Jean Wahl

L'affirmation de l'individu s'avère paradoxale chez Emerson car, qu'il cherche à s'affirmer esthétiquement ou éthiquement, l'individu se nie nécessairement. L'affirmation doit donc passer par la médiation d'un autre qui l'appelle à devenir unique et irremplaçable, c'est-à-dire un Individu. Chez Emerson, cet autre s'incarne chez le poète, cet hétéronyme d'Emerson. Or Emerson conçoit le poète comme un "dieu libérateur", un individu divin qui possède les mêmes attributs que Dieu. Cet article entend ainsi montrer comment Emerson construit, à l'épreuve du texte, une arche divine sous laquelle l'individu est appelé à mener son existence et l'affirmer. Cet habiter divin doit ainsi permettre à l'individu de procéder à la réforme d'une méthode métaphysique enlisée dans l'impasse logique de la pensée normative et de surmonter cette difficulté par le mouvement, non plus unilatéral mais bilatéral, de transcendance.

Un dialogue se crée entre  Yves Bonnefoy, « poète dialecticien », les philosophes qui ont pensé la poésie et leurs lectures qui se tressent.
Ainsi, les poètes lus par les philosophes qui inspirent Bonnefoy mais aussi les philosophes lus par Bonnefoy vont se manifester à nous, bien autrement éclairés par cette double lumière qui se projette  comme réflexion sur l'expérience et comme acte d'écriture.

Исследуется ряд интерпретаций опыта сознания в гегелевской философии. В статье я показываю, что для французских неогегельянцев основания опыта сознания в философии Гегеля были мистико-интуитивными, т. е. абстрактными в их оценке отношений между истиной и научной системой ее познания, между предметом и методом, знанием и предметом знания.

Перед вами исследование оригинального философского течения середины XX в., значительно повлиявшего на современные дискуссии о статусе философского высказывания, о предмете и методе философии и о судьбе гегелевского наследия. Представлен комплексный анализ, сделанный на единых философских основаниях, который охватывает работы всех четырех ключевых представителей данного течения - Жана Валя, Александра Койре, Александра Кожева и Жана Ипполита. Автор показал процесс развития гегелеведения и гегельянства во Франции, раскрыл исторический контекст появления французского неогегельянства, показал специфику и философскую ценность данного философского течения в целом и каждого из его представителей в частности. Для историков философии, исследователей современной европейской мысли, преподавателей, аспирантов и студентов высших учебных заведений.
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A study of the original philosophical course of the middle of the 20th century, which significantly influenced modern discussions about the status of philosophical statements, about the subject and method of philosophy, and about the fate of the Hegelian heritage. It presents a comprehensive analysis, made on a unified philosophical basis, which covers the work of all four key representatives of that trend - J. Wahl, A. Koyre, A. Kojeve and J. Hyppolite. The author showed the development of the Hegelian studies and Hegelianism in France, revealed the historical context of the French neo-Hegelianism emergence, pointed to the specifics and philosophical value of that philosophical movement in general and each of its representatives in particular.

For historians of philosophy, researchers of modern European thought, lecturers, graduate students and students of higher educational institutions.

Курилович И.С. Французское неогегельянство: Ж. Валь, А. Койре, А. Кожев и Ж. Ипполит в поисках единой феноменологии Гегеля–Гуссерля–Хайдеггера. М.: РГГУ, 2019. 224 с.

"Michel Weber and Will Desmond, (eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought X1 & X2, 2008. (695 p. + 726 p. ; ISBN 978-3-938793-92-3 ; 398 €)
Gathering 115 entries written by 101 internationally renowned experts in their fields, the Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought aims at interpreting Whitehead secundum Whitehead, at canvassing the current state of knowledge in Whiteheadian scholarship and at identifying promising directions for future investigations through (internal) cross-elucidation and (external) interdisciplinary and crossdisciplinary development.
Table of Contents
Introduction
I. Aesthetics
II. Anthropology
III. Ecology
IV. Economy
V. Education
VI. Ethics
VII. Gender Studies
VIII. History
IX. Language
X. Mathematics and Logic
XI. Metaphysics
XII. Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind
XIII. Public Policy
XIV. Science
XV. Sociology of Science
XVI. Theology and Religion
XVII. Theory of Knowledge
XVIII. Urbanism & Architecture
XIX. Biographical entries
XX. Critical Apparatus

