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.
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.
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.
Rachel St. John explores the diverse range of nation-building projects that vied for legitimacy and land across the continent during the XIXe century, illuminating the diversity of North American political history and the contingency of national growth and definition.
Arrests, torture, massacres: the Assad clan has been tormenting the Syrian people for the past 50 years. This major collective work provides conclusive evidence of the violence to which Europe turns a blind eye.
Have France’s Jews been excluded from the great national narrative? The fact is, their archives are as rich as they are significant, bearing witness to a very long history. Moreover, they provide a basis for writing the “external” as well as the “internal” history of Jewish communities.
Reviewed: Daniel Laurison, Producing Politics: Inside the Exclusive Campaign World Where the Priviledged Few Shape Politics for All of Us, Beacon Press
About: Serge Paugam, L’attachement social, Seuil
About: Camille Dejardin, John Stuart Mill, libéral utopique. Actualité d’une pensée visionnaire, Gallimard
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.
In 1947, Princess Elizabeth promised to serve ‘the great imperial family’, as part of the attempt to remake post-war Britain as a global power. The British Empire collapsed; but this language of service and Commonwealth allowed the Queen to take up the postcolonial concerns of the 21st century.
The economic crisis that has plagued a great part of the world since 2008 remains baffling as ever, all questions and no answers. Why not start by listing the former, and then imagine what the latter could look like?
How to renew the currently dwindling support for democratic governance? To the minds of theorists and historians, whether advocating going back to classical political traditions like Republicanism or drawing lots, or experimenting new approaches, increased political participation may be the best path to follow.
Food is now a conspicuous topic, from culinary blogs to magazines, diet books, TV shows and contests. Yet unbeknownst to many, it often holds an underground, clandestine place in some of social science’s major works. This dossier assesses the current importance of such scholarly endeavors, known as “food studies” in the United States.
André Gorz’s multiform thought is entirely centred on liberation: from work, which prevents individuals from thriving; from consumption, which grows ever higher; and from the social system, which reduces individuals to mere pawns in a “megamachine”.
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?
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.
En Arizona, les survivalistes se préparent à la fin du monde. Viscéralement méfiants à l’égard de l’État, climato-sceptiques, conservateurs, ils se reconnaissent pleinement dans le candidat Trump et voient dans le bitcoin un moyen de défendre une vision purifiée de ce que doivent être à leurs yeux les États-Unis.
Qui étaient les lectrices de Simone de Beauvoir ? À partir d’un matériau exceptionnel fondé sur les échanges épistolaires de la philosophe avec son lectorat, Marine Rouch livre une vision incarnée de la réception de la pensée beauvoirienne.
Sacralisée depuis les deux Guerres mondiales, prépondérante dans la mémoire historique, la victime est devenue la nouvelle figure du héros, formant ainsi une exemplarité nouvelle et controversée.
À propos de : M’hamed Oualdi, Un esclave entre deux empires. Une histoire transimpériale du Maghreb, Seuil
À propos de : Stéphanie Soubrier, Races guerrières. Enquête sur une catégorie impériale (1850-1918), CNRS Editions
À propos de : Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Universaliser. « L’humanité par les moyens d’humanité », Albin Michel ; Ubuntu. Entretien avec Françoise Blum, Éditions de l’EHESS