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.
In this analysis of animal behavior, Florence Burgat brilliantly examines a continent that Freud left unexplored: the animal unconscious. But is psychoanalysis the right framework for such a project?
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.
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.
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.
About: Catherine Malabou, Au voleur ! Anarchisme et philosophie, Puf
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
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.
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.
Is there still room for hope at the White House?
Our Books and Ideas dossier on the American presidential elections will make no forecasts - instead it will look back on four years of Democratic leadership at the White House and four years of right-wing radicalization inside and outside of the G.O.P. Whoever wins will have to deal with the Tea Party, and the record shows it will not be easy for anyone.
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.
Richard Hoggart (1918-2014), a poor child who went onto become a university professor, was the epitome of a successful scholarship student. The trajectory of this “exemplary counter-example” sheds light on the mechanisms of social reproduction when they prove inoperative and the distance that can be traveled from one’s native milieu.
Among the recipients of the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics was Elinor Ostrom, for her analysis of economic governance, especially in relation to the commons. While this choice took many in the profession by surprise, her life-long quest for an understanding of successful common property resource management holds important lessons for our future.
Claude Nicolet a marqué tout autant par ses travaux sur Rome et par ses essais, très connus et très engagés, sur l’idée républicaine. Il a aussi fait école, en systématisant l’usage de la méthode prosopographique.
Dans les années 1830, une épidémie de choléra sévit dans les villes et les campagnes, incapables de « se cuirasser contre les miasmes ». Aujourd’hui comme hier, l’impuissance face à la maladie met à nu le fonctionnement de la société tout entière.
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.
À propos de : Geneviève Pruvost, La subsistance au quotidien, conter ce qui compte, La Découverte
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
