Vladimir Jankélévitch (31 August 1903 – 6 June 1985) was a French philosopher and musicologist.

Biography

Jankélévitch was the son of Ukrainian Jewish parents, who had emigrated to France. In 1922 he started studying philosophy at the École normale supérieure in Paris, under Professor Bergson. In 1924 he completed his DES thesis (, roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) on ''Le Traité : la dialectique. Ennéade I 3 de Plotin'' under the direction of Émile Bréhier. From 1927 to 1932 he taught at the, where he wrote his doctorate on Schelling. He returned to France in 1933, where he taught at the Lycée du Parc in Lyon and at many universities, including Toulouse and Lille. In 1941 he joined the French Resistance. After the war, in 1951, he was appointed to the chair of Moral Philosophy at the Sorbonne (Paris I after 1971), where he taught until 1978. In May 1968, he was among the few French professors to participate in the student protests. The extreme subtlety of his thought is apparent throughout his works where the very slightest gradations are assigned great importance.