Abstract

This dissertation interprets and begins to assess critically the political philosophy of Alexandre Kojeve. Kojeve's political philosophy is perhaps the fullest expression of some of the central goals and aspirations of modernity, and a sustained examination of his thought allows one the opportunity to begin to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of modernity as such, of modern rationalism and historicism. This dissertation is unique in that it attempts to bring into focus Kojeve's political philosophy by looking at his corpus as a whole, something which has only recently become possible given the fact that many of his most important works were published posthumously in the last 15 years. In analyzing Kojeve's political philosophy, I begin and take my bearings from the debate between Kojeve and Leo Strauss in the latter's On Tyranny. This is probably the single best contemporary debate which succinctly crystallizes the fundamental differences between the ancients and moderns or their respective understandings of the nature of philosophy and politics, and the relation between the two. In many ways, the dissertation is a modest attempt to respond to the objections that Strauss raised against Kojeve's position but which Kojeve himself never directly addressed. ;The first chapter of the dissertation discusses Kojeve's philosophy of history, and in particular his understanding of Hegel's master-slave dialectic. The second chapter examines the Esquisse d'une phenonmenologie du droit, where Kojeve most fully articulates the character of the justice of the universal and homogenous state, the state that is to be realized at the end of our historical evolution. Chapter three looks at Kojeve's understanding of the nature and purpose of political philosophy, and I pay particular attention to Kojeve's own motivations for writing the many works that he did. The fourth chapter discusses the character of Kojevean satisfaction, as well as what our economic and spiritual life is going to be like at the end of history. In the final section of chapter four, I briefly suggest that one further area of investigation would be to examine in more detail Kojeve's understanding of classical political philosophy