Koyré and Kojève’s future-priority reading of Hegel ends in admitted impasse

Evidence

Koyré, in his article on ‘Hegel in Jena’, and Kojève, in his Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, recognize that in the ‘Systems’ of the Jena period, the future has a ‘prevalence’ or alternately, a ‘priority’, over the past and the present. Thus both writers show here the proximity between the thought of the young Hegel and that of Heidegger. But the kind of project they represent, as significant as it is, does not give us the means to respond to the question of the future of Hegel. Besides the fact that the problem of an ‘orientation towards the future’ is in no respect a Hegelian problematic, this way of reading Hegel leads, as Koyré and Kojève both admit, to an impasse. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 211