Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper I attempt to renew scholarly interest in Koj�ve by demonstrating that his argument concerning �the end of history� is not an idiosyncratic reading of Hegel but rather represents the culmination of the modern understanding of history and most accurately reflects the modern understanding of the relationship between thought and action as it unfolds in historical time. Read in this light, while fulfilling none of the promises of liberalism or the enlightenment, the end of history is the �natural� result of the emancipation of human beings from the tyranny of feudalism and superstition by democracy and science. The result is that under these conditions the Universal and Homogeneous State (the raceless and classless State) is the result of the modern understanding of human beings as free, and historical, actors. The irony is that this State leaves human beings with none of their distinctly human actions to perform. The price we pay for our freedom is our humanity. The question of Global politics then, is what form this State will take? Will it be the home of re-animalized last men, as Nietzsche suggests, trapped in the meaninglessness of consumer society, or is there space for another form of distinctly human activity that would not constitute the rejection of the modern project? This provides a new lens for interpreting global events and the encounter with modernity that is occurring both within and between civilizations and culture.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines the issue of reconciliation in the work of Kojeve and Levinas. It argues that Levinas is better able than Kojeve to account for the experience of guilt and the desire for reconciliation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines Alexandre Kojève's Outline of a Phenomenology of Right in light of his 1945 policy paper to De Gaulle, "Outline of a French Foreign Policy." Kojève attempts to give an account of a rational, Federated, Empire along the lines described by Kant's a priori principles of the civil constitution, that is not an a priori concept but rather grounded in existing conditions, customs, mores, and laws and hence would not succumb to what Hegel calls "abstract cosmopolitanism." Kojève makes explicit use of the inheritances and cultural traditions of existing nations in order to build an Empire that would realize "the synthetic justice of the citizen." This principle of justice is realized by bringing aristocratic appreciation of life into democratic equality in the name of preserving “aristocratic sweetness of living” and the "humanization of free time," over and against bourgeois contentment. Kojève is representative of the two faces of cosmopolitanism. Ultimately he is an advocate of a rationalist State based upon cosmopolitan principles, yet at the same time this is with full awareness that such a State would likely lead to a self-satisfied, passive, sterile, and ultimately "reanimalized" existence.