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.
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.
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.
The “California dream” does not date back to the Gold Rush of the 19th century, but only to the 20th, and is more a matter of criticism than enthusiasm. Louis Warren invites us to put this myth into perspective, and to be wary of the tendency to see California as the laboratory of the United States.
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.
About: Olivier Mongin, Démocraties d’en haut, démocraties d’en bas, Dans le labyrinthe du politique, Seuil
About: Vincent Carpentier, Pour une archéologie de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, La Découverte
About: Laurence Fontaine, Vivre pauvre. Quelques enseignements tirés de l’Europe des Lumières, Gallimard
The EU aims for net climate neutrality by 2050, utilizing the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) as its main tool. But the climate crisis demands more than market mechanisms. It requires comprehensive planning and legal frameworks that prioritize public over private interests.
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.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer. In the meantime, here is our weekly selection of reviews published over the past year.
A selection of four essays recently published on Books & Ideas offers new perspectives on the definition, historiography and potential applications of environmental theory.
At a time when Europe is equated with sovereign debt and political powerlessness, one should not forget that the foundations for a European citizenship have already been laid. Its potential for democracy needs to be interrogated, as do the cultural resources that it can rely on.
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.
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.
Les propos racistes tenus notamment à l’encontre des immigrés en situation irrégulière par Donald Trump ne l’ont pas empêché d’obtenir les voix d’un nombre croissant d’électeurs noirs, hispaniques et asiatiques lors du scrutin de novembre 2024. Que peut-on conclure de ce paradoxe apparent ?
En raison de leur parenté avec le souverain, les « princes de sang » peuvent lui succéder. Élevés au-dessus de toute la noblesse, mais tenus à distance des affaires de l’État, ils ne renoncent pourtant pas à jouer un rôle politique.
Mobilisant les ressources de l’ethnocomptabilité, G. Pruvost mène une enquête stimulante sur le mode de vie “alternatif” en milieu rural.
À propos de : Jean-Baptiste Comby, Ecolos, mais pas trop… Les classes sociales face à l’enjeu environnemental, Raisons d’Agir
À propos de : Samuel Moyn, Liberalism Against Itself : Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times, Yale University Press
À propos de : Hélène Blais, L’Empire de la nature. Une histoire des jardins botaniques coloniaux (fin XVIIIe-années 1930), Champ Vallon
