Alexandre Kojève

Unravelleing the mystery of Kojève

Unravelleing the mystery of Kojève

Boris Groys's new book is an intellectual biography of the fascinating and mysterious figure of Alexandre Kojève, discussing his involvement with Hegel's dialectics, his idea of communism and his vision of a universal empire as the end of history. Kojève proclaimed himself to be a Stalinist and at the same time was one of the creators of the European Union. His anthropology that describes humans as always negating their nature and their identity, and always desiring to be different from what they are, is highly political. It explains why humans can never be fully satisfied by a political system based on their allegedly "natural" rights.

Introduction: What does it mean to be human?

I. History as Self-Negation
1. Struggle for Recognition
2. The Self-Reflection
3. The Anthropogenic Desire

II. From Sophia to Stalin and Back
1. Political Androgyny
2. Paradisal Work
3. Napoleon
4. Stalin
5. The Sage
6. The Working State
7. History as Magic

III. The Giving Empire
1. The Christian Empire
2. The Ideocratic State
3. The Latin Empire
4. Colonialism and the Giving Empire
5. Bataille and Marshall Plan

IV. Becoming a Sage
1. Painting the Totality
2. Visualization of Logos

Epilogue: How to remain human after the End of History?