Alexander Nehamas was born in 1946 in Athens. In 1964, he relocated to the United States to study economics, even though his dream was to study business. Three years later, however, he was fatally attracted to philosophy by the help of his professor Gregory Vlastos and decided to devote himself to philosophical studies as a teacher and author.

The awarded Professor of the Humanities, of Philosophy and of Comparative Literature at Princeton University says that the purpose of his teaching is to make students uneasy about life and their world. The issue of his origins is complicated, because he is the son of a Christian Orthodox mother and a Jewish father of Spanish nationality, who was baptized Catholic before the war.

In past interviews, Alexander Nehamas has disclosed that even though he had taken his father’s Spanish nationality, he became a US naturalized citizen after living for decades in the country, only to gain the right to vote for Obama. However, he emphasizes that, “My homeland is Greece”.