Heidegger and French Philosophy

Humanism, Antihumanism and Being

Tom Rockmore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134832828
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Martin Heidegger's impact on contemporary thought is important and controversial. However in France, the influence of this German philosopher is such that contemporary French thought cannot be properly understood without reference to Heidegger and his extraordinary influence. Tom Rockmore examines the reception of Heidegger's thought in France. He argues that in the period after the Second World War, due to the peculiar nature of the humanist French Philosophical tradition, Heidegger became the master thinker of French philosophy. Perhaps most importantly, he contends that this reception - first as philosophical anthropology and later as postmetaphysical humanism - is systematically mistaken.

1

HEIDEGGER AS A “FRENCH” PHILOSOPHER

This chapter will have a somewhat sociological flavor due to the need to sketch in some of the contextual background of the French reception of Heidegger. This essay contends that since the end of the Second World War Heidegger has assumed a dominant role in French philosophy. If one overlooks Heidegger’s impact on the contemporary French philosophical discussion, one cannot hope to understand its main problems and main approaches to them. There is a measure of truth to Heidegger’s boast that when the French begin to think, they think in German.¹

It is difficult to measure something as nebulous as influence. Even the term is difficult to analyze precisely. Yet in an informal, subjective sense, it is clear that as measured by a variety of criteria — including the sheer size of the discussion concerning his thought, the number of philosophers interested in his position, his impact on the subsequent debate — as we approach the end of this century, Heidegger has attained exceptional status as one of the several most influential philosophers of this period. This is nowhere more clearly the case than in France, where over the last half-century his ideas have left their mark on a wide range of leading philosophers (Lévinas, Derrida, Lyotard, Henry), on philosophers specifically committed to detailed historical studies of such figures as Aristotle (Pierre Aubenque, Rémi Brague), Suarez (Jean-François Courtine), Descartes (Jean-Luc Marion), Schelling (Courtine, Miklos Vetö), Hegel (Kojève, Jean Hyppolite, Dominique Janicaud), as well as on social theorists (Foucault), feminists (Luce Irigaray), psychoanalysts (Lacan), and others.

The relation between Heidegger’s theory and French philosophy is not bidirectionaLor marked by mutual appreciation, but starkly unilateral. Although Heidegger appreciated some French poets, such as René Char, and philosophers devoted to him and to his thought, such as Jean Beaufret, he was unimpressed by, in fact overtly hostile to, French philosophy. With the exception of his severely negative reaction to Descartes’s theory, there is no corresponding French philosophical influence in Heidegger’s thought. To the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence that Heidegger was ever influenced in his philosophical thinking, other than in a negative sense, in whole or in part, by French philosophy. In at least one text he makes overtures toward France and French thinkers, but in general he takes a consistently negative attitude towards French thought.² This negative attitude is illustrated by his consistently critical³ attitude, early and late, toward Descartes’s theory-and his later rejection of Sartre’s position.⁴ Yet, for reasons to be specified below, Heidegger’s negative reactions toward the theories of Descartes and above all of Sartre did not hinder but rather helped bring about the French philosophical turn toward Heidegger.

Heidegger’s thought, like that of other important thinkers, is susceptible of different interpretations. It is a matter of record that Heidegger’s position receives different treatments in different languages and literatures. In practice, the link between Heidegger’s and Husserl’s theories is more frequently taken into account in Europe than in America, where students of either tend to have a low opinion and even less knowledge of the other philosopher’s theory. In Germany, it is standard practice to understand Heidegger’s theory through examination of its relation to Husserl’s.⁵ In France, where the currently influential Derridean approach to Heidegger’s theory is only one of the variants, there is a pronounced tendency to approach Heidegger’s thought through its relation to Husserlian phenomenology. In the United States, Heidegger is often understood through the eyes of French postmodernism, with particular attention to the views of Derrida and such associates as Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Françoise Dastur as well as through the influence of writers located in America, influenced by the French reception of Heidegger, such as Gayatri Spivak, Jacques Taminiaux, Reiner Schürmann, John Sallis, David Krell, and others.

