Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe ( , ; 6 March 1940 – 28 January 2007) was a French philosopher. He was also a literary critic and

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

. Lacoue-Labarthe published several influential works with his friend

Jean-Luc Nancy Jean-Luc Nancy ( , ; 26 July 1940 – 23 August 2021) was a French philosopher. Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was ''Le titre de la lettre'' (''The Title of the Letter'', 1992), a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Laca ...

. Lacoue-Labarthe was influenced by and wrote extensively on

Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th ce ...

, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, German Romanticism, Paul Celan, and

Gérard Granel Gérard Granel (; 1930 – 10 November 2000) was a French philosopher and translator. Life and work Born in Paris, Granel attended the lycée Louis-le-Grand and the courses of Michel Alexandre, Jean Hyppolite and, later, of Louis Althusser ...

. He also translated works by Heidegger, Celan,

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...

Friedrich Hölderlin Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (, ; ; 20 March 1770 – 7 June 1843) was a German poet and philosopher. Described by Norbert von Hellingrath as "the most German of Germans", Hölderlin was a key figure of German Romanticism. Part ...

, and

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish ...

into French. Lacoue-Labarthe was a member and president of the

Collège international de philosophie The Collège international de philosophie (Ciph), located in Paris' 5th arrondissement, is a tertiary education institute placed under the trusteeship of the French government department of research and chartered under the French 1901 Law on associ ...

Work

Collaboration with Jean-Luc Nancy

Lacoue-Labarthe wrote several books and articles in collaboration with

, a colleague at the Université Marc Bloch in Strasbourg. Early collaborations included ''Le Titre de la lettre: une lecture de Lacan'' (1973; trans., ''The Title of the Letter: A Reading of Lacan'') and ''L'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 at Cerisy-la-Salle, centered around Derrida's 1968 paper ''Les fins de l'homme''. Following this conference and at Derrida's request, in November 1980 Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy founded the ''Centre 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 in ''Les 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), and ''Le mythe nazi'' (1991, revised edition; originally published as ''Les méchanismes du fascisme'', 1981). Many of these texts are gathered in translation in ''Retreating the Political'' (1997).

On Martin Heidegger

In 1986 Lacoue-Labarthe published a book on Celan and Heidegger entitled ''La poésie comme expérience'' (1986; trans., ''Poetry as Experience''). Lacoue-Labarthe received his ''doctorat d'état'' in 1987 with a jury led by Gérard Granel and including Derrida,

George Steiner Francis George Steiner, FBA (April 23, 1929 – February 3, 2020) was a Franco-American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, and educator. He wrote extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the ...

and

Jean-François Lyotard Jean-François Lyotard (; ; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and ...

. The monograph submitted for that degree was ''La fiction du politique'' (1988; trans., ''Heidegger, Art, and Politics''), a study of Heidegger's relation to

National Socialism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Naz ...

. These works predate the explosion of interest in the political dimensions of Heidegger's thought which followed the publication of a book by Victor Farías. In ''Poetry 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 or

Georg Trakl Georg Trakl (3 February 1887 – 3 November 1914) was an Austrian poet and the brother of the pianist Grete Trakl. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists. He is perhaps best known for his poem " Grodek", which he wr ...

. 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.

Theatrical work

Lacoue-Labarthe was also involved in theatrical productions. He translated Hölderlin's version of ''

Antigone In Greek mythology, Antigone ( ; Ancient Greek: Ἀντιγόνη) is the daughter of Oedipus and either his mother Jocasta or, in another variation of the myth, Euryganeia. She is a sister of Polynices, Eteocles, and Ismene.Roman, L., & R ...

'', and collaborated with to stage the work at the on 15 and 30 June 1978. Lacoue-Labarthe and Deutsch returned to the Théâtre national de Strasbourg to collaborate on a 1980 production of Euripides' ''

Phoenician Women ''The Phoenician Women'' ( grc, Φοίνισσαι, ''Phoinissai'') is a tragedy by Euripides, based on the same story as Aeschylus' play ''Seven Against Thebes''. It was presented along with the tragedies ''Hypsipyle'' and '' Antiope.'' With this ...

''. Lacoue-Labarthe's translation of Hölderlin's version of '' Oedipus Rex'' was staged in Avignon in 1998, with

Charles Berling Charles Berling (born 30 April 1958) is a French actor, director and screenwriter. Life and career Charles Berling, son of a navy doctor, is also the nephew of the literary critic Raymond Picard. His mother, Nadia, "only daughter of (French) s ...

in the title role.Actor's Metamorphosis Into Oedipus the Tyrant

Bibliography

* 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

References