Kojeve’s Master-slave Dialectics And Its Historical Limitations

Alexandre Kojeve was a famous thinker in France in twentieth Century,and after his interpretation,Hegel’s philosophy became a common theoretical basis of the French academic circle.In the view of Kojeve,the core of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is "Master-slave Dialectics",it reveals the dialectical relationship between desire and history.History begins with desire,and desire is fulfilled as the development of history,the satisfaction of desire means the end of history.Compared with the meaning in Hegel’s original context, Kojeve’s interpretation of Hegel is undoubtedly biased,Kojeve is not a pure endorser of Hegel’s philosophy,he himself is a great thinker.Introduction to the Reading of Hegel,is the book integrates Kojeve’s lecture and the notes made by his students’ in his class.His Interpretation was in his own frame which combining philosophy, history and other subjects. We can say that it is Kojeve’s "madness" interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy constitutes the important influence source of many academic issues,such as the relationship between human nature and desire,desire and history, the end of history, and the universal homogeneous state of Globalization.This paper is divided into three parts:the first part introduces Kojeve’s life from birth, work and death and the ideological source of Kojeve’s Master-slave Dialectics, mainly from Hegel, Heidegger and Marx;The second part introduces Kojeve’s Master-slave Dialectics and discusses Kojeve’s theory of the end of history,and its relationship with Neo-liberalism, Neo-Latin Empire and communism;The third part discusses the existing defects and the criticizes of Kojeve’s Master-slave Dialectics,and also introduces the acceptance and criticism of Kojeve’s Master-slave Dialectics in Western Marxism.By combing Kojeve’s Master-slave Dialectics to better understand his philosophy,and can also open a door for us to understand such as Hegel,Marx and other thinkers who has influenced Kojeve’s philosophy.It is also an entry point to understand contemporary French philosophy influenced by Kojeve’s philosophy.