Human Existence and Transcendence

Jean Wahl, William C. Hackett

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780268101091
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Existentialism in Philosophy

William C. Hackett's English translation of Jean Wahl's Existence humaine et transcendence (1944) brings back to life an all-but-forgotten book that provocatively explores the philosophical concept of transcendence. Based on what Emmanuel Levinas called "Wahl's famous lecture" from 1937, Existence humaine et transcendence captured a watershed moment of European philosophy. Included in the book are Wahl's remarkable original lecture and the debate that ensued, with significant contributions by Gabriel Marcel and Nicolai Berdyaev, as well as letters submitted on the occasion by Heidegger, Levinas, Jaspers, and other famous figures from that era. Concerned above all with the ineradicable felt value of human experience by which any philosophical thesis is measured, Wahl makes a daring clarification of the concept of transcendence and explores its repercussions through a masterly appeal to many (often surprising) places within the entire history of Western thought. Apart from its intrinsic philosophical significance as a discussion of the concepts of being, the absolute, and transcendence, Wahl's work is valuable insofar as it became a focal point for a great many other European intellectuals. Hackett has provided an annotated introduction to orient readers to this influential work of twentieth-century French philosophy and to one of its key figures.

APPENDIX 1

Selected List of Philosophers, Artists, and Poets in Wahl’s Text

Alexander, Samuel (1859–1958). Metaphysician and philosopher of science; influence on A. N. Whitehead; first Jewish fellow of a college of Oxford University; author of Space, Time and Deity (1920), his (1916–18) Gifford Lectures.

Aristippus (mid-5th–mid-4th c. BC). Student of Socrates; typically conceived as advocating a moderate hedonism.

Arnauld, Antoine (1612–1694). Theologian, philosopher, mathematician, and influential public intellectual; author of On Frequent Communion (1643) and The Art of Thinking, commonly known as The Port-Royal Logic (1683).

Béguin, Albert (1901–1957). Swiss thinker and author of L’âme romantique et le rêve, essai sur le romantisme allemand et la poésie française (1937/39).

Biran, Maine de (1766–1824). Philosopher and key originator of French vitalism and spiritualism; a major influence on Felix Ravaisson and later Michel Henry.

Bosanquet, Bernard (1848–1923). English neo-Hegelian; author of Philosophical Theory of the State (1899) and The Meeting of Extremes in Contemporary Philosophy (1921).

Boutroux, Émile (1845–1921). Philosopher of science influenced by Maine de Biran; advocated the compatibility of science and religion; a member of the Académie française and author of Science and Religion in Contemporary Philosophy (Gifford Lectures, 1903–5).

Bradley, F. H. (1846–1924). Author of Appearance and Reality (1893); with Bosanquet Bradley was a so-called Absolute Idealist.

Brandès, Georg (1842–1927). Influential Danish author and critic; author of Main Currents in Nineteenth-Century Literature (6 vols.; 1906).

Brémond, Henri (1865–1933). Member of the Académie française and author of Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France depuis la fin des guerres de religion jusqu’à nos jours (11 vols.; 1916–36).

Broglie, Louis de (1892–1987). French physicist and Nobel Prize laureate; conceived of the wave-particle duality thesis.

Chénier, André (1762–1794). Poet; precursor to Romanticism; he was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution.

Corbin, Henri (1903–1978). Philosopher and historian of Islamic mystical thought; early translator of Heidegger and author of Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ’Arabi (1969).

Corte, Marcel de (1905–1994). Catholic philosopher and critic of modern society.

Courbet, Gustave (1819–1877). Controversial French painter; leader of nineteenth-century Realism.

Damascius (AD mid-5th–mid-6th c.). Syrian philosopher; head of the School of Athens when it was shut down by Justinian in 529; known as the “last pagan philosopher” or the “last of the Neoplatonists.” His central theme is divine incomprehensibility, as can be seen in his masterwork, Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles.

Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882–1944). British astrophysicist and philosopher of science.

Empedocles (5th c. BC). Pre-Socratic philosopher; author of the influential theory of the four elements, which can be found in the extant fragments of his great poem On Nature.

Estève, Claude-Louis (1890–1933). Philosopher and literary critic; author of Études philosophiques sur l’expression littéraire (1938).

Fernandez, Ramon (1894–1944). Mexican-born French writer and critic; author of De la personnalité (1928) and the novel Le Pari (1932).

Gide, André (1869–1951). French Symbolist and anticolonialist writer; he received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947.

Granet, Marcel (1884–1940). French sociologist and ethnologist; applied Durkheim’s thought to the study of Chinese civilization.

Hamelin, Octave (1856–1907). Philosopher influenced by Durkheim; he wrote books on Descartes, Aristotle, and the “neocritical” idealist Charles Renouvier.

Hartmann, Nicolai (1882–1950). Eastern European philosopher; student of neo-Kantian thinkers Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp; author of Possibility and Actuality (1938).

Holt, Edwin B. (1873–1946). American philosopher and psychologist; student of William James and author of The Concept of Consciousness (1918).

Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825–1895). English biologist known as “Darwin’s bulldog”; coined the term agnostic in self-conscious opposition to the term gnostic; grandfather of writer Aldous Huxley.

