Customer Reviews

Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

2010 amendments added to original 2003 review --

As noted by other reviewers, this reading of Hegel is a post-Nietzsche, post-Marx, post-Heidegger reading. By this I mean that Kojeve recognizes the importance of these post-Hegel threads of thought, and attempts to incorporate their best points, just as Hegel would have. It is therefore scorned by some Hegel 'purists' like Mr. Trejo below.

Having read quite a few commentaries on, and interpretations of, the Phenomenology, I would say that this one is the most well-written, in the sense that it illuminates some very difficult Hegelian concepts (like "Spirit" itself) in a searingly direct manner. When one reads Kojeve, there is no doubt that difficult or ambiguous passages are not products of gratuitous showing off or self-indulgent excursions (as one encounters in writers like Derrida and his children) but rather reflect the genuine difficulty of the subject matter the author is trying to articulate. Also, I have read no other writer so convincing in their argument as to Hegel's basic rightness in his grasp and description of "the concept " (the concept of concepts) which brings closure to the riddle of Western metaphysical thought.

I would agree with the 'purists' in not taking this book as the 'definitive' interpretation of Hegel -- it can't excuse not reading Hegel in the original, or other commentaries -- but I would call it essential within the spectrum of Hegelian thought.

This book shows Hegel, though famously critical of Kant, to be essentially the extender of the Kantian philosophy to it's own logical conclusion: the completion of the concept of experience, identified as time itself (zeitgeist). That is, human time, identified as departing from nature at the emergence of specifically human desires, i.e. desire for recognition, desire for the symbolic. This 'absolute subject' of human existence, in transcendental terms, constructs itself rationally by self-reflection on its own object-negating, nature-negating, given-negating activity or creativity. Humanity invents the system of clock time after reflecting on our own ability to temporally transform the given, and so to measure a 'progress': to count state B, following some transformative labor, as a better state of being than state A which preceded that effort. This immanently made conception of time is categorically different than the classical notion of a rational time that would exist somehow outside or independently of thought -- for Hegel the latter idea is the illusion of a confused thinker.

Kojeve's reading however, though convincing in it's demonstration of an anthropologically necessary historical development toward Hegelian 'harmony' between (acting) subject and (being) object, leaves out Hegel's attempt at the 'absolute identity' of the object. This can be read in two ways that Kojeve touches on. First, in the rationalistic, idealistic sense that the object is necessarily different from the subject to ensure the ability of a subject to realize itself as a self, as a free subject of object-negating, creative, activity. Another way to read this is as simply Kojeve's dismissal of Hegel's 'merely aesthetic' Philosophy of Nature and it's more cosmic attempt at spiritualizing the notion of matter.

Commentators such as Stephen Houlgate seem to represent the idealistic view that in absolute knowing nature comes to be fully intelligible to and 'within' spirit. But other recent commentators, such as Joseph Flay and Ardis Collins, are in my view more sober, more realistic, and more likely to persuade mainstream thought in the Anglo-American world to recognize Hegel's vital insights. In their view, nature retains an independence and even resistance to the rationality of the concept, even for what Hegel calls absolute knowing. The perennial problem of induction (sometimes called Hume's problem) in the philosophy of (natural) science testifies to this seemingly intrinsic resistance of nature to the kind of rationality we 'in spirit' are capable of conceiving.

Kojeve's dismissal of 'absolute idealism' (did Hegel even use this term?) can also be understood as the Heidegger-influenced side of his reading. Most contemporary Continental thought is in agreement here that the absolute idealist reading of Hegel does not metaphysically supersede Kant's conclusion in his 3rd Critique that philosophy consists in an irreducibly Aesthetic relation between the concept and the singularity of that-which-resists total rationalization (i.e. nature).

Yet this should not be understood to imply failure by Hegel, rather, it should point us to Hegel's true accomplishments: (1) delivering tremendously relevant insights regarding the concrete, material history of mankind and human experience, by wrestling formidably with Kant's brilliant but very bare, formalistic framework, the critical philosophy of reason itself; (2) rendering the whole historical evolution of Western thought more intelligible than it had ever been prior, and thereby giving us enough intellectual satisfaction to finally drop many inherited but fruitless metaphysical problems.

My own tentative conclusion is that Hegel, along with the existentialist and phenomenological thinkers following him (including Kojeve), can be understood as essentially philosophers of the subject in the Western tradition. While greatly illuminating the conditions, formation, and character of human self-hood, they also force us to feel the limits of self-reflection. Thus they arouse in us who are philosophical, introverted types, the sense that we must also take partisan, decisive actions in the world beyond contemplation.

