Fall 2017 JPI

thesis that historical time is imagined.
However, for Anderson, “the possibility of imagining the nation arose historically,” 4 meaning
that in the genealogy of the nation, historical continuity is based on the rupture, independent of
narrative, with a set of historical events. For example, settler colonialism might have imagined its
legitimacy against that of the indigenous peoples, but a material rift in continuity took place as well –
especially in terms land appropriation. In the genealogical method, developed by Nietzsche and later
Foucault, continuity as a barrier of absolute truth is disrupted, in order to debunk essentialist
identities. 5 Despite its tendency to counter historical essentialism, genealogy remains a historicized
concept.
ENDS OF HISTORY
The disruption of imperial centers of power in the 19th century, gave birth to a Europe of
nations that has continued to evolve ever since. Hegel believed that the historical justification of the
nation-state came to being through a replacement of the religious community with an anonymous one,
held together by calendric time invented by print capitalism. In the final chapter of his Phenomenology
of the Spirit, Hegel defines the concept of absolute truth as the full historical consciousness of the
subject, acquired through remembrance 6 .
Hegel's universalism is primarily idealist and mostly focuses on the forging of national freedom;
the historical subject is most of all a dialectical subject and does not subscribe to an anthropological
or moral discourse. The “end of history,” a diachronically debated idea that humanity will attain a
point of original expression in the context of a sustainable global utopia, has a limited application in
Hegel’s thought. For Hegel, such an end is embodied by the state, both as a compound of the nationstate
and as a motor of identity. In retrospect, Hegel's insistence on the state over the nation can be
viewed as a counter to totalitarian notions of ethnically homogenous nations. Although a Europe of
nations was still in the making in Hegel's time, he, as well as Metternich, hinted at a belief in
internationalism or federalism as models of peace. Later writing in the Philosophy of the Right, Hegel
actually saw the future of his ideas as lying in the US, representing the triumph of federalism.
A second interpretation of the “end of history” is that of Alexander Kojeve, whose theories
were mostly developed in the interwar years. The lectures he gave on Hegel in Paris, were attended by
French intellectuals like Jacques Lacan and Maurice Merleau-Ponty and directly influenced others, like
Sartre. His considerable influence on this generation of intellectuals led to a consolidation of his views,
but what is more significant is the effect this consolidation had on yet another generation of French
thinkers, namely, the post-structuralists.
Kojeve interpreted Hegel anthropologically. Whereas in the work of Hegel the historical
subject is an idea that refers to human consciousness, Kojeve placed the historical subject in the human
being, thus presenting Hegel's dialectics as a history of man himself. Consequently, the “end of history”
in Kojeve's thought, is a much more obscurantist and utopian notion that presents itself as the
synthesis that emerged out of political conflict in first-half of 20th century Europe.
Kojeve, who gave up his position as an academic to work for the French state and later helped
4 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 36.
5 Foucault discusses Nietzsche and explains how the genealogical method tackles the “origin” to offer alternative narratives in his lecture Nietzsche, la
généalogie, l’histoire.
6 Hegel, G. W. F., Phénoménologie De L'Esprit (Paris: Flammarion, 2012), 680-690.
JPI Fall 2017, pg. 37