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.
Our understanding of nature differs from that of the Greeks and Romans. From the “month of the ox” to “the forest goddess,” the ancients never thought to separate humans from the flora and fauna around them.
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.
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.
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.
About: Gwendal Châton, Calmann-Lévy, éditeur engagé. Défendre l’antitotalitarisme dans la guerre froide des idées, Calmann-Lévy
About: Adeline Barbin, La démocratie des techniques, Hermann
About: Claire Larroque, Philosophie du déchet, Presses universitaires de France
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.
Twenty years after the publication of Viviana Zelizer’s “The Social Meaning of Money”, this special issue brings together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to examine the genesis of the book, its impact in shaping the analysis of economic value, and its enduring intellectual influence on both sides of the Atlantic.
In our second winter selection of reviews and essays, Books & Ideas takes a look back at a few important articles published over the last year on the current developments and trends affecting public spaces for expression and debate : from the traditional media to the world wide web, these different spaces are all under pressure from ongoing changes. Rules and practices are evolving, as the traditional public space is being radically enlarged.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be offering weekly selections of reviews and essays published over the last year. This week’s selection focuses on digital tools, their relationship to political power and capitalism.
For more than thirty years, Joan Scott has been informing and transforming both our history and the way we write history, while encouraging us to question categories and change our modes of thinking. From class struggle to sex differentiation, sexual emancipation and race, she proposes a critical analysis of Republican rhetoric to undermine naturalized forms of inequality.
By asserting that structuralism is a fruitful approach to kinship relations or the difference between the sexes, Françoise Héritier radically renewed anthropological methodology. Her life’s work has also shown us that scientific commitment goes hand-in-hand with societal involvement.
In an innovative study that returns Albert Camus’ early works to their rightful place in the canon, Laurent Bove suggests we should view Camus as a philosopher of immanence and of acquiescence to the joy of the world. This reading is enlightening as far as Camus’ thoughts on history are concerned, but tends to gloss over the ruptures that run though his work, which is driven with multiple tensions.
Les réformes récentes de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la recherche, et en particulier les effets des plateformes numériques Parcoursup et MonMaster, ont été à l’origine de mobilisations étudiantes. Parmi elles, le “mouvement des sans-facs”, pour qui "étudier est un droit et non un privilège".
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
