Influence of Hegel, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger on post-war French philosophy
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One suggested way of understanding French philosophy of this period, it has been suggested, is to locate the major influential figures in their current. The major influences were primarily 6 Germans from preceding eras - Hegel, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger. For example, Alexander Kojeve's Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit were quite a sensation in Paris in the 1930s. It was attended by George Bataille and a young Jacques Lacan among others. Jean Wahl and Jean Hippolyte were also responsible for spreading Hegel's lectures into Parisian circles.
Marx was introduced to philosophers both inside and outside the university. Many, like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, grew up during the Resistance against Nazi occupation, during which time they were introduced to Marxist-Leninists.
Nietzsche's influence went through George Batailles and the Acephale group, down to Foucault and Deleuze. The Acephale group is partly responsible for reclaiming Nietzsche for Western Philosophy, after decades of Nazi appropriation.
Heidegger and Husserl's influence was felt, firstly, in the existential-phenomenology of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Even Simon de Beauvoir's feminism borrowed extensively from this current. She used phenomenological conceptualizations of consciousness, time and memory to conceptualize Woman. Later, most famously, Jacques Derrida deconstructed Husserl in Of Grammatology.
Finally, Freud was most avidly championed by Jacques Lacan's "return to Freud". Lacan's lectures caused a stir in Parisian intellectual circles akin to Alexander Kojeve's a generation earlier. Attended only by clinical trainees at first, as time wore on Lacan opened up his seminars to philosophers and artists of various kinds. Lacan's writings impacted the whole generation - while Louis Althusser found the theoretical apparatus in Lacan to talk about interpellation and ideology, Jacques Alain Miller, Althusser's student at first, would go on to become Lacan's most devoted follower. The French Feminists - Irigaray, Kristeva, Cixous, responded to Lacan in various ways, and perhaps most famously, Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus presented a strong critique of the practice of psychoanalysis.