***

2011 update: Contra Kojeve: a revised view of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature and contention that "the Real is Rational"

Instead of revising what I've already written above and thus what others have actually rated, I'm adding this revision separately. My view on Hegel's philosophy of nature has changed, and I do now believe that his contention that "the real is rational, and the rational is real" can be reasonably defended. Let me explain how as simply as I can:

Does Hegel ever claim that nature is completely rational? No. Does Hegel recognize that the natural scientist is never going to find that his inductions from observation of nature conform to precise deductive logic? Yes. In a way, the fact that natural science cannot be deductive is actually supportive of Hegel's central insight about nature: nature is only rationality in germ, not developed or become self-reflective as in human discourse. What does it mean to say that nature is only rationality in germ? If the essence of reason is the relation of identity-in-difference, and if nature shows itself most basically in the temporal movement of patterns, repetitions, reproductions, and resemblances -- i.e. not in any simply eternal or 'present' stuff, but in temporal patterns, repetitions, reproductions -- then we can affirm that such patterns are only the habitual or natural form of what has the potential to become self-realized in cognition: reason. Reason in this sense also becomes the self-grasping ability To Differ from the merely given patterns of nature. And this ability-to-Differ or Difference-in-itself is another way of naming the cognitive achievement of absolute spirit.

***

Well--the one and only, for my purposes anyway. However Kojeve's reading of Hegel is "refracted," as one reviewer put it, his lectures were the means through which Hegel entered 20th century French thinking, and this book is important if only to understand where people like Sartre, Queneau, Camus, Bataille, Lacan, etc. come from--and if we add Girard and Derrida, we can also add De Man and American deconstruction. This is an impressive list. The title is very apt: it is an introduction to Hegel, no more perhaps but certainly no less.

And it is a very good introduction. To summarize what is already a summary is a discredit to Kojeve, and I won't go there. Suffice it to say that I have not seen a clearer reading of how Hegel arrives at the master-slave dialectic, nor have I seen a better and more concise explanation of human desire.

Students of philosophy should treat this book the way Kojeve clearly intended it: as a guide to a further study and a more independent reading of Hegel. For students of literature, such as myself, this may well be all the Hegel you'll ever need, and I still find it remarkable how the lectures of one semi-reclusive scholar (Kojeve didn't publish these lectures himself) influenced a whole generation of writers, who in turn ended up defining post-WW2 European thought.

Many people criticize Kojeve for misinterpreting Hegel. This misses the point. Kojeve's reading of Hegel is anthropocentric which, as Kojeve well knows, was not Hegel's intent. This book shouldn't be read as a commentary on Hegel (for that look to Hypolite) but rather as an original work of philosophy in it's own right. It should be read as a work of philosophy and attributed all the respect that great works of philosophy deserve. But then if you're reading this you probably already know this.

First of all, the editors left out the most important essay, the essay on work--and by the way, the most clearly "Marxist" of Kojeve's essays. Hmmmm. Kojeve started teaching this course after losing most of his money after investing in a cheese company called "le vache qui rit," and taking the class over from his distant relative Koyre, who is praised in a uncited aside for providing all the ideas contained in the work (there is a remarkable biography of Kojeve by Auffret). The book is nothing if not crystalline clear, the author a remarkable expositor of an impossible author. The most interesting thing that he does is provide a table in which he fits Plato, Spinoza, etc., as if each chose one of a few alternatives of thought, and in which, it is important to note, there is no going beyond (hence Kojeve is a commentator). All that he asks is that you grant his not unreasonable premises: from there all the rest follows.

Kojeve joins a long list of quasi-Marxists who try to take a materialist interpretation of Hegel. Marx's approach, that Hegel needed to be turned upside down to be useful, is also Kojeve's approach. This is not a genuine study in Hegel but it is perhaps the most famous quasi-study of Hegel. It was extremely influential in the early 20th century, because as Jean-Paul Sartre said in his SEARCH FOR A METHOD, the Universities in Europe in those days were so terrified of Marx that they refused to teach anything Dialectic (and they did not believe Hegel's own words that he was a Christian thinker). Kojeve tries to convince us that Hegel was really an atheist, even though Hegel was clearly a theologian to be reckoned with (e.g. Kung recognizes Hegel as a modern Aquinas). Kojeve just didn't read Hegel deeply at all -- he took all of his cues from Marx. The 20th century intelligensia cannot be understood apart from Kojeve, so this book is important to understand Kojeve. It is pretty well useless if you want to know about Hegel.

This was edited by Raymond Queneau for Alexandre Kojève based on Kojève's lectures on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit in Paris in the 1930s. The lectures were very influential in introducing the generation of Jean-Paul Sartre to Hegelian ideas. The book takes the standpoint of the French Revolution as a determining event for Hegel's thought and offers a detailed commentary of the Phenomenology (1806), starting with the story of Hegel seeing Napoleon when he passed through Jena.

Kojève's reading makes the dialectic of master and slave a key to the book, which becomes a narrative of social freedom more than of religious insight. Despite his own Russian orthodox background, Kojève gives an unambiguously atheistic reading of the Phenomenology that is now widely contested, though it still has its supporters. Kojève's French and Italian biographers Auffret and Filoni see him as a genteel Marxist who nonetheless took care to flee Stalinist Russia, later becoming an influential Eurocrat.

