Jean Wahl

Life and work

Former student of the National university (promotion 1907), boarder of the Thiers Foundation before the War of 1914. It began its career as a disciple of Henri Bergson. Pioneer in the field of the American studies, it publishes in 1920 his thesis on pluralist philosophies of England and America, in which it analyzes in detail the pluralism of William James, in a reflection which will be prolonged, by a reflection on the idea of unit this time, in its study of Parménide of Plato. He introduced a new reading of the thought hégélienne in France, starting from the reason for the " conscience malheureuse" , in the years 1930, before even the famous conferences of Alexandre Kojève. He was also a large defender of the thought of Kierkegaard. These engagements, which are expressed in its two books the misfortune of the conscience in the philosophy of Hegel (1929) and the Études kierkegaardiennes (1938) were very discussed, in the climate of the dominant thought of the time. It influenced a certain number of important thinkers, such Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Paul Sartre; he was the friend in particular of Vladimir Jankélévitch. He is traditionally recognized as being a philosopher of the nonsystematic thought, and supporting the innovation and the concrete one. He also has a poetic work (he published in the review Fontaine of Max-pol. Fouchet during the war) and published articles on Pierre Jean Jouve of which he was the friend.

At the time of its exile to the the United States, during the second War, Wahl founded the Private school of the High Studies to New York, with the assistance of Gustave Cohen and of the Fondation Rockefeller. Later, at the university of Mount Hoyoke where it had a station, it also set up the Décades of Mount Holyoke , known under the name of Pontigny-in-America , of the meetings on the model of those organized by Paul Desjardins between 1910 and 1939 on the site of the abbey cistercian of Pontigny in Burgundy. These profitable meetings gathered many French intellectuals in exile and of the Americans such as Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens and Roger Session. Besides Wahl translated many poems of Stevens into French.

In 1946 it founds the philosophical Collège and directs the Revue of metaphysics and morals as from 1950. He will be president of the French company of philosophy with died of Gaston Berger.

Works

pluralist philosophies of England and America , 1920; rééd. preface of Thibaud Trochu, the Hinderers to think in round, 2005.
Of the role of the idea of moment in the philosophy of Descartes , 1920; republication with a foreword of Frederic Worms, Descartes&co, 1994.
the misfortune of the conscience in the philosophy of Hegel , 1929.
Study on the Parménide of Plato , Paris, Rieder, 1930.
Towards concrete the , Vrin, 1932; rééd. with a foreword of Mathias Girel, Vrin, 2004.
Studies kierkegaardiennes , 1938.
Platonic problems: the the Republic, Euthydème, Cratyl E , Paris, CDU, 3 fasc., 1938-1939.
human Existence and transcendence , Neufchâtel, Baconnière, 1944.
Table of French philosophy , Gallimard, 1946.
Little story of the existentialism , Paris, the Arch, 1947.
Poetry, thought, perception , Paris, Calman-Levy, 1948.
Jules Lequier , Baconnière, 1948.
the thought of the existence, 1952.
Treated of Metaphysics , 1953.
the philosophy of the existence, 1954.
Towards the end of ontology , 1956.
the Metaphysical Experiment , 1964.
Course on the enlightened atheism of Dom Deschamps , 1967.

Literature secondare

Special issue of in' review Today , 1994, to see in particular article of Frederic Worms, p. 94-128.

See too

Metaphysical
History of metaphysics

External bonds

Day of studies of the cycle passurs on '' Jean Wahl, the multiple '' organized by Giuseppe Bianco and Frederic Worms with the CIEPFC of the ENS

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