Abstract

My dissertation is a comprehensive history of the initial reception of Martin Heidegger's philosophy in France from 1927--1961. The project focuses on Emmanuel Levinas, Alexandre Kojeve, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Beaufret, and Maurice Blanchot. After World War I the notion of progress as defined by the positivist and neo-Kantian traditions in France was in disarray. In response to this crisis, thinkers such as Kojeve reintroduced Hegel into France in an effort to salvage the notion of progress through the concept of history. At the same time the philosophy of Heidegger was introduced to France through the work of Levinas. While Kojeve's lectures were not in themselves Heideggerian, they were heavily laced with interpretations of Heidegger read into Hegel. ;By the end of World War II the notion of progress no longer seemed salvageable. At this time the emphasis in French philosophy shifted toward an investigation of the understanding of Being. The work of Levinas and the figures surrounding the Kojeve seminar prepared the ground for the understanding of Heidegger in France, but the popularization of Heidegger can be attributed to the work of Sartre. Sartre's philosophy represents a shift in emphasis from Kojeve's historical understanding of Heidegger veiled by Hegel's teleological dialectic toward an understanding of Heidegger's work taken on its own terms. But this first reading of Heidegger was in many ways a mis-reading. It was to this misunderstanding that Heidegger wrote the "Letter on Humanism" to Jean Beaufret in 1946. ;Through the work of Beaufret, this second reading of Heidegger in France presented Heidegger's philosophy in opposition to the humanistic philosophies of Sartre and Kojeve. The result was a debate between thinkers, openly indebted to Heidegger, and Heidegger himself via Jean Beaufret. This debate was further complicated by the revelation of Heidegger's Nazi affiliations during the first Heidegger Affair in 1945. ;Heidegger's turn toward language and the moral implications of the first Heidegger Affair became essential components in the philosophical development of Blanchot and Levinas. In the third reading of Heidegger, Blanchot and Levinas looked to use Heidegger's philosophy as a building block in an attempt to think beyond Heidegger