Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A note on references
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC (1890–1940)
- PART II THE REIGN OF EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY (1940–1960)
- PART III STRUCTURALISM AND BEYOND (1960–1990)
- Conclusion: the philosophy of freedom
- Appendix: philosophy and the French educational system
- References
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A note on references
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC (1890–1940)
- PART II THE REIGN OF EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY (1940–1960)
- PART III STRUCTURALISM AND BEYOND (1960–1990)
- Conclusion: the philosophy of freedom
- Appendix: philosophy and the French educational system
- References
- Index
Summary
There is nothing sacred about the century as a unit of time, but there is a relatively self-contained and coherent story to be told about French philosophy from about 1890 to about 1990. In telling it, I have tried to be comprehensive although by no means exhaustive. There are full chapters on the half-dozen figures I regard as of the highest importance and substantial sections on about a dozen other major thinkers. Beyond that, I have let the logic of my narrative, more than any desire for encyclopedic completeness, determine whom I discuss and how. Given the constraints of length, it has been impossible to avoid arbitrary exclusions. Thoughtful readers will regret no more than I that there is little or nothing on André Lalande, Alain, Simone Weil, Pierre Bourdieu, Alain Badiou …
My approach has been that of a historically minded philosopher rather than a historian per se. I have, accordingly, paid more attention to the internal logic of ideas than to, for example, social-political contexts, economic determinants, or the psychology of influence. I have, however, tried to give a sense of the flow and interaction of ideas from one thinker to another and to explain, at least in intellectual terms, major changes in views (from, for example, idealism to existentialism and existentialism to poststructuralism). My main goal has been to provide the reader with lucid and fair analyses of what philosophers have thought and of how the thoughts of different philosophers are related.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century , pp. xi - xiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001