but a commentary on a course by Heidegger’.27 It was delivered in the academic year before Foucault began University studies, but Defert says that Foucault attended what sounds like a similar course from October 1946.28 A very young Kostas Axelos, newly arrived from Greece, was there for the earlier course, and recalls that Wahl ‘did not read a text written in advance, and only consulted the notes he had with him very occasionally’.29 It seems likely that Foucault attended Wahl’s 1950 course L’Idée d’être chez Heidegger, and possibly the December 1951 to March 1952 course La Pensée de Heidegger et la Poésie de Hölderlin.30
While the dominant French reading of Heidegger in the late 1940s and early 1950s focused on the texts available in translation, and tended to read him through Sartrean and Kierkegaardian lenses,31 Wahl was able to provide a much richer interpretation. These courses make extensive use of Heidegger’s writings after Being and Time, with a special focus on the collection Holzwege. Holzwege was published in 1950 and included texts from 1936–46, notably one on Nietzsche. Wahl also discusses the ‘Letter on Humanism’, and there is a stress on the development of Heidegger’s thought.32 He also draws on secondary literature, including Walter Biemel’s study of the world, and makes extensive use of an article by Henri Birault, then forthcoming in Revue de métaphysique et de morale, a journal Wahl edited.33 Foucault took notes on Biemel’s study, which also includes discussion of unpublished material.34
Two further courses, on the history of metaphysics and philosophy of existence were published in 1951.35 The first of these has a focus on Heidegger’s short book that contained ‘Plato’s Doctrine of Truth’ and the ‘Letter on Humanism’; along with Holzwege. Wahl immediately translates Heidegger’s brief description of what a Holzwege is – a wood path, but also a lost path.36 Wahl also discusses Heidegger’s 1924–5 course on Plato’s Sophist and the first lecture course on Nietzsche from 1936–7 on The Will to Power as Art, unpublished until 1992 and 1961, respectively.37 Foucault either attended this course or had access to its notes.38 Wahl’s subsequent courses included two at the Sorbonne published together as Traité de Métaphysique, though these do not discuss Heidegger as much.39 One notable later course by Wahl was on Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger’s 1935–6 lecture course, though not published in German until 1953.40 Wahl’s final course on Heidegger was Mots, mythes et réalité dans la philosophie de Heidegger, published in 1961.41
Wahl’s access to unpublished material is significant. Beaufret recalls that Alexandre Koyré took a copy of a Heidegger course to France in 1929.42 From Beaufret’s recollection of a passage in the manuscript, in which Heidegger compared Dasein to Leibniz’s monad, this is likely the same course Wahl mentions in his 1947 book Petite histoire de l’existentialisme, in which he too discusses such a passage.43 Although Beaufret’s recollection is not precise, it is likely they mean the summer 1928 course, immediately preceding the Einleitung, published in German in 1978 and translated as The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. This course is a detailed engagement with Leibniz, and it does have a passage that matches their recollection.44
It seems highly likely that Koyré brought more than one course to Paris from his time in Germany in 1928 and 1929.45 While Koyré is best known in English for his works in the history of science, including From the Closed World to the Open Universe and The Astronomical Revolution, he was also a significant thinker of the history of philosophy.46 Koyré had long been an important figure in the introduction of Heidegger’s ideas to France. Koyré and Wahl knew each other well, and Koyré was instrumental in getting Wahl to the United States in 1942, probably saving his life.47 After the war Wahl clearly had access to other unpublished courses by Heidegger, including the one on Nietzsche on which he lectured. Student transcripts circulated and Foucault clearly had access to them too. Foucault’s engagement with Heidegger will be fully discussed in Chapter 5.
Jean Hyppolite and the Diploma Thesis on Hegel
Hyppolite was best known for his work on Hegel. He was the translator of the Phenomenology of Spirit, and wrote important works on that text, the Logic and the Philosophy of History.48 Of a slightly earlier generation, Alexandre Kojève’s lectures had begun this French engagement.49 The audience was extraordinary: Althusser, Raymond Aron, Bataille, Blanchot, André Breton, Koyré, Lacan, Henri Lefebvre, Emmanuel Lévinas, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and many others.50 Hyppolite himself apparently avoided the lectures ‘for fear of being influenced’.51 As John Heckman puts it, ‘the course served as an indispensable preparation for the renewal of serious interest in Hegel after the Second World War. In large part it is fair to say that Kojève created the reading public for Hyppolite’s translation and commentary.’52 Hyppolite also wrote studies on Marx’s early, Hegelian, work,53 and his essays across the history of western philosophy were collected into a wide-ranging collection two years after his death.54 Foucault later recognizes how Wahl and Hyppolite together had made possible a French engagement with Hegel, albeit one that Foucault would attempt to free himself from with the aid of Nietzsche, Bataille and Blanchot (DE#281 IV, 84; EW III, 246).
In 1965 Hyppolite took part in a televised discussion with, among others, Canguilhem, Foucault, Paul Ricoeur, Dina Dreyfus and Alain Badiou.55 He died in 1968, and it was his chair at the Collège de France to which Foucault was elected. There was a tribute session organized at the ENS on 19 January 1969, at which both Canguilhem and Foucault spoke.56 Foucault suggests that Logique et existence is ‘one of the great books of our time’ (DE#67 I, 785), and pays specific attention to the course on the Phenomenology of Spirit which he attended – in which he says the students heard not only the voice of the professor, but also ‘something of the voice of Hegel, and perhaps even the voice of philosophy itself’ (DE#67 I, 779). Foucault underscores that Hyppolite was not just an historian of philosophy, but spoke of the ‘history of philosophical thought’ (DE#67 I, 780). The next year, Foucault pays fulsome tribute to Hyppolite in his Collège de France inaugural lecture in the History of Systems of Thought (OD 74–82/170–3), which seems to go beyond the standard honours to his predecessor demanded by the occasion. Finally, Foucault led the volume Hommage à Jean Hyppolite in 1971, to which he contributed his ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’ essay, along with pieces by Canguilhem, Laplanche and Michel Serres.57
Foucault’s diplôme d’études supérieures thesis (roughly equivalent to a Master’s degree by research) under the direction of Hyppolite was submitted in 1949. It was entitled ‘La Constitution d’un transcendantal dans la Phénoménologie de l’esprit de Hegel [The Constitution of a Transcendental in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit]’, but was long thought lost.58 Even when Foucault’s papers were sold to the BNF in 2013 this thesis was not to be found: it appears that Foucault did not keep a copy. However, his nephew, Henri-Paul Fruchaud, found it in Foucault’s mother’s house. It is part of a collection of documents relating to the 1940s and 1950s which Fruchaud donated to the BNF, separate from the main Foucault Fonds. There are two typed copies of the thesis, along with fragments of Foucault’s manuscript and some typed summaries and plans, along with Annexes of references and a bibliography. One of the typescripts is missing several pages, but the other is almost complete and missing only pages 74 and 75. Unfortunately these are also missing from the other version.59
Following a note on references and some ‘Preliminary Remarks’, the thesis is divided into three. The first and second parts are in three chapters; the third part in four. The structure is tied to three questions:
1 What are the limits of the field of phenomenological exploration, and to what criteria must the experience serving as a point of departure for reflection
