Alexandre Kojeve (1902-1968) was a thinker of many contradictions. Born in Russia, he spent most of his life in France. His interpretation of Hegel and his notorious declaration that history had come to an end had a major influence on French thinkers and writers such as Raymond Aron, Georges Bataille, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Lacan, and Raymond Queneau. An unorthodox Marxist, he was a critic of Martin Heidegger and interlocutor of Leo Strauss who played a leading role in establishing the European Economic Community; a polyglot with many arcane interests, he wrote works, mostly unpublished, on quantum physics, the problem of the infinite, Christian theology, Mahayana Buddhism, atheism, and Vassily Kandinsky's paintings.
In The Black Circle, Jeff Love reinterprets Kojeve's works, showing him to be a provocative thinker who challenged modern society and its valuation of individuality, self-interest, and freedom from death. Emphasizing Kojeve's neglected Russian roots, The Black Circle puts him in the context of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Russian debates over the proper ends of human life. Love explores notions of perfection, freedom, and finality in Kojeve's account of Hegel and his neglected later works, clarifying Kojeve's emancipatory thinking and the meaning of the oft-misinterpreted "end of history." Joining intellectual history, close textual analysis, and philosophy to reassess an essential modern theorist, The Black Circle reveals Kojeve's thought as a profound critique of capitalist individualism and a timely meditation on human freedom.
Industry Reviews
The Black Circle is an extraordinary study in which hardcore philosophical issues are approached at a cosmic level but lyrically, almost as part of an intimate conversation. Alexandre Kojeve was so thoroughly at home in German and French culture that his origins in yet a third culture have been neglected. In this book, Jeff Love restores Russian contexts to Kojeve's thought on Hegel and the 'end of history.' -- Caryl Emerson, Princeton University
Kojeve is best known as arguably the best twentieth-century commentator on Hegel. But Love's incisive book shows that he is much more. This is by far the best, most comprehensive overview of Kojeve's thinking in any language and the only one to draw in detail on Kojeve's Russian background. Clearly, elegantly written and argued, it is indispensable reading for anyone interested in the complexity and range of twentieth-century thought. -- William Todd Mills, Harry Tuchman Levin Professor of Literature, Harvard University
Known only in Anglophone letters for a drastically truncated translation of his idiosyncratic and influential Parisian "Lectures on Hegel," Alexandre Kojeve bequeathed to posterity a multitude of tantalizing manuscripts and has finally received the intellectual contextualization and philosophical interpretation he deserves. In his magisterial study Jeff Love uncovers the profound presence of nineteenth-century Russian thought within Kojeve's literary style and his philosophy of negation, finality, perfection, repetition, political community, and radical freedom, such that Kojeve emerges from Dostoevsky's underground as a distinctly Russian Hegelian existentialist thinker worthy of serious consideration today. -- Henry W. Pickford, Duke University
In this excellent intellectual biography, Jeff Love explicates the thought and speculates on the intentions of expatriate Russian Hegelian philosopher Alexandre Kojeve. Love's readings of neglected Russian influences on Kojeve (Dostoevsky and philosophers Vladimir Soloviev and Nikolai Fedorov) and of Kojeve himself are satisfyingly complex, clear, and accessible. His Kojeve is deep, controversial, and a 'philosophical propagandist' still relevant today. -- Donna Orwin, University of Toronto
A sophisticated contribution to the study of one of the most enigmatic modern thinkers, this book is simultaneously scholarly and bold. It not only retraces Kojeve's roots in more than a century of Russian literature and thought but also-attuned to the paradoxes and ironies embedded in his kaleidoscopic corpus-orchestrates a spirited exchange among canonical figures of the 'Western tradition,' from Plato and Aristotle to Beckett and Leo Strauss. -- Ilya Kliger, New York University
Love's thoughtful account and probing interrogation of Kojeve's texts shed light on both the powerful arguments and interpretations that Kojeve presents and the bewildering paradoxes and problems that the outcomes of these arguments leave us with. -- James H. Nichols * H-Net *
This lucid book goes far in clarifying the origins of and the problems with Kojeve's 'end of history' thesis. * Choice *
Meticulously researched and boasting an extensive bibliography in multiple languages . . . of interest to philosophers [and] intellectual historians. * Slavic Review *
Kojeve's thought is complex, puzzling, and intense-and so is this book about writings and ideas he puts forward. It is no easy reading, but the reader who takes the challenge will be rewarded with a (not the) profound grasp of the philosophical thought of this important Russian-European thinker. * Studies in East European Thought *
