Books & Ideas is the English-language mirror website of La Vie des Idées, a free online journal which has gained a large readership and established itself in France as a major place for intellectual debate since 2007.
In a book that is learned and ambitious as well as accessible, Vincent Citot compares the philosophies of eight different civilizations to understand their cyclical evolution from a religious to a scientific stage.
Quotas in India contribute to the emancipation of lower castes while producing perverse effects that are difficult to control. Rohini Somanathan questions the right balance between targeted positive discrimination policies and public policies with a universal vocation.
For over a century, the left has owed its political identity and major political victories to a critical adherance to the Enlightenment. This is why, Stéphanie Roza argues, abandoning this legacy is dangerous.
The behavioral sciences have revolutionized our understanding of individual choices and actions. These approaches are leading to new public policies, which raises important ethical and political questions.
About : Julien Fretel & Michel Offerlé, Écrire au président. Enquête sur le guichet de l’Élysée, La Découverte
About: Hélène Tordjman, La croissance verte contre la nature. Critique de l’écologie marchande, La Découverte
About: Ariel Colonomos, Pricing Lives: The Political Art of Measurement, OUP
Jane Mansbridge has made a major contribution to political theory. She has spent her life combining empirical research with a theoretical approach, and has played a vital role in developing the critique of rational choice and the study of democracy as a permanent process continually in flux.
Rorty made conversation a philosophical genre in its own right, which led him to reject any distinctions he considered futile: between analytic and continental philosophy, between the Enlightenment and postmodernity, between philosophy and literature.
In 1947, Princess Elizabeth promised to serve ‘the great imperial family’, as part of the attempt to remake post-war Britain as a global power. The British Empire collapsed; but this language of service and Commonwealth allowed the Queen to take up the postcolonial concerns of the 21st century.
The current world-wide demand for “real” democracy as embodied in the Indignados (15-M) movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement reiterates long-lasting frustrations as regards representative government and the incompleteness of democratic experiences throughout the world. This dossier gathers interviews and essays by renowned scholars on the conception of democracy as an on-going experience and not as a finished model.
In this virtual roundtable published in partnership with Public Books, four participants from France, Germany and the US re-visit the inequalities debate sparked by Thomas Piketty’s Capital, comparing perceptions of income, economic equality and political economy.
Is there still room for hope at the White House?
Rediscovering an activist thinker who was at the origins of eco-feminism, but remains unknown. Her work inspired an extremely heterogeneous movement, but has her ambition to concretely transform the social, economic and political organisation of society been pursued?
Now a well-known Chinese lawyer of the democratic dissidence in China, Zhang Sizhi was once a young nationalist, a high-ranking official in the court of Beijing and a victim of anti-rightist repression. In his memoirs, he provides a detailed and fascinating description of the profession and China in the second half of the 20th century.
Alors que la souveraineté numérique est de plus en plus associée au potentiel du logiciel libre ou open source, les multinationales et leurs plateformes ont réussi à marginaliser les alternatives communautaires, voire à en épuiser les ressources, avec la complaisance de l’État.
Comment classe-t-on les stades d’une maladie, les meubles dans un catalogue, les races dans un système d’apartheid ? L’ouvrage classique de Star et Bowker est traduit en français 25 ans après sa parution, alors que la tentation discriminatrice revient en force.
En croisant sources écrites et archéologie, Chris Wickham propose un tableau comparé de la Méditerranée du Xe au XIIe siècle, et en termine définitivement avec le mythe des marchands italiens ouvrant au commerce une mer endormie.
À propos de : Yorim Spoelder, Vision of Greater India. Transimperial Knowledge and Anti-Colonial Nationalism, c. 1800-1960, Cambridge University Press
À propos de : Quinn Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism. Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy, Metropolitan Books
À propos de : Jérémy Guedj, Les Juifs français et le nazisme, 1933-1939, Puf