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 ancient Greece, religious rites were designed to produce a unique state of receptivity. This book, which focuses on the tools used in sensory encounters with the gods, contributes to the sensory turn that is currently revitalizing historical studies.
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.
‘Prevent disorder’ is the motto of Russian power, justifying all forms of repression and establishing a partly decentralized system of domination through fear at the hands of local mobs.
The hood-wearing entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley are workers subject to often fierce competition. Inequalities abound in the world of innovation.
About: Annabelle Bonnet, La barbe ne fait pas le philosophe (1880-1949), CNRS Éditions
About: Catherine Coquio, Joël Hubrecht, Naïla Mansour, Farouk Mardam-Bey (dir.), Syrie, Le pays brûlé. Le livre noir des Assad (1970-2021), Seuil
About: Mathias Dreyfuss, Aux sources juives de l’histoire de France, CNRS Éditions
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.
As protests against racism break out all over the world following the murder of George Floyd, Books & Ideas gathers a selection of texts examining the history of these multifaceted discriminations and of the struggles for racial justice.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be back at the end of August. In the meantime, here is a selection of interviews, reviews and essays on popular music published over the past year.
This dossier examines the recently reopened debate on regional integration in Asia. What are the obstacles to the construction of an Asian Union? How is the issue tackled in Japan, China or Australia?
In an innovative study that returns Albert Camus’ early works to their rightful place in the canon, Laurent Bove suggests we should view Camus as a philosopher of immanence and of acquiescence to the joy of the world. This reading is enlightening as far as Camus’ thoughts on history are concerned, but tends to gloss over the ruptures that run though his work, which is driven with multiple tensions.
How do scientific discoveries and progress come about? Against an idealist and triumphalist conception of the history of science, Simon Schaffer’s oeuvre examines science in the making, in close proximity to its practices and actors. Far from diminishing its prestige, this approach restores science to the central place it occupied in Old Regime societies.
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.
Le Parti républicain a-t-il vendu son âme au diable en choisissant pour la troisième fois Donald Trump comme candidat ? Comment peut-il porter un homme défiant à ce point tous les garde-fous de la démocratie et réinterprétant aussi radicalement la grammaire conservatrice ?
La passion est un thème récurrent de la littérature, mais les histoires d’amour sont souvent en fait des histoires d’abus. Les notions modernes de « harcèlement », d’« emprise », de « consentement » et de « mémoire traumatique » permettent de relire nos classiques de manière éthique.
De Salomé à Lolita, les représentations de « tentatrices » accompagnent un fantasme masculin : celui de la femme qui a déjà dit oui avant qu’on lui demande quoi que ce soit. Or celle qui a « allumé » le désir des hommes doit en payer les conséquences.
À propos de : Jean-Louis Fournel et Jean-Claude Zancarini. Savonarole. L’arme de la parole, Passés composés
À propos de : Guillaume Calafat, Mathieu Grenet, Une Histoire des mobilités humaines (1492-1750), Points
À propos de : Indravati Félicité, Le Saint-Empire face au monde. Contestations et redéfinitions de l’impérialité, XVe-XIXe siècle, CNRS Éditions
