Abstract
This paper focuses on Kojève’s account of history and philosophy of science. Kojève’s understanding of science can be characterized as internalism, which is evident in his holistic view of philosophy, theology, quantum physics, and the history of classical Newtonian mechanics. It precipitates the facilitation of a further inquiry into the Christian genesis, secular evolution, and subsequent de-Christianization of scientific thought. The paper includes a critical scrutiny of Kojève’s philosophical tenets, followed by a comparative analysis of the views of Hegel, Koyré, and Kojève. The primary objective of this research is to juxtapose Kojève’s doctrines with Hegel’s contemplations on the history and philosophy of science. In addition to identifying affinities, notably the emphasis on the Christian concept of God’s Incarnation for the advancement of science, I draw the distinctions between the positions of Hegel, Kojève, and Koyré, specifically concerning the valuation of mathematical knowledge.
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Notes
As noted by Annett Jubara, there is “The paradoxical anchoring of Kojève’s philosophizing in the tradition of Russian religious philosophy” (Jubara 2023) in the fact that Kojève’s straightforward atheism was always engaged in dialog with theism, as it was in the debates of Russian thought in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.
Kojève’s last two reports were presented in response to the lectures of the renowned mathematician, geophysicist, engineer, and inventor Ervand George (Gevorgovich) Kogbetliantz following the sessions of the “Russian Society of Philosophy of Science” chaired by Dimitri Pavlovitch Riabouchinsky.
“Fonds Alexandre Kojève” at BNF (Paris): https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc588221/ca106.
Numerous biographical details about how Kojève was fascinated by physics, mathematics, and the philosophical interpretation of their foundations can be found in Kojève’s biography (Filoni 2010, pp. 194–197). His position in the debate over the problem of determinism has also been discussed previously. See: Ibid., pp. 198–210, Geroulanos 2010, pp. 59–66, Geroulanos 2011.
These concepts are used in the sense of an established tradition in the philosophy of science (Fuller 2000). At the same time, the term “antipositivism” is used to refer to the criticism of these thinkers’ ideas about the progressive cumulative progress of science and about the contradiction between science and other forms of intellectual activity, such as religion or art.
The classification of Koyré’s philosophical stance remains a subject for debate. See: Stump 2001, p. 243.
It is enough to compare Koyré’s works listed above with his essays, written between 1922 and 1933. See: Koyré 1971b.
Koyré A. De l’influence des conceptions philosophiques sur l’évolution des théories scientifiques (Koyré 1971a, pp. 231–246).
There is even evidence of a dispute between Koyré and Kojève over the contention for priority in revealing the Christian roots of Modern European science (Rosen 2000, p. 208). Presumably, the debate was not over this general thesis, shared by both Hegel and Duhem, but about an interpretation specific to Kojève and Koyré.
The “Philosophy of Nature” will also be referenced, albeit in a limited form. This is due to the fact that the second volume of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences was directly deemed by Koyré to be a profound misconception that has lost its relevance, a view that Kojève subsequently endorsed.
Not all dogmas, according to Kojève, turned out to be useful: the Resurrection of Christ and the notion of the soul’s immortality are anthropologically erroneous. This is due to the fact that the concept of postmortem nonexistence is replaced with that of eternal life, whether in hell or heaven. Consequently, the religious belief in an afterlife chains humans to the mere givenness of their existence, to varying extents. This effectively deprives them of “being-towards-death,” relegating humans to merely creatures of the Homo Sapiens species. This question is discussed in more detail in Nicolas 2022. This is Kojève’s position, in stark contrast to Hegel’s positive attitude to resurrection. Apart from this, Hegel’s interpretation of Christian dogmas provides insight into Kojève’s philosophical grasp of the history of science.
However, Hegel’s reasoning appears to be overlooked by Kojève: between art and science, religion—specifically Christianity in its historical forms like Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or non-Chalcedonian churches—should have been Christianized. Its truth had to articulate itself independently, a process that began with the Reformation. Consequently, Kojève failed to address an evident query: why did not Christian science emerge in Byzantium? Although Constantinople fell in the middle of the fifteenth century, it had more than enough time before that. It never faced the time disparity associated with the Christianization of barbaric states. Hence, its own Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, and Newton should have emerged sooner near the Golden Horn. Nonetheless, in address to Hegel’s philosophy, the question remains, why not all or at least not most of the representatives of philosophy, physics, astronomy were Protestants, if the necessary step of the Spirit was related to the Reformation.
Undoubtedly, it cannot be not suggested that Kojève, or even more so subsequent researchers, believe that the idea of the significance or exemplarity of the science of number emerged in the Modern Age. This thought traces back to Plato (in particular, to “Philebus” and “Theaetetus”), and even before him to Philolaus. This concept was attributed to Pythagoras—with the notable distinction that the assertion of the identity of knowledge of number, given the broad semantics of “arithmos” as counting, order, grasping internal divisions. Another key element in this is that knowledge of essence not only has Modern European implications about the mathematical nature of physics, but also the direct opposite, popular until the end of the Middle Ages—that of the insignificance of physics as nonmathematical knowledge. The conclusion about how to study the objects of the physical world and whether mathematics can be applied in this depends not on the value of mathematics, but on cosmology—Kojève and Koyré’s position is just that.
On the contradictory concepts of secularity and laity in Kojève’s thought, explained by their post-Christian rather than anti-Christian nature, cf. Jeffs 2014.
The epistemological problem of actual infinity in Kojève’s philosophy is analyzed in Kurilovich 2019.
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The research was supported by Grant No. 23-18-00802 of the Russian Science Foundation at the Russian State University for the Humanities.
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Kurilovich, I.S. Religion in Alexandre Kojève’s atheistic philosophy of science. Stud East Eur Thought 76, 91–107 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-024-09634-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-024-09634-5