Curated playlist
20th-century French philosophers
- Jean BeaufretJean Beaufret was born on the 22nd of May 1907 in Auzances, a small town in central France, and he would spend his life building a bridge between French philosophy and one of Germany's most contested thinkers. He died on the 7th of August…
- Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, and he refused it. He said a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution. The prize was announced on the 22nd of October 1964. Nine days earlier, on the…
- 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 would never meet. Lucien Camus, a poor agricultural laborer, died in combat…
- Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault was born on the 15th of October 1926 in Poitiers, France, into a family where a surgeon father expected his son to follow in his footsteps. That son became one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century instead.…
- Émile DurkheimÉmile Durkheim was born on the 15th of April 1858 in Épinal, Lorraine, France, the son of a rabbi and the grandson of a rabbi, and the great-grandson of one too. His family's rabbinical lineage stretched back eight generations. Nobody…
- Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss died on the 30th of October 2009, at the age of 100, and for four days the world did not know. When French President Nicolas Sarkozy finally spoke, he called Lévi-Strauss "one of the greatest ethnologists of all time."…
- 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. Yet she wrote the sentence that opened a century of argument: "One is not born woman but becomes woman."…
- 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 Bethesda, Maryland, at the age of 36, admitted to a hospital under the false name…
- Georges BatailleGeorges Bataille was born on the 10th of September 1897 in Billom, a small town in the Auvergne region of France, and by the time he died on the 8th of July 1962 he had spent a lifetime writing things that made people deeply uncomfortable.…
- Jacques LacanJacques Marie Émile Lacan, born on the 13th of April 1901 in Paris, became the most controversial psychoanalyst since Freud. He held seminars in Paris nearly every year from 1952 until 1980, attracting philosophers, artists, and clinical…
- Henri PoincaréHenri Poincaré was born on the 29th of April 1854 in the Cité Ducale neighborhood of Nancy, and by the time he died on the 17th of July 1912, he had touched nearly every branch of mathematics that existed in his lifetime. His peers called…
- Louis AlthusserLouis Althusser was born on the 16th of October 1918 in Birmendreïs, a town near Algiers in French Algeria, and he died on the 22nd of October 1990 in a psychiatric institution. Between those two dates lies one of the most turbulent…
- Alexandre KojèveAleksandr Vladimirovich Kozhevnikov entered the world on the 28th of April 1902 within the borders of the Russian Empire. He was born into a wealthy and influential family that would shape his early trajectory. His uncle, Wassily…
- Gabriel MarcelGabriel Honoré Marcel was born on the 7th of December 1889 in Paris, and by the time he died on the 8th of October 1973 he had written more than a dozen philosophical books and at least thirty plays. Yet he spent much of his life…
- Jean WahlJean André Wahl was born on the 25th of May 1888, and for most of the twentieth century he stood at the center of French philosophical life as a teacher, editor, poet, and institutional builder. He died on the 19th of June 1974, having…