Skip to content
Curated category

20th-century French philosophers

  • Jean BeaufretJean Beaufret was born on the 22nd of May 1907 in Auzances, France. He graduated from the École Normale Supérieure before completing his mandatory military…
  • Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre was born on the 21st of June 1905 in Paris as the only child of Jean-Baptiste Sartre and Anne-Marie Schweitzer.
  • Albert CamusAlbert Camus was born on the 7th of November 1913 in Mondovi, a working-class town in French Algeria, to a mother who was deaf and illiterate and a father he…
  • Michel FoucaultPaul-Michel Foucault was born on the 15th of October 1926 in the city of Poitiers, west-central France. He entered a prosperous, socially conservative family…
  • Émile DurkheimDavid Émile Durkheim was born on the 15th of April 1858 in Épinal, Lorraine. He entered a long lineage of devout Alsatian Jews stretching back eight…
  • Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss was born on the 28th of November 1908 in Brussels. His parents were French Jews who had moved there for his father's work as a portrait…
  • Simone de BeauvoirSimone de Beauvoir did not consider herself a philosopher, and at the time of her death in 1986 the world did not call her one either.
  • Frantz FanonFrantz Omar Fanon was born on the 20th of July 1925 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, a French colony in the Caribbean. He died on the 6th of December 1961 in…
  • Georges BatailleGeorges Bataille was born on the 10th of September 1897 in Billom, a small town in the Auvergne region. His father Joseph-Aristide worked as a tax collector…
  • Jacques LacanJacques Marie Émile Lacan was born on the 13th of April 1901 in Paris. His father worked as a successful soap and oils salesman while his mother remained an…
  • Henri PoincaréOn the 29th of April 1854, Jules Henri Poincaré was born in the Cité Ducale neighborhood of Nancy. His early years were marked by a severe illness that left…
  • Louis AlthusserLouis Pierre Althusser was born on the 16th of October 1918 in Birmendreïs, a small town near Algiers in French Algeria.
  • Alexandre KojèveAleksandr Vladimirovich Kozhevnikov entered the world on the 28th of April 1902 within the borders of the Russian Empire.
  • Gabriel MarcelGabriel Honoré Marcel entered the world on the 7th of December 1889 in Paris, France. His mother Laure Meyer was Jewish and died when he was very young.
  • Jean WahlJean Wahl entered the École Normale Supérieure in Paris during a period when French philosophy was dominated by rigid academic traditions.