Heidegger’s influence on French thought has become more important over time. Although Kant’s position quickly exerted great influence in the German philosophical debate in the wake of the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason,some philosophers, such as Johann Georg Hamann, Johann Gottfried von Herder, and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi were either unconcerned with or even hostile to Kant’s critical philosophy. In the contemporary French philosophical debate, there are exceptions, thinkers who display no interest for, and whose own writings are untouched by, Heidegger’s thought. Yet it is fair to say that since the end of the Second World War, Heidegger’s influence has steadily increased to the point where it can be said to form the horizon of contemporary French philosophy, the perspective within which French philosophers now tend to think and write.

Even if we acknowledge the importance of his theory, Heidegger’s enormous influence on the French philosophical discussion is surprising. Certainly, the views of such other German-language philosophers as Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein, which have long been highly influential in English-language philosophy, have so far failed to attract anything like Heidegger’s audience in French philosophy.

The impressive impact of Heidegger’s theory in France is surprising since there are some fairly obvious factors that in principle ought to count against any large-scale French interest in Heidegger’s thought. We have already noted Heidegger’s known antipathy toward French philosophy. Then there is a stylistic barrier. In principle French philosophy still respects the well known Cartesian concern with clarity and distinctness. Heidegger is an obscure German philosopher who formulates his ideas in language that at best is not quite standard German and presents formidable difficulties.

Further, even when we take into account the ongoing rapprochement within the framework of the Common Market, there are obvious historical grounds for continuing friction, even animosity, between the Germans and the French, whose deep political differences, apparent in two world wars in this, testify to the uneasy coexistence of these geographical neighbors. In an assessment of the French turning to Heidegger, it should not be overlooked that in the Second World War France was defeated and occupied by the same Nazi Germany with which Heidegger clearly and unambiguously identified.

To understand the French reception of Heidegger’s thought requires a characterization of “French” philosophy as well as of its context or background. To avoid misunderstanding, let me clearly state that it is not my intention to provide a description of French philosophy here, even in outline. My characterization of French philosophy will be limited merely to identifying some aspects important for understanding its attraction to Heidegger’s theory.

“FRENCH PHILOSOPHY”?

French philosophy, starting with the understanding of the term “philosophy,” is no better or worse than, but certainly different from, philosophy as practiced elsewhere, say in Germany or the United States. The ambiguous term “French philosophy” may be taken to mean “philosophy in France,” or “philosophy written in French,” or even “philosophy that conveys a specifically French point of view.” The French Heidegger discussion includes not only philosophers working in France but others as well who have contributed to the French-language debate. By “French philosophy” I shall mean philosophy published in France by French writers as well as non-French writers writing in French and an occasional contributor to the French discussion of Heidegger from outside France, such as Alphonse De Waelhens, Marc Richir or Jean Grondin. This means that I will have little or nothing to say about French-language philosophy in other countries, including Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, French-speaking parts of Africa, and so on.

The word “philosophy” has different meanings in different philosophical tendencies and national traditions. On seeing the term philosophie a French reader is reminded of “philosophy” in the English or German senses of the term. The French reader is reminded as well of the last year in the lycée — often referred to as philosophie — devoted to acquiring a general grounding in Western philosophy, with particular attention to Descartes and other French thinkers. A further meaning, familiar to any speaker of French, is the frequent injunction to take things philosophically or, more precisely, stoically.

