Alexandre Kojève
1902-1968 · Marxism · Known
Kojève was a Russian emigrant whose Paris seminar on Hegel in the 1930s taught a generation to read history through desire and the fight to be recognized, master against slave. Lacan, Bataille and Sartre all drew on him, as did Strauss and Fukuyama. History ends in one universal state, the same everywhere, he said, and then he spent two decades as a bureaucrat in the French economic administration.
Signature
The position Kojève is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Society
- leans Collectivism
- Time
- Eschatological
Positions on the 3 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Collectivism (29 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Meaning
- mildly between Constructed and Inherent (58 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Opposition
- strongly leans Sublation (0 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
17 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Kojève refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Technocracy / Totalitarianism
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Other
What is the highest good? - Perception
- Conceptual Mediation
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Pure Reason / Power-Knowledge
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Relational
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Radical Freedom / Social Determinism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Eschatological
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Law
- Social Contract / Revolutionary
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Human Nature
- Evolved Animal / Socially Constructed
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?