Jean Beaufret

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Jean Beaufret (born May 22, 1907 in Mars near Auzances in the Creuse department , † August 7, 1982 in Paris ) was a French philosopher and Germanist. He was strongly influenced by Martin Heidegger .

Life

Beaufret grew up in Auzances, where both of his parents worked as teachers. He attended the Lycée de Montluçon from 1919 , where he graduated from high school in 1925. In the same year he moved to the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris , where he was preparing for college. Beaufret began his studies in 1928 at the École normal supérieure (Paris) (ENS). There he was a student of Léon Brunschvicg . For his "Diplôme d'études supérieures" Beaufret spent a year at the Institut français in Berlin in 1930/1931 . His diploma thesis, submitted in 1931, was entitled "Les Rapports du droit et de la morale d'après Fichte". After his return from Berlin, Beaufret completed his military service and then continued his studies. At the ENS he obtained his agrégation in philosophy in 1933 .

From 1933 Beaufret worked as a teacher of philosophy at the Lycée de Guéret . In 1937 he was a brief teacher at a Lycée in Auxerre and from 1937 to 1939 he worked as a philosophy teacher at a French school in Alexandria , Egypt.

After France declared war on the German Reich in response to the attack on Poland in September 1939 , Beaufret was called up and in 1940 took part with a French unit in the fighting in the western campaign, where he was taken prisoner by the Germans. In September 1940 he escaped from a train transport of prisoners of war to Germany and settled in the unoccupied zone of France. In November 1940 he took up a position as a teacher at the Lycée Champollion in Grenoble . From October 1942 he moved to Lyon at the Collège-lycée Ampère , where he worked as a teacher until 1944.

In Lyon, Beaufret met Joseph Rovan , with whom he read works by Heidegger. Rovan worked for the Resistance and, after a new occupation of Lyon in 1943, introduced Beaufret into his “Service Périclès” group, which was established in July 1943 and created false documents. The group was broken up in February 1944 and Rovan was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Dachau. Beaufret was able to flee in time due to a warning.

In Paris, Beaufret took a job at the Lycée Saint-Louis in 1944 . In 1945, after the liberation of France, he was a teacher at the Lycée Jaques-Decour. From September 1946 to 1952 Beaufret was a teacher at the Lycée Henri IV . From 1952 to 1955 he held a scientific position at the Center national de la recherche scientifique . His doctoral supervisor was Jean Wahl , who in 1953/1954 classified him before the Comité consultatif as unsuitable for a university career. After all, he was a teacher at the Lycée Condorcet from 1955 to 1972 . During this period, Beaufret held regular readings at the École normal supérieure. In 1969/1970 Beaufret applied a second time for a position at the University of Aix-Marseille , but was rejected.

He had been friends with Paul Éluard , Maurice Merleau-Ponty , André Breton, and Paul Valéry since before World War II .

Act

Correspondence with Heidegger - Humanism letter

After Heidegger was banned from teaching in 1946 due to his involvement during National Socialism and his public reputation was damaged, both came into contact with each other. In the course of a slowly resuming reception of Heidegger in France, that is, the country that at that time provided the occupying power in Freiburg, Beaufret Heidegger wrote a letter in which he asks the question: "How can the word humanism be given a new meaning?" he asks about the relationship between Heidegger's philosophy and humanism. This was preceded by an essay by Jean-Paul Sartre with the programmatic title “ L'existentialisme est un humanisme ”.

Heidegger replied to Beaufret with a letter that became known as the letter about "humanism" (short: letter of humanism).

Friendship with Heidegger

In 1947 Beaufret took his students, including Jean-François Lyotard , to visit Heidegger in Todtnauberg, followed by a long German-French academic exchange in Freiburg.

Beaufret and Heidegger kept in close contact for a long time. It was through him that Heidegger became aware of the work of Jacques Derrida . Since then, Beaufret has been considered the best-known “Orthodox” Heideggerian in France.

