Introduction tothe Readingof AlexandreKojeve PatrickRiley PoliticalTheory,Vol.9,No.1.(Feb.,1981),pp.5-48. StableURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0090-5917%28198102%299%3A1%3C5%3AITTROA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y PoliticalTheoryiscurrentlypublishedbySagePublications,Inc.. YouruseoftheJSTORarchiveindicatesyouracceptanceofJSTOR'sTermsandConditionsofUse,availableat http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html.JSTOR'sTermsandConditionsofUseprovides,inpart,thatunlessyouhaveobtained priorpermission,youmaynotdownloadanentireissueofajournalormultiplecopiesofarticles,andyoumayusecontentin theJSTORarchiveonlyforyourpersonal,non-commercialuse. Pleasecontactthepublisherregardinganyfurtheruseofthiswork.Publishercontactinformationmaybeobtainedat http://www.jstor.org/journals/sage.html. EachcopyofanypartofaJSTORtransmissionmustcontainthesamecopyrightnoticethatappearsonthescreenorprinted pageofsuchtransmission. JSTORisanindependentnot-for-profitorganizationdedicatedtoandpreservingadigitalarchiveofscholarlyjournals.For moreinformationregardingJSTOR,[email protected]. http://www.jstor.org FriMay2511:24:162007 INTRODUCTION TO THE READING OF ALEXANDRE KOJEVE PA TRICK RILEY Unrversrty of Wiscons~n-M adison One of the most v~siblep henomena on the front~ero f postwar polit~calp hilosophy has been a resuscitated "left Hegelianism," and among contemporary left Hegelians none has been so influentla1 as Alexandre Kojke, whose brilliant Introductron to the Reading of Hegel (1947)l is viewed as a modern classic even by those who see it as a one- sided interpretation of Hegelian philosophy Why "left Hegelianism" in general, and Kojeve's reading of Hegel In particular, should have sprung up in France (beg~nningin the 1930s but fully flower~ngo nly after the War), is a questlon not as easily answered as some appear to th~nkA. llan Bloom cla~msin his English-language edit~ono f Introductron to the Reading of Hegelthat "Kojeve is the most thoughtful, the most learned, the most profound of those Marxists who, dissat~sfiedw ~thth e thinness of Marx's account of the human and metaphysical grounds of his teaching, turned to Hegel as the truly philosophic source of that teachingV;2 but it 1s not at all clear how far Kojeve's reading of Hegel IS really "Marxist," despite the fact that Kojeve makes the "dialect~co f Master and Slave" In the Phenomenology the "key" to h~isn terpretation of the whole of Hegel.3 If there IS (at least) a Marx~stc omponent In Kojeve's reading, there is also an existent~alisto ne-wh~ch is at its clearest in his insistence that the h~stoncaslt ruggle between Masters and Slaves is a struggle freely entered into, w~thout" cause" or "biological ne~essity";~and there IS also what one could call a Nietzschean component in Kojke's hatred of all "transcendence," of all "escape" into a "beyond" where there is (allegedly) no struggle, no Mastery and Slavery Th~dsi staste for the "beyond," so remlnlscent of the Twilight of the Idols.5 is the foundation of Kojeve's hostility to Plato (and the realm of idea^),^ and of his lesser but substantial aversion to Kant (and the realm of th~ngs-~n-themselves).('O ne can, Kojeve complains in the POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 9 No. I, February 1981 5-48 O 1981 Sage Publicat~ons,I nc. 6 POLlTlCAL THEORY / FEBRUARY 1981 "Plato" chapter of his Attempt as a Reasoned History of Pagan Philosophy, "deny the possibility of all satisfaction on the here-and- now" Thus "the affirmation of religious satisfaction"-whether in Plato or in Kant-"demands the affirmation of a 'beyond' where the man can be satisfied who cannot be in the here-and-now."8 Put otherwise, Kojeve continues, "religious satisfaction cannot be anything else than an 'extinction' [nirvana] of the extendedduration of human empirical existence."9 Since, for Kojkve, Hegelianism is a "radically atheistic" philosophy which treats Christianity as only "anthropologically" true-insofar as it stresses God-becoming- manlo-Hegel avoids altogether the "religious attitude" which believes in the "impossibility" of man's being "fully and definitively satisfied" in this world, "in the world where he is born, lives and dies." Hegel, indeed, for Kojeve, is the philosopher of "perfect" satisfaction in the "'worldly' hzc et nunc.")li A complete "picture" of Kojeve, then, would stress not just the Marxian elements of his thought, but the existentialist and "Nietzschean" ones as well: these elements, in themselves perfectly discrete, may well be able to coexist, and even support each other (if one stresses, say, the "voluntary" undertaking of a "struggle" for Mastery whose upshot is the enslavement of those who find solace in a "beyond"); but these mutually supporting discrete "elements" add up to something more and other than "Marxism" tout court. With the posthumous publication of Kojeve's Kant (1973) and of the last two volumes of his