He called himself a "Sunday philosopher," created an epoch-making interpretation of Hegel that influenced the works of Bataille, Breton, Lacan, and Derrida, likely spied for the KGB, and was a co-architect of the European Economic Area: Few thinkers of the 20th century intervened in history as joyfully and diversely as Alexandre Kojève. The fact that even the eighteen-year-old Kojève would have seen another life as pure imposition is evident in his "Diary of a Philosopher," which gathers memories, reflections, and poems of the student who had just embarked on his journey to Western Europe.