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Alexandre Kojève, The Notion of Authority (A Brief Presentation), translated by Hager Weslati London: Verso, 2014; 224pp; ISBN: 978-1781680957
Alexandre Kojève, the Russian-French philosopher, is probably best known in the English-speaking world for his Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on Phenomenology of Spirit (1948). This text and the original lectures on which it is based exercised a significant - and I would argue unfortunate - influence on the development of French thought in the twentieth century. Less well-known in the English-speaking world, however, is Kojève's social theory - itself heavily dependent on Hegel's philosophy - which is articulated in his The Notion of Authority (1842) and Outline of a Phenomenology of Right (1843). The former - a relatively short, yet still systematic and ambitious work - has just been translated into English for the first time. It may prove to be of interest to scholars of Hegelian thought, twentiethcentury French philosophy, and the problem of authority (including theorists of anarchism).
The Notion of Authority is divided into two parts. The first and longer part, entitled 'Analyses', develops Kojève's theory of authority. The second part, entitled 'Deductions', applies this theory to certain relations and institutions. The first part is preceded by a preface, entitled 'Preliminary Remarks', in which Kojève provides a very concise outline of the work. The second part is followed by two brief appendices in which two concrete, contemporary cases are considered: the authority of Marshal Pétain in Vichy France; and revolutionary authority in the same socio-historical context. We...