Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (/ləˈkuːləˈbɑːrt/lə-KOO lə-BART;French:[lakulabaʁt]; 6 March 1940 – 28 January 2007) was a Frenchphilosopher. He was also aliterary critic andtranslator. Lacoue-Labarthe published several influential works with his friendJean-Luc Nancy.

Lacoue-Labarthe was influenced by and wrote extensively onMartin Heidegger,Jacques Derrida,Jacques Lacan,German Romanticism,Paul Celan, andGérard Granel.^[2] He also translated works by Heidegger, Celan,Friedrich Nietzsche,Friedrich Hölderlin, andWalter Benjamin into French.

Lacoue-Labarthe was a member and president of theCollège international de philosophie.

Lacoue-Labarthe wrote several books and articles in collaboration withJean-Luc Nancy, a colleague at theUniversité Marc Bloch (Strasbourg II) inStrasbourg. Early collaborations includedLe Titre de la lettre: une lecture de Lacan (1973; trans.,The Title of the Letter: A Reading of Lacan) andL'Absolu littéraire: théorie de la littérature du romantisme allemand (1978; trans.,The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism).

In 1980 Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy organized a conference atCerisy-la-Salle, centered around Derrida's 1968 paperLes fins de l'homme. Following this conference and at Derrida's request, in November 1980 Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy founded theCentre de recherches philosophiques sur le politique (Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political). The Centre operated for four years, pursuing philosophical rather than empirical approaches to political questions. During that period Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy produced several important papers, together and separately. Some of these texts appear inLes Fins de l'homme à partir du travail de Jacques Derrida: colloque de Cerisy, 23 juillet-2 août 1980 (1981),Rejouer le politique (1981),La retrait du politique (1983), andLe mythe nazi (1991, revised edition; originally published asLes méchanismes du fascisme, 1981). Many of these texts are gathered in translation inRetreating the Political (1997).

In 1986 Lacoue-Labarthe published a book on Celan and Heidegger entitledLa poésie comme expérience (1986; trans.,Poetry as Experience). Lacoue-Labarthe received hisdoctorat d'état in 1987 with a jury led by Gérard Granel and including Derrida,George Steiner andJean-François Lyotard. The monograph submitted for that degree wasLa fiction du politique (1988; trans.,Heidegger, Art, and Politics), a study of Heidegger's relation toNational Socialism. These works predate the explosion of interest in the political dimensions of Heidegger's thought which followed the publication of a book byVictor Farías.

InPoetry as Experience Lacoue-Labarthe argued that, even though Celan's poetry was deeply informed by Heidegger's philosophy, Celan was long aware of Heidegger's association with the Nazi party and therefore fundamentally circumspect toward the man and transformative in his reception of his work. Celan was nonetheless willing to meet Heidegger. Heidegger was a professed admirer of Celan's writing, although Celan's poetry never received the kind of philosophical attention which Heidegger gave to the work of poets such as Friedrich Hölderlin orGeorg Trakl. Celan's poem "Todtnauberg," however, seems to hold out the possibility of a rapprochement between their work. In this respect Heidegger's work was perhaps redeemable for Celan, even if that redemption was not played out in the encounter between the two men.

Lacoue-Labarthe considered that Heidegger's greatest failure was not his involvement in the National Socialist movement but his "silence on the extermination" and his refusal to engage in a thorough deconstruction of Nazism. He also believed, however, that Heidegger's thought offers pathways to a philosophical confrontation with Nazism, pathways which Heidegger failed to follow, but which Lacoue-Labarthe did attempt to pursue.

Lacoue-Labarthe was also involved in theatrical productions. He translated Hölderlin's version ofAntigone, and collaborated withMichel Deutsch [fr] to stage the work at theThéâtre national de Strasbourg on 15 and 30 June 1978.^[3] Lacoue-Labarthe and Deutsch returned to the Théâtre national de Strasbourg to collaborate on a 1980 production ofEuripides'Phoenician Women.^[4] Lacoue-Labarthe's translation of Hölderlin's version ofOedipus Rex was staged inAvignon in 1998, withCharles Berling in the title role.^[5]

* contents of this book do not correspond exactly to those of the book it otherwise translates

** collects essays from 1979, 1981, and 1983 and others not previously published

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