Jean Hyppolite (1907-1968), normalien, agrégé in philosophy, professor at Sorbonne University, director of Normale Sup then professor at the Collège de France, successor to Martial Guéroult and predecessor to Michel Foucault in this post, is translator of the "Phenomenology of the spirit "of Hegel.

The history of philosophy is necessary and original. This story is necessary because it is original.
The history of philosophy is a philosophical history. Philosophy as the metaphysics of being and as a critic of metaphysics. A philosophical text is not self-sufficient. Philosophy is therefore not a system like mathematics.
The future of philosophy is not the passage from error to truth like science.
Philosophy is in a story that is in itself.
How then to teach the history of philosophy?

Georges Canguilhem underlines Hyppolite's intellectual probity in the Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1969, tome 2:
“What could be simpler - but what a singularity at the time - than this declaration in the Preface to the translation of the Phenomenology of the mind: 'It was by preparing an overall work on the Phenomenology that we were leads to writing this translation. 'Hyppolite translates the text he intends to comment on, publishes the translation before the comment, puts anyone in a position to compare the comment to the text. Probity, in philosophy as elsewhere, consists in exposing one's evidence to possible disapproval. "

Extract from the inaugural lesson at the Collège de France in Hyppolite:
"The history of metaphysics is an integral part of this research, while the history of science is not part of science itself."

This video can be viewed as a whole on the BNF Gallica website at the following URL: https: //gallica.bnf.fr/ark: / 12148 / bpt ...

The video was filmed three years before the death of Jean Hyppolite. Alain Badiou is 28 years old.