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.
As 2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Hannah Arendt’s death, a new book offers a fresh perspective on a little-known yet pivotal period in the philosopher’s life and work.
The female silhouette – understood as the body’s visible form and socially perceived appearance – has long been shaped by social norms. In the age of social media, these norms are intensifying, prompting, in response, the rise of so-called “body-positive” movements.
How can we move beyond the double deadlock of state socialism and market capitalism? For Lea Ypi, returning to Kant and the Enlightenment offers a perspective to provide a new ground to freedom as social responsibility, and to open up towards a cosmopolitan horizon against the authoritarianism of profit.
A collective work traces the emotional and psychological journeys of Holocaust survivors in the immediate postwar period. It examines both the practices of caregivers and the strategies survivors employed to reintegrate into society.
Backed by Raymond Aron and Manès Sperber, the French publishing house Calmann-Lévy championed anti-communism and the fight against totalitarianism from the end of World War II.
About: Adeline Barbin, La démocratie des techniques, Hermann
About: Claire Larroque, Philosophie du déchet, Presses universitaires de France
About: Catherine Malabou, Il n’y a pas eu de Révolution, Payot & Rivages
A rumour is circulating in some African countries: the French state is organising penis thefts to offset declining fertility. The rumour, spread by Russian propaganda, has become fake news.
The American sociologist Harrison White made a vital contribution to the development of social network analysis. Besides his work in this field, his theoretical synthesis and his understanding of social formations have influenced a variety of fields such as the sociology of art and economic sociology.
Ukraine’s water networks have been mobilized since the start of the war in 2014. Infrastructure workers are some of the last to leave settlements attacked by the Russian army. Water systems and people are resisting but are reaching the limits of their capacity to adapt to violence and disruptions.
Five leading scholars of Big Tech studies share their views on the hopes and dangers of the on-going Digital Revolution. Their answers reveal the pressing need for more political, social and economic theorizing of these dynamics.
Books & Ideas is going on holiday for the summer, and will resume its publication schedule in September. In the meantime, we present you with a weekly roundup of our most recent essays and reviews. Economic inequalities have been at the forefront of intellectual debate this year with the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Our third selection of articles brings an international perspective on the issue, with a sociological and historical outlook.
A selection of five essays and reviews recently published in Books&Ideas discusses the legacy and renewal of social class studies in France, Great-Britain and India.
“Do we have the right to make bets on the future of mankind?” Forty-one years after being the first ecologist candidate in a presidential campaign and publishing his manifesto book, René Dumont’s intuitions and warnings have lost little of their relevance.
What distinguishes a blank canvas from an empty frame? A simple object from a readymade? What is this mysterious gap that art digs as it separates from life? Such are the questions posed by Arthur Danto, a major figure of contemporary art theory.
From the margins to which he was confined, Georges Devereux (1908-1985) formulated some of the most original scientific work of his century. In the wake of Freud, whose legacy he firmly defended, Devereux initiated the transcultural practice of psychiatry. François Laplantine, one of his former disciples, reconsiders the legacy of ethnopsychoanalysis’ founder.
Selon la première ministre japonaise, les Japonais doivent travailler toujours plus. Ce discours productiviste doit être replacé dans l’histoire longue du conservatisme japonais et de son rapport avec le libéralisme.
Nicolas Soulas replace la figure du « robespierriste » Claude-François Payan dans une vaste biographie familiale. Il montre comment une famille négocie le virage révolutionnaire, à la fois moment d’opportunité unique et parenthèse à l’échelle de stratégies familiales de plus long terme.
Avocat du New Deal, ministre de la Justice sous Roosevelt et membre de la Cour Suprême, Robert Jackson fut aussi l’un des acteurs centraux des procès contre les nazis. Son parcours rappelle qu’en des temps pas si éloignés les États-Unis jouaient un rôle essentiel dans la justice internationale.
À propos de : Gabriel Entin, En quête de République. Une histoire de la communauté politique en Amérique hispanique, Presses universitaires de Rennes
À propos de : Jean-Pascal Anfray, Leibniz. Temps, nécessité, conscience, Honoré Champion
À propos de : Clair Juilliet et Jean-Marc Olivier, De Blériot à Airbus : une histoire des industries aéronautiques européennes, 1910-2024, Armand Colin