Attempt at a Reasoned History of Pagan Philosophy (1972, 1973), one is finally in a position to sketch the outlines of this complete picture. The central and decisive Kojevian work remains the magistral Introductzon to the Reading of Hegel; but this can and should be supplemented, not only by Kant and Pagan Philosophy, but by several important articles which Kojkve wrote for the journal Crztzque-above all "Hegel, Marx and Christianity"12 (1946) and "The Political Action of Philosophers"~3( 1950). It is only out of this entire ensemble that an accurate portrait of Kojkve can be built up, so that one can begn to assess his status as the most eminent of contemporary "left Hegelians." In his brilliant and influential Introduction to the Reading of Hegel Kojeve make his treatment of the Phenomenology revolve around Riley / READING ALEXANDRE KOJZVE 7 Hegel's great set-piece,l4 "Master and Servant" (which he renders "Master and Slave"). And in this treatment Kojeve argues that for Hegel human soclety and human "discourse" began when men were first willing to nsk their "animal" and b~olopcale xistence in a 'Yight to the death" for "pure prestige," for "recognit~on" by the "other."l5 The man who became the Master was he who was "willing to go all the way*' in this fight: the potentla1 Master "preferred, to his real, natural, b~olog~cal life, something ideal, spiritual, non-biological-the fact of being recognized in and through [another] consciousness, of bearing the name 'Master,' of being called 'Master' "16 The (potential) Slave on the other hand, was the onewho saw and feared his own "nothingness" should he die in the struggle, and who "recognized" the Master rather than die.]' The Master, for his part, finds that he is not "satisfied" with mastery, slnce he has rlsked his life for recognition by a mere Slave whom he uses as a "thing"; the Master has the "pleasuren of not having to work, but this pleasure is not a true satzsfactron. "To get oneself recogn~zedb y a Slave is not to get oneself recognized by a man"; hence "the Master never attains his end, the end for whlch he has nsked hls very life."'* (It IS for this reason, according to Kojeve, that mastery is ultimately "tragic" and "an existential impasse.")19 The Slave, who submits to and "works" in the servlce of the Master, can ultimately find satisfaction in his work (by whlch he transforms the natural world of "given being" and himself as well): through work, which "negates" "given belng," the Slave overcomes the world.20 "The man who works transforms pven belng where there IS work there IS necessarily change, progress, historical evolution."21 Though this progress and evolution involves alterations In the "means of product~on,"t he essential change is in the Slave himself: "thanks to h~ws ork, the Slave can change and become other than he is, that is-in the end--cease to be a Slave."22 For work, according to Kojeve reading Hegel, is Bildung or education "in a double sense of the word: on the one hand it forms and transforms the world, humanizes it, by making it more adapted to man; on the other hand, it trans- forms, forms, educates man, humanizes h ~ min bnnpng him closer to the idea which he makes for h~mself'( the "idea" of being "free" and ''recognlzedW).23 Since the Slave's "overcoming"-of the natural world of "glven being," of his fear of the Master and of death, of slavery ~tself-is not histoncally complete until men choose thelr own work and become cltlzens of a "universal and homogeneous" Hegelian state,24 history IS, lnter alia, a history of "slave ideologies" by which Slaves conceal their 8 POLITICAL THEORY / FEBRUARY 1981 slavery from themselves. "The transformation of the Slave, which will permit him to surmount his terror, his fear of the Master is long and dolorous."25 At first, Kojeve reading Hegel asserts, the Slave "raises himself' through his work to the "abstract Idea" of liberty-an abstract Idea which he does not "realize" because "he does not yet dare to act in view of thls realization, that IS to struggle against the Master and risk hls life in a struggle for liberty "26 Before "realizing" liberty, the Slave "imagnes a series of ideologies, by which he seeks to justify himself, to justify his servitude, to reconcile the deal of liberty with the fact of slavery "2' For Stoicism, the first of the "slave ideologies," Ep~ctetusIn his chains and Marcus Aurelius on his throne are "equal" as "wise men"; hence for the Stoic "ideology" the chains do not "matter."28 In Chr~st~an "ideology" equality is of a different sort: all men are equal "before God," whatever their earthly stations; but thls IS s~mplya nother escape to a "beyond" (beyond the histor~calw orld of work and struggle) In which, though there are no "masters," there is one "universal" Master (God) to whom everyone is enslaved. Christianity, according to Kojeve reading Hegel, "does not take account of social distinctions, but leaves them intact. Equality