Klages, Ludwig (1872–1956). German philosopher, poet, and psychologist; a protoexistentialist, he advocated a quasi-Romantic mysticism of earth and antiquity; a fundamental distinction of his is between Geist (mind) and Seele (soul), which negate and affirm life, respectively (Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele, 1929).

Lamartine, Alphonse de (1790–1869). French Romantic poet, novelist, playwright, and political personality during the French Revolution; author of Méditations poétiques (1820).

Leconte de Lisle, Charles-Marie-René (1818–1894). French poet of the “Parnassian” movement (a sort of proto-Symbolism) and member of the Académie française; translator of Greek tragedians.

Melissus of Sardis (5th c. BC). Pre-Socratic philosopher; student of Parmenides; last of the Eleatics.

Montague, William Pepperell (1873–1953). American philosopher; critic of English-speaking Idealism; author of The New Realism (1912).

Montherlant, Henry de (1895–1972). French writer and member of the Académie française; author of the novel Les célibataires (1934).

Musset, Alfred de (1810–1857). French poet, playwright, novelist; author of La Confession d’un enfant du siècle (1836).

Nerval [Gérard Labrunie] (1808–1855). Poet; central figure in French Romanticism; author of the novel Sylvie (1853).

Pater, Walter (1839–1904). English essayist, historian, novelist; one of the great prose stylists of the nineteenth century; author of The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873) and Marius the Epicurian (1885).

Patmore, Coventry (1823–1896). English poet; author of The Angel in the House (1854).

Perry, Ralph Barton (1876–1957). American “neo-Realist” philosopher; student of William James; author of Realms of Value (Gifford Lectures, 1948–50) and the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Thought and Character of William James (1935).

Powys, John Cowper (1872–1963). British poet, novelist and philosopher; author of In Defense of Sensuality (1930) and A Glastonbury Romance (1932); Wahl dedicates a chapter to Powys’s thought in his Poésie, pensée, perception (1948).

Racine, Jean (1639–1699). Playwright and major figure in French letters, primarily known for his tragedies.

Rauh, Frédéric (1861–1909). French moral philosopher; teacher of René Le Senne; taught that moral ideas cannot be analyzed when abstracted from moral experience; considered by some to be the (true) father of French existentialism.

Raymond, Marcel (1897–1981). Swiss literary critic influenced by phenomenology (of the “Geneva School”); author of De Baudelaire au surréalisme (1933).

Reid, Thomas (1710–1796). Scottish philosopher of common sense; fierce opponent of David Hume; author of An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764).

Renéville, Rolland de (1903–1962). French poet and essayist; author of L’expérience poétique, ou le feu secret du langage (1938) and Rimbaud le voyant (1929).

Royce, Josiah (1855–1916). American philosopher of the school of Objective Idealism (which identifies all reality with the perception of it in God); influenced by C. S. Peirce and William James; author of The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892).

Saint-Martin, Louis-Claude de (1743–1803). French esoteric thinker influenced by Boehme.

Santayana, George (1863–1952). Spanish-American philosopher of a pragmatist bent (Idealism is true but is of no consequence since thinking is not detached from our animal needs); author of influential multivolume works such as The Life of Reason (5 vols.; 1905–6) and The Realms of Being (4 vols.; 1927–40), which builds on his Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923).

Saurat, Denis de (1890–1958). French scholar with a strong interest in Blake (e.g., Blake and Modern Thought, 1929), and the poetic dimensions of philosophy and vice versa (e.g., Milton, Man and Thinker, 1920/25).

Sellars, Roy Wood (1880–1973). American philosopher critical of the mechanistic view of nature in light of evolutionary theory; author of Evolutionary Naturalism (1922); father of philosopher Wilfred Sellars.

Sheldon, Wilmon Henry (1875–1981). American process philosopher; author of Process and Polarity (1944) and God and Polarity: A Synthesis of Philosophies (1954).

Spencer, Herbert (1820–1903). Victorian-era English philosopher and social scientist; developed an early account of evolution as the key to understanding everything; the phrase “survival of the fittest” is Spencer’s.

Strong, Charles Augustus (1862–1940). American philosopher who lived in Florence; student of William James, close associate of Santayana; counted among the American Critical Realists.

Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688–1772). Swedish scientist and inventor; receiver of bizarre revelations of the spiritual worlds; author of Heaven and Hell (1758).

Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837–1909). English “decadent” poet, dramatist, and critic; author of Atalanta in Calydon (1865) and Poems and Ballads (1866).

Theophrastus (late 4th–late 3rd c. BC). Successor of Aristotle as scholarch of the Peripatetic school; author of a number of extant works such as On Plants, On Stones, On First Principles.

Thibaudet, Albert (1874–1936). Literary critic and political philosopher at the University of Geneva; student of Henri Bergson; author of La république des professeurs (1927) and Les idées politiques de la France (1932).

Tieck, Johann Ludwig (1773–1853). Poet and novelist; early figure in German Romanticism; author of the fairy tale Der blonde Eckbert.

Vigny, Alfred de (1797–1863). French Romantic poet and novelist; friend of Victor Hugo and member of the Académie française.

Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Auguste (1838–1889). French Symbolist and horror writer.

APPENDIX 2

Books by Jean Wahl in English

A year in brackets identifies the year of publication of an original French edition.

1925 ...