Atheism

One of the twentieth century’s most brilliant and unconventional thinkers, Alexandre Kojève was a Russian émigré to France whose lectures on Hegel in the 1930s galvanized a generation of French intellectuals. Although Kojève wrote a great deal, he published very little in his lifetime, and so the ongoing rediscovery of his work continues to present new challenges to philosophy and political theory. Written in 1931 but left unfinished, Atheism is an erudite and open-ended exploration of profound questions of estrangement, death, suicide, and the infinite that demonstrates the range and the provocative power of Kojève’s thought.

In a highly original account of the radical implications of theism and atheism that ranges across Heidegger, Buddhism, Christianity, Marxism, German idealism, Russian literature, and quantum physics, Kojève advances a novel argument about freedom and authority. He investigates the possibility that there is not any vantage point or source of authority—including philosophy, science, or God—that is outside or beyond politics and the world as we experience it. The question becomes whether atheism—or theism—is even a meaningful position since both affirmation and denial of God’s existence imply a knowledge that seems clearly outside our capacities. Written as an experiment in an intricate yet spare Russian, Atheism evinces a capacious, restless mind confronting several of life’s most urgent and fundamental questions. Skillfully translated by Jeff Love, author of The Black Circle: A Life of Alexandre Kojève, this book offers a striking new perspective on Kojève’s work and its implications for theism, atheism, politics, and freedom.

Alexandre Kojeve (1902–1968) was a Russian-born French philosopher and polymath whose influence on contemporary thought via his many disciples and detractors, from Derrida to Lacan to Leo Strauss, is vast. While most famous for his Hegel lectures, Kojeve also had exceptional influence while working in the French Ministry of Economic Affairs as an important figure in the creation of the European Economic Community.

Jeff Love is Research Professor of German and Russian at Clemson University. He is the author of The Black Circle: A Life of Alexandre Kojeve (Columbia, 2018) and The Overcoming of History in “War and Peace” (2004). He is also cotranslator of F. W. J. Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations Into the Essence of Human Freedom (2006) and editor of Heidegger in Russia and Eastern Europe (2017).