Professor Tran Duc Thao - a brilliant philosopher

Tran Duc Thao was born on September 26, 1917, in Song Thap commune, Tu Son district, Bac Ninh province, into a family of minor civil servants. To this day, he remains the only Vietnamese philosopher renowned in the scientific arena and recognized internationally in the West. If we include his time studying in France (in the late 1930s and early 1940s) and his works written in French and published in France, Tran Duc Thao was also considered a French philosopher. He was the only Vietnamese person of his generation to pursue a genuine philosophical education.

Tran Duc Thao was an outstanding student at the Albert Sarraut French High School in Hanoi, having won second prize in the national French high school philosophy competition. In 1935, after graduating with honors, he attended the Hanoi Law School. In 1936, he was sent to France to prepare for the entrance exam to the d'Ulm School of Education (Paris) – a renowned school in France known for its progressive intellectual traditions, culture, and modern science. The school was also famous as a cradle for training thinkers and politicians for France. In 1939, Tran Duc Thao passed the entrance exam with high marks. In 1945, he graduated at the top of his class, receiving a master's degree in philosophy based on his dissertation.Husserl's phenomenological method.

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

After peace was restored in North Vietnam in 1954, he was appointed Deputy Director of the Faculty of Literature at the Pedagogical University, Head of the History Department, and taught subjects.History of PhilosophyHe attended Hanoi University (1956-1957). His lectures on the History of Philosophy were later compiled and published as a book by former students such as Nguyen Hoang Gia.History of thought before Marx(Social Sciences Publishing House, 1995). Later, Tran Duc Thao stopped teaching at the university and devoted much of his time to researching Marxist-Leninist classics and working as a specialist at a publishing house.Thetreal.

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

Firstly, there is the comparison of Husserl's phenomenology with dialectical materialism, mainly from the period when he lived and wrote in France (1941-1951). Tran Duc Thao's second major focus includes works on the transformation of Hegelian idealist dialectics into Marxist materialist dialectics, and the role of Marxism in understanding and transforming the world. The third focus comprises research works that can be classified as dialectical materialism by Tran Duc Thao (1966-1986). This is also part of the system of issues that Tran Duc Thao pondered since the 1940s: how consciousness and thought emerge in the great evolution of nature from matter, through living organisms, to humanity. It is in this area that he left behind another work of international significance. The fourth aspect relates to the nature and formation of humankind, through which he also outlines the evolutionary trajectory of human history, from "primitive communist society" to "scientific communist society," through the transformation of intermediate modes of production.

Thus, Tran Duc Thao's thought spanned a wide range of issues from Philosophy to History, Anthropology, Biology, Linguistics, Literature, and Religious Studies… On the other hand, the topics he was interested in were also fundamental aspects of classical Philosophy and Marxist Philosophy such as materialism, dialectics, ontology, epistemology, logic, and humanistic themes directly related to the fate and activities of human beings and society…, which are topics that no fundamental philosophical study can avoid.

Tran Duc Thao entered the field of philosophy during a very difficult period. Along with his era, he inherited from Husserl and Marx both the atmosphere of crisis and their dream of transforming the world through reason. To this day, Tran Duc Thao is the only Vietnamese person to have a philosophical school bearing his name, and it continues to be studied and researched by many scholars. Not only in France, but even in Germany – the country of philosophy – many philosophers consider themselves disciples of Tran Duc Thao. Clearly, he was an Asian philosopher whose reflections once shook the foundations of European theoretical thought.

Before embracing Marxism, having received formal training at the renowned d'Ulm teacher training college in Paris, he had the opportunity to work within a sophisticated French intellectual environment and maintain close ties with many influential philosophers of the latter half of the 20th century, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Alexandre Kojève, Louis Althusser, and Jacques Derrida. These were leading thinkers of the phenomenological and existentialist movements. Simultaneously, his discoveries and ideas were recognized and highly valued by them as "unique contributions to the fields of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Linguistics" (Daniel J. Herman).

Some domestic scholars have regarded "Tran Duc Thao as a great philosopher of the century" (Huy Can); "Tran Duc Thao is an outstanding philosopher of Vietnam and of the world" (Prof. Vu Khieu); "Vietnam has only one philosopher, Professor Tran Duc Thao" (Prof. 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.

In the context of Marxism, Tran Duc Thao is considered to have contributed to the development of dialectical materialism into a comprehensive form of Marxist materialism.cloning(Cù Huy Chử), which Marx was the creator of. In philosophy, he created a comprehensive system of thought that continuously absorbed new ideas, and in that sense, Trần Đức Thảo was also a "creative" philosopher. For the first time, a philosopher belonging to the Husserl school, Trần Đức Thảo, succeeded in combining Husserl's phenomenology with Marx's dialectical materialism.

Tran Duc Thao became a renowned phenomenologist with a distinctive way of thinking capable of critically examining the most challenging problems in philosophy. From his enlightenment in Marxism to his passing on April 19, 1993, a period of over 40 years, he dedicated all of that time to realizing Marxist methodology, connecting philosophy closely with life and the destiny of his people. Tran Duc Thao deeply believed that Marxism was not a dogmatic theory, but a practical torch guiding the proletarian revolution. He profoundly understood the ability of dialectical materialism to explain ontological issues. In that sense, there is ample basis to assert that there is a philosophy named Tran Duc Thao, and even more so, a "Tran Duc Thao way of thinking and style."ButA significant contribution of Vietnamese intellect to humanity. Tran Duc Thao's lasting contribution to academia was a pure philosophical thought. This was first and foremost manifested in a high capacity for abstraction, and secondly in his ability to frame and solve philosophical problems in light of new scientific discoveries using interdisciplinary research methods.

The scholar Daniel J. Herman wrote a cautious yet meaningful sentence that we—his compatriots—cannot help but share: "It is my sincere hope that Tran Duc Thao, the outstanding Marxist and phenomenologist, will finally find his rightful place in the overall history of meaning." Because he wrote philosophical works with a distinctly academic style using material drawn from real life right here in his homeland.

Philosopher Tran Duc Thao left behind two great lessons. The first is a lesson about methods of thinking. The second, equally important, is a lesson about the character of Vietnamese intellectuals, and also a lesson about being a good person.