The Black Circle

A Life of Alexandre Kojeve
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-0-231-18656-8
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 376 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 650 g

Alexandre Kojève (1902–1968) was a thinker of many contradictions. Born in Russia, he spent most of his life in France. His interpretation of Hegel and his notorious declaration that history had come to an end had a major influence on French thinkers and writers such as Raymond Aron, Georges Bataille, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Lacan, and Raymond Queneau. An unorthodox Marxist, he was a critic of Martin Heidegger and interlocutor of Leo Strauss who played a leading role in establishing the European Economic Community; a polyglot with many arcane interests, he wrote works, mostly unpublished, on quantum physics, the problem of the infinite, Christian theology, Mahayana Buddhism, atheism, and Vassily Kandinsky’s paintings.

In The Black Circle, Jeff Love reinterprets Kojève’s works, showing him to be a provocative thinker who challenged modern society and its valuation of individuality, self-interest, and freedom from death. Emphasizing Kojève’s neglected Russian roots, The Black Circle puts him in the context of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Russian debates over the proper ends of human life. Love explores notions of perfection, freedom, and finality in Kojève’s account of Hegel and his neglected later works, clarifying Kojève’s emancipatory thinking and the meaning of the oft-misinterpreted “end of history.” Joining intellectual history, close textual analysis, and philosophy to reassess an essential modern theorist, The Black Circle reveals Kojève’s thought as a profound critique of capitalist individualism and a timely meditation on human freedom.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Love, Jeff

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: 20./21. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie

Über Autor(innen)

Jeff Love is professor of German and Russian at Clemson University. He is the author of The Overcoming of History in War and Peace (2004) and Tolstoy: A Guide for the Perplexed (2008), cotranslator of F. W. J. Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations Into the Essence of Human Freedom (2006), and editor of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: Philosophy, Morality, Tragedy (2016) as well as Heidegger in Russia and Eastern Europe (2017).