No More Godmen: Alexandre Kojève, Atheism, and Vladimir Solov΄ev

Abstract

Prior to his influential seminars on G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit in the 1930s, the philosopher Alexandre Kojève was still Aleksandr Kozhevnikov, a recent émigré to Germany who studied the philosophy of Vladimir Solov΄ev in Heidelberg. As a result, Kojève published several articles in French and German on Solov΄ev's philosophy of history and divine Sophia. While he soon developed his own reputation as a celebrated philosopher, posthumously published works such as Atheism (1931) and the forthcoming publication of a manuscript written in 1940 and devoted once more to “Sophia,” suggest that his engagement with Russian religious philosophy was more protracted than previously considered. This article outlines the uniqueness of Kojève's interpretation of Sophia, from his initial interest in Solov΄ev's philosophy, through to his secularization of the concept in Atheism, and ultimately his “return” to Russian philosophy, when he writes a treatise on Sophia in Russian to be sent to Stalin himself.