Contents
Introduction: I
Impact and Significance of Kojčve
Displacement One: Marx, History and Desire.
Displacement Two: Heidegger, Death and Recognition
Displacement Three: Hegelon History and Method
Conclusion: DialecticalMethod
Introduction:
The Impact of Kojčve
"Now, we have seen that the presence
of Time (in which the future takes primacy)
in the real World is called Desire (which
is directed towards another Desire), and
that this desire is specifically human desire,
since the Action that realises it is Man's
very being. The real presence of Time in
the World is therefore called Man. Time is
Man, and Man is Time. …
Therefore the natural reality implies Time
only if it implies a human reality. Now,
Man essentially creates and destroys in terms
of the idea that he forms of the Future.
And the idea of the Future appears in the
real present in the form of a desire directed
towards another Desire - that is, in the
form of a Desire for social Recognition.
Now, Action that arises from this Desire
engenders History.
Hence, there is Time only where there is
History. … On the last page of the Phenomenology,
Hegel says, time is history whereas nature
is space. … But in his other writings Hegel
is less radical. In them, he admits the existence
of a cosmic time. But in so doing, Hegel
identifies cosmic time and historical time.This,
I believe, was his basic error."(pp
133, 147)
Hegel's "basic error," according
to Alexandre Kojčve, was his conflation of
natural and historical time, and Kojčve sets
out to rectify this mistake. In doing so,he
produces one of the most influential interpretations
of Hegel since Marx - not least because of
his insistence on the need for a 'return
to Hegel'. "Kojčve," argues Allan
Bloom in the introduction to Kojčve's Introductionto
the Reading of Hegel, "is the mostthoughtful,
the most learned, the most profound of those
Marxists who … turned to Hegel as the truly
philosophic source of [Marx's] teaching."
It is not an exaggeration to say that Kojčve's
lectures at the Sorbonne (1934-1939) influenced
an entire generation of French thought, including
Sartre and Lacan.
Kojčve
reads Hegel, 'after Heidegger' and finds
Hegel's ontology of nature indefensible,suggesting
that Heidegger's meditation on Being may
be a substitute for it. The key text in Kojčve's
Introduction is the appendix,"The Idea
of death in the philosophy of Hegel".
Here Kojčve expresses his judgement that
"the 'dialectical' or anthropological
philosophy of Hegel is in the final analysis
a philosophy of death"and that "the
wise man can speak of science as his science
only to the extent that he can speak of death
as his death".The potential complementarity
of Hegel and Heidegger's work on this point
lies at the basis of the extraordinary centrality
o fthe master-slave dialectic to French thought
since WWII. In the words of a contemporary
reviewer, "Kojčve was the first to have
attempted the intellectual and moral threesome
of Hegel, Marx and Heidegger which has since
that time been such a great success".[1]
Kojčve wants to work three displacements
on Hegel's Phenomenology.
Kojčve's insistence on the centrality of
the master-slave dialectic is intended to
rectify Hegel's "basic error" -
the conflation of natural (or cosmic) time
with historical time. By placing the master-slave
dialectic at the centre of Hegel, Kojčve
hopes to work a displacement of Hegel's 'theological'
time by Marx's emphasis on class struggle
as the basis for inter-subjective history.
Kojčve works a displacement
of Hegel's conception of death as "absolute
lordship" by an existential conception
of the anticipation of death as the basis
for the human being's sense of historical
time, producing a displacement of Hegel's
analysis of the fear of death by Heidegger.
Kojčve produces a displacement of Hegel by
Hegel himself, in Kojčve's insistence on
the letter of Hegel's thesis of the end of
history. Kojčve argues that the only logical
way out of the theological underpinnings
of all philosophies of history is Hegel's
notion that "the Concept is Time"
and that therefore a history of philosophy
is only possible at the end of (historical)
time. For Kojčve, the thesis of the end of
history is the only way to have absolute
knowledge (the final and immutable truth)
and a thorough-going historicism, at the
same time. This leads to Kojčve's last -
and most interesting - assertion, that "Hegel's
method is not at all dialectical … Hegel
was the first to abandon Dialectic as the
philosophical method".
Although I disagree with Kojčve, I think
all these displacements are necessary. SoI
want to argue that either Kojčve makes a
botch of the job (the first two displacements),
or that he illustrates precisely why Hegel's
dialectical method has to be itself historicised-
rather than 'returned to'.
