Alexandre Kojève
Subtitle: the roots of postmodern politics
By: Shadia B. Drury.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press; Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 1994
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 274
Subjects: Kojève, Alexandre, 1902-1968.; Postmodernism -- Political aspects.; History -- Philosophy.; Ideology.
Description: Alexandre Kojeve is an enigmatic figure whose influence on postmodernism is better known than it is understood. Reading Hegel through the eyes of Marx and Heidegger simultaneously, Kojeve formulated a wild if not hypnotic melange of ideas. In this book, Drury reveals the nature of Kojeve's Hegelianism and the extraordinary influence it has had on both French and American intellectuals.

According to Drury, Kojeve believed that history was a tragedy in which a cold, soulless, instrumental, and uninspired rationalism has conquered and disenchanted the world. Drury maintains that Kojeve's conception of modernity as the fateful triumph of this arid rationality is the cornerstone of postmodern thought.

Kojeve's picture of the world gives birth to a dark romanticism that manifests itself in a profound nostalgia for what reason has banished - myth, madness, disorder, spontaneity, instinct, passion, and virility. In Drury's view, these ideas romanticize the gratuitous violence and irrationalism that characterize the postmodern world.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [261]-265) and index.