Is there a purely algebraic or categorical way to introduce the Chevalley-Eilenberg complex in the definition of Lie algebra cohomology?
In group cohomology, for example, the bar resolution of a group is equal to the chain complex associated to the nerve of the group when considered as a category; I wonder if something like this is also possible for the Chevalley-Eilenberg complex?
I know that the Chevalley-Eilenberg complex arises as the subcomplex of left-invariant differential forms on a Lie group, but apart from this geometric origin, its definition doesn't seem very natural to me, so it would be nice to have some algebraic or categorical construction as well.
Best Answer
Lie algebras are algebras over an operad, usually denoted $\mathscr{L}\mathit{ie}$. This is a quadratic operad, which happens to be Koszul. It therefore comes with a prefered cohomology theory (there is an analogue of Hochschild cohomology of algebras over a Koszul operad) which is defined in terms of a certain canonical complex —unsurprisingl called the Koszul complex. If you work out the details in this general construction, you obtain the Chevalley-Eilenberg resolution.
Alternatively, if $\mathfrak{g}$ is a Lie algebra, we can view $U(\mathfrak g)$, its enveloping algebra, as a PBW deformation of the symmetric algebra $S(\mathfrak g)$. The latter is just a polynomial ring, so we have a nice resolution for it, the Koszul complex, and there is a more or less canonical way of deforming that resolution so that it becomes a resolution for the PBW deformation. Again, working out the details rapidly shows that the deformed complex is the Chevalley-Eilenberg complex.
Finally (I haven't really checked this, but it should be true :) ) if you look at $U(\mathfrak g)$ as presented by picking a basis $B=\{X_i\}$ for $\mathbb g$ and dividing the free algebra it generates by the ideal generated by the relations $X_iX_j-X_jX_i-[X_i,X_j]$, as usual, you can construct the so called Annick resolution. Picking a sensible order for monomials in the free algebra (so that standard monomials are precisely the elements of the PBW basis of $U(\mathfrak g)$ constructed from some total ordering of $B$), this is the Chevalley-Eilenberg complex again.
These three procedures (which are of course closely interrelated!) construct the resolution you want as a special case of a general procedure. History, of course, goes in the other direction.