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Philosophy

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Essays

Filming the End of the World

An Interview with Peter Szendy

by Florent Guénard & translated by Kate McNaughton, 6 May

2012, Terminator, Blade Runner, Melancholia. There is no shortage of films portraying the end of the world; in fact, they are becoming ever more successful. But what is their real meaning? Are (...)

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Reviews

Choosing Our Leaders

About : Jean-Claude Monod, Qu’est-ce qu’un chef en démocratie ? Politiques du charisme, Seuil.

by Jean-Yves Pranchère, 11 February

Democracies cannot do without leaders, according to Jean-Claude Monod, as they guarantee our freedom against the domination of economic powers. Even so, we must learn to choose our leaders and to (...)

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Essays

The Suspension of Meaning

An Interview with Jean Starobinski

by Sarah Al-Matary & translated by Susannah Dale, 28 January

Creating connections has been the aim of Jean Starobinski’s work for more than half a century. His body of work is large and shifting, created in response to life, lying somewhere between the (...)

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Essays

Analytics of Power

An Interview with Judith Butler

by Claire Pagès & Mathieu Trachman, 29 November 2012

After the publication of her last book, Parting Ways. Jewishness and the Critique of zionism, Judith Butler discusses her most recent work in an interview, proposing a new analytics of power. She (...)

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Essays

Citizen Balibar

An Interview with Étienne Balibar

by Nicolas Duvoux & Pascal Sévérac & translated by Michael C. Behrent, 26 November 2012

Who comes after the subject? According to Étienne Balibar, it is the citizen—grasped not in her isolated sovereignty, but as a member of an emerging community. Yet the equality of rights that (...)

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Essays

Human Rights and Politics

1980-2012

by Justine Lacroix & translated by John Zvesper, 24 October 2012

Are human rights a cornerstone of democracy, or a threat to social ties? Are they a precondition for the existence of a public space, or a triumph of individualism? Political thinkers have (...)

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Essays

Choosing Confucianism: Departing from the Liberal Framework

An Interview with Daniel A. Bell

by Emilie Frenkiel, 10 September 2012

Recounting his itinerary from research on Communitarianism to the adoption of Confucian values, political philosopher Daniel A. Bell advocates thinking of cities as representing different social (...)

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Essays

The Significance of Choice

An Interview with Tim Scanlon

by Yascha Mounk, 11 July 2012

T. M. Scanlon is one of the most highly regarded moral philosophers working today. The prime architect of contemporary contractualism in ethics, he has, besides his masterwork, What We Owe to (...)

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Reviews

The Mid-Life Crisis of Neo-Liberalism

About: Serge Audier, Néo-libéralisme(s) – une archéologie intellectuelle, Grasset, , 2012.

by Emile Chabal, 4 July 2012

Serge Audier has set out to rewrite and rehabilitate the history of neo-liberalism. It is an important task but one which depends, not simply on showing what neo-liberalism was not, but also what (...)

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Reviews

Justice and Otherness

About: Corine Pelluchon, Éléments pour une éthique de la vulnérabilité, Cerf

by Marie Garrau & translated by John Zvesper, 22 June 2012

Replacing the modern liberal concept of the free and sovereign subject with the interdependent, vulnerable and responsible subject, Corine Pelluchon bases politics on an ethical ontology. But (...)

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Essays

The Ethnography of Disasters

An Interview with Sandrine Revet

by David Bornstein & Florent Guénard & translated by Michael C. Behrent, 18 June 2012

For Sandrine Revet, we need to move beyond statistics to see the ethnographic side of disasters. It is a necessary step if we are to understand their effects not only on public policies, but also (...)

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Reviews

Promises, Promises

About: Hanoch Sheinman (ed.), Promises and Agreements. Philosophical Essays, Oxford University Press.

by Vincent Boyer & translated by Michael C. Behrent, 8 June 2012

We promise a lot and we are promised a lot. Promises lie at the heart of our social life. They are also the foundation of electoral democracies, in which political programs take the form of (...)

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Reviews

Is It Human Nature to Be Good?

About: Vanessa Nurock, Sommes-nous naturellement moraux ? [Are we naturally moral beings?], PUF.

by Solange Chavel & translated by Victoria Lazar Graham, 30 May 2012

Where does ones moral compass come from, nature or nurture? Successfully avoiding all reductionism, Vanessa Nurock reflects on the natural origins of ethics, using both the history of philosophy (...)

