From 1927 to 1932 he taught at the
Institut Français in Prague [
fr], where he wrote his doctorate on
Schelling. He returned to France in 1933, where he taught at the
Lycée du Parc in
Lyon and at many universities, including
Toulouse and
Lille. In 1941 he joined the
French Resistance. After the war, in 1951, he was appointed to the chair of Moral Philosophy at the
Sorbonne (
Paris I after 1971), where he taught until 1978.
In May 1968, he was among the few French professors to participate in the student protests.
The extreme subtlety of his thought is apparent throughout his works where the very slightest gradations are assigned great importance.
Bibliography
1931: Henri Bergson (tr. into Italian, Brescia, Morcelliana, 1991. tr. into English, Nils F. Schott, 2015)
1933: L'Odyssée de la conscience dans la dernière philosophie de Schelling
1933: Valeur et signification de la mauvaise conscience
1936: La Mauvaise conscience (tr. into Italian, Bari, Dedalo, 2000; tr. into English, Andrew Kelly, 2015)
1936: L'Ironie ou la bonne conscience (tr. into Italian, Genova, Il melangolo, 1988; tr. into Serbian, Novi Sad, 1989; tr. into German by Jürgen Brankel, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 2012)
1939: Ravel (tr. into German by Willi Reich, Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1958; tr. into English by
Margaret Crosland, NY-London, 1959; tr. into Italian by Laura Lovisetti Fua, Milano, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1962)
1942: Du mensonge (tr. into Italian by Marco Motto, Milano, Raffaello Cortina, 2000; tr. into German "Von der Lüge", Berlin, Parerga Verlag GmbH, 2004)
1947: Le Mal (tr. into Italian by Fernanda Canepa, Genova, Marietti, 2003)
1949: Traité des vertus (tr. into Italian by Elina Klersy Imberciadori, Milano, Garzanti, 1987)
1950: Debussy et le mystère de I'instant
1954: Philosophie première introduction à une philosophie du Presque (tr. into German by Jürgen Brankel, Vienna, Turia + Kant, 2006)
1956: L'Austérité et la Vie morale
1957: Le Je-ne-sais quoi et le presque-rien
1960: Le Pur et l'impur
1961: La Musique et l'Ineffable, (tr. into Serbian by Jelena Jelić, Novi Sad, 1987; tr. into Italian by Enrica Lisciani-Petrini, Milano, Bompiani, 1998; tr. into English by Carolyn Abbate, 2003; tr. into Dutch by Ronald Commers, Gent Belgie, 2005)
1963: L'Aventure, l'Ennui, le Sérieux (tr. into Italian by Carlo Alberto Bonadies, Genova Marietti, 1991)
1966: La Mort (tr. into Bosnian by Almasa Defterdarević-Muradbegović, Sarajevo, 1997; tr. into German by Brigitta Restorff, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 2005; tr. into Italian Torino, Einaudi, 2009; tr. into Croatian, Zagreb, AGM, 2011) –
ISBN3-518-58446-4
1967: Le pardon, (tr. into Italian by Liana Aurigemma, Milano, IPL, 1969; tr. into English as Forgiveness by Andrew Kelley, 2005)
1968: Le Sérieux de l'intention
1970: Les Vertus et l'Amour'
1971: L 'Imprescriptible, (a section ("Pardonner?") of which is translated into English by Ann Hobart as "Should We Pardon Them?," Critical Inquiry, 22, Spring 1996; tr. into Italian by Daniel Vogelmann, "Perdonare?", Firenze, Giuntina, 1987; tr. into German by, Claudia Brede-Konersmann, "Das Verzeihen", Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 2003)
1972: L'Innocence et la méchanceté
1974: L'Irréversible et la nostalgie
1978: Quelque part dans l'inachevé, en collaboration avec Béatrice Berlowitz (tr. into German by Jürgen Brankel, Vienna, Turia + Kant, 2008)
1980: Le Je-ne-sais-quoi et le presque rien (tr. into Italian by Carlo Alberto Bonadies, Genova, Marietti, 1987; tr. into German by Jürgen Brankel, Vienna, Turia + Kant, 2009)
1981: Le Paradoxe de la morale (tr. into Italian by Ruggero Guarini, Firenze, Hopefulmonster, 1986; tr. into Croatian by Daniel Bućan, Zagreb, AGM, 2004)
Posthumous publications
1994 Penser la mort? Entretiens, recueil établi par F. Schwab, Paris, Liana Levi (tr. into Italian, Milano, Raffaello Cortina, 1995; tr. into German by Jürgen Brankel, Vienna, Turia + Kant, 2003)
Notes
^Levinas acknowledges that his notion of the "wholly other" or "absolutely other" comes from Jankelevitch. See Emmanuel Levinas, "Phenomenon and Enigma," in Collected Philosophical Papers, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), p. 47. Also read: Levinas, E., 1991, Humanisme de l’autre homme, Fata Morgana, p. 12. Direct references to Jankélévitch's thought can be found in "Transcendence and Height" (1962), "Proper Names" (1975), "Time and the Other" (1979), "God, Death and Time" (1993), "Alterity and Transcendence" (1995), and "Totality and Infinity" (1971).
^Alan D. Schrift, Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, pp. 140–1.