Before World War II French intellectuals had paid little attention to Hegel. Only offbeat intellectuals like André Breton's surrealists and a circle of young Marxists in the 1920s paid tribute to the German dialectician. Among the reasons suggested by Alexandra Koyré for the lack of interest were the obscurity of Hegel's writing, the strength of Cartesian and Kantian traditions, Hegel's Protestantism, but, above all, the incredulity of the French toward Hegel's “strict identity of logical synthesis and historical becoming.” If this (...) was the situation, how can we account for the precipitous turn to Hegel in the 1940s? In the eyes of many converts to Hegel, the catastrophic defeat of France in 1940 had discredited liberal-bourgeois intellectual and political traditions, leaving France in a conceptual vacuum. (shrink)

The upsurge of interest in Hegel in France in the years immediately following World War II was linked with the question of Marxism, a link which was reinforced by the participation of the Communist Party in De Gaulle's government. Far from being a matter of historical or intellectual curiosity, the problem of Hegel was one of actuality. It was not so much Hegel himself that was at stake as the use to which his work was to be put; whether Hegel (...) was to be seen as leading toward Marxism or as the last line of defense against Marxism. Typical of this problematic is a statement by Alexandre Kojève, written in 1946: “Thus we can say that for the moment, any interpretation of Hegel, if it is more than idle chatter, is but a program of struggle of work (one of these ‘programs’ being called Marxism). (shrink)

Between 1933 and 1939 Alexandre Kojève gave his series of celebrated lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. Importantly, Kojève claimed to be reading Hegel in the wake of a philosopher whom he considered to be, along with Marx, the only important philosopher since Hegel - Martin Heidegger, whose Being and Time had appeared in 1927. Indeed, Kojève went so far as to claim that Hegel’s Phenomenology “would probably never have been understood (...) if Heidegger had not published his book”. (shrink)

La " mesure " est le thème de la troisième et dernière section de la Théorie de l'être dans la Logique de Hegel. Le mot ne dit pas d'abord l'opération de mensuration, mais la règle immanente qui détermine les existences quantitatives. Hegel la présente comme unité concrète de la qualité et de la quantité. C'est cette catégorie qui fonde le champ de la physique mathématique et de la chimie : la théorie de la mesure est ainsi un lieu privilégié de (...) la confrontation de Hegel et des sciences de son temps. Le traducteur et commentateur, tout en suivant le développement immanent du concept, présente et éclaire les références qui permettent au lecteur d'aujourd'hui de mieux comprendre cette confrontation, avec sa grandeur et ses faiblesses. A. D. (shrink)

Par sa maitrise encyclopedique de l'existence, la philosophie hegelienne a tente de reconcilier de maniere concrete et definitive - apres la tourmente revolutionnaire ou s'affronterent le monde ancien et le monde moderne - l'objectivite subs-tantielle et la subjectivite singuliere, l'ordre ethico-religieux et la raison progressiste, le totalitarisme politique et le liberalisme social, la nature reelle en son droit et le droit en sa nature formelle.