Modern French philosophy

In Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne, Baudelaire draws attention to Poe's short story, 'The Man of the Crowd', in which a convalescent, sitting in the window of a London coffee house, becomes absorbed in the movement of the crowd outside and, after observing the various urban types and 'tribes' to be seen there, becomes fascinated by one particular individual, and is drawn to follow him back and forth through the bustling streets of the city. This sinister and elusive figure, the narrator concludes at the end of the tale, is 'the type and genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone. He is the man of the crowd. It will be in vain to follow; for I shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds.' 1 The artist Constantin Guys, the eponymous 'painter of modern life,' was, Baudelaire tells us, a 'Grand amoureux de la foule et de l'incognito' (great lover of the crowd and of the incognito), and, similarly, 'toujours, spirituellement, à l'état du convalescent,' (always, spiritually, in a state of convalescence) 2 seeing everything with the freshness and intensity of a child. The crowd is his domain: his passion is d'épouser la foule (to be wedded to the crowd). Guys, as the model of the modern artist, is not, Baudelaire tells us, to be mistaken for a dandy, since the dandy is blasé whereas Guys is dominated by an insatiable passion for seeing and feeling that draws him to the crowd. Not a dandy, then, but a flâneur: Pour le parfait flâneur, pour l'observateur passionné, c'est une immense jouissance que d'élire domicile dans le nombre, dans l'ondoyant, dans le mouvement, dans le fugitif et l'infini. Être hors de chez soi, et pourtant se sentir partout chez soi; voir le monde, être au centre du monde et rester caché au monde, tels sont quelques-uns des moindres plaisirs de ces esprits indépendants, passionnés, impartaux, que la langue ne peut que maladroitement définir. L'observateur est un prince qui jouit partout de son incognito. (OC II, 691-2) (For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world – such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito.)

This paper will analyze the evolution and the key aspects of René Girard's critique of the Hegelian " struggle for recognition " and the master-slave dialectic. Through a discussion of Girard's views on Identity, Difference, Violence, Desire and Negativity, the study will aim to highlight the philosophical uniqueness of the mimetic theory in respect to French Hegelianism and post-Hegelianism.

André Lalande is known to history almost exclusively as the editor of the famous Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, promoted by the newborn Société française de philosophie and published even nowadays. Over the years, scholarship has usually focused on the disciplinary and sociological context that instilled in fin-de-siècle academic philosophy the need for a tool codifying and normalizing the language of the discipline. From this perspective, the Vocabulaire has been primarily framed as an instrument of disciplinary self-legitimization. However, little is known about the properly philosophical vision that was at the roots of such an ambitious editorial enterprise. By bringing to light his theory of "involution", with its theoretical and social implications, this article sets out to reassess the neglected thought of André Lalande, thereby allowing us to see the philosopher behind the editor.

This paper compares the accounts of the basis of ethics in Emmanuel Levinas and the Danish philosopher and theologian Knud Ejler Løgstrup. It proposes an interpretation of the transcendental status of linguistically-mediated intersubjectivity in Levinas which puts emphasis on his interpretation of Descartes, and draws comparisons with Wittgenstein. It then explores inconsistencies in the ethical position which Levinas derives from his analyses, and contrasts this position unfavourably with the account of the ethical demand which Løgstrup seeks to disclose through his phenomenology of human relationships.

This article assesses Émile Boutroux’s contingentist account of scientific knowledge in light of his interpretation of critical philosophy. The author underlines the recasting of Kantian motives from a spiritualist perspective as well as the rejection of Kant’s stance concerning the relationship between science and metaphysics. The main purpose is to highlight how, far from being a form of neo-Kantianism, Boutroux’s philosophy of science was subordinate to strong metaphysical concerns that had their roots in the French context of the latter half of the nineteenth century.

This is a final draft. Please cite only the published  in Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker and Michael J. Thompson, Radical Intellectuals and the Subversion of Progressive Politics: The Betrayal of Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 211-236.