Authors : A Sister of St-John, Adam Scarfe , Albert C. Lewis, Alessandro Sardi, Alix Parmentier, Andrew Dawson, Annamaria Miranda, Arran Gare, Barbara Muraca, Berit Brogaard, Beth Lord, Brian G. Henning, Bruce Duncan MacQueen, Bruce G. Epperly, Carol F. Johnston, Carol P. Christ, Claude de Jonckheere, Claus Michael Ringel, Clifford Cobb, Craig Eisendrath, Daniel A. Dombrowski, David G. Butt, David Ray Griffin, Dominic J. Balestra, Donald Wayne Viney, Donna Bowman, Douglas R. Anderson, Elias L. Khalil, Elie During, Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos, Franck Robert, Gao Shan, Gary A. Cook, George Allan, Giangiacomo Gerla , Gottfried Heinemann, Graham Bird, Granville C. Henry, jr., Gudmund Smith, Guillaume Durand, Howard Woodhouse, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Jaime Nubiola, James Connelly, James Williams, Jean-Pascal Alcantara, Johanna Seibt, John B. Cobb, Jr., John H. Buchanan, John Quiring , John W. Lango, Jonathan Delafield-Butt, Jorge Luis Nobo, Joseph A. Bracken, S.J., Joseph E. Earley, Sr., Joseph Grange, Juan Vicente Mayoral de Lucas, Judith Jones, Julie A. Nelson, Kipton Jensen, Leemon McHenry, Les Muray, Lieven Decock, Liliana Albertazzi, Luca Gaeta, Luca Vanzago, Manuel Bächtold, Marc Maesschalck, Maria Pachalska , Mark Modak-Truran, Mark R. Dibben, Mary Elizabeth Moore, Max Velmans, Michael Epperson, Michael Fortescue, Michel Weber, Murray Code, Mustafa Ruezgar, Norman Sieroka, Patrick J. Coppock, Paul Custodio Bube, Peter Hare, Peter Simons, Pierfrancesco Basile, Les Muray, Randall E. Auxier, Richard Feist, Robert Castiglione, Robert J.Valenza, Ronny Desmet , Ross L. Stein, Rudolf Windeln, Stephen T. Franklin, Sylviane R. Schwer, T. L. S. Sprigge, Thomas A. F. Kelly, Thomas E. Hosinski, C.S.C., Timothy E. Eastman, Vincent Shen, Volker Peckhaus, William Jay Garland, William T. Myers"

"Michel Weber, L’Épreuve de la philosophie. Essai sur les fondements de la praxis philosophique, Louvain-la-Neuve, Éditions Chromatika, 2008. (978-2-930517-02-5 ; 141 p. ; 15 € ; http://www.i6doc.com/fr/livre/?GCOI=28001100357380)

Peu connu en francophonie, l’entretien — ou la « pratique » — philosophique est une activité qui plonge ses racines dans l’héritage socratique. Faire l’épreuve de la philosophie, c’est se soumettre à l’exigence de la vie authentique, telle qu’elle pilote un type particulier de dialogue : le dialogue maïeutique, celui qui accouche les âmes. Il s’agit ici de situer les enjeux de la pratique philosophique et d’en établir les fondements, c’est-à-dire de montrer ce qui fait sa spécificité indépendamment des disciplines existant déjà dans le domaine de la santé mentale.

