The Premodernity of Modernity. Kojève’s Reading of Bayle

Abstract

In this article I reconstruct Alexandre Kojève’s interpretation of Pierre Bayle based on his various writings on this subject, most of which are still unpublished. In the introduction I briefly present the history and current editorial situation of each of them. In the first section I analyze some of Kojève’s manuscripts to give an initial account of his position on Bayle’s concept of tolerance. In the second section I outline Kojève’s epistemological argumentation in his book on Bayle. In the third section I rely on Kojève’s notes for his 1936-1937 lectures on Bayle to argue that his position actually differs from both Bayle’s skepticism and political liberalism. Rather, for Kojève, Bayle’s philosophical impasse results from his transitional position in the movement toward a “modern” worldview first consistently produced by Hegel and Marx, implying the idea of a purely historical human truth realized in – and imposed by – the “post-revolutionary” state.