Professor Tran Duc Thao - eminent philosopher

Tran Duc Thao was born on September 26, 1917 in Song Thap commune, Tu Son district, Bac Ninh province, in a family of small civil servants. Up to now, he is the only Vietnamese philosopher who is famous in the scientific forum and is recognized as having international stature in the West. If we count the time he studied in France (in the late 30s, early 40s of the last century) and his works written in French, published in France, then Tran Duc Thao is also a French philosopher. He is the only Vietnamese, in his generation, who has a real path of studying Philosophy.

Tran Duc Thao was an excellent student at the French high school Albert Sarraut (Hanoi), and won second prize in the French national high school philosophy competition. In 1935, after passing the baccalaureate exam with honors, he studied at the Hanoi Law School. In 1936, he was sent to France to prepare for the entrance exam to the Pedagogical College of the rue d' Ulm (Paris) - a famous school in France for its tradition of progressive ideology, culture and modern science. The school is also famous for training thinkers and politicians for France. In 1939, Tran Duc Thao passed the entrance exam to this school with a high score. In 1945, he graduated as valedictorian, receiving a master's degree in philosophy for his thesis.Husserl's phenomenological method.

Philosopher Tran Duc Thao (1917-1993)/Photo: Bui Tuan

Peace was restored in the North in 1954, he was appointed Vice President of the University of Pedagogy, Head of the History Department, teaching the subject.History of philosophyat Hanoi University (1956-1957). His lectures on the History of Philosophy were later edited and published into books by former students such as Nguyen Hoang Gia.History of ideas before Marx, (Social Sciences Publishing House, 1995). After that, Tran Duc Thao stopped teaching at the university, he spent a lot of time researching classic works of Marx - Lenin, working as a specialist at the Publishing House.Thethit.

The main research directions in the scientific life of philosopher Tran Duc Thao can be summarized as follows:

The first is the comparison of Husserl's phenomenology with dialectical materialism, mainly during the period when he lived and wrote in France (1941-1951). The second major direction of Tran Duc Thao includes works on the transformation of Hegelian dialectical idealism into Marxist dialectical materialism, along with the role of Marxism in perceiving and transforming the world. The third direction includes research works that can be classified as the dialectical materialism of Tran Duc Thao (1966-1986). This is also part of the system of problems that has been troubling Tran Duc Thao since the 1940s: how consciousness and thought appear in the great evolution of nature from matter, through organisms, to humanity. It is also in this area that he left another work of international stature. The fourth direction is related to the nature and formation of human beings, through which he also outlined the evolutionary diagram of human history, from "primitive communist society" to "scientific communist society", through the transformation of intermediate production methods.

Thus, Tran Duc Thao's thoughts extend to many issues from Philosophy to History, Anthropology, Biology, Linguistics, Literature and Religious Studies... On the other hand, the topics that he is interested in are also the very core contents of Classical Philosophy and Marxist Philosophy such as materialism, dialectics, ontology, epistemology, logic, and human topics directly related to the fate and activities of humans and society..., which are contents that no basic philosophical research can avoid.

Tran Duc Thao came to Philosophy in a very difficult period. Along with his era, he inherited from Husserl and Marx both the atmosphere of crisis and their dream of reforming the world with reason. Up to now, Tran Duc Thao is the only Vietnamese person with a school of Philosophy named after him and is still being studied and researched by many scholars. Not only in France, but also in Germany - the land of Philosophy - there are many people doing Philosophy who claim to be disciples of Tran Duc Thao. Obviously, he is an Asian Philosopher whose thoughts once shook the foundation of European theoretical thinking.

Before coming to Marxism, he was formally trained at the famous College of Pedagogy of the Rue d'Ulm in Paris, so he had the opportunity to work in an elite French intellectual environment and had close contact with many influential philosophers in the philosophical activities of the second half of the 20th century such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Alexandre Kojève, Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida... They were the leading thinkers of the phenomenological movement, of existentialism. At the same time, his discoveries and ideas were recognized and highly appreciated by them as "unique contributions to the fields of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Linguistics" (Daniel J. Herman).

Some domestic scholars have considered “Tran Duc Thao as a great philosopher of the century” (Huy Can); “Tran Duc Thao is an outstanding philosopher of Vietnam and the world” (Professor Vu Khieu); “Vietnam has only one philosopher, Professor Tran Duc Thao” (Professor Tran Van Giau). He deserves to be admired and honored by the Vietnamese people as a philosopher on par with the world’s leading philosophers.

With Marxism, Tran Duc Thao is considered to have contributed to developing dialectical materialism into dialectical materialism.clone(Cu Huy Chu), of which Marx was the creator. In Philosophy, he created a comprehensive system of thinking that continuously absorbed new things, and in that sense, Tran Duc Thao is also a "constructive" Philosopher. For the first time, a Philosopher of the Husserl school, Tran Duc Thao, succeeded in combining Husserl's phenomenology with Marx's dialectical materialism.

Tran Duc Thao became a famous Phenomenologist with a unique way of thinking that could clearly illuminate the most difficult problems of Philosophy. From the time he was enlightened about Marxism until his eternal death on April 19, 1993, a time gap of over 40 years, he devoted all that time to realizing Marxist methodology, making Philosophy closely linked to life, closely attached to the fate of his people. Tran Duc Thao had a deep belief that Marxism was not a dogmatic theory, but must be a practical torch guiding the proletarian revolution. He deeply recognized the ability to explain ontological problems of dialectical materialism. In that sense, there is a complete basis to affirm that there is a philosophy named Tran Duc Thao and even more so "Tran Duc Thao's thinking and style".-a great contribution of Vietnamese intelligence to humanity. Tran Duc Thao's lasting contribution to academia is a pure philosophical thinking. This is first of all shown in a high capacity for abstraction, then in the ability to pose and solve philosophical problems in the light of new scientific discoveries using interdisciplinary research methods.

Scholar Daniel J. Herman wrote a cautious yet affectionate sentence that we, his compatriots, cannot help but share: "It is our sincere hope that Tran Duc Thao, a distinguished Marxist and phenomenologist, will eventually find his rightful place in the general history of meaning." Because he wrote philosophical works with a strong academic style using materials drawn from real life right in his own homeland.

Philosopher Tran Duc Thao left two great lessons. The first is a lesson about thinking methods. The second lesson, no less important, is a lesson about the personality of Vietnamese intellectuals, and also a lesson about being human.