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.
Can morality be grounded in the sense of sympathy? According to Adam Smith, sympathy with the sentiments of others is precisely what allows for self-command, a cardinal virtue that enables us to act from a sense of duty.
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.
An unparalleled demographic catastrophe, the Black Death disrupted the economic, social, and cultural balance of medieval Europe in the 14th century. Long considered a major turning point, it now appears as an indicator of the structures, limitations, and resilience of medieval societies.
Alongside its Paris branch, the French terrorist group Action Directe also operated a Lyon branch, responsible for dozens of attacks and robberies, and marked by a crude ideology and domestic abuse within the group. We look back at far-left violence in the post-1968 era.
About: Pascal Engel, Foucault et les normes du savoir, Eliott éditions
About: Maria Cecilia d’Ercole, Silvia d’Intino, Florence Gherchanoc (dir.), Natura. Approches anciennes, enjeux contemporains, Classiques Garnier
About: Marina Touilliez, Parias. Hannah Arendt et la « tribu » en France (1933-1941), L’échappée
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.
During the Christmas season, Books and Ideas offers a selection of reviews and essays that tackle the subject of cities and the issues they raise as complex centers of urban life: how could we live better in them? How to reduce the inequalities they create? Can they become more sustainable? The following texts cast a new light on all of these questions.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, reviews and interviews published over the past year, exploring the relationship between music and politics.
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?
A great historian of the English working class, a major intellectual figure in debates surrounding Marxism in the years 1960-1970, and an anti-nuclear activist who initiated an environmentalist critique of capitalism—such were the many faces of Edward Palmer Thompson, whose work deeply permeates the different social sciences to this day.
Michel Crozier’s work was shaped by the conviction that organizational phenomena create society. He helped pioneer the tools for analyzing groups established to carry out a common project according to a specific system of action and rules of the game.
En Allemagne, un moteur de recherche permet d’explorer les registres du Parti nazi. Au-delà des secrets de famille, cette initiative ravive des débats. Quelle différence entre la connaissance et la mémoire ? Que faire du nazisme à l’heure où l’extrême droite s’efforce de le réhabiliter ?
Le multilatéralisme est devenu la cible de nombreux leaders populistes visant à en saper les fondements. Quelle est la spécificité de ces attaques populistes et les institutions de la gouvernance mondiale sont-elles en mesure d’y résister ?
Catastrophe démographique sans équivalent, la Peste noire a bouleversé les équilibres économiques, sociaux et culturels de l’Europe au XIVe siècle. Longtemps pensée comme une césure majeure, elle apparaît désormais comme révélateur des structures, limites et résistances des sociétés médiévales.
À propos de : Thibaut Giraud, La Parole aux machines. Philosophie des grands modèles de langage, Éditions Grasset
À propos de : Anne-Lyse Chabert et Gabrielle Halpern, Nos paroles empêchées, L’aube
À propos de : Aaron Reeves, Sam Friedman, Born to Rule. The Making and Remaking of the British Elite, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
