Resumen de Alexandre Kojève, or the philosopher as a madman
The possibility of knowledge has been the main philosophical concern since Plato. In other words, the philosopher who claims that he knows something ought to answer the question: how can he know that he knows something? Needless to say, subjective certainty will not be enough to demonstrate that one is in possession of knowledge. That is, ideas must be externally verified in some sense. Alexandre Kojève’s (1902-1968) philosophical attempt has in view this forceful verification, whose goal is nothing less than absolute knowledge (Wisdom). Kojève places Hegel at the base of his attempt. The Russian-born French philosopher radicalizes the uttermost modern, Hobbesian-Vichian verum-factum thesis. He does so in History, as it is a human product that is in turn anthropogenic. The result is that, at the end of history, truth is rationally revealed (Man is made truly selfconscious) and the philosopher becomes a Wise Man. Or, to put it in another way: according to Kojève’s radical atheism, God does not exist and there is no transcendent truth (no theology). Therefore, if truth exists, it has to be immanent in History (through Work and Struggle in the Master-Slave dialectic). Hegel’s thesis is that the Concept is Time. However, on the other hand, if the Concept is not Time but temporal (and there is no end to History), the philosopher becomes “a madman, who claims or wants to be what one can not be and (what is worse) what he knows to be impossible.” In this chapter, this problem will be addressed in light of the Strauss-Kojève debate on tyranny.
