GILBERT JEAN FACCARELLO (Paris, 1950) is professor of economics at Université Panthéon-Assas, Paris, and a member of the Triangle research centre (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon and CNRS). He is presently chair of the ESHET Council (European Society for the History of Economic Thought). He completed his doctoral research in economics at Université de Paris X Nanterre. He has previously taught at the Université de Paris-Dauphine, Université du Maine and École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay/Saint- (...) class='Hi'>Cloud (now École Normale Supérieure de Lyon). He is a co-founder of The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, which he co-edited for 20 years with J. L. Cardoso, Heinz D. Kurz, and A. Murphy. With Alain Béraud, he edited the Nouvelle histoire de la pensée économique (La Découverte, 3 volumes, 1992-2000) and, together with Heinz D. Kurz, he is presently editing a Handbook of the History of Economic Analysis (3 volumes, forthcoming with Edward Elgar). -/- EJPE interviewed Gilbert Faccarello about his research career in the history of economic thought, where he has focused especially on old and new classical and Marxian political economy, and French political economy during the 18th and 19th centuries. G. Faccarello discusses his interest not only in the logical structure and context of the economic ideas of past thinkers but also the links between economic thought, philosophy, and religion. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage rassemble les communications présentées lors d'une Journée d'études organisée, le 30 avril 1998, par l'Ecole nationale des Chartes et l'Ecole normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud-Fontenay. Le rapport des femmes au livre y est envisagé sous plusieurs angles. Une partie de l'ouvrage envisage la femme comme lectrice, en Espagne et en Nouvelle Espagne, à la fin du Moyen Age et au début des Temps modernes. Les sources sont des inventaires. Les uns sont dressés (...) après décès, tels ce... (shrink)

Cet article veut contribuer à définir l’objet de la théorie dialectique. Afin d’y parvenir, il reconstruit le projet d’une théorie dialectique tel qu’il a pris forme au cours des années trente au sein de l’École de Francfort – dont on rappelle qu’elle s’est toujours voulue, depuis sa naissance à Francfort dans les années 30, et dans le contexte de la société allemande, une continuation et une reprise du marxisme et sur le plan spéculatif et sur le plan des sciences empiriques (...) – en prenant appui sur les protocoles de discussions qui eurent lieu en 1939 à l’International Institute for Social Research à New York et dont l’importance n’a jamais été pleinement reconnue. Je défends que le projet peut être lu à la lumière d’une déclaration de Marx et que les termes qu’il emploie suggèrent, paradoxalement, que l’on peut emprunter l’une ou l’autre de deux voies distinctes pour élaborer la théorie dialectique. Je montre ensuite ce qui motive Max Horkheimer à emprunter l’une de ces voies et Theodor W. Adorno à emprunter plutôt l’autre. Je montre enfin pourquoi, dans la confrontation de leur position, l’une des deux voies s’affirme sur l’autre et comment cela nous permet de discerner plus précisément la nature de l’objet de la théorie dialectique. (shrink)

L'étude de Christine Hivet concerne deux romancières, la mère et la fille, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) et Mary Godwin Shelley (1797-1851), situées à la jonction des XVIII et XIXe siècles. Hivet examine la première dans le contexte du modèle féminin esquissé par quelques romancières de seconde zone, émules ou adversaires de notre aïeule féministe. En parallèle et en contrepoint, elle étudie la seconde, Mary Shelley. Celle-ci s'exprime dans des œuvres de science-fiction (Frankenstein..

Academic careers in French science during the mid-nineteenth century were made within the Université de France, an integrated state system of secondary and higher education controlled by a centralized Parisian educational administration. Among the most respected members of thecorps universitairewere Charles d'Almeida and Pierre Bertin, two historically obscurephysicienswhose significance derives from their substantial contributions to the social organization, teaching and communication of French experimental physics. This two-part comparative biography uses their entwined careers to make a case for the emergence (...) of a discipline of French experimental physics from the corps during the tumultuous politico-cultural transition from the Second Empire to the Third Republic. Of fundamental importance are disciplinary regimes of teaching and inspection within the corps, the foundation of the Société française de physique and theJournal de physique, and the diversification of the traditional pedagogical role of the Ecole normale supérieure, which, from around 1860, began to offer a career pathway for aspiring scientific researchers. Having established in this paper the socio-institutional mechanisms for the stabilization of a distinct field, in part two I characterize the epistemological–methodological aspects of French experimental physics. (shrink)

Jean Cavaillès (15 mai 1903-17 février 1944) était un philosophe français, héros et l'un des organisateurs de la Résistance, avant d'être fusillé à 40 ans par les nazis. Une journée d'hommage lui a été consacrée le 17 février 2014 à l'Ecole normale supérieure de Paris. Pierre-Yves Canu, Tommy Murtagh, Hourya Benis Sinaceur, Paul Cortois, Alya Aglan, Baptiste Mélès, Gerhard Heinzmann et Jacques Lautman présentent un Cavaillès indissociablement philosophe et Résistant, explorent les racines de sa pensée, montrent (...) l'actualité de ses concepts. Jean-Jacques Szczeciniarz et Christian Houzel proposent une analyse du Mouvement de la jeunesse allemand, un historique de la société Les Amis de Jean Cavaillès, éditrice du présent recueil, et deux hommages à celui qui la présida de 1989 à 1995, le mathématicien Henri Cartan. (shrink)

L'oeuvre philosophique d'Eric Weil (1904-1977) est l'une des plus importantes de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle. Oeuvre systématique qui repense l'héritage de la philosophie en fonction du problème radicalement moderne que pose le choix de la violence absolue - dont la réalité hitlérienne est l'exemple -, la Logique de la philosophie (1950) est prolongée par une Philosophie politique (1956), une Philosophie morale (1961), qui explicitent le même problème dans les domaines déterminés de la réalité politique et de la vie (...) morale, et elle se double de la lecture philosophique des philosophes -Hegel et l'Etat (1950), Problèmes kantiens (1963), 2è édition augmentée, 1970) - et de nombreuses études dont quelques-unes sont réunies dans Essais et conférences (1970-71). Co-fondateur de Critique, