Alexandre Kojeve : The Roots of Postmodern Politics

Rating:
Summary: The Kojeve File
Review: On the trail for suspects in the legacy of both the 'end of history' myth, and the sources of postmodernism (for those who find it problematical), we arrive at the Ministry Office of Alexander Kojeve, a remarkable figure towering philosophically over the last gasp of the Cold War and whose charming brilliance conceals a contradictory, if not toxic, mix of Marx, Heidegger, and Hegel. An admirer of Stalin, yet he saw before many the inevitable outcome of the Cold War, and thought America a more deserving victor of the ideological war of the twentieth century. Yet the strange result of his gesture in the interpretation of Hegel in his classic text lies in the subsequent dialectical swing to an opposite extreme in a version of Hegel that is really a neo-liberal false mustache. The spectacle of the end of history so conceived has a strange Nietzschean fevered charm, yet suddenly seems a bit sulphuric, as the hell with no-exit for the bourgeois Faust, the last man.
This work contains a good critical account of the Kojeve's life and work, along with discussions of his relations with Strauss, and his influence on early postmodernists, Alan Bloom, and the work of Fukuyama.

Rating:
Summary: Unfortunate
Review: The most unfortunate aspect of this book is that it projects post-60s thought onto Kojeve's anthropological reading of Hegel. The book would have been far better served by tracing the real impact of Kojeve's misreading of Hegel (and the French were well aware that Kojeve misread him) on the social sciences, from philosophy to psychoanalysis. Obviously, that a book (or originally in this case, a lecture series) is reading a philosopher (Hegel) incorrectly (and dozens of books attest to this fact in French) takes nothing away however from the brilliance and fecundity that others are able to discern in it and who subsequently use in their own thought. So misreadings can be very fruitful.

That the title of Drury's book is "Kojeve" rather than "Kojeve's reading of Hegel" (which would have been more accurate - is Kojeve known for anything else?) should be duly noted (as I will, below). So, Drury's book defies every major category except for one: it is not a work of philosophy, or of history, or even of intellectual history (the book would have to treat facts to qualify for this title). So what is left? Polemical, if that were actually a book category. Drury's book tries to show how post-60s French thought is very simply (one should probably say far too simply) a reaction to Kojeve's work from 40+ years earlier, while it ushers Hegel out the side door, as if he were just a bit player on the stage. Errandum: no Kojeve without Hegel. To make matter worse, it seems as though Drury, while busy polemicizing against contemporary thought, has forgotten one thing, and it's not simply Hegel: it is the immense cultural learning that French lycee students were (and still are) required to partake in, including philosophy. Drury would have the reader believe that from the second quarter of the 1900s to the 1960's, and beyond, that there was a cultural vacuum in French thought. Ergo post-1960s thought is but a "reaction" to Kojeve (but not to Hegel, or, come to think of it, anybody else for that matter). I have used the word reaction on several occasions in this review, and not only because it is Drury's main argument. I think the word speaks aptly to Drury's book as a whole, which is not only polemical but reactionary, in the everyday sens of the word. As there are plenty of excellent books on the market that are neither polemical nor reactionary and address exactly the same issues that Drury attempts to do, but fill in the background, there seems little sense in wading through Drury's at times hyperbolic arguments. In short, he's reaching. I have intentionally not spoken to his own misunderstandings, and therefore inevitable misrepresentations, of the authors he discusses - not even where Kojeve himself is concerned. This is not the place for a page by page correction. And as better books exist without these errors, the problem is more easily fixed: I recommend Vincent Descombes' remarkable "Modern French Philosophy," which is a model of scholarship and clarity. It begins with Kojeve. The volume also gives suggestions for further reading. And one of the most incisive synopses of Kojeve's highly slanted reading of Hegel and its influence is perhaps not where one might expect to find it: as the Preface to Mikkel Borch-Jakobsen's "The Absolute Master." It is an exceedingly clear account, and highly recommended. Both books can be perused online at Amazon.