(ending the end of history)

Kojevean pitstop

In the Hegelo-Kojévean system, the very origins of the concept of the ‘End of History’, the world-historical dialectic —and world history itself— curls around the development and the possibility of universal social relations. While the system itself focuses on universality (Science) it denies it any proper substance: from the point of animal Being to a period of Negation —history, which here equals the development of universality— to the return of the animal by “the Negation of Negation”, i.e.: Being —particular and content— at the End of History. It seems that the eternity of Being is only interrupted by a brief period of Human Negation —he says

“The disappearance of Man at the end of History, therefore, is not a cosmic catastrophe: the natural World remains what it has been from all eternity. And therefore, it is not a biological catastrophe either: Man remains alive as animal in harmony with Nature or given Being.”

To Kojeve, Nature is eternal being —but I’ll get back to that later.

To summarize, the system begins from the earliest social relation which is between the Master and the Slave. The Master becomes the Master, by voluntarily risking his life in a “duel to the death” against the Slave, who remains in “animalhood” by not risking his life. He then recognizes the quality (the substance) of the Master’s sacrifice (or willingness of it) and comes under his service to work to complete his project (the projection of the recognized substance into the material world) —however, this interpretation is already somewhat modified by me— for Kojeve, the Master has no substance and produces no substance. Instead of his Desire (which is Negation) being aimed at an Object (which fulfills the hole left by the Negation) like an animal, it is aimed at another Desire (the Negation of the Negation) which for Kojeve is the “recognition coming with prestige” —he says;

“The fight for pure prestige, moreover, is a suicide […] It could also be said that the Master is actually humanly dead in the Fight: he no longer acts, strictly speaking, since he remains idle; therefore he lives as if he were dead; that is why he does not evolve any more in the course of History and is simply annihilated at its end: his existence is a simple "afterlife" (which is limited in time) or a "deferred death." The Slave progressively frees himself through Work which manifests his freedom; but he must finally take up the Fight again and accept the Risk in order to realize this freedom by creating through victory the universal and homogeneous State of which he will be the "recognized" Citizen.”

There are two very important points we have to outline here:

1. The Master’s “transcendence” over nature is illusory —he “no longer acts”, that is, none of his actions have any substance, and they exist outside of History. There’s great parallelism between this and the Marxist notion of the character of the classes in its materialist history: the Master (the bourgeois) engages in idealism and metaphysics —he has some “ethereal project”— he doesn’t “Work”, that is, does not transform (material) form (remember “form” as it will be important later). In fact, he extracts recognition for his illusory being out of Work. He “wastes”.

2. The Slave through a series of Revolutions has to overcome the Master’s illusion —of course, they themselves cannot become or stay Masters, as that would be suicide —” Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children”— the Slave achieves his state of rebellion by receiving Gnosis of the falsity of the illusion (projected by the Master) by the transforming of matter through Work (form). This Gnosis —Knowledge— culminates into Absolute Knowledge (of the illusion and its “non-contents”), ending history.

Of course, there is an apparent and great contradiction that I’ve tried to subtly emphasize: the “illusion”, which supposedly has no substance (metaphysical existence) drives the whole system. This is somewhat acknowledged in the definitions of Absolute Knowledge:

“The opposition between Plato and Hegel, then, is not an opposition within Philosophy. It is an opposition between Philosophy and Theology-that is, in the final analysis, between Wisdom and Religion. […] In the Phenomenology he tries to prove that it is the only one possible. Actually, he does not succeed in doing so. […] And as for Theology, he only succeeds in showing that the Religious man's existence is necessarily an existence in unhappiness. But since he himself says that the Religious man is satisfied by his unhappiness, he cannot refute him either, unless he appeals once more to the extension of self-consciousness. Now, this extension no longer interests the Religious man, once he believes he has attained perfect understanding of God.”

—of course, there are plenty of problems with the extension of religious interpretation here, but the point is, that the Absolute Knowledge attained in this system cannot be proven, that is, you cannot tell the difference between the Knowledge of the illusion (Absolute Knowledge) and the illusion itself (within the system).