is transposed into the beyond (men are brothers 'in Jesus Chrlst'; that is, all slaves of an absolute Master)."29 A modern bourgeois may, by contrast, appear to be "his own master," but bourgeois ideology is simply a new slavery one is now enslaved to property and to cap~tal".T he bourgeois does not work for another. But ne~therd oes he work for h~mselft,a ken as a b~ologicale ntity He works for himself taken as a 'jundical person,' as a private proprietor he works for Capital."30 And so long as there is slavery-whether to a Master, to God, or to Capital-man will never be truly "satisfied" or truly free, slnce true satisfaction and freedom come from belng "recognized" as an equal by an equal, which IS possible only In the Hegelian state. "Man can only be truly 'satisfied,' history can only end, in and through the formation of a Society, of a State, In which the strictly particular, personal, individual value of each is recognized as such . . by all."31 Such a state, selon Kojeve, "is only possible after the 'suppress~on' of the opposition between Master and Slave."3* This "suppress~on," to be sure, is brought about mainly through the Slave's work. "Only the Slave," Kojke urges, "'suppresses' hls 'nature' and finally becomes a Citizen. The Master does not change: he would rather die than cease to be Master. The final struggle, which transforms the Slave into a Cit~zens,u ppresses Mastery in a nondialectical fash~on: Riley / READING ALEXANDRE KOJEVE 9 the Master is simply killed, and he dies as a Master."33 But by this point, the end of history, the Slave is ready for the reality of freedom, not its mere "imagination" (as in Stoicism or Christianity). "The complete, absolutely free man," Kojeve insists, "will be the Slave who has 'overcome' his slavery If Idle Mastery 1s an impasse, laborlous Slavery, in contrast, is the source of all human, soc~al,h istorical progress. History 1s the history of the work~ngS la~e."3In~ the6'raw, natural, given world," he adds, "the Slave is the slave of the Master. In the technical world transformed by h~sw ork, he rules-or, at least, will one day rule-as absolute Master. And this Mastery that anses from work will be an entirely different thing from the 'immediate' mastery of the Master. The future and History hence belong not to the warlike Master but to the working Slave."3s In another passage of his Introductzon, Kojeve enlarges and refines this view uHistory will end when man no longer acts in the strong sense of the term, that IS, no longer negates, no longer transforms given being and social being through bloody struggle and creat~vew ork. And man no longer does this when what IS Real [le Re'el donne1 glves him full sat~sfactionb, y realizing fully h~Ds es~re (which in man is a des~ref or universal recognition of his personality, which is unique in the world)."36 Or, as Kojeve puts it in "Hegel, Marx and Christianity," history will end "necessarily" when "man is perfectly satisfied by the fact of being a recognized citizen of a universal and homogeneous State, or, if one prefers, of a soclety w~thoutc lasses encompassing the whole of humanity "3' If man is fully satisfied "by what he IS," the only des~rele ft-on the part of aphilosopher-1s that of "understanding what he is and revealing it through discourse." This "understanding" and "revealing" are prov~dedb y Hegel, standing at the end of time, who offers an "adequate description of the Real in its totality."38 Hegel, in short, provides a satisfying account of a Reality which has (finally) become satisfactory. This is about as far as most accounts of Kojeve go. Thus Hannah Arendt, in her frequently stimulating last work, Willing, claims that Koj6ve was influenced above all by the closing lines of Alexandre Koyrt's "Hegel a Iena," which had argued that "it is possible that Hegel believed" that history was at an end, and that "this essent~alc ondition (for a philosophy of history) was already an actuality . .and that this had been the reason why he himself was able-had been able-to complete it." And Arendt goes on to speak of Kojeve, "for whom the Hegelian system is the truth and therefore the definite end of philosophy as well as hist0ry."3~ 10 POLITICAL THEORY I FEBRUARY 1981 Unfortunately "definiten is too definite a term at this point; for while Arendt is certainly essentially right about Kojeve, she does not take into account some peculiarly Kojevian additions to the Ende der Geschlchte and to Hegel as "the last philosophern-additions which need to be attended to. One might pardonably imagne-havlng been told that the future "belongs" to "the working slavew-that the "universal and homogeneous staten would be produced precisely by these (former) slaves when they (finally) "suppressn both the Master and their own slavery. But this turns out to be not quite the case: if a "Master" is not needed to usher in the "end of history," a hero at least is. And this hero is Napoleon. Since this