Displacement One: Marx (The Master-SlaveDialectic)
In his brilliant and influential Introduction,Kojčve
makes his treatment of the Phenomenology
revolve around Hegel's great set-piece, Lordship
and Bondage, which Kojčve renders as "master
and slave". It is no accident that Kojčve
begins with a quotation from Marx:
"Hegel… grasps labour as the essence
of man,"
and then places his own heavily glossed version
of the master-slave dialectic at the start
of his Introduction so that this chapter
governs the work as a whole. This is consonant
with Kojčve's statement that the master-slave
dialectic is the key to Hegel and that it"determined
the whole of Marx's thought".Kojčve's
assertion is that: "in having discovered
the notion of recognition, Hegel found himself
in possession of the key idea of his whole
philosophy. Also, it is through the analysis
of this fundamental notion that one understands
the role of the different aspects and elements
of the Hegelian dialectic."
Kojčve argues that for Hegel, human society
and human 'discourse' began when men were
first willing to risk their 'animal' and
biological existence in a 'fight to the death
for pure prestige,' for 'recognition' by'the
other'. The man who became master was willing
to 'go all the way'. Yet although the master
has the pleasure, they do not yet have the
satisfaction of recognition by an equal:
mastery is ultimately 'tragic' and' an existential
impasse'.
It is the slave,who through
work "negates given being" who
overcomes the world: "the man who works
transforms given being … where there is work
there is necessarily change, progress,historical
evolution". For work, according to Kojčve's
interpretation of Hegel, is education or
development in a double sense: it transforms
the world and also educates the slave.
So long as there is slavery - whether to
master, god or capital - man will never truly
be 'satisfied' or truly free, since true
satisfaction and freedom come from being
recognised as an equal by an equal, which
is possible only in the universal, Hegelian
state. As Kojčve puts it, "the final
struggle, which transforms the slave in to
the citizen, suppresses mastery in a non-dialectical
fashion: the master is simply killed, and
he dies as a master. If idle mastery is an
impasse, the future, by contrast, belongs
to the laborious slave: Laborious slavery
is the source of all human social historical
progress. History is the history of the working
slave."
The whole of "ideology" according
to Kojčve's interpretation of Hegel, "is
a sort of ideal 'superstructure' which has
a sense and a possibility of being only o
nthe basis of a real 'infrastructure', formed
by the totality of political and social struggles
and of labours undertaken by man". This
"aspect" of "the Hegelian
dialectic" he concludes, "is materialist"and
it actually "determined all of Marx's
thought". But if Kojčve stresses concepts
that have Marxist resonances (work, struggle,ideology,
and history as the history of the labouring
slave), there is an important sense in which
his employment of them is strictly non-Marxist.
In Marx, "men can be distinguished from
animals … as soon as they begin to produce
their means of subsistence." For Kojčve,by
contrast, humanity is distinguished from
animal life by the struggle for recognition:"man
is only human … insofar as he is 'recognised'".
Moreover, this recognition is methodologically
analytically prior to production, for it
is the "struggle to the death for pure
prestige" which the master and the slave
enter freely, while work is imposed on the
slave as a consequence of the slave's defeat.
"Nothing,"Kojčve urges "pre-disposes
the future conqueror to victory, as nothing
pre-disposes the future vanquished to his
defeat. It is by an absolute act of liberty
that the adversaries create each other, in
and through the struggle for prestige, freely
entered into".For Kojčve, it is recognition
which lifts humanity from the animal world;
for Marx, it is production.
Similarly, for Marx the socialist revolution
means the end of the history of class struggle-
which for Marx is the end of pre-history.
Kojčve, by contrast, emphasises revolutionit
self as the end of history.
"Marx,"Kojčve maintains,
"takes up … this Hegelian theme"
in Capital Vol. III Chapter 48
"History properly speaking, where
men
('classes') struggle between themselves
forrecognition
and struggle against Nature throughwork,"
is for Marx "called the realm of necessity; beyond is
situated the realm of freedom where men,
recognisingeachother mutually without reserve,
no longer struggle and work as little as
possible (nature being definitively subjugated)".
Kojčve,unsurprisingly, mentions recognition
first and foremost - but what does Marx actually
say?
