Atheism /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Kojève, Alexandre, 1902-1968, author.
Uniform title:Athéisme. English
Imprint:New York : Columbia University Press, [2018]
©2018
Description:1 online resource (xxxix, 205 pages)
Language:English
Subject:
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12020874
Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:Love, Jeff (G. Jeffrey), translator.
ISBN:9780231542296
0231542291
9780231180009
0231180004
Notes:Originally published by Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1998.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Print version record.
Summary:"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. Ranging across Heidegger, Buddhism, Christianity, German idealism, Russian literature, and mathematics, 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. Masterfully translated by Jeff Love, this book offers a striking new perspective on Kojève's work and its implications for theism, atheism, politics, and freedom. Alexandre Kojève (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, Kojève 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."--
Other form:Print version: Kojève, Alexandre, 1902-1968. Athéisme. English. Atheism. New York : Columbia University Press, [2018] 9780231180009
Review by Choice Review

In the introduction and translator's note for this translation of Atheism--which Kojève (1902--86) wrote in 1931 but never published--Love (German and Russian, Clemson Univ.) provides terms and distinctions that will help with the experience of reading the text. Reading the text, however, is its own slow-moving treat. The abstraction of the argument will not stymie those familiar with Kojève, Hegel, et al. The core of the argument--Kojève divides atheists and nonatheists (eventually "theists") on the basis of their experience of finitude and/or the question of the givenness of infinitude--provides a mode of analyzing the divide between the two encounters from a refreshing viewpoint, one still innovative in contemporary discussions. Not only does this help Kojève ask the question of an atheist religion, but it also allows him to distinguish the atheism/theism debate from the secular/religious debate with which it is so often confused. The experience of reading the book can be compared to the experience of reading Jean-Luc Nancy's Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity (Eng. tr., 2008): the abstractions require no former knowledge. The book is dense and very rewarding for those who approach it patiently. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Daniel R. Boscaljon, independent scholar

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review