Modern Thought Blog

On the Death of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

I learned Tuesday that one of my friends and mentors, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, passed away in Paris this weekend at the age of 67. He had been in ill-health for many years and finally died during a period of respiratory weakness.

I pass on this news to you here because I believe it is appropriate to say that the contemporary possibility of an institution such as the Centre for Modern Thought was shaped by Lacoue-Labarthe’s work in the 1970’s and 80’s. My own ambitions for this venture, in any case, were profoundly marked by my experiences with him in Strasbourg, where he played a leading role in intellectual and artistic life. No site is better than this one for my desire to commemorate what he offered because the Centre for Modern Thought is where I now hope to carry forward what I learned from him.

I will speak here of my personal experience with him because the news has brought back many rich memories that grip my thoughts and prevent me from taking a greater distance. That experience began in 1978 when Philippe visited the Romance Studies programme at the Johns Hopkins University, where I was studying for a Ph.D.. The strong affinity between us prompted me to travel to Strasbourg for the period of my my dissertation research (1979-1981) and made me a suitable candidate for replacing Jean-Luc Nancy during his absence from Strasbourg in the years of 1985-87. Since Philippe normally did almost all of his teaching with Jean-Luc, I enjoyed the remarkable opportunity of teaching at his side for three semesters in the same seminars that defined my last years of graduate study. I also resided at his house and joined him frequently at lunch and dinner (together with Claire Nancy) for conversations that brought home to me how issues in literary history and theory might become an integral part of one’s everyday sustenance.

Strasbourg, in those years, was a site of extraordinary intellectual fervour and artistic activity, particularly by reason of the National Theatre, with which Lacoue-Labarthe was actively involved. Visitors to the house at 6 rue Charles Grad came from all of the arts and one could frequently expect guests such as Jacques Derrida, George Steiner, or Jean-Francois Lyotard. On quieter afternoons, particularly after seminars or bouts of marking student papers, Philippe and I would share a glass of whiskey. He sat at his desk, behind which were arrayed his favourite books, including almost all of the original works of Georges Bataille.

I chose Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe as a Ph.D. supervisor because I found in his work a singular engagement with Heidegger’s thought. Earlier, in Paris, I had learned a deconstructive approach to Heidegger’s text. In Strasbourg, I learned a new respect for Heidegger’s contributions to modern thought (including deconstruction itself). In this context, I could read Heidegger’s Being and Time in a way that opened Heidegger’s ethico-political thinking to a genuine questioning and actively join Philippe, who was leading the most acute questioning about Heidegger’s political thought and actions at this time. These were intense and exciting years as we struggled to argue for a post-Heideggerian understanding of the political in the face of an obvious decline of philosophical rigour in political thinking (a decline that has become far more painfully visible today). I was too young and inexperienced, I think, to appreciate everything Philippe was attempting; but I was fully aware of a deep historical sense in his political thinking. And I was close enough to this thinking to see him founder in the courageous effort to articulate a founded ethical judgment in relation to Heidegger’s actions (and close enough to suffer that failure).

I cannot help honouring his contributions via my own experience of them since we worked in such close proximity for so long. But I know that I was hardly alone in being deeply marked by Philippe’s capacity to bring the question of art (via music, theatre, and literature) to philosophy. This influence was not merely at a conceptual level; Philippe’s intellectual presence affected one’s attunement and the rhythms of one’s thinking, in philosophy and in all critical judgment. Moreover, his playful love for art made it possible to understand in everyday experience what Nietzsche was getting at in his early work when he spoke of the “redemptive” role of art (though Philippe would have nothing to do with redemption). He never sought to lead with this presence, but it was such that one could not ignore the call to a form of intellectual community (which I realized with others, such as Rodolphe Burger, who were working in his company).

That thinking presence particularly shaped one’s relation to language. In my preface to Typography, I described Philippe as a “syntaxier” (remembering Mallarmé). I was thinking of his exceptional stylistic skills and his attention to all the linguistic “jointures” of philosophical language. I was thinking of his grasp of the meaning of Fug, as Heidegger defined it—and fugue. I can only hope that students will continue to discover his work and that his students and friends will continue to find ways to transmit what they learned in his presence and in his writings. The style of philosophical practice that reigned in his best years has passed. But Philippe’s acute sense of style is something we must find ways of preserving and renewing.

I will end this awkward note (dulled by the immediate effects of grief) with a word on the mystery of Philippe’s collapse. Those who were close to him know that it began many years ago, its causes inextricably psychic and physiological. He foundered in ways that will make his friends think uncomfortably of the fate of Hölderlin (with whom he identified powerfully), but that also prompt one to think of Heidegger’s words on the fates of thinkers like Nietzsche or Schelling (as at the beginning of the Schelling lectures). Philippe taught us to think carefully about such figures of thought, and especially of this particular version of tragic thought. He taught us a critically important sobriety. But he faced such issues with the seriousness with which he treated everything of Heidegger’s work of this period. And I believe that such seriousness leads us to consider his own fate in the light of Heidegger’s many remarks on the way a great thinker or poet faces disaster. Philippe deserves no less.

Jacques Derrida once remarked that no cloud ever passed through his friendship with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. I have always wondered whether friendship, in the sense sought by Philippe, could ever be without clouds, given the form of exposure it entailed. I must certainly acknowledge, in any case, that clouds passed in my friendship with him, and precisely at the time of the beginning of the collapse to which I have referred. But now, at his death, such clouds do not obtrude as I look back at the special relation of distance and proximity that marked my years with him. It was more than an honour and privilege to work with Philippe; it was a gift. And that gift is as present now as ever.

Thank you for letting me commemorate that fact here.

Christopher Fynsk
January 31, 2007