In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins
only where labour which is determined by
necessity and mundane considerations cease;
thus, in the very nature of things it lies
beyond the sphere of actual material production.…
Beyond [necessity] begins that development
of human energy which is an end in itself,
the true realm of freedom, which, however,can
blossom forth only with this realm of necessity
as its basis. The shortening of the working
day is its basic prerequisite.
Far from
'recognition' being the 'key idea' of this
summary, and prior to work, Marx flatly says
that the "realm of freedom" begins
only where "labour which is determined
by necessity … ceases". Freedom, for
Marx, begins not simply with the suppression
of the master, but with going beyond work
determined by material necessity.
But if work is determined by
necessity, it is not something simply imposed
by the master as an objectification of recognition.
For Marx, production is primary; for Kojčve
it is secondary. Hyppolite (a left
Hegelian with Marxian tendencies):
"the struggle for life and death … is
the root of history for Hegel,while the exploitation
of man by man is only a consequence of it,
this consequence serving on the other hand
as Marx's point of departure."
This can be demonstrated by reference to
the epigram Kojčve cites as his introduction
to his own Introduction. ("Hegel … grasps
labour as the essence of man".) In Marx's
text, however, the 'dot dot dot' is filled
by a crucial qualification: "Hegel's
standpoint is that of modern political economy.
He grasps labour as the essence of
man -man's essence in the act of proving
itself: he sees only the positive,
not the negative side of labour … The only
labour which Hegel knows and recognises is
abstractly mental labour … he is therefore
able to present his philosophy as the philosophy".
Hegel,then, not only draws on political economy-
and does not simply "grasp labour as
the essence of man" - but one-sidedly
understands this by reducing labour to thought.
This flatly contradicts Kojčve's assertion
that the "recognition" arising
from the "master-slave" dialectic
is the "key idea" in Hegel, and
that this (materialist) side "determines
the whole of Marx's thought".
Displacement Two: Heidegger (Death
and Recognition)
Having abandoned Hegel's ontology of nature,Kojčve
is seeking for an existential basisfor the
phenomenon of the temporalisationof history.
Because "the Concept isTime" and
"man is Time," thebasis for humanity's
comprehension of thehistorical unfolding
of the empirically existingconcepts, which
describe the real, is tobe located in our
existential experience.The key to this experience
is the strugglefor recognition; and the key
to recognitionis death as the possibility
of the "absoluterefusal of recognition".
But for Kojčve,Hegel's concept of 'death'
is insufficientlydistinguished from natural
death.
The main point of Hegel's dialectic of recognition-
as opposed to Heidegger's existential analysiswhereby
a Being individualised by its anticipationof
death is considered, by virtue of itsthrowness,
to be 'with-others' - is that"self consciousness
exists for a self-consciousness".If
this is true, then as a self-interpreting,self-conscious
being, Being's individualitycannot be derived
from its anticipation ofdeath independently
of its relations to others.Rather, Being
must first, or simultaneously,be constituted
as a self-conscious beingthrough its relation
with others, in a dialecticof recognition,
in order that it may becomethe kind of being
which is capable of anticipatingits death
as the end towards which it isthrown, and
hence of constituting itselfexistentially
as a being-towards-death. Thisdisrupts the
whole ontological problematicof being and
time, for it challenges thefoundational status
of Heidegger's descriptionof Dasein - a being
for whom being is 'there'in the fundamentally
inquisitive form ofthe question of the meaning
of being - revealingit as a dogmatic presupposition
of Heidegger'sinquiry; the result of a prior
commitmentto 'the question of the meaning
of being'which falls outside the scope of
the inquiry'sown critical procedures.
On the Hegelian model, being can only be'there'
in Heidegger's sense of presentingitself
as the object of inquiry for a fundamentallyself-interpreting
entity, if this entityhas previously been
constituted as an entityof this kind, through
a process of mutualrecognition. Furthermore,
it is only throughthis process of mutual
recognition constitutiveof Dasein's consciousness
of itself as aself-interpreting being that
Dasein can acquirea sense of death in the
first place. Thepoint for Hegelians is not
only that Beingis first and foremost a being-with-others,but
that its being with others is constitutiveof
a death which, while ultimately groundedontologically
in our inscription within cosmologicaltime,
nonetheless derives its existentialreality
from the form of our relationshipto it. Heidegger's
analysis may registerthat it is by the deaths
of others that that'mineness' of death is
confirmed, but itprovides no account of whence
this thingcalled 'death' comes, or what its
existentialanticipation has to tell us, ontologically,about
the character of Being as a socialbeing.
