La narrazione del padre. Considerazioni su Alexandre Kojève, l’autorità, la tradizione

Alexandre Kojève (1902-1968), a Russian philosopher writing in French, investigates the types of authoritative phenomena in a posthumous treatise called The Notion of Authority (1942). Among the four typologies – the Master, the Leader, the Judge, the Father – the latter is the one having a relationship with the past and the tradition. According to Kojève, although the father autority has no personal quality, no specific character, it is a defining type in any political regime, because it masters the storytelling of tradition. This contribution aims to clarify some features of the apparently only functional paternal authority in Kojève in the context of his thought. Particular attention is devoted to its tie with the wise man at the height of absolute knowledge and its male features