Introduction to the Reading of Hegel

Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit

Cover of the first edition
Author	Alexandre Kojève
Original title	Introduction à la Lecture de Hegel
Translator	James H. Nichols, Jr
Language	French
Subject	Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Published	1947 (Gallimard, in French) 1969 (Basic Books, in English)
Publication place	France
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	287 (English edition)
ISBN	0-8014-9203-3 (English edition)
LC Class	80-66908

Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit (French: Introduction à la Lecture de Hegel) is a 1947 book about Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel by the philosopher Alexandre Kojève, in which the author combines the labor philosophy of Karl Marx with the Being-Toward-Death of Martin Heidegger. Kojève develops many themes that would be fundamental to existentialism and French theory such as the end of history and the Master-Slave Dialectic.

Summary

Kojève argues that Hegel's System needs to be seen as circular and returning to itself. This implies that Hegel's philosophical framework creates a continuous loop of development and self-reflection.

Kojève takes Heidegger's concept of Angst (anxiety) in the face of death and applies it to the fear experienced by the Slave in his initial conflict with the Master. In Hegel's dialectic, the Master-Slave relationship is pivotal. The Master achieves dominance because he is willing to risk his life and confront death, while the Slave, fearing death, submits. This initial act of submission due to the Slave's unwillingness to accept death sets the foundation for their unequal relationship. The Master remains the master because of his fearlessness, and the Slave remains the slave because of his fear.

Influenced by Heidegger's insights into the manner in which Dasein (being-there, a term Heidegger uses to describe human existence) stands before earthly death, Kojève sees man as a fundamentally negative creature. This negativity is not merely a lack or absence but an active force that negates existence through labor and transformation. According to Kojève, it is through labor that the Slave begins to transform the world and, ultimately, himself. This labor is a form of negation of the given reality, a reshaping of the world through human effort and creativity. Therefore, the Slave, despite his initial position of subjugation, engages in a process of self-creation and world-creation, leading to the eventual possibility of overcoming the initial inequality with the Master.

Reception

The philosopher Herbert Marcuse, in a 1960 appendix to Reason and Revolution (first published 1941), writes that the "only major recent development in the interpretation of Hegel's philosophy" is the "postwar revival of Hegel studies in France". Marcuse credits the "new French interpretation" with showing clearly "the inner connection between the idealistic and materialistic dialectic", and lists Kojève's book as one of the key works.

Some have argued that the book is more an elaboration of Kojève's own philosophy rather than a mere commentary on Hegel. For example F. Roger Devlin claims it is like calling Aquinas's Summa Theologica a mere introduction to Aristotle.

Simone de Beauvoir's reading of the book would emphasize the Master-Slave relation between men and women she saw in The Second Sex (1949).

In Jon Stewart's anthology The Hegel Myths and Legends (1996), Introduction to the Reading of Hegel is listed as a work that has propagated "myths" about Hegel. The dismissive view of French Hegel is expressed in Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations by Robert B. Pippin. He writes that Kojève is a "truncated and unsatisfactory jumblings of Hegelian ideas which get a better hearing in the original."