Little known in the French-speaking world, philosophical counselling is a practice that is rooted in Socrates' and Epicurus legacies. The philosophical ordeal, i.e., to put philosophy to the test requires a double event taking place during the dialogue between the philosophical practitioner and the visitor (to use Achenbach's term). On the one hand, the practitioner accepts to have her philosophical standpoint assessed by its maieutic capacity to relieve human suffering. On the other, the visitor endorses in his own way the commitment to authenticity that is specific to philosophical life. This book provides the foundations for a practice primarily inspired by A. N. Whitehead’s organic and processual philosophy as it enforces a radical creativity. Its visionary stance is furthermore confronted with Pierre Hadot’s “spiritual exercises” and its efficacy supported by James’ pragmatism.
"

"Michel Weber, Whitehead's Pancreativism. The Basics, Foreword by Nicholas Rescher, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought VII, 2006. (278 p. ; ISBN 3-938793-15-5 ; 84 €)
There is one question that any potential reader who suspects that Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) might be important for past, contemporary, and future philosophy inevitably raises: how should I read Whitehead? How can I make sense of this incredibly dense tissue of imaginative systematizing, spread over decades of work in disciplines so different and specialized as algebra, geometry, logic, relativistic physics and philosophy of science? Accordingly, this monograph has two main objectives. The first one is to propose a set of efficient hermeneutical tools to get the reader started. These straightforward tools provide answers that are highly coherent and probably the most applicable to Whitehead’s entire corpus. The second objective is to illustrate how the several parts of Process and Reality are connected, something that all commentators have either failed to recognise or only incompletely acknowledged.
Table of Contents
Abbreviations
Foreword—Nicholas Rescher
Introduction
I. Historico-Conceptual Context
II. The Intertwining of Science, Philosophy and Religion
III. Process and Reality’s Goal and Method
IV. Creative Advance and Categoreal Scheme
V. Pancreativism
VI. Epochal Actuality and Types of Potentiality
VII. Conclusion
Bibliography
Analytic Table of Contents
"

"Alan Van Wyk and Michel Weber (eds.), Creativity and Its Discontents. The Response to Whitehead's Process and Reality, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought VIII, 2008. (240 p. ; ISBN 978-3-86838-018-7 ; 89 €)
“I do not expect a good reception from professional philosophers” wrote Whitehead in 1929, straight after the publication of Process and Reality. Indeed, it took nearly thirty years before scholars seriously started to try to decipher the book taken as a whole. And there remains nowadays “professional” Whiteheadians who claim that this work can—or even should—be bracketed by anyone wishing to get a clear picture of Whitehead's true speculative agenda. Creativity and Its Discontent aims to provide evidence for this state of affairs by gathering and contextualizing all the major reviews (translated where need be) of Process and Reality: its original 1929 edition, its various translations (some of them still ongoing) and its 1978 corrected edition. It is designed as the ideal tool to accompany the forthcoming Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought.
Table of Contents
Introduction : Michel Weber (Chromatiques)
1. CUP and Macmillan Editions, 1929
Mumford, December 1929
Clark, January 1930
Ginzburg, January 1930
Northrop, January 1930
Wieman, January 1930
Mabbott, March 1930
Carr, July 1930
Nagel, July 1930
Marvin, November 1930
Stebbing, October 1930
Taylor, 1930
Belgion, 1930
Moore, May 1931
Murphy, 1931
2. Macmillan Reprint, 1960
Fjellman, November 1961
3. Free Press Corrected Edition, 1978
Ogden, Fall 1979
Christian, 1979
Connor, 1979
Burke, 1981
Nobo, 1983
4. Translations
Spanish Translation by J. Rovira Armengol (1956) Reviewed by Garcia Bacca, 1956
Italian Translation (1965) Reviewed by Guzzo, 1965
Italian Translation (1965) Reviewed by Sandro Travaglia, 1966
German Translation (1979) Reviewed by Wolf-Gazo, 1979
French Translation (1995) Reviewed by Weber, 1998
Bibliographies by Linguistic sphere
American and English by Steve Hulbert and John Quiring (Claremont)
Dutch by André Cloots (Louvain)
French by Michel Weber (Chromatiques)
German by Helmut Maaßen (Geldern)
Italian by Luca Gaeta (Milano) and Luca Vanzago (Pavia), under the supervision of Carlo Sini (Milano)
Portughese by Luis de Morais (Lisboa)
Spanish by Juan Vicente Mayoral de Lucas (Toledo)
"

Interview faite par Pierre Boutang à Jean Wahl en 1971 où celui-ci, pour la première fois, raconte les circonstances de son arrestation par la Gestapo à Paris, en 1941, son passage à la Santé puis à Drancy et nomme ceux qui l'ont averti, aidé, soutenu ainsi que que le nom de celui qui l'a indiqué à la Gestapo.

