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.
As 2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Hannah Arendt’s death, a new book offers a fresh perspective on a little-known yet pivotal period in the philosopher’s life and work.
The female silhouette – understood as the body’s visible form and socially perceived appearance – has long been shaped by social norms. In the age of social media, these norms are intensifying, prompting, in response, the rise of so-called “body-positive” movements.
How can we move beyond the double deadlock of state socialism and market capitalism? For Lea Ypi, returning to Kant and the Enlightenment offers a perspective to provide a new ground to freedom as social responsibility, and to open up towards a cosmopolitan horizon against the authoritarianism of profit.
A collective work traces the emotional and psychological journeys of Holocaust survivors in the immediate postwar period. It examines both the practices of caregivers and the strategies survivors employed to reintegrate into society.
Backed by Raymond Aron and Manès Sperber, the French publishing house Calmann-Lévy championed anti-communism and the fight against totalitarianism from the end of World War II.
About: Adeline Barbin, La démocratie des techniques, Hermann
About: Claire Larroque, Philosophie du déchet, Presses universitaires de France
About: Catherine Malabou, Il n’y a pas eu de Révolution, Payot & Rivages
A rumour is circulating in some African countries: the French state is organising penis thefts to offset declining fertility. The rumour, spread by Russian propaganda, has become fake news.
The American sociologist Harrison White made a vital contribution to the development of social network analysis. Besides his work in this field, his theoretical synthesis and his understanding of social formations have influenced a variety of fields such as the sociology of art and economic sociology.
Ukraine’s water networks have been mobilized since the start of the war in 2014. Infrastructure workers are some of the last to leave settlements attacked by the Russian army. Water systems and people are resisting but are reaching the limits of their capacity to adapt to violence and disruptions.
The media industry has undergone dramatic changes in its technologies and business models. To help us understand the effects of these changes on democracy, Books and Ideas takes the discussion away from simplistic dichotomies between the Internet and the so-called “traditional” press.
A selection of five essays and reviews recently published in Books&Ideas discusses the legacy and renewal of social class studies in France, Great-Britain and India.
Books & Ideas is going on holiday for the summer, and will resume its publication schedule in September. In the meantime, we present to you a weekly roundup of our most recent essays and reviews. Our first summer selection features compelling interviews on subjects as varied as food and media studies, African-American history, quantum physics, Russian political culture, and Muslim-Jewish relations.
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.
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.
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.
Selon la première ministre japonaise, les Japonais doivent travailler toujours plus. Ce discours productiviste doit être replacé dans l’histoire longue du conservatisme japonais et de son rapport avec le libéralisme.
Nicolas Soulas replace la figure du « robespierriste » Claude-François Payan dans une vaste biographie familiale. Il montre comment une famille négocie le virage révolutionnaire, à la fois moment d’opportunité unique et parenthèse à l’échelle de stratégies familiales de plus long terme.
Avocat du New Deal, ministre de la Justice sous Roosevelt et membre de la Cour Suprême, Robert Jackson fut aussi l’un des acteurs centraux des procès contre les nazis. Son parcours rappelle qu’en des temps pas si éloignés les États-Unis jouaient un rôle essentiel dans la justice internationale.
À propos de : Gabriel Entin, En quête de République. Une histoire de la communauté politique en Amérique hispanique, Presses universitaires de Rennes
À propos de : Jean-Pascal Anfray, Leibniz. Temps, nécessité, conscience, Honoré Champion
À propos de : Clair Juilliet et Jean-Marc Olivier, De Blériot à Airbus : une histoire des industries aéronautiques européennes, 1910-2024, Armand Colin
