Kojeve, Girard, Nagel: surprising affinities

I was reading the beginning of Kojeve’s Introduction to the Reading of Hegel and was struck by how similar his account of desire was to that found in Girard and in Nagel. Kojeve speaks of how we learn to desire what others desire. This is the beginning of what Girard terms mimetic desire. Kojeve then says when we love others, we desire their desire in return. This is an insight Nagel arrives at quite differently in his essay on sexual perversion (though Nagel does say he is offering a sort of phenomenology of sexual desire, and Kojeve is writing on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and Nagel rhymes with Hegel). Whether there’s much more in it I don’t know, but when several people independently (if it is independent) arrive at a similar conclusion it surely makes it more plausible.