Dominique Janicaud - Heidegger in France

HEIDEGGER

IN FRANCE

STUDIES IN CONTINENTAL THOUGHT

John Sallis, editor

Consulting Editors

Robert Bernasconi

John D. Caputo

David Carr

Edward S. Casey

David Farrell Krell

Lenore Langsdorf

James Risser

Dennis J. Schmidt

Calvin O. Schrag

Charles E. Scott

Daniela Vallega-Neu

David Wood

DOMINIQUE JANICAUD

TRANSLATED BY FRANOIS RAFFOUL AND DAVID PETTIGREW

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

First published in French as Heidegger en France

ditions Albin Michel S.A., 2001

English translation 2015 by Indiana University Press

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Janicaud, Dominique, 19372002

[Heidegger en France. English]

Heidegger in France / Dominique Janicaud ; translated by Franois Raffoul and David Pettigrew.

pages cm. (Studies in Continental thought)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-01773-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-253-01977-6 (ebook) 1. Heidegger, Martin, 18891976. 2. Philosophy, French20th century. 3. PhilosophersFranceInterviews. I. Title.

B3279.H49J2713 2015

193dc23

2015015901

1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15

THE TRANSLATORS WOULD like to thank first and foremost John Sallis and Dee Mortensen for their support of this project from its earliest stages. Initial planning began for the project in discussions with Professor Sallis and with Dee Mortensen, senior sponsoring editor at Indiana University Press. We are grateful that Professor Janicaud endorsed our plan to undertake the translation from the outset, and for the encouragement that he addressed to us in his paper Toward the End of the French Exception? delivered at the meeting of the Heidegger Conference in New Haven, in May 2002; it was subsequently published in French Interpretations of Heidegger: An Exceptional Reception. Dominique was to die tragically later that summer in Nice. Subsequently, we attended a Colloque in Dominiques memory in Nice in 2003, and met with his family at that time. We are grateful that we received their blessings to go forward with the translation. We would like to thank especially Franoise Dastur, who organized the Colloque in Nice and facilitated our discussions with Dominiques family.

Based on these early discussions, we were committed to keeping our promise to Dominique to complete the translation of his book, and our commitment to that promise sustained our efforts over the years. This was indeed a massive undertaking, given the size of the two volumes to be translated. The final manuscript numbered nearly 1,000 pages with 1,500 footnotes. We are therefore deeply grateful to a number of colleagues and friends who contributed to the early stages of the work by helping with the production of first drafts of some of the chapters and interviews. We thank John Castore, Cathy LeBlanc, Gregory Recco, Hakhamanesh Zangeneh, and Suzanne Zilch, in this respect. Cathy LeBlanc, in particular, helped further with an early review of a substantial part of the manuscript and some of the interviews, and for this we are grateful. Additional essential editorial assistance was received from a number of graduate students and scholars at Louisiana State University (LSU) and elsewhere, including Michael MacLaggan, Nadia Miskowiec, and Jim Ryan. We would also like to express our appreciation to Heidegger scholars in France who were consulted on various translation questions, including Jean Greisch, Pierre Jacerme, and Joseph OLeary, all of whom actually appear in Dominiques book as part of the history of the reception of Heidegger in France.

David Pettigrew would like to thank Southern Connecticut State University for the support he received over the course of the translation, including from the Philosophy Department, the School of Arts and Sciences, and the Office of the Provost. Such support included a sabbatical, research-reassigned time, and research grants. In addition, David would like to thank Cathy LeBlanc and her family for their hospitality in Aniche, France, as well as his friends at Hotel de Senlis in Paris, and at Hotel Saraj in Sarajevo, all places where much of the work of translation and revisions was undertaken over the years.

For the support he received at Louisiana State University, Franois Raffoul is grateful to the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at LSU for granting him a Manship Summer Research Fellowship in 2012 to work on the translation, as well as Delbert Burkett, department chairperson, and Gregory Schufreider, from the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies. He is thankful to Luis Daniel Venegas for his hospitality and Charlie Johnson for his friendship. Last but not least, he is deeply grateful to Melida Badilla for her unconditional support.

Finally, we have been grateful for the support and patience of Indiana University Press, and for the profoundly important contributions of many colleagues and friends. It has been an honor to have had the opportunity to bring Dominique Janicauds extraordinary book, Heidegger en France, to an English-language readership. We would like to think that we have kept our promise to our friend and colleague, Professor Dominique Janicaud, and in this way, that we have honored his memory.

DOMINIQUE JANICAUDS HEIDEGGER in France is a major work of breathtaking historical scope, a unique intellectual undertaking reconstituting in two volumes the history of the French reception of Heidegger, from its earliest stages in the late 1920s until 2000.). Derrida plays here as well on the sense of being against, as in going against the master: When I say: counter to Heideggers order (Counterpath, 56), it is because he haunts me, in Counterpath as in The Post Card, he is always there, watching me and reproaching me for something (HF, 355). This description of Derridas relation to Heidegger might serve as an accurate illustration of Heideggers place in French philosophy: a master with whom and against whom one thinks.

Janicaud writes that at first he had not envisioned a second part completely devoted to interviews with the personalities, translators, and/or interpreters who have been significant actors or witnesses in the reception of Heideggerian thought in France (HF, 12). However, he then adds that the development of the work itself poignant note about collecting Heideggers books after his death, books that were to be donated to the library at the Strasbourg Philosophy Institute. On the night table, among the books that had been set aside, there were books by Hlderlin, Goethe, and the Suhrkamp collection of Celans poems. Another book on the night table included a dedication from Jacques Lacan (