However, the problem is not proper proof, but the assumption of metaphysical precession when it comes to substance and the transcendent. Let’s observe this in the Dialectic:

Being —> Negation —> “Negation of Negation” [=Being]
Animal —> Man —> “End of History Man” [=man as animal]
Slave (man in nature as animal) —> Master —> “Citizen” [=re-animalized man]
Woman —> Man —> “Universally-able human” [=Woman]
Object —> Desire —> “Desire negating Desire” [=Object]
Matter —> Spirit —> “Matter (Work) becomes Spirit” [=Matter]
…

This could go on ad infinitum. One’s observant enough could already spot the illusion of change within the dialectic —OR the very development within the dialectic of the illusion. Most potently this problem is displayed in the following paragraph:

“…To remain human, Man must remain a "Subject opposed to the Object," even if "Action negating the given and Error" disappears. This means that, while henceforth speaking in an adequate fashion of everything that is given to him, post-historical Man must continue to detach "form" from "content," doing so no longer in order actively to transform the latter, but so that he may oppose himself as a pure "form" to himself and to others taken as "content" of any son.”

Form —> Content —> “Form equals Content” [=Form]

The metaphysical assumption here is twofold: for one, the assumption that form precedes content (which ends in the contradiction of substance and illusion), and secondly, that an order of precession must be established. This order of precession is metaphysical and thus vertical and qualitative —not merely horizontal like, for example, physical causation— what comes before both opposes and defines what comes after. To go even deeper, the major contradiction of this already appears at the level of perception: to perceive form you must perceive it in opposition to content, and vice versa. But such opposition is not destructive but generative —for they both generate (the possibility of ) perception. There is a mix-up, (and here I must exit from a philosophical vocabulary briefly) between the content of Good vs. Evil (qualitative definition) and the form of Good and Bad (quantitative definition). The Transcendent unifies opposites.

II.

The End of History is the fulfillment of the promise of Absolute Knowledge —we indeed live in this world— the world of the animalized man to whom the knowledge of illusion and reality is a circular, self-consuming state —this being both a technological truth: conflict —i.e.: risking death— is virtualized, —overlayed as a massive illusory interface over the world, —and a cultural reality: nature over civilization, woman over man, bottom-up over top-down, animal over human, (excess) life over death and the mere inversion of all the previously listed —the Dialectic stands victorious. The recognition of Death as something that gives substance has been eradicated.

However, here I want to reveal both a mechanistic and metaphysical reality that underlies all this, which is the “Trialectic” or the emergence of cybernetics. The Trialectic operates on a transcendent and paradoxical vector, Being —> Nothing (or Negation) —> Becoming —Becoming being both the outcome of the previous dialectic, which resolves the contradiction of the “illusion” of change within the dialectical system, but also it feeds back into Being (and thus Negation) and thus it is simultaneously feedback itself. The cybernetic or Trialectic system is generative for it recognizes and mimics the generative nature of opposites (as previously described). It naturally tries to interface the Transcendent which is, by definition, supernatural and Apocalyptic when brought into causal time. Instead of precession, this operates with resolution, for the sides of the opposites, instead of superceding one another, increase in definition.

In form, this manifests itself as synchronicity and synchronization (between opposites, and as a technology between systems, people, and things). What is generative is creative rather than destructive, and creation —the act of becoming more— is driven by purpose. The key is Teleology.

This is where we can surgically pinpoint the crack within the current era of history: the state of the End of History is actually actively reinforced rather than being a “natural” End-point —Nature being the eternal transcendent, and its enslavement through circular gnosis and illusion is actually a “model” continuously being generated. The assault of various branching Eschatological realities, though unconscious for now, is the slow realization of this fact— however, compared to previous revolutionary eras, this “next step” will necessarily take a different form— but to unpack this I’d have to start a new essay.

To end it I’ll leave with this observation: Eschatology is the realization and revelation of Teleology and in almost every case, the culmination of the relationship between Man and Technology