Trần Đức Thảo (26 September 1917 – 24 April 1993) was a

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overseas Vietnamese, Vietnamese people living outside Vietna ...

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

. 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 (Peirce), a branch of philosophy according to Charles Sanders Peirce (1839� ...

with

Marxist philosophy Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are works in philosophy that are strongly influenced by Karl Marx's Historical materialism, materialist approach to theory, or works written by Marxists. Marxist philosophy may be broadly divided into Wester ...

. His work had some currency in France in the 1950s and 1960s, and was cited favorably by

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...

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 p ...

and

Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher who studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser was a long-time member an ...

Life

Studies in France

Trần Đức Thảo was born in

French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China), officially known as the Indochinese Union and after 1941 as the Indochinese Federation, was a group of French dependent territories in Southeast Asia from 1887 to 1954. It was initial ...

, he was educated there, completing his baccalaureate 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 interes ...

at the

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

where he wrote a dissertation for a ' (roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) on

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...

. In 1943, he completed his

agrégation In France, the () is the most competitive and prestigious examination for civil service in the French public education A state school, public school, or government school is a primary school, primary or secondary school that educates all stu ...

with a thesis on the phenomenology of

Edmund Husserl Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (; 8 April 1859 – 27 April 1938) was an Austrian-German philosopher and mathematician who established the school of Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology. In his early work, he elaborated critiques of histori ...

, 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 emeritus ...

. 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 a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism, literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th ...

and Merleau-Ponty's journal ''

Les Temps modernes ''Les Temps Modernes'' () was a French journal, founded by Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Its first issue was published in October 1945. It was named after the 1936 film by Charlie Chaplin. ''Les Temps Moderne ...

'' about colonialism in Indochina; these articles were read by

Frantz Fanon Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961) was a French West Indian psychiatrist, political philosopher, and Marxist from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have become influential in the ...

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, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...

, 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'' (; , , , ) 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 copies. Its weekend ...

'' 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

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 (, , formerly , ) is the largest cemetery in Paris, France, at . With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Buried at Père Lachaise are many famous figures in the ...

Works

* ''Phénoménologie et matérialisme dialectique'' (1951), ''Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism'' English edition: * “The Phenomenology of Mind and its Real Content”. ''

Telos Telos (; ) is a term used by philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause of a natural organ or entity, or of human art. ''Telos'' is the root of the modern term teleology, the study of purposiveness or of objects with a view to their aims, ...

'' 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

Sources

* Herrick, Tim.
'A book which is no longer discussed today': Tran Duc Thao, Jacques Derrida, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty
" ''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 resources
from viet-studies.org. (In English, French, and Vietnamese.) {{DEFAULTSORT:Tran, Duc Thao Vietnamese writers 20th-century Vietnamese philosophers 1917 births 1993 deaths Phenomenologists Marxist theorists Nhân Văn–Giai Phẩm affair People from Bắc Ninh province Vietnamese Marxists