Böcker av Alexandre Kojeve

A compilation of esoteric musings, Kandinsky: Incarnating Beauty explores Alexandre Kojève’s philosophical approach to the relationship between art and beauty.A teacher to Jacques Lacan, André Breton, and Albert Camus, Kojève defined art as the act of extracting the beautiful from objective reality. His poetic text, “The Concrete Paintings of Kandinsky,” endorses nonrepresentational art as uniquely manifesting beauty. Taking the paintings of his renowned uncle, Wassily Kandinsky, as his inspiration, Kojève suggests that in creating (rather than replicating) beauty, the paintings are themselves complete universes as concrete as the natural world. Kojève’s text considers the utility and necessity of beauty in life, and ultimately poses the involuted question: What is beauty? Including personal letters between Kandinsky and his nephew, this book further elaborates the unique relationship between artist and philosopher. An introduction by Boris Groys contextualizes Kojève’s life and writings.

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 Alexandre Kojeve's thought.

The original text of this work was published in the French journal Revue d'Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses. This English translation presents Kojève's attempt to unify the religious philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov into a metaphysical system that Solovyov strived for but was never able to fully articulate in his lifetime.

Offering a systematic discussion of key themes such as right, justice, law, equality, and autonomy, this work presages our contemporary world of economic globalization and international law. It is also a translation of a work in political philosophy.

This collection of lectures shows the intensity of Kojeve's study and thought and the depth of his insight into Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.