Jean André Wahl (; 25 May 188819 June 1974) was a French

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

Early career

Wahl was educated at the

École Normale Supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

. He was a professor at the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

from 1936 to 1967, broken by

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. He was in the

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

from 1942 to 1945, having been interned as a

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

at the

Drancy internment camp Drancy internment camp was an assembly and detention camp for confining Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps during the German occupation of France during World War II. Originally conceived and built as a modernist urban commu ...

(north-east of

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

) and then escaped. He began his career as a follower of

Henri Bergson Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson

and the American pluralist philosophers

William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...

and

George Santayana Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana (; December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952), was a Spanish and US-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Born in Spain, Santayana was raised ...

. He is known as one of those introducing

Hegelian Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...

thought in France in the 1930s (his book on Hegel was published in 1929), ahead of

Alexandre Kojève Alexandre Kojève ( , ; 28 April 1902 – 4 June 1968) was a Russian-born French philosopher and statesman whose philosophical seminars had an immense influence on 20th-century French philosophy, particularly via his integration of Hegelian conce ...

's more celebrated lectures. He was also a champion in French thought of the

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...

proto-

existentialist Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and value ...

Søren Kierkegaard Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , , ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on ...

. These enthusiasms, which became the significant books ''Le malheur de la conscience dans la Philosophie de Hegel'' (1929) and '' Études kierkegaardiennes'' (1938) were controversial, in the prevailing climate of thought. However, he influenced a number of key thinkers including

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...

Emmanuel Levinas Emmanuel Levinas (; ; 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work within Jewish philosophy, existentialism, and phenomenology, focusing on the relationship of ethics to me ...

and

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and litera ...

. In the second issue of ''

Acéphale ''Acéphale'' is the name of a public review created by Georges Bataille (which numbered five issues, from 1936 to 1939) and a secret society formed by Bataille and others who had sworn to keep silent. Its name is derived from the Greek ἀκέ� ...

'',

Georges Bataille Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, ...

's review, Jean Wahl wrote an article titled "

Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, Prose poetry, prose poet, cultural critic, Philology, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philo ...

and the Death of God", concerning

Karl Jaspers Karl Theodor Jaspers (, ; 23 February 1883 – 26 February 1969) was a German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry, and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jasper ...

' interpretation of this work. He became known as an anti-systematic philosopher, in favour of philosophical innovation and the concrete.

In exile

While in the USA, Wahl with

Gustave Cohen Gustave Cohen (24 December 1879 – 10 June 1958) was a French medievalist. Cohen was born and grew up in Brussels. He fought for the French army in World War I. He became professor of medieval literature at the Sorbonne, encouraging his student ...

and backed by the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

founded a 'university in exile', the ''

École Libre des Hautes Études École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Sav ...

'', in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Later, at

Mount Holyoke Mount Holyoke, a traprock mountain, elevation , is the westernmost peak of the Holyoke Range and part of the 100-mile (160 km) Metacomet Ridge. The mountain is located in the Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts, and is the ...

where he had a position, he set up the ''Décades de Mount Holyoke'', also known as ''Pontigny-en-Amérique'', modelled on meetings run from 1910-1939 by French philosopher Paul Desjardins (November 22, 1859 - March 13, 1940) at the site of the

Cistercian The Cistercians, () officially the Order of Cistercians ( la, (Sacer) Ordo Cisterciensis, abbreviated as OCist or SOCist), are a Catholic religious order of monks and nuns that branched off from the Benedictines and follow the Rule of Saint ...

abbey An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess. Abbeys provide a complex of buildings and land for religious activities, work, and housing of Christian monks and nuns. The conce ...

Pontigny Pontigny () is a commune in the Yonne department in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in north-central France. Sight Its principal distinction is as the home of Pontigny Abbey. See also *Communes of the Yonne department The following is a list of th ...

Burgundy Burgundy (; french: link=no, Bourgogne ) is a historical territory and former administrative region and province of east-central France. The province was once home to the Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th until the late 15th century. The c ...

. These successfully gathered together French

intellectual An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or a ...

s in wartime exile, ostensibly studying the English language, with Americans including

Marianne Moore Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. Early life Moore was born in Kirkwood, ...

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...

and

Roger Sessions Roger Huntington Sessions (December 28, 1896March 16, 1985) was an American composer, teacher and musicologist. He had initially started his career writing in a neoclassical style, but gradually moved further towards more complex harmonies and ...

. Wahl, already a published poet, made translations of poems of Stevens into French. He was also an avid reader of the

Four Quartets ''Four Quartets'' is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published over a six-year period. The first poem, ''Burnt Norton'', was published with a collection of his early works (1936's ''Collected Poems 1909–1935''). After a f ...

and toyed with the idea of publishing a poetical refutation of the poem. (See, e.g., his
On Reading the Four Quartets
" )

Post World War II

In post-war France Wahl was an important figure, as a teacher and editor of learned journals. In 1946 he founded the

Collège philosophique Collège philosophique was an association founded in 1946 by Jean Wahl, located in the Latin Quarter in Paris. Wahl created it because he felt the lack of an alternative to the University of Paris, Sorbonne (University of Paris), where it would be ...