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Reviews

Envisaging the Future of Republicanism in France

About: T. Ménissier, La liberté des contemporains. Pourquoi il faut rénover la république, P.U. Grenoble, 2011

by Sophie Guérard de la Tour, 17 May 2012

To Thierry Ménissier, France’s republicanism is not a thing of the past. In fact, the republican regime is still the best guarantee of liberty in France, but only if it is overhauled so that it (...)

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Essays

Louis Dumont’s Political Thought

by Vincent Descombes & translated by John Zvesper, 17 April 2012

Louis Dumont is very well known for his anthropological work on India, but rather less for his political thought. Vincent Descombes emphasizes the substantial originality of that thought, which (...)

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Reviews

Minimal Ethics

About: R. Ogien, L’influence de l’odeur des croissants chauds sur la bonté humaine, Grasset.

by Marc-Antoine Dilhac & translated by Susannah Dale, 7 February 2012

Simply by analysing the moral problems of each and every one of us, Ruwen Ogien takes the stance of ‘minimal ethics’. His book reads like a good mystery novel in which the detective proves against (...)

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Essays

The Media Revolution and Public Debate

by Charles Girard & translated by Susannah Dale, 3 January 2012

In a democratic regime, do new media represent a threat or a step forward for the press? Charles Girard examines the renewal of the journalistic profession and its impact on democratic debate. (...)

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Essays

Translating the Second Sex

by Constance Borde & Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, 17 November 2011

Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier have published a new English translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s famed The Second Sex sixty years after its initial publication. They explain for (...)

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Essays

From Risk To Disaster

A New Paradigm

by Florent Guénard & Philippe Simay & translated by Susannah Dale, 8 June 2011

In the human and social sciences, the pervasiveness of the notion of disaster is an indication that a true paradigm is developing, which seeks to replace the paradigm of risk on which the modern (...)

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Reviews

Predatory Power

About: G. Chamayou, Les chasses à l’homme, La Fabrique.

by Jean Bérard & translated by Arthur Goldhammer, 3 June 2011

Might manhunting—from helots to undocumented immigrants—be the paradigm of all power? This is the hypothesis that Grégoire Chamayou puts to the test in an ambitious and devastating essay that (...)

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Reviews

Obama as Philosopher

About: J. Kloppenberg, Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition, Princeton University Press

by Michael C. Behrent, 11 May 2011

Historian James Kloppenberg suggests that Obama deserves a place in the pantheon of American political thinkers. The president’s taste for reconciliation and overcoming of partisanship supposedly (...)

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Reviews

The Reception of John Stuart Mill in France

About: John Stuart Mill, Considérations sur le gouvernement représentatif, Gallimard.

by Vincent Guillin & Djamel Souafa & translated by Arthur Goldhammer, 9 May 2011

How did the thought of John Stuart Mill cross the English Channel? Vincent Guillin and Djamel Souafa analyze the reception of Considerations on Representative Government in Second Empire France (...)

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Dossiers

The Significance of Disasters

by Florent Guénard & Philippe Simay, 29 April 2011

Disasters and the tragedies that they entail accumulate, along with human and social science research trying to grasp the significance of their repetition. The aim of the dossier launched today (...)

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Reviews

The Social Utility of the Humanities

About: M. Nussbaum, Not for Profit. Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Princeton University Press.

by Solange Chavel & translated by Arthur Goldhammer, 26 April 2011

Is the teaching of the humanities a luxury that today’s societies can no longer afford? Martha Nussbaum responds that, on the contrary, in a world of globalized economic competition, there are (...)

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Reviews

A Moral History of Human Guinea Pigs

About: G. Chamayou, Les Corps vils, La Découverte.

by Ariel Suhamy & translated by Virginia Ricard, 6 April 2011

Is scientific progress necessarily moral? In his history of experiments on human guinea pigs, Grégoire Chamayou attempts to show that modern science, although apparently neutral, has a share in (...)

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Reviews

The Two Lives of Ivan Illich

About: « Actualité d’Ivan Illich », Esprit

by Augustin Fragnière, 18 March 2011

The French literary magazine Esprit evaluates the work of Ivan Illich. It first focuses on his denouncing the perverse effects of industrial society. It also analyzes the symbolic effects of the (...)

