Alexandre Kojève (French: [alɛksɑ̃dʁ koʒɛv]; 28 April 1902 – 4 June 1968) was a Russian-born French philosopher and statesman whose philosophical seminars had an immense influence on 20th-century French philosophy, particularly via his integration of Hegelian concepts into twentieth century continental philosophy. As a statesman in the French government, he was instrumental in the creation of the European Union. Kojève was a close friend of, and was in lifelong philosophical dialogue with, Leo Strauss.
--- Though not an orthodox Marxist, Kojeve was known as an influential and idiosyncratic interpreter of Hegel, reading him through the lens of both Marx and Heidegger. The well-known "End of History" thesis advanced the idea that ideological history in a limited sense had ended with the French Revolution and the regime of Napoleon and that there was no longer a need for violent struggle to establish the "rational supremacy of the regime of rights and equal recognition." Kojeve's "End of History" is different from Francis Fukayama's later thesis of the same name in that it points as much to a socialist-capitalist synthesis as to a triumph of liberal capitalism. Mark Lilla notes that Kojève rejected the prevailing concept among European intellectuals of the 1930s that capitalism and democracy were failed artifacts of the Enlightenment that would be destroyed by either communism or fascism. In contrast, Kojève, while initially somewhat more sympathetic to the Soviet Union than the United States, devoted much of his thought to protecting western European autonomy, particularly so France, from domination by either the Soviet Union and the United States. He believed that the capitalist United States represented Right-Hegelianism while the state-socialist Soviet Union represented Left-Hegelianism; victory by either side, he posited, would result in what Lilla describes as "a rationally organized bureaucracy without class distinctions."
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
The New German Idealism
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Like Thomas Jeffverson before me I am adamantly, unalterably opposed to any form of tyranny over the human mind and spirit.
I've never studied Hegel but apparently are virtually stole most of his ideas from Hegel, therefore, I categorically REJECT any and all forms of political philosophy that could be categorized as outgfrowths of Marxian Collectivist Thought.
The strength and glory of human existence is rooted in the visin, aspirations, and achievements of unique, singular, highly distinguished INDIVIDUALS –– people who have usually had to pit themselves AGAINST the unspeakable dulness and dreariness of the masses and the orthodoxies of their time.
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