Alexandre Kojeve Quotes
Alexandre Kojeve was a Russian-born French philosopher whose lectures on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes from 1933 to 1939 shaped a generation of French intellectuals, including Sartre, Beauvoir, Bataille, Lacan, and Merleau-Ponty. His reading made the master-slave dialectic the center of Hegel's thought and presented history as the progressive realization of mutual recognition in a universal homogeneous state. The quotes below are attributed to Alexandre Kojeve, organized by topic.
Browse Alexandre Kojeve by topic
Alexandre Kojeve on Death
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“There has to be a risk of the death sentence in order for 'mastery' to exist.”
p. 79
Alexandre Kojeve on Freedom
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“The being invested with authority is then necessarily an agent , and the authoritarian act is always an absolute (conscious and free) act . However, the authoritarian act is distinguished from all other acts by the fact that it does not encounter opposition from the person or persons towards whom it is directed. This in turn presupposes both the possibility of opposing it and the conscious and voluntary renunciation of realising this possibility.”
p. 8
Alexandre Kojeve on God
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“Starting with "I think," Descartes fixed his attention only on the "think," completely neglecting the "I." Now, this I is essential. For Man, and consequently the Philosopher, is not only Consciousness, but also—and above all— Self -Consciousness. Man is not only a being that thinks —i.e., reveals Being by Logos , by Speech formed of words that have a meaning . He reveals in addition—also by Speec”
Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit , assembled by Raymond Queneau, edited by Allan Bloom, translated by James H. Nichols, Jr. (1969), p. 36 -
“Obviously, absolute Authority in the strong sense of the word is never realised in fact. Only God is held to possess it.”
p. 31 -
“It is from Eternity that the representatives of God on earth derive their Authority.”
p. 50
Alexandre Kojeve on Knowledge
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Attributed to Alexandre Kojeve:
“Philosophy is the wisdom of the wise man at the end of history.”
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Attributed to Alexandre Kojeve:
“Wisdom is the consciousness that we are at the end of the journey of consciousness.”
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“A Revolution is nothing other than the replacement of one given type of Authority with another.”
p. 103
Alexandre Kojeve on Love
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Attributed to Alexandre Kojeve:
“Man is desire, and human desire is the desire of another desire.”
Alexandre Kojeve on Mind
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“Starting with "I think," Descartes fixed his attention only on the "think," completely neglecting the "I." Now, this I is essential. For Man, and consequently the Philosopher, is not only Consciousness, but also—and above all— Self -Consciousness. Man is not only a being that thinks —i.e., reveals Being by Logos , by Speech formed of words that have a meaning . He reveals in addition—also by Speech—the being that reveals Being, the being that he himself is, the revealing being that he opposes to the revealed being by giving it the name Ich or Selbst , I or Self.”
Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit , assembled by Raymond Queneau, edited by Allan Bloom, translated by James H. Nichols, Jr. (1969), p. 36
Alexandre Kojeve on Politics
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Attributed to Alexandre Kojeve:
“History is the dialectic of master and slave.”
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Attributed to Alexandre Kojeve:
“The end of history is the universal recognition of the dignity of every human being.”
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“True, since the Minority is necessarily weaker (physically, that is to say quantitatively) than the Majority, its power can only derive from its Authority (minority regimes are necessarily 'authoritarian'). But this Authority never derives from the fact that the Minority is a Minority . The 'justification' ('propaganda') is always of the kind: " even though we are only a minority, we . . ." The Authority that is endorsed by a Minority 'justifies' itself or explains itself by 'quality' and not by quantity. (Even the 'snob' claims to belong to the elite and not to the minority .)”
p. 39 -
“In all times and ages, political crimes have always been punished more severely than others – even in the degenerate State of Nicholas II . The fact that in modern ' democracies ' we lean towards political clemency proves only one thing: the loss of any sense of the 'political' in general.”
p. 79
Alexandre Kojeve on Time
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“The Authority of the 'man of the moment' pertains to the fact that it is he, par excellence, who represents 'actuality', the Present, the 'real presence' of something in the world (Hegel's Gegenwart ), as opposed to the 'poetic' unreality of the past and the 'utopian' unreality of the future.”
pp. 49–50