Kojève's End of History: Hegel, Stalin, Bataille, Deleuze, and the Return to Animality

About this episode

Enroll now at AHRC: https://www.acidhorizonpodcast.com/ahrc-courses Attend 'University of Excess' free: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast/posts/new-panel-of-and-163158129?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link Buy the Book: https://www.versobooks.com/products/3232-alexandre-kojeve?srsltid=AfmBOorrKB0ugBN0vBNZjBdT9aeqMWBFGCK5bOl9l8sOeWm7nmKwWQtp In this intellectual biography, critic and philosopher Boris Groys turns to the Arthur Rimbaud of modern bureaucracy, Alexandre Kojève, a philosopher of little-known writings and profound influence. Kojève was fascinated with Hegel’s dialectics and with communism and envisioned a universal empire as the end of history. Kojève drew on Buddhism and also proclaimed himself a Stalinist. At the same time, he was one of the creators of a nascent European Union. His concept of the human as something defined by negation and unique among animals in being separated from nature is highly political. It explains why humans can never be fully satisfied by a political system based on their allegedly ‘natural’ rights. Groys reveals a Kojève with a unique perspective on our political ca