Alexandre Kojeve

Kojeve, Alexandre 

(Russian surname: Kozhevnikov). Born 1902, in Moscow; died May 1968, in Paris. French idealist philosopher; representative of neo-Hegelianism.

Kojeve studied in Germany under K. Jaspers. In 1933 he became a professor at the Sorbonne. His lectures during the 1930’s on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind greatly promoted the dissemination of the ideas of G. Hegel in France and the interpretation of these ideas in the spirit of existentialism (particularly Kojeve’s conception of the dialectic as a method belonging exclusively in the sphere of “human existence”). His students included J.-P. Sartre, M. Merleau-Ponty, J. Hippolyte, G. Fessard, and the sociologist R. Aron.

WORKS

Introduction à la lecture de Hegel. Paris, 1947.
“Tyrannie et sagesse.” In L. Strauss, De la Tyrannie, 3rd ed. Paris, 1954.
Essai d’une histoire raisonnée de la philosophie païenne, vol. 1. Paris, 1968.