“Philosophie générale” refers to the common form of philosophical teaching in French high schools, universities, and all the way up to the highest teaching diploma, the agrégation. Because of the wide range of topics it covers, the notion seems to defy precise definition and has therefore been criticized. After examining the criticisms raised against “philosophie générale,” this article aims to define its pedagogical value in its broadness and its legitimacy as a foundational teaching method. More specifically, we will explore the sense of universality put forward by Pascal through the concept of honesty. This concept sheds light on the value of “philosophie générale” as a specific form of relationship to knowledge and to others, rather than a set of themes or subjects.


Le syntagme « philosophie générale » renvoie en France à une épreuve de l’agrégation, à une matière enseignée à l’université et à l’enseignement obligatoire de philosophie au lycée. Ce syntagme échappe souvent à une définition formelle claire, si bien que la cohérence d’un tel enseignement a été discutée. Dans cet article, après avoir examiné les critiques qui ont été adressées à cet enseignement en raison de son extension et de son indétermination méthodologique, nous essayons à rebours de discerner ce qu’il peut y avoir de fécond sur le plan pédagogique dans cette approche généraliste. Nous nous appuyons en particulier sur une pensée de Pascal qui associe universalité et honnêteté. Le concept d’honnêteté permet en effet d’éclairer l’intérêt de la philosophie générale comme rapport à nos connaissances et aux autres hommes, plutôt que comme ensemble de contenus thématiques divers.

RESUMEN - ABSTRACT
Se abordarán las bases del perspectivismo de Nietzsche, así como uno de sus supuestos fundamentales: el carácter ficcional de la realidad. De igual forma se revisará la concepción antropológica según la cual el hombre es un animal de ficciones para el cual conocer es simplemente trabajar con su metáfora favorita, siendo así que la construcción de metáforas es el instinto fundamental del hombre. En relación con lo anterior se expondrá la conveniencia sugerida por  Derrida de elaborar una historia de la escritura asumiendo la encarnadura del propio escritor en su obra, asumiendo que escribir es escribir-se, a la vez interpretarse y constituirse en una tarea que compromete el sentido del hombre mismo que la lleva a cabo.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca

Like other philosophical traditions, what we call French spiritualism is a complicated constellation of thinkers who developed partially divergent answers to shared themes or concerns. In order to avoid easy generalizations and artificial labels, this article aims to explore the many-voiced character of this tradition by focusing on a debate on the notion of 'liberté morale' that took place in 1903 at the Société française de philosophie. Given the number and the calibre of the participants, as well as the centrality of the discussed notion, this episode sets the perfect stage for an in-situ assessment of the inner fault lines underlying any superficial unity in the French spiritualist tradition.

Maps the context and development of immanence and micropolitics, from Sartre to Deleuze, via Merleau-Ponty and Foucault

Christian Gilliam argues that a philosophy of ‘pure’ immanence is integral to the development of an alternative understanding of ‘the political’; one that re-orients our understanding of the self toward the concept of an unconscious or ‘micropolitical’ life of desire. He argues that here, in this ‘life’, is where the power relations integral to the continuation of post-industrial capitalism are most present and most at stake.
Through proving its philosophical context, lineage and political import, Gilliam ultimately justifies the conceptual necessity of immanence in understanding politics and resistance, thereby challenging the claim that ontologies of ‘pure’ immanence are either apolitical or politically incoherent.

"In his deft study, Gilliam provides a lineage of French philosophy from Sartre to Deleuze that grounds a conception of immanence increasingly employed within contemporary political theory.　 Beginning with the way Sartre’s philosophy moved increasingly towards a kind of ontological immanence, he shows how this thought is taken further in Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the flesh, Foucault’s micropower relations, and Deleuze’s concepts of disjunction, folding and desiring-production.　 In this way, Gilliam shows how immanence is necessarily cashed out in an understanding of politics as micropolitics." -


Prof. Nathan Widder


Professor of Political Theory


Royal Holloway, University of London

In Finnish. The article discusses the nature of the theories on anamorphosis presented from 1950s to 1980s amidst the structuralist paradigms in France. It problematizes the idea that anamorphosis is and was an anti-Cartesian gesture. This it does by comparing the theories by Jurgis Baltrušaitis, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Jean-François Lyotard to discussions considering the use of perspective and anamorphosis in Académie française in the 17th century.