ABSTRACT
In the winter of 1937, Kojève’s celebrated lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit deal with, amongst other things, the way in which Hegel understands how history will complete itself through the overcoming and collapse of the antithetical master and slave dialectic and how this historical completion was already evident in Hegel’s own time:
Now, according to Hegel, this completion of history is realized in and through the Napoleonic wars – and especially the Battle of Jena – through the dialectical suppression (Aufheben) of both Master and Slave. The presence of the Battle of Jena in Hegel’s consciousness is consequently of the utmost importance. It is because Hegel hears the uproar of this battle that he can know that History completes itself or has already done so and that, consequently, his conception of the World is a total conception and his knowledge an absolute knowledge.
