Hegel as an atheist and intuitivist in the interpretations of Alexandre Kozhève and Nikolay Lossky

Abstract

The Russian exiled philosophers Alexander Kozhevnikov (Alexandre Kozhève) and Nikolay Lossky, who had to leave Russia in the 1920s, gave paradoxical interpretations of Hegel’s work: Kozhève treated Hegel as an atheist whereas Lossky interpreted him as an intuitivist. Both philosophers have influenced the development of Western European philosophy and contemporary understanding of Hegel’s texts. The history of Russian philosophy would be poorer if we forget that Kozhevnikov acquired recognition as a French philosopher Kozhève only at a mature age. A strong influence on Kozhève’s treatment of Christianity was exerted by Vladimir Soloviev’s philosophy, to which he devoted his first dissertation under the guidance of Karl Jaspers. His attention to the Christian understanding of love as an endless power over the finite manifestations of spirit, which was expounded upon/revealed in his course of lectures on Hegel, enjoyed great popularity in France and influenced the formation of eminent philosophers. Hegel’s atheism in Kozhève’s interpretation is not a denial of religion, since religion and philosophy have common interests applied to eternal themes; they differ only in methods of the cognition of the Absolute. The logic of the anthropological interpretation of Hegel led Kozhève to the rationalization of religion by elevating philosophy over it. Hegel’s atheistic anthropology turned his study into a summary of religious evolution, with theology eventually ousted by anthropology. Nikolay Lossky, who had written a book on intuitivism before the revolution, in his creative work abroad extended his notion of intuitivism by calling Hegel an extreme intuitivist. He based this conclusion on Hegel’s upholding of the principle of the identity of thinking and being, that is following the logic of an object in cognition. The possibility to eliminate the contradiction between knowledge and being, about which Hegel wrote, is interpreted by Lossky as intuitivism and even empiricism.