Jean Beaufret

Who was Jean Beaufret?

Jean Beaufret was a French philosopher and Germanist tremendously influential in the reception of Martin Heidegger's work in France.

After graduating from the École Normale Supérieure and completing military service Beaufret passed his agrégation de philosophie in 1933 and undertook a career teaching as a lycée philosophy instructor. His early philosophical interests were in 19th century German philosophy, particularly GWF Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Karl Marx. In the period before the Second World War, he came to know Paul Éluard, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, André Breton, and Paul Valéry. During the war, he was a prisoner and escaped. Then he became a member of the Resistance near the city of Lyon in the "Service Périclès".

In 1946, as Heidegger's continued teaching privileges came into question by the denazification committees, he made Beaufret's acquaintance. Beaufret engaged Heidegger on the development of French existentialism, and Heidegger wrote the "Brief über den Humanismus" to Beaufret in response. Beaufret took his students to visit Heidegger at Todtnauberg in 1947 following a month-long Franco-German academic exchange at Freiburg im Briesgau, while Baden-Württemberg was still under French occupation. Jean-François Lyotard, one of the group of students on the trip selected to visit Heidegger, wrote about the experience thus: