La fame e il desiderio. Il clima filosofico francese 1930-1940

Paris, the 1930s: these are the heroic years of philosophy. Ferment and fluidity, the introduction of German schools of thought (phenomenology, the nascent existentialism), the revaluation of idealism. In this context, a young Russian, Alexandre Kojève, with his seminar on Hegel creates the basis so that, from a genealogical point of view, that era becomes the foundation of the French thought from then on. Questioning the genesis of that seminar, cloaked in fabulous anecdotes and more or less bizarre stories, also means facing its effects – since it will pass from a founding myth to an operating mythology, or rather a “mythological machine” that will mark the following philosophical season. Concepts such as recognition, desire, negativity, sovereignty, violence, domination, servitude, tyranny, wisdom: concepts that owe a lot to that seminar and with which, since then, the philosophical journal of an era has been written.