“Filoni’s full command and understanding of the life and work of Alexandre Kojève make this both an informative and enjoyable read. It is a tour de force. Broder’s translation succeeds in not only bringing the biography of this important figure to English language readers but also in extending what has been known about Kojève’s life and work.” —Ethan Kleinberg, Wesleyan University
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“As Kojève would have wished, [Filoni] tells a captivating story.” —London Review of Books

“[In] The Life and Thought of Alexandre Kojève, inner and outer perspectives intertwine. . . Kojève comes to life as a gifted theatrical personality, a man for whom ideas, systems, the temptations of teleology and the pragmatics of politics are all performances - or even games.” —Times Literary Supplement 

“In Filoni’s The Life and Thought of Alexandre Kojève, the question of the relationship between Kojève’s philosophy and his politics is cast into fascinating relief by a detailed account of his extraordinary life . . . It's a dizzying irony of modern intellectual history that comes through clearly by the end of Filoni’s biography: No matter where one turns, there Kojève will be, just out of reach.” —Foreign Policy 

“Filoni’s biography has long been the gold standard . . . And it will remain the most important biography of Kojève available to English readers for years to come. David Broder’s translation brilliantly captures the clear, yet often cheeky and affectionate tone of the Italian original. Filoni’s wit matches that of his subject, following Kojève’s bonmot that human life is a comedy played seriously. Filoni emphasizes the essential point: reading Kojève is fun, and we may understand him best if we don’t take every word literally.” —Cleveland Review of Books

“Filoni presents Kojève not so much as an ‘éminence grise of international trade policy’, but as a man of action whose entry into an administrative career followed from a determinate intellectual choice. The latter—to leave the republic of writers—is understood against the backdrop of the particular kind of thinker Kojève was: driven by a hunger for holistic reflection on reality . . . Filoni’s book is a narrative of Kojève’s efforts to satisfy [that] ‘hunger.'” —Contemporary Political Theory

“The Life and Thought of Alexandre Kojève marshals a wealth of detail about both Kojève himself and his broader intellectual setting, and will doubtless be a touchstone of future scholarship on Kojève’s place in history as both a thinker and a political actor.” —Modern Intellectual History

“For decades, Alexandre Kojève—the Russian-born philosopher of mastery and recognition, the French diplomat, the spy, prophet, and photographer of the end of history—has entranced and mystified intellectuals of the Left and the Right. In this towering biography, Marco Filoni sets the discussion of Kojève on entirely new ground, making radiant sense of his complex life, thought, and influence.” —Stefanos Geroulanos, New York University
 

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