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PJCV 8/1 - Violence and Conflict in Alexandre Kojève’s Works
Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence
ISSN 2559-9798
Editor-in-Chief: Andreas Wilmes
Guest Editor: Luis Javier Pedrazuela
Vol. VIII (Issue 1/2024)
Pages 1-97
DOI: 10.22618/TP.PJCV.20248.1
You can read this issue in open access
DOSSIER: Violence and Conflict in Alexandre Kojève’s Works
Front matter
Foreword
By Luis Javier Pedrazuela
On the Precipice of the Political: A Katechontic Consideration of Kojève’s Concept of Empire
Kyle Moore
Abstract: During and in the immediate aftermath of WWII, Alexandre Kojève formulated two different and conflicting concepts of empire: one which promoted the idea of world empire, a so-called “universal and homogeneous state,” and another advocating a multi-polar organisation of empire-states working in tandem to delay world unity. I analyse this tension in Kojève’s political thought and suggest how it is related to the political theology of Carl Schmitt, in particular his concept of the katechon.
Has Kojève Played a Role in the Constitution of the Secret Society Acéphale? A Working Hypothesis
Nicola Apicella
Abstract: Our paper will attempt to explain how the concepts Alexandre Kojève was developing during his seminar on the Phenomenology of Spirit and his proximity to Georges Bataille may have left their mark on the latter’s withdrawal from any militant political initiative after dissolution of the revolutionary movement Contre-Attaque. Indeed, Kojève’s teaching on the Master-Slave dialectic and on the role of the intellectual seems to have nourished the vocabulary of Contre-attaque, but the coldness that he displayed towards this movement produced in Bataille — and here lies our working hypothesis — a feeling of disaffection that the thinker of expenditure sought to counter by founding Acéphale. Finally, we will try to show how certain ideas about the political function of violence in view of a “terrorist” revolution could have determined this disinterest on the part of Kojève, a disinterest that could only be partially buffered by the foundation of the Collège de Sociologie.
Critique of Pure Violence: Weil contra Kojève
Hager Weslati
Abstract: This article aims to lift the curtain on Kojève’s elusive conception of violence in conversation with Eric Weil who was one of his most prominent interlocutors during and after the Hegel lectures. First, I outline the context and causes of the understudied Weil-Kojève dispute, situating its deeper roots in their respective experiences of exile. Secondly, I present an overview of the argument put forth in Weil’s Logic of Philosophy, which was intended as a refutation of Kojève’s Hegelianism. I conclude with a brief critical reading of Kojève’s objections to the regulative function of discursive reason and the politics of compromise in Weil, which, in his view, aim to repress rather than resolve conflict.
Alexandre Kojève on Terror
Jeff Love
Abstract: The main point of this essay is to reveal the centrality of violence and criminality to Alexandre Kojève’s thought. After a brief historical introduction that associates Mikhail Bakunin with Kojève, the first part of the essay deals with the notion of terror as expressed in Kojève’s manuscript, entitled Atheism, from 1931 and in the Hegel lectures from 1936-1937. The essay then broadens its scope beyond terror to address criminality and violence beginning with an “excursus” on crime and punishment located in a large unpublished manuscript in Russian from 1940-1941. The birth of the human in violence and crime is the basic focus of this concluding section of the paper.
Alexandre Kojève on Interaction, Individual Freedom and Suicide
Luis Javier Pedrazuela
Abstract: Using the Kojevian notion of “Robespierrian Bonapartism” as a starting point, this article traces the roots of Kojève’s conception of terror. To achieve this, it delves into Kojève’s 1931 book Atheism. Within the framework of a philosophy of religion, hinted at as early as in his diaries in the 1920s, Kojève articulates this conception along a three-pronged axis consisting of his ideas of ‘interaction,’ ‘individual freedom,’ and ‘suicide.’ Furthermore, by elaborating on the Heideggerian concept of ‘man-in-the world,’ and notions such as ‘self-givenness,’ Atheism sets patterns upon which Kojève’s later thought will develop. With the aim of concluding on its significance within his overall oeuvre, this article engages in a head-on study of the complex and occasionally cumbersome conceptual setting that Kojève establishes in the book in question.
Contributing Authors
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