""
In contrast to many of his contemporaries, A. J. Ayer was an analytic philosopher who had sustained throughout his career some interest in developments in the work of his ‘continental’ peers. Ayer, who spoke French, held friendships with some important Parisian intellectuals, such as Camus, Bataille, Wahl and Merleau-Ponty. This paper examines the circumstances of a meeting between Ayer, Merleau-Ponty, Wahl, Ambrosino and Bataille, which took place in 1951 at some Parisian bar. The question under discussion during this meeting was whether the sun existed before humans did, over which the various philosophers disagreed. This disagreement is tangled with a variety of issues, such as Ayer’s critique of Heidegger and Sartre (inherited from Carnap), Ayer’s response to Merleau-Ponty’s critique of empiricism, and Bataille’s response to Sartre’s critique of his notion of ‘unknowing’, which uncannily resembles Ayer’s critique of Sartre. Amidst this tangle one finds Bataille’s statement that an ‘abyss’ separates English from French and German philosophy, the first recorded announcement of the analytic-continental divide in the twentieth century.""

Jean Wahl was born in Marseille, France, where his father, who was professor of English, succeeded to Mallarmé. He studied in the lycée Janson de Sailly (Paris) and, after a preparatory
year in the lycée Louis-le-Grand (Paris), he entered the École normale supérieure (Ulm) in 1907. In 1910 he became “agrégé de philosophie” (first in his year, just before his good friend
Gabriel Marcel, 1889–1973). Docteur ès lettres in 1920 with a thesis devoted to Les
Philosophies pluralistes d’Angleterre et d’Amérique (translated into English by Fred Rothwell
as The Pluralist Philosophies of England and America, London: Open Court, 1925) and a
supplementary thesis (“Thèse complémentaire”) on Descartes’ concept of the instant (Le Rôle
de l'Idée de l'Instant dans la Philosophie de Descartes).

Twentieth-century philosophy has often been pictured as divided into two camps, analytic and continental. This study challenges this depiction by examining encounters between some of the leading representatives of either side. Starting with Husserl and Frege's fin-de-siècle turn against psychologism, it turns to Carnap's 1931 attack on Heidegger's metaphysics (together with its background in the Cassirer-Heidegger dispute of 1929), moving on to Ayer's 1951 meeting with Bataille and Merleau-Ponty at a Parisian bar, followed by the 'dialogue of the deaf' between Oxford linguistic philosophers and phenomenologists at the 1951 Royaumont colloquium, leading up to the Derrida-Searle controversy. Careful study shows that it is implausible to assume the existence of a century-old 'gulf' between two sides of philosophy. Vrahimis argues that miscommunication and ignorance over the exact content of the above encounters must to a large extent be held accountable for any perceived gap.

