Alexandre Kojève

Alexandre Kojève (28 April 1902 – 4 June 1968) was a Russian-born French philosopher and statesman whose philosophical seminars had an immense influence on 20th-century French philosophy

Quotes

• Kojève is the unknown Superior whose dogma is revered, often unawares, by that important subdivision of the "animal kingdom of the spirit" in the contemporary world - the progressivist intellectuals.
  • 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), Editor's Introduction

• * Kojeve learned from Hegel that the philosopher seeks to know himself or to possess full self-consciousness, and that, therefore, the true philosophic endeavor is a coherent explanation of all things that culminates in the explanation of philosophy. The man who seeks any other form of knowledge, who cannot explain his own doings, cannot be called a philosopher.
  • Editor's Introduction

• 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