Alexandre Kojève

Alexandre Vladimirovich Kojevnikov

1902 (St. Petersburg) – 1968 (Brussels)

Kandinsky was his uncle and close friend. Jaspers supervised his PhD, though Kojève spent more time studying Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese. Koyré, an early influence, became his university colleague in France (after Kojève lost his fortune investing badly). His famous weekly Hegel seminars were attended by Breton, Bataille, Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, Klossowski, Queneau, Aron, Caillois, and briefly Arendt: Queneau and Bataille becoming close friends strongly influenced by his ideas, Bataille regularly going to eat and drink with him following the seminar. Lévinas and he loved discussing Dostoyevsky together.