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.
The complexity of contemporary biology is a source of wonder, fear, and misunderstanding. Thierry Hoquet reviews the major biological theories to help us think through the social implications of a science that is opening up fascinating, though not inevitable, horizons.
Since the 1980s, patient accompaniment has been considered a form of care in its own right. Yet, the “ethic of care,” now a key notion in philosophy, is also part of the solidarity pact that governs the welfare state in France.
“Fixers”, or dragomans, are vital intermediaries and interpreters for both journalists and soldiers in hostile terrain, and play a central role in a network of relationships and transfers. In the Middle Ages they embodied the need for otherness, and continue to do so today.
About: Manon Garcia (éd.), Philosophie féministe. Patriarcat, savoirs, justice, Vrin
About: Benjamin Lemoine, La démocratie disciplinée par la dette, La Découverte
About: Stéphane Dufoix, Décolonial, Anamosa
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.
Summer is here. Books&Ideas is off on holiday. We will be back with new publications starting August 29th. In the meantime, here is a selection of essays, interviews and reviews published over the past year.
In order to better grasp protests and social movements in China, whose number has impressively swollen in recent years, Books&Ideas presents a dossier on the evolution of social mobilization and on the representation of social instability in this country.
The media industry has undergone dramatic changes in its technologies and business models. To help us understand the effects of these changes on democracy, Books and Ideas takes the discussion away from simplistic dichotomies between the Internet and the so-called “traditional” press.
Ronald Dworkin’s innovative and politically ambitious work has become essential reading in political and legal theory. Taking issue with classical political liberalism, he argues that liberty and equality are not mutually exclusive, and are indeed inseparable. And against traditional interpretations of law, he argues that law must be understood by comparing it to a collective novel, a mixture of creativity and interpretation.
Although now considered a pseudo-science, phrenology was tremendously successful in its Victorian heyday. Tracing the intellectual and scientific journey of George Combe, the ’science’s most prominent promoter in Great Britain, this paper addresses the phrenologists’ little-known contribution to the ’social question’ debate of the day, and the ambiguities of their social gospel.
Umberto Eco is best known to the general public for his novels and critical works in which he developed his theory of reception. Who realizes, however, that this aspect of his work is only one part of a general semiology organized around a philosophy of signs?
La crise politique vénézuélienne connaît un nouvel épisode avec une élection présidentielle frauduleuse par laquelle Nicolás Maduro tente de se maintenir au pouvoir au prix d’un nouveau saut en avant autoritaire. La répression étatique atteint des sommets sans précédent.
En trois volumes rassemblant l’œuvre écrite et parlée de Chantal Akerman, apparaît l’écrivaine derrière la cinéaste.
Au commencement il y a le Spasfon, un succès pharmaceutique français, un médicament banal, prescrit à des millions de femmes chaque mois pour soulager leurs douleurs menstruelles. À la fin, un médicament dont l’efficacité s’avère insuffisamment prouvée, et souvent prescrit comme placebo.
À propos de : Raphaële Andrault, Le Fer ou le Feu. Penser la douleur après Descartes, Classiques Garnier
À propos de : Justine Lacroix, Les valeurs de l’Europe. Un enjeu démocratique, Collège de France éditions
À propos de : Bernard Lahire, Les structures fondamentales des sociétés humaines, La Découverte