Hegel, Kojeve, Marx, and Yoder: An Examination of Christianity and Social Justice
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In the Phenomenology of Spirit G.W. F. Hegel puts forth a number of ideas on man’s relationship with the world. In his chapter on the “Dialectic of Subject,” specifically, Hegel looks at the ability of self-consciousness to relate to the world by putting itself at the center of things. In doing so, Hegel takes the reader through the steps which self-consciousness undergoes in order to relate properly to the world. In my thesis, I utilize an interpretation of this text by Alexandre Kojeve in order to demonstrate that Christians can create the world and thus take a proper place in history as Hegel so desires. In using figures such as John Howard Yoder and other theologians and biblical exegetes, I demonstrate that Christianity is not merely an ethereal concept, as Kojeve seems to think, and that Christians are meant to and do in fact take part in social action in our relation to the world. In doing so, Christians properly work in the world, as Kojeve demands, and thus take part in the process of “completing” history, in proper Hegelian fashion.