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.
Right to a healthy environment, rights of nature or of non-human animals: can environmental rights serve the cause of environmentalism? Legal expert Diane Roman analyses the pathways towards the jurisdictional enforcement of these new rights, and highlights the progress they have made, as well as their limitations.
Quotas in India contribute to the emancipation of lower castes while producing perverse effects that are difficult to control. Rohini Somanathan questions the right balance between targeted positive discrimination policies and public policies with a universal vocation.
Is another world possible? Answering this question requires us to first ask ourselves what “possible” might mean. We must return to the classics: from Aristotle to Bourdieu, many authors can help us understand what an alternative might look like.
Are we free, or are our actions determined by natural causes? The problem thus posed is a metaphysical construct: From late antiquity onwards, the authentic meaning of freedom as a principle of action has been obscured by the invention of free will and the excessive importance given to the concept of the will.
About: Pascal Sévérac, Puissance de l’enfance. Vygotski avec Spinoza, Vrin
About: Delphine Dulong, Premier ministre, CNRS Éditions
About: Jean Vioulac, Anarchéologie. Fragments hérétiques sur la catastrophe historique, Puf
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.
Over the past few months, Books and Ideas has been running a series of interviews with leading contemporary scholars, who took the time to discuss their particular topics of research with us. For the Christmas season, we have put together a selection of seven discussions with intellectuals across the humanities and sciences: sociology, history, comparative literature, neuro-biology, anthropology and political science.
At a time when Europe is equated with sovereign debt and political powerlessness, one should not forget that the foundations for a European citizenship have already been laid. Its potential for democracy needs to be interrogated, as do the cultural resources that it can rely on.
How do images respond to political events and how do they shape them ? What is the political power of images ? Should images of violence be shown in the media ? Through its winter selection, Books&Ideas offers to rediscover a group of four essays and reviews, all published in 2015, which have tackled these questions through the prism of history, philosophy, aesthetics and political sciences.
By asserting that structuralism is a fruitful approach to kinship relations or the difference between the sexes, Françoise Héritier radically renewed anthropological methodology. Her life’s work has also shown us that scientific commitment goes hand-in-hand with societal involvement.
Miguel Abensour profoundly renewed thinking about democracy. His political philosophy paid close attention to the desire for emancipation and was based on an original conception of utopia breaking with the mythology of the ‘ideal city’ or of a ‘good society’.
Rediscovering an activist thinker who was at the origins of eco-feminism, but remains unknown. Her work inspired an extremely heterogeneous movement, but has her ambition to concretely transform the social, economic and political organisation of society been pursued?
Quelle est la part de la référence religieuse dans le discours de Vox, le parti d’extrême droite espagnol ? Le catholicisme est au cœur de sa revendication identitaire et nationaliste, mais sert aussi de ressource symbolique pour combattre les courants féministes et progressistes.
L’Italie a-t-elle une histoire avant l’unification ? Au cœur de la Méditerranée, pendant des siècles, la péninsule se présente comme une koiné culturelle à première vue uniforme mais montre une complexe pluralité politique, économique et sociale.
Critiquée pour des manquements à répétition, la police française semble désespérément manquer d’une ligne d’action explicite en matière d’encadrement des manifestations. Celle-ci pourrait pourtant s’inspirer de la logique de désescalade promue ailleurs sur le continent européen.
À propos de : Günther Anders, L’humain étranger au monde. Une anthropologie philosophique, Fario
À propos de : Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Histoire de la papesse Jeanne. Une enquête au cœur des textes, Presses Universitaires de Lyon
À propos de : Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, Sans transition. Une nouvelle histoire de l’énergie, Seuil