""Michel Weber, La dialectique de l’intuition chez A. N. Whitehead : sensation pure, pancréativité et contiguïsme [Introduction à la lecture de Process and Reality (1929)]. Préface de Jean Ladrière. Mémoire couronné par la Classe des Lettres et des Sciences morales et politiques de l’Académie Royale de Belgique (2000) et publié avec le concours de la Commission des publications de l’Institut supérieur de Philosophie (Université catholique de Louvain), Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Chromatiques whiteheadiennes I, 2005. (391 p. ; ISBN 3-937202-55-2 ; 75 €)
Procès et réalité (1929) d’A. N. Whitehead (1861–1947) est sans doute l’ouvrage le plus important pour saisir le sens et la portée de la pensée du processus. A l’instar du corpus whiteheadien, la présente introduction procède de manière circumambulatoire, c’est-à-dire qu’elle met en œuvre une série convergente d’analyses contextualisantes. La première partie met en scène le concept de « sensation pure » à l’aide d’un examen contrasté de ses inflexions bergsoniennes et whiteheadiennes. La seconde partie expose l’intuition « systématique » de Whitehead, c’est-à-dire la rationalisation d’un mode relationnel qui rend compte de — et est justifié par — l’intuition pré-systématique. La troisième partie affine le concept de l’Ultime en opérant un remembrement principiel « contiguïste » des paysages jusque là profilés sectoriellement.
« Cette étude me paraît remarquable à plusieurs égards. […] Je salue la rigueur de maintes analyses précises […]. Outre qu’il témoigne d’une culture philosophique tout à fait notable, allant des présocratiques aux contemporains, ce mémoire a le grand mérite de prêter une attention scrupuleuse au texte original de l’auteur dont il traite et de se débattre en permanence avec les interprétations qui en ont été proposées, et ce jusqu’aux plus récentes. » (Jacques Taminiaux, Institut supérieur de Philosophie, Université catholique de Louvain et Department of Philosophy, Boston College, in « Concours annuel de 2000. Rapports des Commissaires », Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres et des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 6e série, Tome XI, Bruxelles, Académie Royale de Belgique, 2000, pp. 122-126.)
« Il s’agit, concernant un philosophe particulièrement difficile, d’un ouvrage remarquable et impressionnant par sa vaste culture philosophique, sa pénétration conceptuelle, son organisation systématique et la connaissance approfondie de son auteur. Il faut se réjouir de cette étude, l’une des rares qui soit exhaustive en langue française, sur Whitehead qui reste méconnu sur le continent. […] » (Marc Richir, Institut de Philosophie, Université Libre de Bruxelles, in « Concours annuel de 2000. Rapports des Commissaires », Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres et des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 6e série, Tome XI, Bruxelles, Académie Royale de Belgique, 2000, pp. 122-126.)""

Attentive readings of Deleuze’s works alongside the projects of his teachers show that they often share a common problem or set of problems. One of the most innovative and influential of these projects is the work of Jean Wahl. Wahl’s analysis of French existential phenomenology, here analyzed through a representative essay published in 1950, focuses on the problem of the pre-personal, pre-subjective elements of thinking and worldly existence. Deleuze’s philosophical project, already visible in his early essays on Bergson, is a critique of the phenomenological presuppositions that determine this problem in terms of negation.

« 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], Paris, Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2004. Critical review », Process Studies 34/1, 2005, pp. 155-156.

« 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], Paris, Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2004. Compte rendu critique », Revue internationale de Philosophie, vol. 61 n° 236, Juin 2006, pp. 246-248.

Un premier volume d'échanges de plus de 900 lettres organisées autour de trois axes:
le surréalisme (Breton - Alechinsky - Ubac...)
la création de la revue l'éphémère des Editions Maeght (Gaetan Picon - Paul Celan...)
les grandes amitiés , philosophiques et poétiques: Bachelard.- Chatelet - Wahl - Jouve - Jaccottet - Butor - Cioran...)
Une quantité d'informations sur le travail du poète et sur la sensibilité d'une époque (avec des notes enrichies d'extraits de la chronologie de l'écrivain par lui-même).

Jean Wahl (1888-1974), once considered by the likes of Bataille, Deleuze, Levinas, and Marcel to be among the greatest philosophers in France, has today nearly been forgotten outside France. Yet his influence on French philosophical thought can hardly be overestimated. About him, Emmanuel Levinas wrote that "during over a half century of teaching and research, [Jean Wahl] was the life force of the academic, extra-academic, and even, to a degree anti-academic philosophy necessary to a great culture." And Gilles Deleuze, for his part, commented that "Apart from Sartre, who remained caught none the less in the trap of the verb to be, the most important philosopher in France was Jean Wahl." As professor at the Sorbonne for over three decades, president of the Société Française de Philosophie (1960-74), editor of the Revue de métaphysique et de morale (1950-74), and founder and director of the Collège Philosophique, Wahl was in dialogue with some of the most prominent and well-known French philosophers and intellectuals of the twentieth century, including Georges Bataille, Henri Bergson, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Butor, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Gabriel Marcel, Jacques Lacan, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Maritain, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone Weil, impacting several of them greatly. Wahl also played a significant role, in some cases almost singlehandedly, in introducing French philosophy to movements like phenomenology, existentialism, American pragmatism and literature, and British empiricism. And Wahl was an original philosopher and poet in his own right. The goal of this volume of selections from Jean Wahl's philosophical writings is to reintroduce Wahl to the English-speaking philosophical community, and to show the enormous influence he had through introducing the work of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Jaspers to several generations of French philosophers.

