Trần Đức Thảo (
Từ Sơn,
Bắc Ninh
Bắc Ninh () is a city in the northern part of Vietnam and is the capital of Bắc Ninh province. The city is the cultural, administrative and commercial center of the province. The city area is 82.60 square km, with a population of 501,199 in N ...
, 26 September 1917 –
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, 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), ma ...
, 24 April 1993) was a
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
philosopher. His work (written primarily in French) attempted to unite
phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
with
Marxist philosophy. His work had some currency in France in the 1950s and 1960s, and was cited favorably by
Jacques Derrida,
Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard (; ; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and ...
and
Louis Althusser.
Life
Studies in France
Trần Đức Thảo was born in
Hanoi
Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is ...
,
French Indochina
French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China),; vi, Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, , lit. 'East Ocean under French Control; km, ឥណ្ឌូចិនបារាំង, ; th, อินโดจีนฝรั่งเศส, ...
, he was educated there, completing his
baccalaureate Baccalaureate may refer to:
* ''Baccalauréat'', a French national academic qualification
* Bachelor's degree, or baccalaureate, an undergraduate academic degree
* English Baccalaureate, a performance measure to assess secondary schools in England ...
at 17. In 1936, he continued his studies in France, becoming a student of
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest an ...
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, S ...
where he wrote a dissertation for a
diplôme d’études supérieures on
Hegel. In 1943, he completed his
agrégation with a thesis on the phenomenology of
Edmund Husserl
, thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations)
, thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view
, thesis1_year = 1883
, thesis2_title ...
, being received
premier ex aequo alongside
Jules Vuillemin
Jules Vuillemin (; ; 15 February 1920 – 16 January 2001) was a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy of Knowledge at the prestigious Collège de France, in Paris, from 1962 to 1990, succeeding Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Professor emeritu ...
. Through the 1940s, he worked on his first book, ''Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism''. The book argued that the defects of the phenomenological account of consciousness could only be remedied by the Marxist account of labor and society. In the 1940s and 50s, Trần Đức Thảo's ideas achieved some currency among the elite philosophical circles of France. At the same time, he became an active anti-colonialist, publishing articles in
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 lit ...
and Merleau-Ponty's journal ''
Les Temps modernes
''Les Temps Modernes'' (''Modern Times'') is a French journal, founded by Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It first issue was published in October 1945. It was named after the 1936 film by Charlie Chaplin.
''L ...
'' about colonialism in Indochina; these articles were read by
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961), also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, was a French West Indian psychiatrist, and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have b ...
and other anticolonialists. From October to December 1945, Trần Đức Thảo was jailed by the French government as a threat to its security.
Return to Vietnam, 1951
''Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism'' was published in 1951, and in the same year he returned to
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
, working in support of the Communist Party. In 1956, he was named the Dean of History in the country's first national university.
But he became critical of the Party over land reforms which had led to many deaths in 1956, and Trần Đức Thảo was caught up in the
Nhan Van-Giai Pham affair in which the dissident intellectuals of the late 1950s were publicly criticized or punished. Though Tran Duc Thao was never jailed, he fell out of favor with the ruling Party, publishing two self-criticisms in ''
Nhân Dân
''Nhân Dân'' (Vietnamese: ''The People'') is the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Vietnam. According to the newspaper, it is “the voice of the Party, the State and the people of Vietnam.”
It has a daily circulation of 180,000 ...
'' and leaving his position of authority in 1958. None of his work was published in his home country from 1965 until 1987.
[Thu-Hương Nguyễn-Võ. ''The Ironies of Freedom: Sex, Culture, and Neoliberal Governance in Vietnam''. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. ]
Page 69: "Prominent intellectuals in the university such as Paris-trained philosopher Trần Đức Thảo were later denounced for demanding the “expulsion of politics from the area of expertise” "
Work on ''Recherches sur l'origine du langage et de la conscience''
For the next thirty years, his profile was lower, as he worked in the rural provinces translating philosophy into
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
and preparing his book ''Investigations into the Origin of Language and Consciousness''. This book, published in France in 1973, combined materialist biological and cognitive accounts of subjectivity and consciousness with the Marxist account he had elaborated earlier. In the liberalized political climate of the 1980s, he was able to return to France for medical treatment, and there he met many of his old philosophical colleagues again, although he lived in poverty in an apartment at the Vietnamese embassy. He died in Paris in 1993 and was cremated at the
Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery (french: Cimetière du Père-Lachaise ; formerly , "East Cemetery") is the largest cemetery in Paris, France (). With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Notable figure ...
.
Works
* ''Phénoménologie et matérialisme dialectique'' (1951), ''Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism'' English edition:
* “The Phenomenology of Mind and its Real Content”
''Telos''8 (Summer 1971). New York: Telos Press.
* ''Recherches sur l'origine du langage et de la conscience'' (1973) ''Investigations into the Origin of Language and Consciousness'' . English edition:
References
* Herrick, Tim.
" ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' 66:1 (2005).
* McHale, Shawn.
" ''Journal of Asian Studies'' 61:1 (Feb. 2002).
* Spire, Arnaud.
Tran Duc Thao, un marxiste dérangeant (obituary). ''L'Humanité'' 26 April 1993. (In French.)
* D'Alonzo, Jacopo. "L’origine du langage chez Tran-Duc-Thao. Perspectives historiques et enjeux théoriques", dans Valentina Bisconti, Rossana De Angelis & Anamaria Curea
Héritages, réceptions, écoles en sciences du langage. Avant et après Saussure, p. 265-272. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle 2019.
* D'Alonzo, Jacopo. "Prefazione del curatore", in Tran Duc Thao,
La dialettica materialista della coscienza, ed. by Jacopo D’Alonzo, p. 5-24. Roma: Castelvecchi Editore 2019.
* D'Alonzo, Jacopo.
. Histoire Epistémologie Language 41.1:159-177. Paris: SHESL 2019.
OI: 10.1051/hel/2019008* D'Alonzo, Jacopo.
. Tran-Duc-Thao and the Language of the Real Life" Language Sciences 70:45-57
pecial Issue: Karl Marx and the Language Sciences: critical encounters ed. by Peter E Jones Amsterdam: Elsevier 2018.
* D'Alonzo, Jacopo.
Tran-Duc-Thao: Consciousness & Language. Report of the Centenary Conference" Acta Structuralica - International Journal for Structuralist Research 3:31-50. 2018.
* D'Alonzo, Jacopo.
semiologia dialettica di Tran-Duc-Thao: Alcune considerazioni su Saussure, fenomenologia e strutturalismo. Acta Structuralica - International Journal for Structuralist Research 2:1.53-86. 2017.
* D'Alonzo, Jacopo.
L’origine del linguaggio e della coscienza. Storia di un libro mai pubblicato: dal carteggio inedito tra Ferruccio Rossi-Landi e Tran-Duc-Thao" Acta Structuralica - International Journal for Structuralist Research 2:1.87-152. 2017.
* D'Alonzo, Jacopo
Trần Đức Thảo: A Marxist Theory on Origins of Human Language " Theoria et Historia Scientiarum 13 The origins and development of language: a historical perspective, pp. 103–120. Nicolaus Copernicus University Press. 2016.
External links
Tran Duc Thao resourcesfrom viet-studies.org. (In English, French, and Vietnamese.)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tran, Duc Thao
Vietnamese writers
20th-century Vietnamese philosophers
1917 births
1993 deaths
Continental philosophers
Marxist theorists
Nhân Văn–Giai Phẩm affair
People from Bắc Ninh province
Vietnamese Marxists