Jean Beaufret

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Jean Beaufret (1907 – 1982) was a French philosopher and Germanist tremendously influential in the reception of Martin Heidegger's work in France.

After graduating from the École Normale Supérieure and completing military service Beaufret passed his agrégation de philosophie in 1933 and undertook a career teaching as a lycée philosophy instructor. His early philosophical interests were in 19th century German philosophy, particularly GWF Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Karl Marx. In the period before the Second World War, he came to know Paul Éluard, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, André Breton, and Paul Valéry.

In 1946, as Heidegger's continued teaching privileges came into question by the denazification committees, he made Beaufret's acquaintance. Beaufret engaged Heidegger on the development of French existentialism, and Heidegger wrote the "Brief über den Humanismus" ("Letter on Humanism") to Beaufret in response. Beaufret took his students to visit Heidegger at Todtnauberg in 1947 following a month-long Franco-German academic exchange at Freiburg im Briesgau, while Baden-Württemberg was still under French occupation. Jean-François Lyotard, one of the group of students on the trip selected to visit Heidegger, wrote about the experience thus:

I remember a sly peasant in his Hütte, dressed in traditional costume, of sententious speech and shifty eye, apparently lacking in shame and anxiety, protected by his knowledge and flattered by his discipline. This picture was enough to prevent me from becoming a "Heideggerian." I take no pride in this. These were fugitive impressions, due no doubt to the prejudices of a young Parisian. I continued to read his work. ("Heidegger and 'the Jews': a Conference in Vienna and Freiburg", p. 137, in Political Writings)

Beaufret remained a close associate of Heidegger's, and it was through Beaufret that Heidegger became aware of Jacques Derrida's work.

Beaufret is considered the wellspring of "orthodox French Heideggerianism," which was the element of French philosophy that was most dismissive of Heidegger's involvement with National Socialism after the French publication in 1987 of Victor Farias's Heidegger and Nazism.

[edit] Bibliography

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