Some unpublished documents of the French philosopher Jean Wahl, relating in particular to his time spent in the concentration camp at Drancy (Summer 1941) and the years of the Occupation and exile in the United States (1942-1945), are shown, in light of the first-hand account of his daughter, to revolve around the complexity of religious experience, the question of atheism and faith for Jean Wahl.
Objects (a lunch pail used in prison), letters (a letter written at Drancy; a note from Samuel Becket on the subject of exile), photographs (of a course taught at Mount Holyoke in 1944), reflections (a radio interview from 1970), and personal memories interlace in order to reconstruct the philosophical and poetic position of the author on the meaning of what was experienced.



Publication de documents inédits du philosophe français Jean Wahl se rapportant en particulier à la période passée au camp de concentration de Drancy (été 1941), aux années de l'Occupation et de l'exil aux Etats-Unis (1942-1945) à travers un témoignage organisé et transmis par sa fille autour de la complexité de l'expérience religieuse, de la question de l'athéisme et de la foi chez Jean Wahl.
Des objets (une gamelle utilisée en prison), des lettres (un billet écrit à Drancy - un mot de Samuel Beckett sur le thème de l'exil), des photographies (un cours professé à Mount-Holyoke en 1944), des réflexions (une interview radiophonique de 1970) et des souvenirs personnels s'entrecroisent pour restituer la position philosophique et poétique de l'auteur sur le sens de ce qui a été vécu.

Translator's Abstract: "La Poésie Comme Exercice Spirituel" first appeared in a 1942 issue of Revue Fontaine edited by Jacques and Raissa Maritain and was subsequently republished in Wah's 1948 text Poésie, Pensée, Perception, published by Calmann-Lévy. The following is a translation of the Fontaine version. I have noted all of the variations from the latter version in the notes. As I emphasize in my commentary, the piece is a notable display of Wahl's eclectic range of influences. Most importantly, it shows the extent to which his interest in radical empiricism and process metaphysics informs his creative approach to the intersection of poetics and metaphysics. These interests are not explicitly named in the essay, and yet their influence is pervasive. The essay also includes several moments of substantial resonance with the work of Gilles Deleuze, as noted in the commentary.

In Whitehead's philosophy, perception is enlarged to every entity of the world: "prehensions" and "feelings" constitutes reality as a series of events. In other words, Whitehead builds a "cosmo-aesthetics", mixing up aesthetics-in its ety-mological sense-and cosmology (beyond Kantian interdiction). Aim of this work is to study the implications of these intuitions according to which what we perceive (and feel) in the world should serve as a basis for a speculative analysis of the world itself.

Il s’agit de la traduction en italien de la conférence “Petite histoire de l’existentialisme”, tenue par Jean Wahl en 1946 et publiée en 1947 aux éditions Club Maintenant suivie d’un débat entre les philosophes Berdjaev, Gurvitch, Koyré, Gandillac, Marcel, Levinas et de « Kafka et Kierkegaard. Commentaires », une lecture croisée à travers le regard des deux auteurs.

Un livre de traduction anglaise de quinze des  "Poèmes du camp et de la prison" de Jean Wahl,  parvient à sa fille, de manière inattendue, plus de quarante après sa parution (1974) aux soins de la belle-fille d'un imprimeur, traducteur et bibliophile, Charles Guenther.

The aim of this paper is to re-evaluate the impact of Jean Wahl’s philosophical project on French postmodern philosophy. To complete this task, it is necessary as argued to put the wahlian project into the context of two major motives of XXth Century French philosophy: the rejection of ocularcentrism and the ambiguous relationship to Hegelianism, received through the figure of the unhappy consciousness. Following those two lines, the paper reconstructs Wahl’s intellectual journey from his PhD on American pluralism to his reception of Hegelianism to explain his less known period consisting in introducing American modernist writers in the French philosophical landscape. Through a targeted analysis of William Faulkner’s work, mainly focused on Light in August, the paper shows how the inventiveness of the modernist novel– understood as a long explanation with its European and therefore colonial origins – in terms of techniques of narration, visuality and sonority offered attractive solutions to French Philosophy struggling with the postmodern crisis and contributed to conceive a new type of subjectivity fitting onto the post-war political context.

