the Master and Slave, respectively) must also be overcome:

Man can be truly "satisfied," History can end, only in and by the formation of a Society, of a State, in which the strictly particular, personal, individual value of each is recognized as such, in its very particularity, by all, by Universality incarnated in the State as such; and in which the universal value of the State is recognized and realized by the Particular as such, by all the Particulars.  (58)

            3. Kojève continues with his discussion of Hegel's views on religion in this brief chapter.  "For Hegel," he says, "every theology is necessarily an anthropology" since religious thought is always of humans and human existence.  Philosophy likewise.  Yet the two forms of knowledge differ when theology projects its concern into the 'beyond' of Heaven.  "Furthermore," he adds, "these two types of thought necessarily coexist: while opposing one another, they engender and mutually complete one another" (71).  Philosophy details the particular, the here and now; theology looks to the universal.  Synthesis will take place when both realize their convergence with the other: "it is sufficient to say of Man everything that the Christian says of his God in order to move from the absolute or Christian Theology to Hegel's absolute philosophy or Science" (73).

           4.  Kojève wants to "say a few words about wisdom in relation to Philosophy" before getting to absolute Knowledge and Chapter VIII of the Phenomenology.  The wise human, he says, with one view is "fully and perfectly self-conscious" (76), able to answer all questions regarding his or her actions in a fully coherent manner.  The Stoics, moreover, defined the wise human as one who "wants nothing . . . desires nothing . . . wants to change nothing . . . [and] . . . simply is and does not become" (77).  Hegel, he says, likes both definitions and sees both working together, yet also believes that the wise person is also a morally perfect one:

. . .for Hegel the three definitions of Wisdom are rigorously equivalent.  The Wise Man is the perfectly self-conscious man--that is, the man who is fully satisfied by what he is--that is, the man who realizes moral perfection by his existence, or in other words, who serves as the model for himself and for all others.  (80)

           But is it the destiny of every human being to achieve this wise state?  No, responds Kojève: "the man whom the Phenomenology has in view . . . is not man simply.  It is the Philosopher" (85)--literally, 'the lover of wisdom'.  Plato denies that such wisdom is possible, however, that it is only an ideal, and Kojève next enters into a discussion of this opposition between Plato and Hegel's views on the matter: "The opposition between Plato and Hegel . . . is not an opposition within Philosophy.  It is an opposition between Philosophy and Theology--that is, in the final analysis, between Wisdom and Religion" (89).  Since Plato relegates Wisdom to the ideal world, to an external realm, he is thus aptly placed in the theological/religious camp. 

           As far as Hegel's Phenomenology seems circular (the circle being an essential metaphor for Hegel in its representation of self-consciousness returning into itself) Kojève feels that the Phenomenology must be studied with its circularity in mind. "However," he adds, "before doing this, one must: (1) know what this requirement of circularity means; and (2) understand why the truly true, absolute truth can only be circular" (99).

           5.  Here Kojève considers this requirement, specifically in its relation to Hegel's ideas on Eternity, Time, and the Concept.  He begins with a discussion of how these terms pan out in theological frameworks, or ones in which the Eternal is held to be an external essence beyond Time, as it is in Plato's accounts:

. . . every system of theological absolute Knowledge sees in the Concept an eternal entity, which is related to Eternity.  And inversely, this conception of the Concept necessarily leads in the end, once developed, to a theological Knowledge.  If, as in Plato, Eternity is situated outside of Time, the System is rigorously mono-theistic and radically transcendentalist . . . .  (112)

           He next turns to Aristotle's ideas on the matter, and notes that Aristotle, unlike his teacher, believed the Eternal to be within Time.  "Hence Aristotle says: Time itself is Eternal.  It is circular, but the circle is gone around again and again, eternally" (114).  Yet Kojève feels that Aristotle's logic falls short when it is asked to explain how humans can realize absolute Freedom in this cycle, specifically because any possibility of going outside Time, of completing History, is neglected.   Kant on the other hand equates the Eternal with the Concept: and "[i]f the Concept is eternal, it is because [for Kant] there is something in Man that places him outside of Time: it is freedom--that is, the 'transcendental I' taken as 'practical Reason' or 'pure Will'" (129).  The problem here, Kojève argues, is the notion of the free act as a transcendental one, occurring a priori, seemingly apart from human history. 

           Finally, it is Hegel who says that the Concept is Time.  And Kojève suggests that this equation is a necessary one "if philosophy is to attain absolute Knowledge relating to Man" (130).  More specifically, the equation begins as a necessary premise for considering an account of History, which Hegel attempts to do.  Kojève is careful to note, then, that Hegel's idea of Time is one of a very anthropological flavor, and a circular one at that: in Hegel "there is Time only to the extent that there is History, that is human existence--that is speaking existence" (133).  Further, on Hegel's account, the Future is the prime motivating force in History:

In the Time that pre-Hegelian Philosophy considered, the movement went from the Past toward the Future, by way of the Present.  In the Time of which Hegel speaks, on the other hand, the movement is engendered in the Future and goes toward the Present by way of the Past: Future   Past   Present (   Future).  (134).

