atheism and the concept of religion in the early kojève

This paper analyzes the religious character of kojève’s early concept of atheism. in one of his lesser-known texts, atheism, written in his native russian two years before commencing his famous hegel lectures, kojève deliberates on the possibility of an atheistic religion by attempting to bring atheism and theism under a concept of religion. i argue that in so doing kojève ends up making a bolder assertion that atheism is strictly religious. to make sense of this claim, both his concept of atheism and religion need to be qualified. i proceed as follows. in the first section of the essay, i show that while kojève begins by following durkheim in proposing buddhism as an example of an atheistic religion, he criticizes both durkheim’s concept of atheism and religion as insufficient. he argues that, in durkheim, theism is too narrow a concept and, as its complement, atheism is defined too widely. in the second section, i outline how kojève demonstrates the inadequacy of defining atheism as the “completely other” through a failed attempt to distinguish it from various forms of apophatic theism. in the third section, i show how kojève overcomes this difficulty by rethinking the concept of religion. incorporating a quasi-heideggerian vocabulary, kojève accommodates atheism and theism under a concept of religion by arguing that they both depart from an “irrational gap” (hiatus irrationalis) which divides and links the “human being in the world” in its difference from a source of givenness. only after defining religion as the interpretation of an original “givenness of difference,” does he demarcate a border between theism and atheism as the “givenness” of either “something” (theism) or “nothing” (atheism). in conceptualizing religion in this way, kojève offers a novel perspective on how atheism stands in relation to theism, arguing that neither can be justified on rational grounds. my reading of the early kojève brings to light this novelty, moving against the standard reception, by questioning his status as a post- or a-religious thinker. lastly, in claiming that atheistic philosophy ultimately rests on an irrational foundation, i suggest, in my concluding remarks, that the concept of religion he develops in atheism contains a repudiation of the closed hegelian dialectic.