somewhat odd doctrine is peculiarly Kojevian, but is not noticed by Arendt and many others, it requires some attention. Hegelianism is true, for Kojeve, because it stands at the end of time and "knowsn the whole of Reality; it is "no longer thesearch for wisdom, but wisdom (= absolute knowledge) itself."40 Now truth is not "truly true," for Kojke, unless "the reality which it reveals is entlrely attained (all that was possible is effectively realized), thus 'perfect,' without possibility of extension or change." This "total, definitive reality is the Napoleonic Empire"; for Hegel in 1806-the year of the composition of the Phenomenology-this Empire is a "universal and homogeneous staten which "re-unites the whole of humanity and 'suppresses' (aufiebt) in its womb all 'specific differences': Nations, classes, social groups, fa mi lie^."^' Since this state-for Kojeve-is "perfectn and "definitive," there will be no further change, no further "negation" of the "given"; "this state changes no more because all its citizens are 'satisfied' "In a "universal" state, according to Kojeve, "I am recognized by all men, who are all my peers." And thanks to the "homogeneity" of this state, "it is truly Iwho am recognized, and not my family, my social class, my nation."42 True, in the Napoleonic state it is Napoleon himself who is best ~atisfied;b~u3t apparently everyone is sufficiently satisfied. Hegel's role in the process is simply to "understand" and to "reveal" "this Sage, who (through 'knowledge') reveals Reality (incarnated in Napoleon), is the incarnation of Absolute Mind: thus he is, if one likes, the incarnated God of whom the Christians dreamed."44 And Kojeve ends with a bold claim: "the true, real Christ = Napoleon-Jesus + Hegel-Logos; the Incarnation thus takes place not in the middle but at the end of history "45 This claim, however, in Kojeve's view, is no longer "blasphemous" if one understands that Christianity, qua Riley / READING ALEXANDRE KOJ~VE I I "anthropology," is only symbolically true. "The life of Christ and his death symbolize the real course of history: Chnst sacrifices his particulanty (= Jesus) in order to realize the Universal (= Logos) and the Universal (= God) recognizes this particularity (= Man) which is God himself." Christ, Kojeve insists, "works-he is a carpenter; he sacrifices his life-this is struggle and risk." But it is not a true struggle, since Christ "remains a slaven who "dies on the crossn; thus He reveals "the final atheism, the death of God." And he is "resurrected"-to the extent that one can say this at all--only "as real Man, that is as Community, as Church (= prototype of the Napoleonic Em~ire)."~6 It is Napoleon "revealed" by Hegel who is, according to Kojeve, the "revealed Godn of Chapter VI of the Phenomeno1ogy;and the section of that work called "Evil and Forgiveness" deals (again selon Kojtve) with Napoleon's "crime" in establishing a "universal" state and Hegel's "forgiving" him (by "understanding" the world-histoncal significance of his action).47 Why K0jeve should have attached such weight to Napoleon is much less clear in Introduction to the Reading of Hegel than in the article "Hegel, Marx and Christianity." In the article Kojeve begins, familiarly enough, with the view that history "ended" with the publication of the Phenomenology; that Hegelianism is true "solely because history has ended, because man no longer negates, no longer transforms the Real revealed by the last philosophy, which, for that reason, is no longer philosophy or recherche de la vPrztP, but truth itself or Wisdom (absolute knowledge)";48 that there is a "man" who "realized or incarnated" the end of history, "that is to say Napoleonn; that "Hegelian thought" gives "an account of Napoleon"; that "the Chnst who exists empincally, the God who actually reveals himself to man, the Word truly become flesh-is the diad Napoleon-Hegel, is the man achieving the historical evolution through a bloody struggle, doubled by a man revealing the sense of this evolution through his discourse."49 It is a crucial footnote to "Hegel, Marx and Christianity" which reveals why Kojke sees philosophy, history, Napoleon and Hegel in this light. "In a famous letter," Kojeve urges, "Hegel says that, havlng finished the Phenomenology, he saw at dawn the 'soul of the world' on horseback beneath his windows." This letter, Kojeve insists, is a revelation"^ Napoleon, "the conqueror at Jena, is called 'world-soul' . . he incarnates not the history of the French people, but that of the whole of humanity " But Napoleon, taken by himself, is not "mind," because he is not "fully conscious of himself: by his action, he has in fact completed 12 POLITICAL THEORY / FEBRUARY 1981 history, but he does not know that he does it and that by doing it he realizes Absolute Mind." It is Hegel who "knows" this, and says it in the Phenomenology. Thus, "Absolute Mind or 'God' is neither Napoleon nor Hegel, but