Authority, History, and Political Theology

For the first time in English, this volume brings together the writings, lectures, and correspondence of Alexandre Kojève (1902–1968) and Gaston Fessard, S.J. (1897–1978), two of the most distinctive voices in twentieth-century French thought.

Kojève is widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophers in France, with his famous Hegel seminars of the 1930s shaping an entire generation of intellectuals, including Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, and Raymond Aron. Among his closest interlocutors was Fessard, a leading Jesuit theologian, whose work, though little known in the Anglophone world, revolutionized the study of Hegel, Marx, and Christianity.

Authority, History and Political Theology presents many rare documents exchanged between Kojève and Fessard over the course of their friendship, spanning from the early 1930s until Kojève’s death in 1968. These texts show how each thinker grappled with pressing questions around historical progress, authority, freedom, revolution, and law. Their debate sheds light not only on the ideological and religious crises of their own time but also on the broader tensions between theology and secular modernity.

Including reviews, lectures, letters, and unpublished essays, alongside an editorial introduction, the volume situates the Kojève–Fessard exchange at the intersection of Hegelian philosophy, theology, and politics. It shows how two readers of Hegel–one an atheist philosopher, the other a Jesuit theologian–challenge how we think about political life, religion, and the meaning of history today. Part of Bloomsbury’s Political Theologies series, this book is essential reading for scholars and students of political theology, modern European philosophy, social theory, intellectual history, and readers interested in the entanglement of politics and religion.

Isabel Jacobs is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Queen Mary University of London. She works at the intersection of continental philosophy, visual culture, and the history of science.
Jacob Saliba is an advanced Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at Boston College and a former doctoral fellow of the American Social Science Research Council. His work focuses on European intellectual history, religion, and continental philosophy.