Abstract

Alexandre Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel has incited debate since his Introduction à la lecture de Hegel first appeared in 1947. Amongst his most controversial assertions is the claim that Hegel’s “philosophy is radically atheistic and non-religious.” Scholars have attempted to refute him by citing the pertinent passages from the Phenomenology, the Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia, not to mention the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and the Proofs of the Existence of God. But such refutations are beside the point. As Kojève himself put it, “the question of knowing if Hegel ‘really said’ what I have him say would seem to me to be puerile if I have succeeded in demonstrating everything I have said.” Hegel’s atheism is less a discovery than a self-conscious creation or projection on the part of Kojève.