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Jean Hyppolite (; 8 January 1907 – 26 October 1968) was a French philosopher known for championing the work of G. W. F. Hegel, and other German philosophers, and educating some of France's most prominent post-war thinkers. His major works include Genèse et structure de la Phénoménologie de l'esprit de Hegel (1946) and Études sur Marx et Hegel (1955) and the first translation of Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit into French in 1939.
In 1952, Hyppolite published Logique et existence ( Logic and Existence), a work that may have had a seminal effect on what was to become known as post-structuralism. This book tries to correlate Hegel's Phenomenology to his Logics (the Greater Logic and the Lesser Logic). In doing so, it raises the questions of language, being, and difference that were to become the hallmarks of new French philosophy at the end of the 20th century. The book was reviewed by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The translators of the English language edition of the text (SUNY Press, 1997) included Deleuze's review at the end of the volume.
In 1953 he founded the philosophical Épiméthée collection within the PUF publishing house.
In 1954, he became the director of the ENS and in 1955 produced a study of Karl Marx's earlier, more Hegelian period, at a time when the French interest in Hegel was at its apogee. In 1963, he was elected to the Collège de France and given a chair in The History of Philosophical Thought.
While philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre were known for producing new works influenced by German philosophy, Hyppolite is remembered as an expositor, teacher, and translator. He influenced a number of thinkers, including Gilles Deleuze, who studied Hegel under him at the Lycée Henri-IV, and Michel Foucault, as well as Jacques Derrida, Gérard Granel and Étienne Balibar (at the ENS).
Hyppolite died in Paris.
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