Philippe Devaux, La Cosmologie de Whitehead. Tome I, L'Épistémologie whiteheadienne. Édité par Thibaut Donck et Michel Weber, Préface de Paul Gochet, Louvain-la-Neuve, Les Éditions Chromatika, 2007. (978-2-930517-01-8 ; 351 p. ; 35 €)

Philippe Devaux (1902–1979), qui a enseigné aux universités de Liège, de Bruxelles, de Manchester, de Hull et de Londres, a contribué de manière décisive à la diffusion de la philosophie anglo-saxonne dans le monde francophone. Dès 1929, il publie chez Vrin Le système d'Alexander. Devenu Chercheur qualifié au Fonds National de la Recherche scientifique belge, il séjourne ensuite deux ans comme advanced fellow dans les Universités de Berkeley et de Harvard, où il assistera aux cours de Whitehead. Traducteur et commentateur de Russell et de Whitehead (Le devenir de la religion, 1939 ; La fonction de la raison et autres essais, 1969), Philippe Devaux a également écrit la première introduction en langue française à l'œuvre de Russell (Bertrand Russell ou la Paix dans la Vérité, 1967) et une Introduction historique à la Philosophie européenne (1949).

La Cosmologie de Whitehead constitue un témoignage historique d'un exceptionnel intérêt, dû à un philosophe, instruit des sciences, qui a connu personnellement deux des acteurs principaux du renouveau philosophique de la première moitié du vingtième siècle : Russell et Whitehead. A l'époque où il écrit sa monographie, l'œuvre de Whitehead n'éveille, dans le monde francophone, que la curiosité de quelques érudits tels Jean Wahl (1888–1974). Philippe Devaux continuera jusqu'à sa mort à travailler à ce texte qui est publié aujourd’hui à la faveur d’un renouveau des études whiteheadiennes en francophonie.

Paul Gochet, Membre de l'Académie Royale de Belgique, est professeur émérite de philosophie à l’Université de Liège.

Metafísica e exterioridade: Jean Wahl e o gosto empirista de Deleuze 1 Bernardo de Carvalho Tavares dos Santos  Resumo: Trata-se de propor paralelos entre Deleuze e Jean Wahl, para demonstrar que há entre os dois uma profunda afinidade de estilo ou gosto filosófico, graças à qual o pensamento do segundo oferece uma profícua via de acesso ao do primeiro. Tais paralelos giram em torno dos temas do empirismo superior como metafísica, da ligação entre empirismo e pluralismo e da filosofia do E. Para propô-los, nomes de aliados comuns de Wahl e Deleuze, como Bergson, William James e Whitehead também serão evocados. Ao final, será possível notar como a decisiva afinidade com Wahl afasta Deleuze e seu empirismo transcendental da chave crítica kantiana à qual ele frequentemente é associado. Palavras chave: Deleuze, Jean Wahl, empirismo transcendental, metafísica, filosofia do E.

This paper compares Deleuze’s philosophy with Jean Wahl’s, in order to show their profound affinity of philosophical style or taste, thanks to which Wahl’s ideas offer a fruitful way of accessing Deleuzian thinking. This hypothesis relates to themes like superior empiricism, pluralism and philosophy of the AND, as well as common allies of Wahl and Deleuze, such as Bergson, William James and Whitehead. At the end of the text, such an affinity of taste will help us to start removing Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism form the orbit of Kantian critic, to which it is often related.
Keywords: Deleuze, Jean Wahl, transcendental empiricism, metaphysics, philosophy of the AND

Emmanuel Levinas’ ursprünglich als Dissertationsschrift eingereichter Husserl-Kommentar ist bis heute eine der luzidesten Einführungen in die Phänomenologie und markiert aus philosophiehistorischer Perspektive nicht weniger als einen Meilenstein. In ihrem profunden Einfluss auf Denker*innen wie Paul Ricœur oder Jacques Derrida ist Levinas’ Studie maßgeblich an der Formierung dessen beteiligt, was den Namen »Theorie« tragen wird – nicht nur in ihrer Rolle als erste ausführliche Auseinandersetzung mit Husserl in Frankreich überhaupt, sondern insbesondere auch in ihrer Sensibilität für das, was in der abendländischen Philosophie über diese hinausweist: So zeichnet Levinas’ sorgfältige wie kreative Lektüre bereits Anspruch und Umrisse einer kommenden eigenen, seiner Philosophie des Anderen vor.