Relationship with Faurisson

The Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson was a student of Beaufret from his time at the Lycée Ampère in Lyon. In 1987 Faurisson published two letters from Beaufret in his magazine “Annales d'histoire révisionniste” dated November 22, 1978 and January 18, 1979. By publicizing the “secret letters of encouragement and support” for a “propagandist of the Auschwitz” Lie ”, Beaufret himself fell into the twilight. The science historian and Heidegger biographer Hugo Ott said that Beaufret had "identified with Faurisson's' research" and, as it were, authorized it. "

literature

  • L'Endurance de la pensée. Pour saluer Jean Beaufret , ouvrage collectif, Plon, 1968
  • François Fédier, Heidegger vu de France , Lettre au professeur H. Ott ; in Regarder Voir , Les Belles Lettres / Archimbaud, Paris, 1995. ISBN 2-251-44059-3
  • Jean Beaufret, Ways to Heidegger . Translated from the French. by C. Maihofer, Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 978-3-465-01151-4
  • Martin Heidegger: Letter on Humanism , Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2000, ISBN 978-3465030690

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Maurice Malleret, Encyclopédie des auteurs du pays Montluçonnais et de leurs œuvres (de 1440 à 1994) , Editions des Cahiers Bourbonnais 1994, p. 276
  2. ↑ a b c Alan D. Schrift, Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers , John Wiley & Sons 2009, p. 97
  3. ↑ Ethan Kleinberg, Generation Existential: Heidegger's Philosophy in France, 1927-1961 , Cornell University Press 2007, p. 159
  4. ↑ Ethan Kleinberg, Generation Existential: Heidegger's Philosophy in France, 1927-1961 , Cornell University Press 2007, p. 160
  5. ↑ François Marcot, Didier Musiedlak, Musée de la Résistance et de la déportation de Franche-Comté, Université de Franche-Comté, Les résistances, miroirs des régimes d'oppression, Allemagne, France, Italie , Presses Univ. Franche-Comté 2006, p. 168
  6. ↑ Ethan Kleinberg, Generation Existential: Heidegger's Philosophy in France, 1927-1961 , Cornell University Press 2007, p. 161
  7. ↑ a b Dominique Janicaud, Heidegger en France , Volume 1, Albin Michel, 2001, p 286
  8. ↑ Quoted from Walter Biemel: Heidegger , Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1973, (see chap. 1, note 2), p. 98
  9. ↑ Ethan Kleinberg, Generation Existential: Heidegger's Philosophy in France, 1927-1961 , Cornell University Press 2007, p. 205
  10. ↑ Heinz Paetzold, Das Ende des Heidegger-Mythos , In: Heidelinde Beckers, Christine Magdalene Noll, Understanding the world as questionable - a philosophical claim: Festschrift for Hassan Givsan , Königshausen & Neumann 2006, p. 138
  11. ↑ Hugo Ott: Biographical reasons for Heidegger's "Mentality of Tornness" in Peter Kemper (ed.): Martin Heidegger - Fascination and Scare: The Political Dimension of a Philosophy . Campus Verlag 1990, p. 29; Hugo Ott u. Allan Blunden: Martin Heidegger: A Political Life , Harpers Collins, 1993, 8: “They express support for the work that Faurisson is doing, and encourage him to persevere with the same line of research. It was essentially the same line that he (Beaufret) had taken (he writes): but instead of putting his views in writing he had chosen to confine himself to the spoken word, to avoid being hounded by the mob. "; Richard Wolin: The French Heidegger Debate , New German Critique, 45, 1988, 149: “Beaufret seems to have had a hidden agenda: he was a covert supporter of Robert Faurisson, the French historian who denies the existence of the gas-chambers specifically and the Holocaust in general. "
personal data
SURNAME Beaufret, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Mars, Auzances , Creuse department
DATE OF DEATH August 7, 1982
Place of death Paris