6. Restless times

While it captured the French public imagination, structuralism is now more celebrated as a precursor to post-structuralism and deconstruction. ‘Restless times: structuralism and post-structuralism’ introduces Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze, whose academic, aesthetically based theories were part of a move away from progressive philosophy. Foucault placed madness and medicine in their historical contexts, Derrida’s writings focused on the inherent instability of texts, and Deleuze rehabilitated some of Bergson’s theories while occupying a unique position of his own between radicalism, pragmatism, and metaphysics. What effect did the student protests of 1968 have on these three different writers?

7. French philosophy today

Following the 1968 protests, the once-popular Marxism of Althusser declined in relevance. ‘French philosophy today: competing ambitions’ looks at the careers of Althusser’s pupils and successors. Much of twentieth-century French philosophy was a reckoning with phenomenology, which itself had risen as an alternative to existentialism. Some writers worried that phenomenology, as interpreted by Michael Henry and Emmanuel Levinas, was taking an overly theological turn. French philosophers were ready to move on from the Revolution, but ideas about who conferred power in the absence of a religious authority were as relevant as ever and harked back to the ongoing dialogue between philosophy and Christianity.

4. Post-Revolutionary philosophy

After the French Revolution, philosophy and the rapid rise of individualism were blamed for the bloodshed. ‘Post-Revolutionary philosophy: the nineteenth century and the Third Republic’ introduces thinkers like Auguste Comte, who ushered in socialism by arguing that Enlightenment ideas had toppled the old order of monarchy and religion, but that their individualism potentially hampered progress. Progress, epitomized by science, was the goal in nineteenth-century French philosophy. Rationalism and the ‘critical idealism’ of Léon Brunschvicg were not the only schools of thought. The Romantic philosopher Henri Bergson tackled the relationship between mind, body, and spirit by defining knowledge as a process.

3. Radical philosophy

Cartesian rationalism was challenged in the French public imagination by the theories of John Locke. ‘Radical philosophy: the eighteenth century’ looks at how philosophers like d’Alembert popularized Lockean ideas about how humans experience the world through sensation and reflection. Where did language come from? What can babies, statues, and blind people teach us about sensibility? Should human bodies be perfected by medicine, science, and society? Rousseau wrote that external impressions were as important as innate thoughts and that humans were corrupted by the world. Voltaire argued that Christianity was only one of many religions and the West only one region.

2. The origins of French philosophy

What do Montaigne’s Essays have in common with modern philosophy? ‘The origins of French philosophy’ explains different approaches to relativism, humanism, and scepticism in the writings of Montaigne and Descartes, and lesser-known philosophers Gassendi and Malebranche. As a cleric, Gassendi shaped his conclusions around Christian doctrine. When Descartes was unable to argue a central scientific theory because of the Church—that the Earth revolves around the Sun—he became preoccupied by the possibility of absolute, indisputable knowledge. Thus, ontology in French philosophy was replaced with epistemology—the study of knowledge. How did early modern philosophers explain the relationship between God, the mind, and the body?

1. Introduction

1580 saw the publication of Montaigne’s Essays, which the Introduction identifies as the first philosophical work in French. Montaigne was fluent in Latin, the language of scholarship, so what was the significance of his writing in the vernacular? During the early modern period, French philosophy covered what we would now think of as science, along with theology, metaphysics, and ethics. During the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, philosophy became associated with radical politics and intellectualism. After the First World War, French philosophers embraced existential ideas from Germany and further east. What impact would ‘French theory’ have on the twentieth century?

8. Conclusion

Is it significant, as the Conclusion suggests, that the Sorbonne is located between the Panthéon and the Préfecture de Police? French philosophy is associated with greatness and exercises considerable influence through the education system and grant funding, but in the wrong hands it could be an instrument of state control. The proximity of religious buildings to the Sorbonne also suggests that their influence has not been vanquished by the scepticism that characterized French philosophy from Descartes onward. The history of the French state has been driven by debates and fundamental questions about non-religious foundations of legitimacy. The history of French philosophy is marked by similar traits.

5. Philosophy in wartime

In the early twentieth century, German philosophers like Husserl founded theories of phenomenology. ‘Philosophy in wartime: phenomenology and existentialism’ looks at initial adopters in France, some of whom were then quickly gripped by existentialism and structuralism through translations of Heidegger. The leading lights of mid-twentieth-century philosophy—Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty—explored our place in the world. To what extent are humans the product of traditions and socio-cultural practices? In the 1960s, philosophy moved towards approaches to political, social, and scientific problems that challenged the popular humanism of Sartre’s doctrines.