Jean Wahl Quotes
Jean Andre Wahl was a French philosopher and poet and the principal channel by which Hegel, Kierkegaard, and the wider current of existentialism reached French philosophical education in the years before and after the Second World War. After early work on the pluralist tradition in American philosophy, he produced his celebrated The Unhappy Consciousness in the Philosophy of Hegel, which gave his students Sartre, Beauvoir, Levinas, and Hyppolite their first sustained encounter with a Kierkegaardian Hegel. The quotes below are attributed to Jean Wahl, organized by topic.
Jean Wahl on Freedom
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Attributed to Jean Wahl:
“Kierkegaard taught us that to philosophize is to choose.”
Jean Wahl on Mind
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Attributed to Jean Wahl:
“Existentialism is the discovery that thought belongs to a singular life.”
Jean Wahl on Truth
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Attributed to Jean Wahl:
“Philosophy must remain in contact with the concrete, however far it ventures.”
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Attributed to Jean Wahl:
“Hegel's spirit only lives where it is read against itself.”
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Attributed to Jean Wahl:
“Poetry is the philosophical act that knows itself.”