, influential center for non-conformist intellectuals, alternative to the Sorbonne. Starting in 1950, he headed the ''

Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale The ''Revue de métaphysique et de morale'' is a French philosophy journal co-founded in 1893 by Léon Brunschvicg, Xavier Léon and Élie Halévy. The journal initially appeared six times a year, but since 1920 has been published quarterly. It ...

''. Wahl translated the second hypothesis of the ''

Parmenides Parmenides of Elea (; grc-gre, Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia. Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Elea, from a wealthy and illustrious family. His dates a ...

'' of

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

as "''Il y a de l'Un''", and

Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and pu ...

adopted his translation as a central point in psychoanalysis, as a sort of antecedent in the Parmenides of the analytic discourse. This is the existential sentence of psychoanalytic discourse according to Lacan, and the negative one is "''Il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel'' " — there is no sexual relationship.

Works

* ''Du rôle de l'idée de l'instant dans la Philosophie de Descartes'', Paris, Alcan, 1920; rééd. avec une préface de Frédéric Worms, Paris, Descartes & Co, 1994. * ''Les Philosophies pluralistes d'Angleterre et d'Amérique'', Paris, Alcan, 1920; rééd. préface de Thibaud Trochu, Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2005. * ''Le Malheur de la conscience dans la Philosophie de Hegel'', Paris, Rieder, 1929. * ''Étude sur le Parménide de Platon'', Paris, Rieder, 1930. * ''Vers le concret, études d'histoire de la philosophie contemporaine (William James, Whitehead, Gabriel Marcel)'', Paris, Vrin, 1932; rééd. avec un avant-propos de Mathias Girel, Paris, Vrin, 2004.

Michel Weber Michel Weber (born 1963) is a Belgian philosopher. He is best known as an interpreter and advocate of the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, and has come to prominence as the architect and organizer of an overlapping array of international sc ...

, �
Jean Wahl, Vers le concret. Études d’histoire de la philosophie contemporaine. William James, Whitehead, Gabriel Marcel. Avant-propos de Mathias Girel. Deuxième édition augmentée [Vrin, 1932
/nowiki>, Paris, Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2004. Critical review] », Process Studies 34/1, 2005, pp. 155–156. * '' Études kierkegaardiennes'', Paris, Aubier, 1938. * ''Les Problèmes platoniciens : La République, Euthydème, Cratyle'' (Paris: CDU, 3 fasc., 1938-1939). * ''Existence humaine et transcendance'', Neufchâtel, La Baconnière, 1944. * ''Tableau de la philosophie française'', Paris, Fontaine, 1946. * ''Introduction à la pensée de Heidegger'', livre de poche, 1946. * ''Petite histoire de l'existentialisme'', Paris, L'Arche, 1947. * ''Poésie, pensée, perception'', Paris, Calman-Levy, 1948. * ''Jules Lequier 1814-1862'', Geneva, Éditions des Trois Collines, 1948. * ''La Pensée de l'existence'', Paris, Flammarion, 1952. * ''Traité de Métaphysique'', Paris, Payot, 1953. * ''La structure du monde réel d'après Nicolai Hartmann'' (Paris: Centre de documentation universitaire, 1953) (Cours de la Sorbonne enseigné en 1952). * ''La théorie des catégories fondamentales dans Nicolai Hartmann'' (Paris: Centre de documentation universitaire, 1954) (Cours de la Sorbonne enseigné en 1953). * ''Les Philosophies de l'existence'', Paris, Armand Colin, 1954. * ''Les aspects qualitatifs du réel. I. Introduction, la philosophie de l'existence; II. Début d'une étude sur Husserl; III. La philosophie de la nature de N. Hartmann'', Paris: Centre de documentation universitaire 1955. (Cours de la Sorbonne enseigné en 1954). * ''Vers la fin de l'ontologie - Étude sur l'«Introduction de la Métaphysique» de Heidegger'', Paris, SEDES, 1956. * ''L'Expérience métaphysique'', Paris, Flammarion, 1964. * ''Cours sur l'athéisme éclairé de Dom Deschamps'', 1967.

English translations

The Philosophers Way
Oxford University Press 1948
''The Pluralist Philosophies Of England And America''
1925 (mostly about William James)
''A Short History of Existentialism''
1949 * ''Transcendence and the Concrete: Selected Writings of Jean Wahl.'' Edited by Alan D. Schrift and Ian Alexander Moore. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016.
''Human Existence and Transcendence.''
Translated by William C. Hackett. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016.

Wahl in literature

In 2021, Angelico Press published W.C. Hackett's novella
Outside the Gates
', based on the true story of Wahl's release from the Drancy Internment Camp. The narrator in the novella is Wahl himself, who alternatively tells what he is experiencing and muses philosophically on his situation in life, his sufferings and the sufferings of others in the war, and on whether or not there is a God. Hackett, himself a professional philosopher, artfully weaves in to the narrative former students and colleagues of Wahl.

Early career

In exile

Post World War II

Works

English translations

Wahl in literature

See also

References

Further reading