Preface to the Work of Georges Bataille1

Hegelian Science, which recollects and integrates the history of philosophical

and theological discourse could be recapitulated as follows:
From Thales to our days, while reaching for the extreme limits of thought,
philosophers have debated the question of knowledge, whether such thought should
stop at Three or at Two, or reaches the One, or, at least tends toward the One, by
evolution, in fact, in the Dyad.
The response which is given by Hegel comes down to this:
Man, one day, certainly attains the One, the day when he ceases to exist, that
is to say, the day when Being is no longer revealed by Speech, where God, deprived
of Logos, will once again become the opaque and mute sphere of the radical
paganism of Parmenides.
But so long as man lives as a being speaking of Being, he can never exceed
the irreducible Trinity that he, himself, is, and which is Spirit.
As far as Two, it is the cunning Spirit of the perpetual temptation of the
discursive renunciation of Knowledge, that is to say, of discourse which, by necessity
closes upon itself in order to maintain itself in truth.
How could one respond here? That Hegelianism and Christianity are, at their
foundation, two irreducible forms of faith, of which one is Pauline faith in the
resurrection, and the other, the matter-of-fact faith that one calls good sense?
That Hegelianism is a “Gnostic” heresy, which, in Trinitarian terms,
improperly attributes primacy to the Holy Spirit?
Whatever may be the case, the pages that will follow are situated beyond
circular Hegelian discourse.
It remains to be seen if they contain a discourse (which would, in this case,
have the value of refutation) or if, there, one finds contemplative Silence in a verbal
form. Now, if there is only one possible way to say the Truth, there are innumerable
ways it remains concealed (in silence).

Alexandre Kojève
12-5-1950

1 Translation, by Rowan G. Tepper,, of Alexandre Kojève, Préface à l'œuvre de Georges Bataille, in

Georges Bataille, Œuvres Complètes tome VI, pg. 363. (1/25/2008)