Skip to Main Content

Transcendence and the Concrete: Selected Writings

Online ISBN:
9780823273065
Print ISBN:
9780823273010
Publisher:
Fordham University Press
Book

Transcendence and the Concrete: Selected Writings

Jean Wahl,
Jean Wahl
University of Paris
Find on
Alan D. Schrift (ed.),
Alan D. Schrift
(ed.)
Find on
Ian Alexander Moore (ed.)
Ian Alexander Moore
(ed.)
Find on
Published online:
18 May 2017
Published in print:
1 November 2016
Online ISBN:
9780823273065
Print ISBN:
9780823273010
Publisher:
Fordham University Press

Abstract

Jean Wahl’s influence on French philosophical thought can hardly be overestimated. About him, Emmanuel Levinas wrote that “during over a half century of teaching and research, [Jean Wahl] was the life force of the academic, extra-academic, and even, to a degree anti-academic philosophy necessary to a great culture.” And Gilles Deleuze, for his part, commented that “Apart from Sartre, who remained caught none the less in the trap of the verb to be, the most important philosopher in France was Jean Wahl.” As professor at the Sorbonne for over three decades, president of the Société Française de Philosophie (1960–74), editor of the Revue de métaphysique et de morale(1950–74), and founder and director of the Collège Philosophique, Wahl was in dialogue with some of the most prominent and well-known French philosophers and intellectuals of the twentieth century, including Bataille, Bergson, Beauvoir, Butor, Deleuze, Derrida, Lévi-Strauss, Marcel, Lacan, Levinas, Maritain, Sartre, and Weil, impacting several of them greatly. Wahl also played a significant role, in some cases almost singlehandedly, in introducing French philosophy to movements like phenomenology, existentialism, American pragmatism and literature, and British empiricism. And Wahl was an original philosopher and poet in his own right. The goal of this volume of selections from Jean Wahl’s philosophical writings is to reintroduce Wahl to the English-speaking philosophical community, and to show the enormous influence he had through introducing the work of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Jaspers to several generations of French philosophers.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close