It’s not hard to understand why. Though in many ways an academic cult figure, Kojève could lay legitimate claim to the mantle of most influential philosopher of the 20th century. He set the program for much French thought after World War I, including the reading of Hegel, the attempted synthesis of Heidegger and Marx, and a surprising range of social theory, especially of psychoanalytic and postcolonial varieties. Such a legacy would already rank him high in the list of modern thinkers, and yet this only accounts for some of Kojève’s influence. As a civil servant in the postwar French government, he also had a pivotal role in the development of the European Economic Community, the precursor to the European Union.

In 1989, political scientist Francis Fukuyama published an essay in the National Interest arguing that the collapse of the Soviet Union and growing U.S. influence in China might signal the final form of human government—namely, the combination of Western liberal democracy and state capitalism. He called this “the end of history,” a term that has since become a byword for the neoliberal era that may now be nearing its end. But Fukuyama did not coin the term. He got it, via his mentor Allan Bloom, from the Russian French philosopher Alexandre Kojève. Indeed, much of Fukuyama’s essay, as well as the book that followed, was devoted to interpreting Kojève’s thought and life.

In 1989, political scientist Francis Fukuyama published an essay in the National Interest arguing that the collapse of the Soviet Union and growing U.S. influence in China might signal the final form of human government—namely, the combination of Western liberal democracy and state capitalism. He called this “the end of history,” a term that has since become a byword for the neoliberal era that may now be nearing its end. But Fukuyama did not coin the term. He got it, via his mentor Allan Bloom, from the Russian French philosopher Alexandre Kojève.