ABSTRACT
In a series of seminars on Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit held in Paris from 1933 to 1939, Alexandre Kojève posited that the end (telos) of history is already achieved. For Kojève, human time is begun not in the past, but in the future, engendered by desire (Kojève, 1969), ultimately by a desire both for recognition and for wisdom. The emergence of the wise man, the sage, capable of understanding rationally the causes of human desire, marks an end point for the Hegelian circle of history. In this post-historical state, all authority, besides the impartial sagacity of the judge, was rendered absurd (Kojève, 2014) including of course the authority of the teacher or philosopher who claimed to say anything new. In later life, Kojève embodied these convictions, abandoning philosophical debates, which he believed had run their course, becoming a bureaucrat in the formation of the European Community.