Napoleon-understood-by-Hegel or Hegel- understanding-Napoleon."50 (If one stresses "the diad Napoleon- Hegel," it is because this theme is characteristically and peculiarly "Kojevian," and cannot be accounted for on a "Marxian" view after all, in the 18th Brumaire Marx, while calling the reign of Napoleon 111 a "farce," referred to the reign of the first Napoleon as a "tragedy.")51 In any event, and whatever one makes of Kojeve's Napoleonism, it turns out that it is not simply the case that "the diad Napoleon-Hegel" has "realizedn (in the double sense) a "satisfying" state: it may only have launched a state of affairs which might (yet) become satisfactory For, after having said in Introduction to the Reading of Hegelthat Napoleon and Hegel between them bnng history to an end, Kojeve backtracks a little: "The perfect State ?No doubt possible, but one is far from Hegel himself, Kojeve urges, knew quite well that the state "was not yet actually realized in all its perfection," and therefore "affirmed only the existence in the world of the germ of this State and the existence of the necessary and sufficient conditions of its flowering."53 Now no one, Kojeve continues, can "deny with certainty the absence of such a germ and of such conditions in our world"; thus the Hegelian "universal and homogeneous state" is no "error" and remains possible "in principle."54 In an argument reminiscent of what Kant saysabout the "possibilityn of "eternal peace,"55 Kojeve goes on to insist that "that which is neither an error nor (yet) a truth, is an idea, or if one prefers an ideal." The idea or ideal of an Hegelian state "will only be transformed into truth by negative action," which, in destroying the World which does not correspond to the idea, "will create through this very destruction the world which conforms to the idea1."56 Thus the Hegelian state, though extant as a "germ" since 1806, remains aprojet a rkaliser Or, as Kojeve puts it in a note in Pagan Philosophy, "Hegelianism is alone in translating itself into existence (at least insofar as history is not definitively completed) through social and political action properly speaking ('revolutionary' or 'Marxi~t')."5~ It seems, then, that there IS some uncertainty in Kojeve whether history ended, and "satisfaction" began, in 1806; or whether only the "germ" of a future "satisfaction" sprang up with "the diad Napolebn- Hegel." Kojeve tnes to cast a little light on this obscurity at the end of "Hegel, Marx and Chnstianityn by saying that, if history did not Riley / READING ALEXANDRE KOJ~VE 13 (utterly) end with "Hegel-understanding-Napoleon," it is at least the case that there has been nothing truly or wholly "new" srnce Hegel: "if there has been from the beginning a 'left' and a 'right' Hegelianism, this is also aN there has been since Hegelw( leaving out of account the vestigial survival of liberalism, a pre-Hegelian thing).$*A nd "history," according to Kojkve, has not yet awarded the. palm to either "left" or "right."59 In sum: however Kojeve may vacillate, he vacillates within a narrow range of possibilities. Either history and philosophy ended in 1806, and universal "recognition" and "satisfactionw set in (the strong version); or at least the germ of all this began in 1806 (remaining aproject are'aliser), and there has been nothing truly new srnce Napoleon-Hegel (the weak version). The "end," then, or the "beginning-of-theend"-those are the possibilities; the vacillation is perhaps not as serious as it might at first appear to be. III The "Napoleonism" apart, there are several ways in which it is reasonable to characterize Kojeve's reading of Hegel as (more or less) "Marxist." Most noticeably, it is no accident that Kojeve begins his interpretation of Hegel with a quotation from Marx's Economrc and Philosophrc MSS of I844 ("Hegel grasps labor as the essence of man-as man's essence in the act of proving itself")60a nd then places his own heavily glossed verslon of the "Master and Servant" chapter of the Phenomenology at the outset of Introductron to the Reading of Hegel, so that this chapter colors and indeed "governs" the rest of the reading. (Hegel, of course, does not begin with Master and Servant; and he gives no Indication that this chapter is "privileged" above other parts of the Phenomenology.)61 Now if "mastery" might mean something like owning the "means of production," and "slavery" might take the form of "alienated labor" on the part of a "proletanan," then Kojeve's insistence on "Master and Servant" as central and governing could certainly be viewed as a "Marxian" reading of Hegel. (One says "could," and not "must," because it 1s noticeable that where one might expect Marx to mention Hegel as the theorlst of Mastery and Slavery-above all In Book 111, Chapter XXIII of Caprtal-he In fact quotes Aristotle's discussion of the subject, at length, and in Greek, but fails to mention Hegel at But as an example of Mastery-in this same passage-