This is an interesting read on the life of Kojève (the philosopher-bureaucrat) whose reading of Hegel defined his reception for a whole generation of French intellectuals. I was particularly interested in Lacan’s relationship with Kojève:
Kojève wasn’t impressed – he described Bataille as a trickster beguiled by his own tricks – but he treated another of his ‘regulars’, Jacques Lacan, with enduring respect. Lacan had contributed to the lectures in 1935 with a comparison between Hegel and Freud, and would go on to describe Kojève as ‘my master (my only master)’. His discussions of psychoanalysis proliferated over the decades but never lost touch with their source in Kojève’s remarks about desire and the struggle for recognition.
Lacan and Bataille may not have had much in common, but they seem to have learned the same lesson from their master. In his lectures, Kojève contrived to present his favourite ideas – about the difference between humans and other animals, for example, or about history coming to an end in 1806 – as if they were obvious facts or self-evident truths rather than arbitrary dogmas. Lacan and Bataille would in turn become exponents of the art of issuing improbable philosophical pronouncements without exploring alternatives, engaging with possible objections or permitting expressions of doubt. Dozens of admirers were soon unveiling new ends of history – the end of humanity and humanism, or the end of modernity and modernism, or the end of art or literature or philosophy, or indeed the end of the world – in the same menacing style, as if daring anyone to express an honest doubt.
I knew Lacan was deeply shaped by Kojève intellectually. But I didn’t realise his style might have been shaped even more than his actual beliefs. That’s a really interesting idea.
Mark Carrigan 