Alexandre Kojève

In this name that follows East Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Vladimirovich and the family name is Kozhevnikov.

Alexandre Kojève
Born	Aleksandr Vladimirovich Kozhevnikov (1902-04-28)28 April 1902 Moscow, Russia
Died	4 June 1968(1968-06-04) (aged 66) Brussels, Belgium
Spouse	Cécile Léonidovna Shoutak ​ ​ (m. 1927; div. 1929)​
Education
Alma mater	University of Berlin University of Heidelberg
Doctoral advisor	Karl Jaspers
Philosophical work
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy Neo-Hegelianism Existential phenomenology Marxism
Institutions	École pratique des hautes études
Notable students	Allan Bloom
Main interests	Philosophy of history, master–slave dialectic, political philosophy
Notable ideas	Subjects of desire

Alexandre Kojève (born Aleksandr Vladimirovich Kozhevnikov; 28 April 1902 – 4 June 1968) was a Russian-born French philosopher and international civil servant whose philosophical seminars influenced 20th-century French philosophy, particularly via his integration of Hegelian concepts into twentieth-century continental philosophy.

Life

Kojève in Berlin, 1922

Aleksandr Vladimirovich Kozhevnikov was born in the Russian Empire to a wealthy and influential family. His uncle was the abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky, about whose work he would write an influential essay in 1936.

Kojève moved to Germany in 1920. He was educated at the University of Berlin and the University of Heidelberg. At Heidelberg, he completed his PhD thesis on the Russian religious philosopher Vladimir Soloviev's views on the union of God and man in Christ, under the direction of Karl Jaspers in 1926. The title of his thesis was Die religiöse Philosophie Wladimir Solowjews (The Religious Philosophy of Vladimir Soloviev).

Early influences included the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the historian of science Alexandre Koyré. Kojève spent most of his life in France and from 1933 to 1939 delivered a series of lectures in Paris on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's work Phenomenology of Spirit. After World War II, Kojève worked in the French Ministry of Economic Affairs as one of the chief planners to form the European Economic Community (now the European Union).

Kojève studied and used Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Latin and Classical Greek. He was also fluent in French, German, Russian and English.

Kojève died in 1968, shortly after giving a talk to civil servants and state representatives for the European Economic Community in Brussels on behalf of the French government.

Philosophy