The Influence of Hegelianism on the French Philosophy of the 20th Century: The Theories by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite

The article attempts to reconstruct the influence of Hegelianism on the French intellectual milieu of the 1930s–60s represented by its leading figures. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that French philosophy is often associated with the idea of overcoming Hegel, without taking into account his influence, including on anti-Hegelians. To address this issue, the author turns to the theories by Alexandre Kojève and Jean Hyppolite, as well as their role in the formation of four famous philosophers. The first part of the article examines Kojève’s anthropological interpretation of Hegel and its influence on Georges Bataille and Jacques Lacan. It demonstrates that each of them developed his own anthropology starting from the themes that were in the focus of their teacher: negation, desire, and the struggle for recognition. They build their discourse around the analysis of the phenomenon of scarcity and the power of negativity in human existence. At the same time, they intend to move beyond Hegel and Kojève, discarding the idea of the end of history. Georges Bataille does this by appealing to the data of ethnology, and Jacques Lacan by developing his own concept of psychoanalysis. The second part of the article deals with the ontological interpretation of Hegel developed by Jean Hyppolite, which influenced Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault. In his commentaries on Hegel, Hyppolite criticized Kojève’s subjectivism and shifted the focus from the individual to the history of the concept and language. His followers also try to overcome anthropology and humanism within the framework of their own philosophical projects – Marxism in the case of Louis Althusser and Foucault’s theory of power-knowledge. Both thinkers started from the idea of a process without a subject and the critique of essentialism developed by their teacher. Along with this, they also use his concepts to turn them against Hegel’s determinism and teleologism. The author of the article draws attention to the fact that it was Hegelianism that anticipated some of the provisions of structuralism. It is concluded that Hegelianism was a prevailing condition for the emergence of the idea of overcoming Hegel in France. 

Keywords: Hegel, French Hegelianism, Alexandre Kojève, Jean Hyppolite, anthropology, negativity, desire, end of history