Jean André Wahl (French:[val]; 25 May 1888 – 19 June 1974) was a Frenchphilosopher.

Jean André Wahl
Born	(1888-05-25)25 May 1888 Marseille, France
Died	19 June 1974(1974-06-19) (aged 86)[1] Paris, France
Alma mater	École Normale Supérieure
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy Existentialism
Institutions	University of Paris
Main interests	History of philosophy
Notable ideas	Pluralism

Wahl was educated at theÉcole Normale Supérieure. He was a professor at theSorbonne from 1936 to 1967, broken byWorld War II. He was in theU.S. from 1942 to 1945, having been interned as aJew at theDrancy internment camp (north-east ofParis) and then escaped.

He began his career as a follower ofHenri Bergson and the Americanpluralist philosophersWilliam James andGeorge Santayana. He is known as one of those introducingHegelian thought in France in the 1930s (his book on Hegel was published in 1929), ahead ofAlexandre Kojève's more celebrated lectures.^[2] He was also a champion in French thought of theDanish proto-existentialistSøren Kierkegaard. These enthusiasms, which became the significant booksLe malheur de la conscience dans la Philosophie de Hegel (1929) andÉtudes kierkegaardiennes (1938) were controversial, in the prevailing climate of thought. However, he influenced a number of key thinkers includingGilles Deleuze,Emmanuel Levinas andJean-Paul Sartre. In the second issue ofAcéphale,Georges Bataille's review, Jean Wahl wrote an article titled "Nietzsche and the Death of God", concerningKarl Jaspers' interpretation of this work. He became known as an anti-systematic philosopher, in favour of philosophical innovation and the concrete.

While in the U.S., Wahl withGustave Cohen and backed by theRockefeller Foundation founded a 'university in exile', theÉcole Libre des Hautes Études, inNew York City. Later, atMount Holyoke where he had a position, he set up theDécades de Mount Holyoke, also known asPontigny-en-Amérique, modelled on meetings run from 1910–1939 by French philosopher Paul Desjardins (22 November 1859 – 13 March 1940) at the site of theCistercianabbey ofPontigny inBurgundy. These successfully gathered together Frenchintellectuals in wartime exile, ostensibly studying the English language, with Americans includingMarianne Moore,Wallace Stevens andRoger Sessions. Wahl, already a published poet, made translations of poems of Stevens into French. He was also an avid reader of theFour Quartets and toyed with the idea of publishing a poetical refutation of the poem. (See, e.g., his "On Reading the Four Quartets." )

In post-war France Wahl was an important figure, as a teacher and editor of learned journals. In 1946 he founded theCollège philosophique, influential center for non-conformist intellectuals, alternative to the Sorbonne.^[3] Starting in 1950, he headed theRevue de Métaphysique et de Morale.

Wahl translated the second hypothesis of theParmenides ofPlato as "Il y a de l'Un", andJacques Lacan adopted his translation as a central point in psychoanalysis, as a sort of antecedent in the Parmenides of the analytic discourse. This is the existential sentence of psychoanalytic discourse according to Lacan, and the negative one is "Il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel " — there is no sexual relationship.

In 2021, Angelico Press publishedW. C. Hackett's novelOutside the Gates, based on the true story of Wahl's release from the Drancy Internment Camp.^[4] The narrator in the novel is Wahl himself, who alternatively tells what he is experiencing and muses philosophically on his situation in life, his sufferings and the sufferings of others in the war, and on whether or not there is a God. Hackett, himself a professional philosopher, artfully weaves in to the narrative former students and colleagues of Wahl.

• Du rôle de l'idée de l'instant dans la Philosophie de Descartes, Paris, Alcan, 1920; rééd. avec une préface de Frédéric Worms, Paris, Descartes & Co, 1994.
• Les Philosophies pluralistes d'Angleterre et d'Amérique, Paris, Alcan, 1920; rééd. préface de Thibaud Trochu, Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2005.
• Le Malheur de la conscience dans la Philosophie de Hegel, Paris, Rieder, 1929.
• Étude sur le Parménide de Platon, Paris, Rieder, 1930.
• Vers le concret, études d'histoire de la philosophie contemporaine (William James, Whitehead, Gabriel Marcel), Paris, Vrin, 1932; rééd. avec un avant-propos de Mathias Girel, Paris, Vrin, 2004.^[5]
• Études kierkegaardiennes, Paris, Aubier, 1938.
• Les Problèmes platoniciens : La République, Euthydème, Cratyle (Paris: CDU, 3 fasc., 1938-1939).
• Existence humaine et transcendance, Neufchâtel, La Baconnière, 1944.
• Tableau de la philosophie française, Paris, Fontaine, 1946.
• Introduction à la pensée de Heidegger, livre de poche, 1946.
• Petite histoire de l'existentialisme, Paris, L'Arche, 1947.
• Poésie, pensée, perception, Paris, Calman-Levy, 1948.
• Jules Lequier 1814-1862, Geneva, Éditions des Trois Collines, 1948.
• La Pensée de l'existence, Paris, Flammarion, 1952.
• Traité de Métaphysique, Paris, Payot, 1953.
• La structure du monde réel d'après Nicolai Hartmann (Paris: Centre de documentation universitaire, 1953) (Cours de la Sorbonne enseigné en 1952).
• La théorie des catégories fondamentales dans Nicolai Hartmann (Paris: Centre de documentation universitaire, 1954) (Cours de la Sorbonne enseigné en 1953).
• Les Philosophies de l'existence, Paris, Armand Colin, 1954.
• Les aspects qualitatifs du réel. I. Introduction, la philosophie de l'existence; II. Début d'une étude sur Husserl; III. La philosophie de la nature de N. Hartmann, Paris: Centre de documentation universitaire 1955. (Cours de la Sorbonne enseigné en 1954).
• Vers la fin de l'ontologie - Étude sur l'«Introduction de la Métaphysique» de Heidegger, Paris, SEDES, 1956.
• L'Expérience métaphysique, Paris, Flammarion, 1964.
• Cours sur l'athéisme éclairé de Dom Deschamps, 1967.

• The Philosopher's Way. New York: Oxford University Press, 1948.
• The Pluralist Philosophies Of England And America. Chicago and London: Open Court, 1925 (mostly about William James).
• A Short History of Existentialism. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949.
• Philosophies of Existence: An Introduction to the Basic Thought of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel, Sartre. New York: Schocken Books, 1968.
• Transcendence and the Concrete: Selected Writings of Jean Wahl. Edited by Alan D. Schrift and Ian Alexander Moore. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016.
• Human Existence and Transcendence. Translated by William C. Hackett. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016.

• Bernard Bourgeois
• Jean Hyppolite

• Emmanuel Levinas,Paul Ricœur andXavier Tilliette,Jean Wahl et Gabriel Marcel, Beauchesne, 1976, 96 p.,ISBN 2-7010-0240-0
• Bruce Baugh,French Hegel. From Surrealism to Postmodernism, New York/London, Routledge, 2003.
• Michel Weber, « Jean Wahl (1888–1974) », in Michel Weber and William Desmond, Jr. (eds.),Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, Frankfurt / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, Process Thought X1 & X2, 2008, I, pp. 15–38, 395-414, 573-599 ; II, pp. 640–642.