Alexandre Kojève

Alexandre Kojève: A Man of influence offers a multi-faceted approach to the work of Alexandre Kojève in which 11 international scholars combine their perspectives on key aspects of the Russo-French thinker's work. The result: an original reappraisal of its significance that prompts a better understanding of the contemporary world.

This edited volume addresses Alexandre Kojève's work from different perspectives, emphasizing the continuity between his early reception of a set of non-philosophical and philosophical influences and that which he might have sought himself to exercise in a pedagogical and practical manner. The first part of the book comprises six essays in which their authors explore Kojève's understanding of art, religion and atheism, and his reception of the thought of Hegel, Marx, and Carl Schmitt. The book's second part is made up by two contributions that tackle respectively Kojève's conceptions of the “end of history” and “empire” in the light of his notion of Sophia or “Wisdom”, and his understanding of the relationship between philosophy and power in the light of an exegetical reading of the debate he held with Leo Strauss. The authors of the final three essays set out to explore the extent to which Kojève's previous processing of a set of non-philosophical and philosophical influences might have resulted in three increasingly concrete outcomes, namely: his notion of authority; the Lacanian mirror-stage; and global trade.

Part I: Three Sources of Influence: Art, Religion, and Philosophy

Chapter 1: From the Inexistent to the Concrete: Kojève after Kandinsky by Isabel Jacobs

Chapter 2: Between Kant and Hegel: Alexandre Kojève and the Absolute State by Jeff Love

Chapter 3: Kojève and Christianity by José María Carabante

Chapter 4: History and Nothingness: Kojève´s Re-Leveraging of Hegel´s Dialectic of Freedom by Waller R. Newell

Chapter 5: Kojève and Marx: Elusive Affinities and Divergences by Igor Shoikhedbrod

Chapter 6: Alexandre Kojève and Carl Schmitt: Mythologies of Enmity by Massimo Palma

Part II: Action and End of History/Wisdom: Means and End of the Concept toward Concretion

Chapter 7: Wisdom, Self-Consciousness, and Empire by Alexei Rutkevich

Chapter 8: Tyranny or Wisdom: A Reading of the Strauss-Kojève Debate by José Daniel Parra

Part III: Three Concrete Kojevean Outcomes and their Likelihood: Authority, the Mirror Stage and Global Trade

Chapter 9: Authority and Legitimacy in Alexandre Kojève´s The Notion of Authority by Bryan-Paul Frost

Chapter 10: The Specular Philosopher: Alexandre Kojève and Jacques Lacan by Trevor Wilson

Chapter 11: Alexandre Kojève´s Economic Undertakings by Luis J. Pedrazuela