Abstract
Departing from the question of 'absence as given' (or the 'non-given' as 'presence' to conscious experience), the work of Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève opened up Western ontology of being ('of which one speaks' [l'être dont on parle]) to the foundational premises of 'Oriental wisdom'. This article identifies two major articulations or moments in Kojevean ontology. The 'inexistent' as a constituent element of the doctrine of the given was first outlined between the early 1920s and early 1930s in his Descartes-Buddha thought experiment and in his close study of Vassily Kandinsky's introduction of sonic effects in 'concrete painting.' In his post-war manuscripts, Kojève resumed and completed the ontological plane of his philosophical system in a comprehensive survey of Western ontologies from the pre-Socratics to Kant, matching the 'temporal' modes of being (eternity, the eternal, the temporal, and time) with their logical articulations as identity, difference, (the Kantian) discourse and absence. The article highlights the implications of this line of thought on three major concerns in Kojève's 'philosophy of the inexistent': theism and atheism, political freedom, and the question of knowledge.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 48-56 |
| Journal | China Media Research |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Publication status | Published - 31 Oct 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Impact: China Media Research is a well established peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of 'eastern' and 'western' philosophies of media and communication. The Journal has a wide readership in China and North America. The article was an invited contribution for a special journal issue on the concept of 'interality' in the philosophy of media and communication. There was a lot of interest from the issue's guest editors in the influence of Chinese and Indian philosophies on Alexandre Kojeve's fascinating intervention in the philosophical tradition of Western ontology. The article contextualises this mostly unknown and very little studied genealogy of ideas, inviting new critical readings of Alexandre Kojeve and his intellectual legacy in contemporary thought. Other contributors to this special issue include Eric McLuhan, Robert L. Ivie, Janell Watson, and Reno Lauro.Keywords
- Communication, cultural and media studies