In Hegel's analysis on the other hand,the
dual priority of recognition over theanticipation
of death appears explicitlyin the depiction
of the 'struggle for recognition'in which
each must risk their life in orderto be recognised
by the other as a self-consciousbeing - the
process leading up to the notoriousmaster-slave
dialectic.
The master and slave are allegorical forms,typifications
of power relations inherentin the structure
of recognition. What theymark is, on the
one hand, the necessarilysocial character
of all self-consciousness,and, on the other
hand, the contradictionbetween dependence
and independence thatself-consciousness beings
must consequentlyexperience outside of an
association 'inwhich the free development
of each is thecondition for the free development
of all';or, as Hegel puts it, 'an absolute
substancewhich is the unity of the different
independentself-consciousness which, in their
opposition,enjoy perfect freedom and independence'.
The presentation of this struggle as a trialby
death is somewhat obscure. In order toknow
itself as a consciousness, consciousnessmust
know itself as both subject and objectof
knowledge at the same time. But withoutanother
self-consciousness, this is impossible,since
any relation of consciousness to itselfwhich
is modelled on its relations to objectscan
only oscillate between an assertion ofits
independence from itself as the objectof
knowledge, and a supersession of thisindependence
which establishes the self-certaintyof the
knowing subject only at the cost ofdemonstrating
its dependence on the negatedobject: therefore
"self-consciousnessachieves its satisfaction
(the satisfactionof its desire to supersede
itself as an object)only in another consciousness."
The duplication of self-consciousness, theirmutual
recognition, and hence their mutualdependence
(replacing dependence on an object)are thus
all shown to be conditions of thepossibility
of self-consciousness, and hence,conditions
of the possibility of Dasein asa self-interpreting
being for whom beingis in question.
The difficulty here lies in the conceptsof
life and death as used by Hegel; specificallyin
Hegel's use of death as the negation
oflife.
Life, here is not used in the commonsensemanner
of physical existence. "Life'is
the
category which, at the beginning ofchapter
four of the PhG matches the reflectivetransition
from consciousness to self-consciousnesson
the side of the object. Life is the
"naturalsetting
of consciousness" or what Hegeldescribes
as "independence without negativity".When
Hegel writes that the individual's
"presentationof
itself … as the pure abstraction of
self-consciousnessconsists
in showing … that it is not attachedto
'life'"
what this means is the consciousnessmust
show that it is detached from its naturalsetting.
Yet physical death is "the natural
negation
of consciousness, negation without
independence,
which thus remains without the required
significance
of recognition".
Now Hegel distinguishes between abstractnegation
- death in the physical sense -and
dialectical
negation, the negation that"preserves
and cancels". This kind of negation
is the kind performed by consciousness
on
its objects, and it is essentially
epistemological
in character. So in this context, it
is clear
that the 'negation' that occurs in
the 'trialby
death' is not the abstract negation
ofphysical
death, but the dialectical negationof
the
other's non-natural life - that isto
say,
the negation of their self-consciousnessand
independence.
Rather, insofar as this kind of literal
negation
of physical life is at issue here,
it is
present only in the 'staking of life'
asan
unrealised possibility. Consciousnessrequires
a demonstration that the other isdetached
from the natural setting - thisis furnished
by the others staking of lifein the
free
enactment of the possibilityof literal,
physical
death. The freely embracedpossibility
of
death symbolises the freedomof consciousness
from the dictates of self-preservation.Pure
being for itself manifests itself onlyas
freedom for death. This is what one
mightcall
the existential core of the dialecticof
recognition.
It is in this sense thatKojčve for,
humanity
is "death livinga human life""
in achieving self-consciousness,the
human
being 'kills' the animal withinthemselves
and supersedes their natural being.But
this
is already a shift to Hegel's second,metaphorical
sense of death.
It is this second, metaphorical sense ofdeath
alone which is at issue in consciousness'sseeking
of the death of the other: what consciousnessseeks
when it desires the death of the otheris
its death as an independent consciousness.It
is thus not the abstract negation of lifethat
is at stake in the death which is sought,but
a reduction to 'life', in Hegel's naturalisticsense.