The book can still be used as a commentary and fills in many, but not all, gaps in understanding the text. There are many other commentaries, as the Phenomenology is a challenge to everyone, but this is one that has stood the test of time. The French edition is still in print. One point about the English translation is that the key in the analysis to page numbers in the Phenomenology refers to the older and more literary JB Baillie translation published under the title The Phenomenology of Mind, not to that of AV Millar. The analysis gives a helpful but slightly mechanistic division of the chapters and sections into 'introduction', 'dialectic', 'conclusions' and 'notes'.

And, of course, the parts that I specifically wanted to read are not even present in this translation.

In particular, if you were interested in the references to this text from the footnotes referenced in Antigones: How the Antigone Legend Has Endured in Western Literature, Art, and Thought by George Steiner, none of those parts are included in this abridgment of Introduction to the Reading of Hegel.

This book, an 'Introduction to the Reading of Hegel', is a collection of transcripts and notes collected and edited by Raymond Queneau, that is the true beginning of the contemporary 'End of History' debate. But can there ever be a final reconciliation between the innumerable factions of human history? "...[H]e [i.e., Hegel] definitely reconciles himself with all that is and has been, by declaring that there will never more be anything new on earth. ('Introduction', p 168.)" Hegel, according to Kojeve, thought that History had come to an end; but the question of course is - exactly what does history 'think' - i.e., do? And that boils down to the question: what exactly is humanity doing? There is a not minor problem with making predictions in public that I would like to mention in this short note; these predictions become but another factor in human interactions. Kojeve, of course, is quite well aware of this; he regarded his 'philosophy' as little more than propaganda for the Hegelian position. This is no modesty, btw, in our posthistoire one can only make propaganda. (Briefly, according to Kojeve, 'History' properly understood ended with Hegel. We live today in a post-history that is nothing but the actualization of Hegelian philosophy throughout the World. When this actualization is complete the Universal Homogenous State then rises.) Thus Kojeve regards (correctly, given his premises) all 'philosophy' today as propaganda. But he has, in my humble opinion. spoken too soon.

Stanley Rosen, a student of Kojeve, alludes to this possibility in the title essay of 'Hermeneutics as Politics': "Had he remained silent, he could never have been refuted." How does one end History, possess the final knowledge - and then change ones mind? (On Kojeve's changing his mind see, for instance, the enigmatic 'Note to the Second Edition' in the 'Introduction to the Reading of Hegel'.) But there is more to the problem than that. By revealing the 'necessities' of History long before its final consummation (i.e., the rise of the UHS) he has allowed all enemies of the ongoing globalization to rally to any opposed cause, no matter how ephemeral. But it may turn out that these short-lived oppositional movements are well-nigh innumerable. ...So, exactly what should Kojeve, given his intentions, have done? He should have worked in the French Ministry (Kojeve is the true architect of the European Union, a building block of the World State), brought out the unjustly ignored, and posthumously published, 'Outline of a Phenomenology of Right', and told Queneau precisely where he could stick his class notes. By publishing the technical, legal and economic 'Outline' and keeping his philosophical speculations permanently to himself he could have (perhaps!) prevented his followers from squabbling over issues that cannot even be decided until the UHS rises...

For as Kojeve admitted in a letter to Leo Strauss, "Historical action necessarily leads to a specific result (hence: deduction), but the ways that lead to this result, are varied (all roads lead to Rome!). The choice between these ways is free, and this choice determines the content of the speeches about the action and the meaning of the result. In other words: materially history is unique, but the spoken story can be extremely varied, depending on the free choice of how to act." (On Tyranny, p 256). Thus the propaganda (i.e., 'the spoken story', theory) is not essential, and here Kojeve remains true to his (peculiar) Marxism, what is crucial is 'material' History. By this Kojeve means the technical, economic and legal forces that inexorably (or so it seems) drive us towards the World State (i.e., UHS). Thus Kojeve's propaganda and predictions, best embodied in the 'Introduction', were always secondary. ...Would we be closer to the UHS if the 'Introduction' never saw the light of day? Of course we will never know. But this possibility can never be discounted either.

I adore this book. It is one of my favorite XX century books. This does not mean I agree with all its ideas, since many are really are so monstrous. But I don't think Kojeve himself agreed with them. I think he was actually appalled by what the logic of his theories required of him--his vision of humanity ending in sci-fi style "animal-snobs" is a horrible ideological terminus, as bad as 1984. But its also fascinating. And I really enjoyed Kojeve's great wit and philosophical rigor as he makes his tortured, tormented journey to "the end of history."

I ordered this book for a graduate seminar not on Hegel, but on Kojeve.

As other reviewers point out, Hegel here is seen through Heidegger philosophy -- how this affected French philosophy as a result is interesting but...

I came to this book with very little training in Western philosophy (I'm in Japanese Literature) -- much less Philosophy -- and found the book was quite easy to read and understand Hegel's principles. Kojeve takes them too far but if you read this book with some knowledge of Hegel or another book on him, you'll probably do fine. The English translation (of this French introduction to the German philosopher!) is very clear and stays with you.

Even though the class is over, this book will stay on my shelf for future reference.