went through George Batailles and the Acephale group, down to Foucault and Deleuze. The Acephale group is partly responsible for reclaiming Nietzsche for Western Philosophy, after decades of Nazi appropriation. Heidegger and Husserl's influence was felt, firstly, in the existential-phenomenology of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Even Simon de Beauvoir's feminism borrowed extensively from this current. She used phenomenological conceptualizations of consciousness, time and memory to conceptualize Woman. The role of politics 20th century French philosophers lived through several very important political upheavals during their time. On the one hand, there was the Resistance against the Nazi forces. For Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, this was the first introduction to communism. Later, they would both become members of the PCF. The other important political event of that era was the Algerian War of Independence, to which the young Foucault, Derrida and Frantz Fanon went. While the PCF had a problematic role to play, dissident Marxist-Leninists of that era went there to help rebelling Algerians. Undoubtedly, for the next generation, the great political upheaval was the student-worker protests of May 1968. Young radicals, from the Sorborne and Ecole Normale Supérieure organized, went to the factories and encouraged the worker's to go on strike. Many young radicals broke away from Marxism–Leninism towards Maoism at this point, while there were several Anarchists, Trotskyites, Situationists etc. at the protests as well. Each of these events have shaped the content as well as the form of the writing of these French philosophers. Time and again, the movements have questioned the French state, the university, imperialism and capitalism as well. This has provided impetus, material and structural change to the current of French philosophy consistently. See also Collège de France Hermeneutics List of philosophers born in the nineteenth century List of philosophers born in the twentieth century French feminism Roland Barthes References French French culture French philosophy 20th century in France