The Concept, Time, and Discourse,New

Alexandre Kojve (19021968) is most widely known in America for his provocative assertion that history is at its end, that is, its completion. In the practical sense, this means that the process of historical development can at last be seen (if from a distance) as the realization of the Marxist universal and homogeneous state. However, Kojve claimed as well that the history of philosophical thinking had also reached its goal in the transformation of philosophy, as the love of wisdom (or the unsatisfied quest for comprehensive knowledge), into that very Wisdom itself and had done so in the most essential respects in the philosophy of Hegel.The Concept, Time, and Discourse is the first volume of Kojves magnum opus, which was to have given an exposition of the (Hegelian) System of Knowledge and of which five volumes were written before his death. It contains, along with a preliminary discussion of the need for an updating of the Hegelian system, the first two of three introductions to the exposition of that system: a First Introduction of the Concept (the integrated totality of what is comprehensible, which is the final object of philosophic inquiry) and a Second Introduction concerning Time, both introductions leading to the (Hegelian) identification of the Concept with Time, an identification which alone takes adequate account of the fact that Philosophy is necessarily discursive (that it must actualize the requirements and essential structure of Discourse).The present volume offers Kojves fullest statement of his Ontology. It includes a critical discussion of the traditional oppositions of the general to the particular and of the abstract to the concrete and an analysis of the act of generalizing abstraction, which detaches Essence from the Existence of Things. Kojve then discusses the three great figures in the threestage development of philosophy into wisdom: Parmenides, Plato, and Hegel. Parmenides monadic account of Being (= Eternity) rendered it ineffable, thereby reducing philosophy to (nonphilosophic) silence; Platos dyadic account of Being (as eternal) was intended to make Being a possible subject of discourse but failed to reflect adequately the triadic (and temporally developing) structure which Plato himself discerned in Discourse. Finally, Hegels triadic account of Being as itself dialectical achieved the final identification of the Concept with Time.This is a firsttime, meticulous translation of Kojves late, unfinished magnum opus, the updating of the Hegelian System of Knowledge, meaning its modification so as to make it comprehensible to the author himself and to his contemporaries. It is, however, much more than an exposition of its central terms, The Concept and Time and their identity. It is an acute, original review of the major themes of the Wests philosophical tradition; it is, in fact, a philosophical education in itself. Robert Williamson has done this tradition a great service by making Kojves work accessible to Americans. Eva Brann, Dean Emerita and Senior Faculty, St. Johns College, Annapolis, MarylandWe now recognize Alexandre Kojve as one of the central figures of 20th century European philosophy. A translation of his The Concept, Time, and Discourse will enable English speaking readers to have a fuller understanding of his remarkably ambitious intellectual project. Michael S. Roth, President, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.Robert B. Williamson is Tutor Emeritus at St. Johns College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he continues to teach. He is coauthor, with Alfred Mollin, of An Introduction to Ancient Greek (University Press of America) and the author of articles on Platos philosophy and Einsteins early work on relativity theory.James H. Nichols, Jr. is Professor of Government and Dr. Jules L. Whitehill Professor of Humanism and Ethics at Claremont McKenna College, where he teaches political philosophy. Among his publications are Epic