Il Tempo dell'Autorità in Alexandre Kojève

The Time of Authority in Alexandre Kojève In the short essay entitled La notion de l’autorité Alexandre Kojève tries to outline the metaphysical dimension of Authority. He identifies the essence of the authoritarian reality with Time. Kojève locates a specific connection between each of the four “pure” types of Authority and each temporal dimension: Present, Past, Future and Eternity. In the light of the analysis of the Kojèvian philosophy of law contained in the Esquisse d’une phénoménologie du droit, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the depletion of every human possibilities of “travail” and “lutte” will generate the eternal dimension of justice. So, this situation culminates in an absolutely legal reality: an universal and homogeneous State that will arise after the so-called “end of History”. In this paper I attempt to show that the Kojèvian theory of Authority has its basis on the metaphysical doctrine of Concept and Time that the french-russian philosopher formulates on his famous interpretation of the Hegelian Phenomenology of Spirit. Here Kojève resumes his metaphysical thesis in this equation: C=T, so Concept is Time. Moreover, I try to clarify how the theory of Authority is tightly linked with the post-historical and legal reality which will realize the final System of law.