Abstract

This text is the transcription, by Jamila Mascat and Sabina Tortorella, of an unpublished manuscript written by Alexandre Kojève in 1965, on the occasion of a conference held as part of the Theological Seminar of the Society of Jesus in Chantilly. In it, Kojève proposes a reformulation of some of his theses from the Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, taken up again in the Essai d’une histoire raisonnée de la philosophie païenne: on the one hand, he identifies the fundamental features of philosophical discourse in relation to other forms of human discourse; on the other, he elaborates a dialectical and historical schema of the evolution of philosophy from its origins. The result is an examination of the status of philosophy, its relationship to time and eternity, and its possible overcoming by wisdom.