A social death: such is slavery, symbolicreduction
of social to natural being. Slaveryis social
death. Conversely, the life wonby the master
is beyond mere 'life', henceKojčve's insistence
that the struggle isone for "pure prestige".
In Hegel's own account, 'absolute negativity'or
'pure being for self' appears in the consciousnessof
the slave only in the form of the fearof
death. A fear of death which is producedby
the recognition of the independence ofthe
other. Yet this recognition thereby makesconsciousness
aware of its own potentialnothingness for
the other - a nothingnessit must project
into the other (seeking thedeath of the other)
if it is to establishitself as pure being
for self. Pure selfconsciousness pure being
for self thus revealsitself as a contradictory
structure of misrecognitionand disavowal.
In summary: self consciousness and the consciousnessof
death ore one and they both come fromthe
other. They are the product of desireand
they result in fear: fear of death asthe
fear of the refusal of recognition. Inboth
the pervasiveness and indeterminacy,this
fear is equivalent to Heidegger's existentialconcept
of anxiety, an anxiety in the faceof being
in the world as such, which accordingto Heidegger,
makes fear possible at all.However, where
for Heidegger it is being'sown freedom which
is at stake, its characteras pure possibility
- to which anxiety returnsit from its absorption
in the world; forHegel, it is the freedom
of the other whichinspires fear.
Anticipation of death, in Heidegger's existentialsense,
is to this extent a constitutive dimensionof
self-consciousness (and therefore socialbeing).
If temporality derives existentiallyfrom
the anticipation of death (Heidegger)and
death comes from the other (Hegel), so,it
follows, does historical time. Existentialtemporality
comes from the other. It is recognitionwhich
temporalises time. It is only selfconsciousness
for which death has a meaning- for which
death 'is' in Heidegger's sense- and self-consciousness
is always sociallymediated. Hegel's definition
of death thusrequires modification. Death
is not just"the natural negation of
consciousness,negation without independence",
theliteral, physical death with which Hegelbegins.
It is the natural or unnatural negationof
a consciousness, negation without independence,which
is both for itself and for others.For all
its inherent mineness which cannotbe denied,
what death 'is' existentially,is mediated
by relations to others - in Hegel'sterms,
the forms of objective spirit. Itsanalysis
will form part of an ontology ofsocial being.
The decision to substitute Heidegger's analysisof
being for Hegel's ontology of nature,combined
with the 'existential' decisionto place the
struggle for recognition beforelabour has
an unwanted consequence in Kojčve'sreading
of Hegel, let alone Marx. For Hegel,the struggle
for recognition is profoundlysocial. Yet
for Kojčve (as for Heidegger)because the
anticipation of death is locatedin the ontological
structures of individualexperience, death
is profoundly a-socialor pre-social. Kojčve,
despite his protestationat Hegel's "basic
error", repeatsHegel's obscurity, supplementing
it witha further problem: the existential
deploymentof death not as a social concept
but as anindividual reality prior to socialisation.
Displacement Three: Hegel on History andMethod
Hegel shows that the desire that is directedtowards
another desire is necessarily thedesire for
recognition, which engenders History,and
moves it. Time lasts only as long ashistory
lasts - that is as long as humanacts accomplished
with a view to social recognitionare carried
out. (135) "As for time,it is the empirically
existing concept itself":this sentence
marks an extremely importantdate in the history
of philosophy … thosephilosophers who do
not identify the conceptand time cannot give
an account of history… the principle aim,
then, of the reformintroduced by Hegel was
the desire to givean account of the fact
of history. (132)
Yet the structure of the preceding two displacementsmakes
this last consideration, on Hegel'sview of
history and methodology, come outvery strangely
indeed. Kojčve's "wiseman" is an
existential Hegel, not ahistorical Hegel.
That is why Kojčve insiststhat: "the
wise man can speak of scienceas his science
only to the extent that hecan speak of death
as his death." (167)For Kojčve, "Consciousness
necessarilyimplies consciousness of death
… historycompletes itself by man's perfect
understandingof death".
Kojčve links this to the dialectical characterof
Hegel's philosophy in remarkably consistentfashion.