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Essays

The Collective Identity of a Teaching Body

by Vincent Descombes & translated by Susan Emanuel, 4 March 2011

How can we explain the breadth of the mobilization of academics against the plan to modify their status? For philosopher Vincent Descombes, it is the collective identity of the teaching body that (...)

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Essays

The Social State and Globalization

by Jean-Fabien Spitz & translated by Susan Emanuel, 11 February 2011

Does the globalization of the economy inevitably imply a lowering of our social protections? As Jean-Fabien Spitz shows, this would mean considering them as a mere luxury that we must give up (...)

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Reviews

The Intelligence of the Hand

About: M. Crawford, Éloge du carburateur. Essai sur le sens et la valeur du travail, La Découverte.

by Marie Duru-Bellat, 7 January 2011

Ex-philosopher Matthew Crawford celebrates the virtues of manual labor, lamenting the alienation that he argues is inherent in ostensibly intellectual occupations. Crawford is convinced that only (...)

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Reviews

From the Rights of Man to Human Rights?

About: S. Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Harvard.

by Justine Lacroix, 1 December 2010

If human rights are our last utopia, it is only if we understand, says the American historian Samuel Moyn, that they are not the same as the rights of man as proclaimed at the end of the 17th (...)

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Reviews

Unlocatable Justice

About: Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice, Harvard University Press.

by Emmanuelle Bénicourt, 23 September 2010

For Amartya Sen, a consensus around rejecting injustice is preferable to a general theory of justice. Although his critique of the Rawlsian approach may be useful, his arguments for a comparative (...)

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Essays

What justice after war?

Elements for a theory of transitional justice

by Christian Nadeau, 14 January 2010

Is it possible, after a conflict or genocide, to deliver justice and build a new political order acceptable to all sides previously set on destroying each other? Christian Nadeau looks at recent (...)

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Reviews

Guattari’s Relevance

About: F. Guattari, Les années d’hiver (1980-1985), Les Prairies ordinaires.

by Manola Antonioli, 10 December 2009

Les Années d’hiver [“Winter Years”] a volume of articles published between the end of the 1970s and the end of the 1980s, constitutes an interesting entrée into Félix Guattari’s thought: his (...)

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Essays

For an Ecological Democracy

by Dominique Bourg & Kerry Whiteside, 1 September 2009

Our consumption never stops increasing and the planet is bled dry. Relying on technological progress for our salvation is an illusion. For the solution is political: We must seek to refound our (...)

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Reviews

Lévy-Bruhl and the Problem of Contradiction

About: F. Keck, Lévy-Bruhl, CNRS Éditions.

by Gildas Salmon, 12 February 2009

Lévy-Bruhl has a bad reputation. Beyond what is needed to dismiss it and indignantly condemn such concepts as that of primitive mentality, very little is in general known about his work. Frédéric (...)

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Reviews

Thinking About the Self

An Interview with Jerrold Seigel

by Nicolas Delalande, 6 February 2009

It has been said since the 1970s that the “death of the subject” is an irrevocable given of any modern conception of the self. Jerrold Seigel shows how to go beyond this simplistic approach: with a (...)

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Essays

October 2008: the return of the State?

Political perspectives on the financial crisis

by Bruno Bernardi, 29 January 2009

The unfolding of the financial crisis and our attempts to keep it in check have spawned a new theme of debate: are we witnessing - to the joy of some and the horror of others - the return of the (...)

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Essays

The Koran and Freedom of Thought

by Dominique Avon & Abdellatif Idrissi, 23 December 2008

There was an age when people had the right to criticise the entourage of the prophet, when religious controversy was carried out with a great freedom of tone, and when Islamic scholars glorified (...)

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Reviews

The Lost Cause of Democracy

About: S. Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes , Verso.

by Jérôme Melançon, 18 December 2008

Žižek strongly advocates an overturning of capitalism through a daily revolution; the latter can only become possible if our perception of society and its constructs can be changed to achieve a (...)

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Essays

When the lottery is fairer than rational choice

An interview with Jon Elster

by Florent Guénard & Hélène Landemore, 26 November 2008

Jon Elster explains why he has gradually distanced himself from rational choice theories to favour chance and the luck of the draw, less liable to be unjust when deliberation is plainly (...)

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