ABSTRACT
Tran duc Thao’s attempts at solving the problems that arose out of his interactions with French and Vietnamese institutions, as well as those that emerged from the development of phenomenology in France, defined his philosophical trajectory. Thao’s introduction to Western philosophy is the result of his close study of the tradition and especially of the authors related to the phenomenological canon then studied in the preparatory classes and at the Ecole Normale Superieure. These definitions of Marxism and attempt to study the lived experience of economic relations led Thao to criticize the tendency to see the economic infrastructure as primary instead of as dialectically linked to the superstructure. Thao instead embraces naturalism, which he seeks to wed to this intellectualism: dialectical materialism as he understands it presents the self as natural and as giving the world meaning.