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Il saggio che presentiamo per la prima volta in lingua italiana, Verso il concreto. Studi di storia della !loso!a contemporanea – William James, Whitehead, Gabriel Marcel, esce nel 1932 per la casa editrice J. Vrin, quando Jean Wahl, ormai quarantaquattrenne, pur non avendo ancora ottenuto il posto di professore di Storia della filosofia alla Sorbona, è un filosofo ormai riconosciuto in Francia; la sua originale tesi di dottorato sulle filosofie pluraliste inglesi e americane, uscita dodici anni prima, era stata accolta positivamente, così come la tesi complementare sul ruolo dell’istante nel pensiero di Descartes, il successivo studio sul Parmenide di Platone e, soprattutto, l’importante lavoro sulla coscienza infelice nella filosofia hegeliana. Giunto ormai alla sua quinta opera, Wahl dà alle stampe Verso il concreto, saggio che rappresenta, a nostro avviso, una tappa fondamentale nel percorso filosofico che egli stava cominciando a delineare. Cosa rende quest’opera così importante? Iniziamo a chiarirlo da un punto di vista ‘interno’, prospettando quattro nuclei tematici che, ben presenti nel testo, diventeranno dei veri e propri capisaldi della rifessione di Wahl.

When Henri Bergson, in Duration and simultaneity, intends to show that durée constitutes the ‘pattern’ of reality, he refers to Alfred North Whitehead’s «beautiful» book on the philosophy of nature (The Concept of Nature). Whitehead, in return, paid his respect multiple times to bergsonian philosophy, from which he had been deeply influenced. The relationship between Bergson and Whitehead is not, however, that of a merely mutual admiration, but it is based on a common naturalistic view, intent in building a consistent cosmology of beings. Aim of my presentation is – following some pioneering remarks made by Jean Wahl – to study the reflections on perception of Bergson and Whitehead: both in the first chapter of Matter and Memory and in the third part of Process and Reality, the two extend perceptivity from the domain of subject to reality in itself, building an original «cosmo-aesthetics» which reunites immediate experience, metaphysics and scientific thought.

Dans les années 1920 et 1930, leur château de Colpach au Luxembourg était un véritable lieu d’accueil pour les écrivains, les intellectuels et les artistes venus essentiellement de France, d’Allemagne et de Belgique. Aline Mayrisch faisait salon dans ce château et a créé un réseau interculturel qui s’appelle « le cercle de Colpach ». Dans cet article, je voudrais comparer « le cercle de Colpach » au Luxembourg aux entretiens d’été dans l’abbaye de Pontigny en Bourgogne, qui sont à l’origine des colloques de Cerisy-la-Salle en Normandie parce qu’on trouvait à Colpach beaucoup de participants de Pontigny. Premièrement, il existe une différence de langue. Tandis que le salon dans le château de Colpach au Luxembourg était plurilingue, les Décades de Pontigny étaient exclusivement monolingues. Deuxièmement, Colpach et Pontigny ont divergé sur les sujets de conversation. Les Mayrisch ont collectionné les œuvres d’art. On peut trouver beaucoup de pièces de théâtre dans la bibliothèque de ce château. Par conséquent, au contraire de Pontigny, on devait discuter des thèmes artistiques à Colpach. Troisièmement, Colpach devait être le lieu confortable pour les femmes intellectuelles. La fondatrice des colloques de Cerisy-la-Salle, Anne Heurgon-Desjardins, ressentait l’homosocialité masculine parmi les écrivains dans les Décades de Pontigny. Certaines femmes cultivées étaient marginales dans les réunions d’été en Bourgogne.