La verità di questo mondo. Rileggendo Tran-Duc-Thao

Abstract

The paper aims to provide an analysis regarding the importance of the Philosopher Tran-Duc-Thao in the French philosophical scene between the Forties and Fifties. In particular the reading of Thao’s main work, “Phenomenology and dialectical materialism” (1951), is taken into consideration. The paper tackles different issues in Thao’s work, through the analysis of his critique to existentialism, his attempt to apply the phenomenological method to the colonial situation of Vietnam, his original reformulation of the marxist critique of ideology within the notion of “lifeworld” and his relationship with Philosophers like Cavaillès and Merleau-Ponty. In particular, the paper focuses on Thao’s proposal to take the
achievements and limitations of the husserlian “genetic constitution” for a radical refoundation of the “dialectical materialism”. In Thao’s thought, highly problematic but still charming, comes to light a “new naturalism”, in which subjectivity and materiality don’t cease to communicate at different levels of the “sense” and in which any reductionism could be avoided,
allowing a continuous and dynamic articulation between “real world” and “true world.”