Alexandre Kojève (1902–1968)

In the first part, Kojève is concerned with rendering accessible Hegel's master-slave dialectic and giving a mythical account of it as the first meeting of two persons. My interpretation of Kojève's mythologized account was that the encounter is supposed to represent the inevitable power struggle that happens between peoples with competing interests. Kojève spends quite a few pages developing the master-slave dialectic theme and drawing out its consequences. I was hoping Kojève would give us some insight into understanding Hegel's use of language, but such insights were mostly operational (learning through use rather than explicitly examining the words to get at their meanings). Kojève then proceeds to the relation of Hegel's system of absolute knowledge to the systems offered by Parmenides-Spinoza, Aristotle, Plato, and Kant. This part was extremely hand wavy. The characterizations of the various ideas and the reasoning given in support of Hegel is fast and flimsy. It reminded me very much of C.S. Lewis's attempt at philosophy in his “Mere Christianity.” I stopped reading at this point not because the text was uninteresting, but because I felt I could use my reading time more effectivity.… (mehr)