Philosophy

Popular sovereignty and the rule of law are inseparable: the idea that there could be “illiberal democracies” is groundless and plays into the hands of populists.

Primitive societies, Lévy-Bruhl explains, are on the lookout for signs of catastrophes, though they are unpredictable. Since we, too, are in a constant state of alert, this insight should inspire us.

Can Nietzsche be considered a social thinker? Straddling social critique and critique of the social, French and German interpretive traditions that embrace Nietzsche make it necessary to revise the hasty conclusions of Marxists and anti-postmodernists.

Why do we believe that our societies are freer, more prosperous or more democratic thanks to the institution of private property rather than in spite of it?

The “ardor of pillagers” refers to the momentum driving the depletion of life, which is outlined by Hicham-Stéphane Afeissa in his new book, drawing on the entire field of ecological thought.

The separation of church and state is a principle that is often difficult to apply. In some cases, a delicate balance must be struck between religious freedom and equality.

Are we responsible for our own health? Yes, according to advocates of liberal public policy. Yet this position fails to acknowledge social inequality’s serious pathogenic effects.

How can we reconcile the working classes with ecology? By reminding ecologists of the need to address together production and consumption. Doing so would lead to the constitution of “biocommunism,” the fundamental concepts of which are outlined by Paul Guillibert.

Marginal and maladjusted childhood (which includes orphans, vagabonds, and delinquents) has a history. While the concept has been condemned, it has also been studied extensively and resulted in institutions designed to deal with it.

What bitter knowledge travel brings! In fact, why travel at all? And can we inhabit the world while journeying through it?

The “double life” of the great English novelist George Eliot combines the literary field with the experience of marriage. Her works form the crucible for reflections on love, social norms and freedom.

We need to rebuild universalism, not as an overarching model to be applied to all regions of the world, but on the basis of their own singularity—laterally, not from above.

Christianity is based on an egalitarian indifference to sexual difference, but in practice treats women very unequally. God the father has replaced the pagan idea of the Earth Mother, who celebrates humanity’s shared belonging to Gaia.

According to Frédéric Monferrand, Marx considers capitalism as a vast effort to put nature to work. This includes human bodies, as well as non-human environments. Monferrand outlines a “historical naturalism,” demonstrating its political and ecological relevance.

Few ancient authors had a discourse on slavery. Even so, many spoke about it, often indirectly or between the lines, either to criticize or justify it.

It is hard to do without the concept of exploitation when describing the many forms of injustice created by capitalism. Marx remains very much our contemporary.

The life and work of Antonio Gramsci are inseparable. To grasp the coherence and theoretical depth of the Prison Notebooks, one must read them in the context in which they were written.

Faced with the risk of losing man to the self, Pierre Guenancia says that we should abandon the self to rediscover man.

Hayek always presented his reconstruction of liberalism as a utopia, based on the idea of a spontaneous, self-regulating social order, against the chimera of social justice.

In the tradition of Marcel Mauss, Pierre Lemonnier examines the male initiation rites of the Baruya of New Guinea not in terms of the signifier that can be attached to them, but rather the action on matter that they make possible.

Time is the hardest thing for us to understand, as we cannot be sure whether it exists in and of itself, or whether it can even be defined. This is an age-old conundrum, but Francis Wolff offers a new answer rooted in neither physics nor phenomenology.

Philosophy has something to say about wine: about its definition, how to savor it, what it inspires, but also about the virtues of inebriation.

Cold War liberalism is hardly discussed in France, even though its theoretical importance should not be overlooked: its attacks on the welfare state have notably fostered neoconservatism.

Experience can only lead to knowledge if it is organized by concepts that are not derived from experience. This is the paradox at the heart of Kant’s metaphysics, which Antoine Grandjean gives an entirely new interpretation.

In the Volta region, there is no such thing as land ownership: Land is not traded but shared. Why, then, do our societies consider the right to appropriate land to be perfectly legitimate?

Some exceptional experiences give us access to a different reality from the one we encounter in our everyday lives. In the twentieth century, a number of philosophers explored these experiences in the pursuit of a new form of empiricism.

Patrick Chastenet examines the anarchist roots of political ecology. He considers five authors who connected the defense of nature to the defense of freedom: Reclus, Ellul, Charbonneau, Illich, and Bookchin. Chastenet offers a rich and instructive presentation that leads to many questions.

Despite repeated proclamations of the death of metaphysics, the contemporary philosophical landscape is marked by the proliferation of ontologies. Sébastien Motta sets out to demonstrate the sterility of the ontological enterprise through a logical analysis of their assumptions.

Whether conceived as advocacy of disorder or as “the highest expression of order,” as the abolition of the state or as state-led deregulation, anarchy feeds on every ambiguity. This is the case even in contemporary philosophy.

Following in Paul Ricœur’s footsteps, Olivier Mongin proposes an interpretation of politics as a tension between state domination at “the top” and living together at “the bottom.” This tension, he argues, contains a potential for reciprocal violence that poses a threat to democracy.

Under the French Third Republic, the gender of “citizenship” and “philosophy” was masculine. Yet women pioneers managed to obtain university degrees and rise to positions of responsibility
from which they had been excluded.

In a book that is part history of ideas, part political essay, Camille Dejardin argues that John Stuart Mill’s oeuvre is useful for understanding contemporary issues, notably the ecological crisis and related economic change. Yet she does so while advancing some half-truths.

The complexity of contemporary biology is a source of wonder, fear, and misunderstanding. Thierry Hoquet reviews the major biological theories to help us think through the social implications of a science that is opening up fascinating, though not inevitable, horizons.

Do you really know what intersectionality is? What about the epistemology of positioning? A new collection of introductory essays on feminist philosophy questions the way feminist thought has been relatively overlooked by French philosophy, and brings to light the promise of emancipation that fuels it.

The decolonial movement is diverse and often highly fragmented. Nevertheless, it remains a major theoretical force, one concerned with tracking down all forms of Eurocentrism and showing how knowledge is always necessarily situated.

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.

The political construction of the European Union has broken down. Restarting it would require profoundly changing our ways of thinking about sovereignty, the people and democracy – we must find a new way of thinking about our citizenship.

Through his research into little-known aspects of twentieth-century French thought and authors sensitive to the diversity of modes of knowledge, Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos has issued a manifesto for empiricism and a rallying cry against ethnocentrism.

Is another world possible? Answering this question requires us to first ask ourselves what “possible” might mean. We must return to the classics: from Aristotle to Bourdieu, many authors can help us understand what an alternative might look like.