The French term philosophe makes no distinction between technical philosophy and the nontechnical musings of the French equivalent of, say, a Francis Bacon. In France, a philosopher is not only someone concerned with ultimate questions like Plato or Aristotle, Kant or Hegel, Descartes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but even someone like Victor Riqueti, the Marquis de Mirabeau, or the Baron Paul-Henri d'Holbach, writers who in the French cultural context count as philosophers. As a matter of policy, the set program featured by the agrégation — that nationwide competitive examination that still remains the main hurdle to be negotiated to become a college teacher — excludes the writings of all living philosophers. But among nonliving philosophers, the program is quite likely to include texts by François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Denis Diderot, or even Blaise Pascal, writers who are not philosophers in the English-language sense of the term. It is, then, not surprising that the Logique de Port Royal features a strong emphasis on Pascal as a philosopher.⁶

A further point is the intrinsically scientific status accorded to philosophy in France. Philosophy has long been bewitched by the conception of philosophy as the science of sciences, most recently in Husserl’s view of philosophy as rigorous science.⁷ Since the rise of the new science in the seventeenth century and the separation of philosophy from science, this model has tended to lose its hold in philosophy in general. Yet at least on the linguistic plane, it continues in French philosophy, which is routinely classified with sociology, psychology, and so on as a human science (science humaine ).⁸

THE FRENCH INTELLECTUAL

It is important but difficult briefly to characterize the peculiarly significant role of the French intellectual, including the French philosopher.⁹ In comparison, the French intellectual tends to function more autonomously, to be taken more seriously, and to regard himself as carrying out a more significant task than elsewhere.

The role of the French philosopher is partly due to the task of the French intellectual, not duplicated elsewhere, in cultural transmission. Vincent Descombes points out that at the beginning of the Third Republic, French academic philosophy, which was given the mission of teaching “the legitimacy of the new republican institutions” ¹⁰ naturally tended to depict itself as the terminus ad quem of social development.

The importance of philosophy is recognized through the place of philo sophy in the classes terminales of the lycée,which culminates in the final year, or classe de philosophie,the peak of French secondary studies, appropriately devoted to philosophy.¹¹ Philosophy is also crucial in the exam, known as the baccalauréat,which must be passed to gain a diplôme,the French secondary school diploma. The importance of philosophy is further acknowledged through the practice, to my knowledge unparalleled elsewhere, of regularly reviewing philosophical books in Le Monde, the main French national newspaper.

In France, intellectuals frequently talk and act as if they were the conscience of society.¹² They are comparatively more willing to take a stand on the important issues of the day, to publish petitions, to participate in public meetings centered on important issues, and so on. A conviction of the importance of the intellectual manifests itself in the concern with intellectual responsibility¹³ that, depending on one’s point of view, reaches an apogée or a nadir in Sartre’s conception of engagement, or deliberate commitment of each person to everyone else.¹⁴

The importance of French intellectuals, including philosophers, is magnified by features of the French context that allow intellectuals to acquire an autonomous or semiautonomous status outside the usual academic establishment. Elsewhere, academic intellectuals, including philosophers, depend on the acquisition of a university position as the condition of exerting influence in the academic discussion. For an intellectual, it is usually very difficult to influence the academic debate, let alone be noticed by the wider public, if one is not located within the academy in some fairly obvious way.

In Germany, Heidegger continued to influence the philosophical discussion during the period after the Second World War when he was barred from teaching because of his collaboration with the National Socialists. Yet I am aware of no other similar example in German philosophy. In the United States, where intellectuals, with the possible e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 HEIDEGGER AS A "FRENCH" PHILOSOPHER
• 2 HEIDEGGER AND THE MASTER THINKER IN FRENCH PHILOSOPHY
• 3 GERMAN PHENOMENOLOGY, FRENCH PHILOSOPHY, AND SUBJECTIVITY
• 4 HEIDEGGER, SARTRE, AND FRENCH HUMANISM
• 5 JEAN BEAUFRET AND THE "LETTER ON HUMANISM"
• 6 HEIDEGGER'S "LETTER ON HUMANISM" AND FRENCH HEIDEGGERIANISM
• 7 ON HEIDEGGER AND CONTEMPORARY FRENCH PHILOSOPHY
• 8 HEIDEGGER'S POLITICS AND FRENCH PHILOSOPHY
• 9 HEIDEGGER, FRENCH PHILOSOPHY, AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION
• Notes
• Index