"Dialectic" accordingto Kojčve
involves action, negation, andtherefore perturbation
of the object. Accordingto Kojčve, Science
perturbs the object …there is no scientific
truth in the strongand proper sense of the
term (177).
"The Hegelian method, therefore, isnot
at all dialectical: it is purely descriptiveand
contemplative, or better, phenomenologicalin
Husserl's sense of the term. (171) Ifthe
thought and the discourse of the Hegelianscientist
or the wise man are dialectical,it is only
because they faithfully reflectthe "dialectical
movement" of theReal of which they are
a part and which theyexperience by giving
themselves to it withoutany preconceived
method. (179) Hegel's method,then is not
at all dialectical … Hegel wasthe first to
abandon Dialectic as the philosophicalmethod
(179)."
"Accordingly, Hegel does not have to'demonstrate'
what he says, nor to refutewhat others have
said. The demonstrationand the refutation
were effected before him,in the course of
the History which precededhim, and they were
effected not by verbalarguments, but in the
final analysis by theproof of fighting and
work. Hegel only hasto record the final result
of that "dialectical"proof and
to describe it correctly. And since,by definition,
the content of this descriptionwill never
be modified, completed or refuted,one can
say that Hegel's description is thestatement
of the absolute, or universallyand eternally
(ie necessarily) valid truth.All this presupposes,
of course, the completionof the real Dialectic
of fighting and ofwork, that is the definitive
stopping ofhistory. It is only "at the
end of time"that a Wise man (who happened
to be calledHegel) can give up dialectical
method - thatis, all real or ideal negation,
transformationor critique of the given -
and limit himselfto describing the given
(191)."
Conclusion: Dialectical Method This conclusionis
unavoidable. Yet it flows from an incompleteconsideration
of the arguments. Kojčve listsa number of
possible relationships betweenthe concept
and time, dismissing the non-historicalrelationships
that had obtained in philosophyup until Hegel.
This leaves only two possibilities:
The concept is time, and hence is relatedneither
to time nor to eternity - this isHegel's
position.(102)
There is still [another] possibility. Theconcept
is temporal. But this is no longera philosophical
possibility. For this typeof (sceptical)
though makes all philosophyimpossible by
denying the very idea of truth:being temporal
the concept essentially changes:that is to
say, there is no definitive knowledge,hence
no true knowledge in the proper senseof the
word. (102)
I would suggest that this latter is in factthe
only way out of the end of history thesis.In
the celebrated second preface to Capital,Marx
insists that though in Hegel the
(idealist) dialectic is "standing onits
head" and "must be turned rightside
up again, if you would discover therational
kernel within the mystical shell"nonetheless
in its rational form, Hegeliandialectics
"includes in its comprehensionan affirmative
recognition of the existingstate of things,
at the same time also, therecognition of
the negation of that state,of its inevitable
breaking up." DemystifiedHegelian dialectic
is "revolutionaryin its very essence
critical and revolutionary,"because
it "regards every historicallydeveloped
social form as a fluid movementand therefore
takes into account its transientnature not
less than its momentary existence."
This suggests that the solution "theconcept
is temporal" is the path takenby Marx.
But if this is the case, then extractinga
dialectical method from Hegel can onlyproceed
at the level of an historical critiqueof
Hegel aimed not at producing eternal formulasbut
at inserting Hegel - and Marx - withinan
ongoing history of philosophy … one withouta
goal or an end.
Heidegger considers successful temporal self-fulfilmentto
be possible in the absence of device transcendence.Heidegger
describes the anticipation of one'sown future
as a "Being- towards-death", but
he means that this anticipation ofthe "possibility
of the measurelessimpossibility of existence"
, whichrepresents death, allows a kind of
'authentic'existence.
Rorty precis the basis of Being and Timeas
follows: "Heidegger would like torecapture
a sense of what time was like beforeit fell
under the spell of eternity, whatwe were
before we became obsessed by theneed for
an overarching context which wouldsubsume
and explain us (...). To put it inanother
way: he would like to recapture asense of
contingency, of the fragility andriskiness
of any human project (...)."This productive
intention, continues Rorty,was undermined
by Heidegger's absolutionof authentic temporality
and its fundamentalontological elucidation.
Note:
1 Alan Bloom, "Preface," to AlexandreKojčve,
Introduction to the Reading of Hegel,pi.
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Evans Experientialism 