           And if it is Desire that propels History, desire for recognition or for an/other's Desire, and if Desire is realized through negation and Work, then:

Only the World transformed by human Work reveals itself in and by the Concept which exists empirically in the World without being the World.  Therefore, the Concept is Work, and Work is the Concept.  And if, as Marx quite correctly remarks, Work for Hegel is . . . "the very essence of Man" . . . it can also be said that man's essence, for Hegel, is the Concept.  And that is why Hegel says not only that Time is the Begriff, but that it is also the Geist.  For if Work temporalizes Space, the existence of Work in the World is the existence in this World of Time.  Now, if Man is the Concept, and if the Concept is Work, Man and the Concept are also Time.  (145).

           6. Another short chapter, this one focusing on the third part of Chapter VIII.  Here he briefly speaks of Hegel's so-called 'realist’; tendency: "a system that breaks up into two Parts," Kojève suggests, "namely a Logik and a Phenomenology, must necessarily be 'realist'" (150).  First, though, it seems pertinent to go through Hegel's metaphysical base.  This is nothing we're unfamiliar with: Spirit as 'revealed Being'; the Object given its 'full freedom'; and so on.  Yet he notes that Hegel's realism surfaces in his bifurcation of 'Spirit's becoming' into Self or Time and static Being or Space; and realism, Kojève reminds us, "is necessarily dualist" (154).  Such an outlook then leads to an emphasis on History, since, we'll remember, Man, Work, and the Concept are all also Time, and thus more of the last chapter pans out:

In two senses, then, History is a history of Philosophy: on the one hand it exists through Philosophy and for Philosophy; on the other, there is History because there is Philosophy and in order that there may be Philosophy, or--finally--wisdom. For Understanding or Knowledge of the Past is what, when it is integrated into the Present, transforms this Present into an historical Present, that is, into a Present that realizes a progress in relation to its Past.  (164).

           7.  In this last chapter Kojève wants to discuss the role of the 'dialectic' in Hegel's method, or his resistance to method, as it were.  "Dialectical 'logic'," he says, "necessarily implies three complementary and inseparable aspects: the 'abstract' aspect . . . ; the 'negative,' properly called 'dialectical,' aspect; and the 'positive' aspect" (169).  Kojève argues, though, that the methodology of Hegel cannot decisively be called dialectical: "it is purely contemplative and descriptive," he adds, "or better, phenomenological in Husserl's sense of the term" (171).  If there is dialectic in Hegel, it is then because, as Kojève reminds us, Being itself is dialectical, and so "Speech and Thought themselves are dialectical only because, and to the extent that, they reveal or describe the dialectic of Being and of the Real" (171). 

           As far as Hegel's resistance to 'method' goes, Kojève explains that

. . . the "method" of the Hegelian Scientist consists in having no method or way of thinking peculiar to his Science.  The naive man, the vulgar scientist, even the pre-Hegelian philosopher--each in his in own way opposes himself to the Real and deforms it by opposing his own mean of action and methods of thought to it.  The Wise Man, on the contrary, is fully and definitively reconciled with everything that is: he entrusts himself without reserve to Being and opens himself entirely to the Real without resisting it.  (176).

           He even adds that Hegel might have been the first philosopher to 'abandon' the Dialectic, as far as it has long been a philosophical method of dialogue or discussion.  Hegel's task, Kojève makes clear, is rather to describe History's dialectical nature.

           For Kojève, a consideration of how and why Hegel surpasses the Dialectic must take into account his outlook on the 'real', 'truth', and 'error':

. . . as long as the real or active dialectic of History endures, errors and truths are dialectical in the sense that they are all sooner or later 'dialectically overcome' . . . , the 'truth' becoming partially, or in a certain sense, false, and the 'error' true; and they are changed thus in and by discussion, dialogue, or the dialectical method. (191)

           Yet Kojève feels that there is course to discuss the dialectic structure of Hegel's Real and Being: in short: Thought describes the 'abstract' aspect of Being, or Identity, 'oneness'; Reason, on the other hand, describes the 'negative' aspect of Being (now we have a dialectic going).  And thus, "Concrete (revealed) real Being is both Identity and Negativity" (200).  Yet,

. . . one cannot say that Being is Identity and Negativity: being both at the same time, it is neither the one nor the other taken separately.  Concrete (revealed) real. Being is neither (pure) Identity . . . nor (pure) Negativity . . ., but Totality . . . .Totality is, therefore, the third fundamental and universal onto-logical category: Being is real or concrete only in its totality, and every concrete real entity is the totality of its constituent elements (identical or negating).  (201-2)

           Here, then, is synthesis taking place in Being.

           Eventually and finally, Kojève returns to the Master/Slave scenario as a way of understanding how these two aspects of Being interact and presuppose their own overcoming or synthesis, and in doing so recalls the place of Work and History:

In short, to describe Man as a dialectical entity is to describe him as negating Action that negates the given within which it is born, and as a Product created by that very negation, on the basis of the given which was negated.  And on the "phenomenological" level this mean that human existence "appears" in the World as a continuous series of fights and works integrated by memory--that is, as History in the course of which Man freely creates himself.  (234)     

           And so we come full circle. 

I of course left stuff out in the interest of time and space and being, but I tried to get in most of the things in Kojève that seemed relevant to our studies this summer.  One little moment that awestruck me, which I remembered as I was going through writing my summary:

. . . what made Man a Slave was his refusal to risk his life.  Hence he will not cease to be Slave, as long as he is not ready to risk his life in a Fight against the Master, as long as he does not accept the idea of his death.  A liberation without a bloody Fight, therefore, is metaphysically impossible. (56) 

           Now that’s a call to arms!