Generation Existential: Heidegger's Philosophy in France, 1927–1961

Ethan Kleinberg

Published by Cornell University Press 2007

Generation Existential

Heidegger's Philosophy in France, 1927–1961

Ethan Kleinberg

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501731648

Overview
Contents

About this book

Kleinberg offers new insights into intellectual figures whose influence on modern French philosophy has been enormous, including some whose thought remains under-explored outside France.

Author / Editor information

Ethan Kleinberg is Associate Editor of History and Theory and Associate Professor of History and Letters at Wesleyan University.

Reviews

Martin Jay, Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley:

Like the foreign irritant that causes oysters to secrete pearls, Heidegger stimulated successive generations of French thinkers to produce some of their most creative ideas. Ethan Kleinberg painstakingly reconstructs the existentialist moment in that still unfolding story, providing lucid and persuasive accounts of the impact of Heidegger's philosophy as inspiration and foil when it first crossed the Rhine. Generation Existential will be of interest not only to intellectual historians but also to anyone still grappling with the legacy of Sartre, Kojéve, Blanchot, and Levinas.

Dominick LaCapra, Cornell University, author of History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory:

Ethan Kleinberg's study of the successive waves in the reception and rethinking of Heidegger in France covers a crucial chapter in modern French thought and contemporary critical theory. His lucid and careful exposition, which includes a discussion of the problems posed to French thinkers by National Socialism and the Shoah, provides a basis for an informed, critical reexamination of this important dimension of recent intellectual history. He also elucidates how responses to Heidegger have always been more or less intricate and coded responses to larger social, political, and ethical issues, including one's conception of the very foundation of a secular democracy.

Carolyn J. Dean, Brown University, author of The Fragility of Empathy after the Holocaust:

Ethan Kleinberg has written an important book on Heidegger's French reception that spans the influence of the German philosopher on French thinkers from Alexandre Kojéve to Maurice Blanchot. Kleinberg's systematic overview of this crucial chapter in the history of French existentialism and its broader impact explores the complex ways in which French philosophers appropriated Heidegger to counter the French postwar intellectual establishment and adapted him to address their own specific priorities. In demonstrating how Heidegger became not quite 'French,' Kleinberg illuminates several recent debates on a wide variety of topics, including French debate over Heidegger's Nazism.

A compelling account of the peaceful invasion of contemporary French theory by the German existentialist whose legacy remains tainted by his support for National Socialism. Kleinberg's account unfolds through individual portraits of the intriguing personalities—Emmanuel Lévinas, Alexandre Koyré, Alexandre Kojéve, Raymond Aron, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Beaufret, and Maurice Blanchot—whose interrogation of subjectivity and alterity, ontology and historicity, and freedom and responsibility were powerfully influenced by Heidegger's thinking. Kleinberg's rigorous examination of the translation of Heidegger's concepts and questions into the French context explores how the 'generation of 1933' became 'generation existential.'

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
On the Way to France ...
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
1. Emmanuel Levinas: de l'etre... Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
The First Reading
2. Alexandre Kojève and the Hegel Seminar at the École Pratique des Hautes Études Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
3. The Dissemination of Kojève's Heideggerian Interpretation of Hegel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	84
4. Jean-Paul Sartre Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
The Second Reading
5. Jean Beaufret, the First Heidegger Affair, and the "Letter on Humanism" Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
The Third Reading
6. Maurice Blanchot: The Writing of Disaster Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209
7. Emmanuel Levinas: ... à l'autre Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	280
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	289

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 308
Keywords: History; Europe

eBook

Published: September 5, 2018
ISBN: 9781501731648