Atheism without Freedom

The Problem of Heteronomy of the Ego in the Philosophy of Alexander Kojève

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of heteronomy of the subject of self-consciousness within the philosophical project of Alexandre Kojève, a French neo-Hegelian philosopher. Kojève's atheistic philosophy aims to restore human dignity as a free being in the absence of an out-of-world immortal god, such as in Christian understanding. To achieve this, Kojève employs a “phenomenology of Hegel-Heidegger”, which he either discovered or constructed. This phenomenology helped him uncover that human self-consciousness originates from desire rather than reason, contrary to classical philosophy's belief. Kojève also utilizes this phenomenology to argue for the essential finitude (mortality) of human beings. The article demonstrates Kojève's non-essentialist derivation of human self-consciousness from a non-natural desire for recognition. His arguments primarily challenge Descartes and aim to establish the autonomy of self-awareness. According to Kojève, this autonomy aligns with the atheist intuition of the non-existence of both monotheistic and philosophical Gods. Conversely, Kojève argues that the opposing atheistic theistic thesis renders self-consciousness heteronomous, implying that it is not humans who think and act, but the infinite God, Thus, humans are completely devoid of agency as a subject. Our article reconstructs and analyses Kojève's arguments from his various texts. It reveals that Kojève only proves human freedom in a narrow sense of the term. The critique of the theistic position does not necessarily establish the ego's autonomy as Kojève anticipated. Additionally, based on Kojève's own conditions, we conclude that the counterintuitive God of atheism is not the sole condition for the heteronomy of the ego, thereby aligning Kojève with the “masters of suspicion”.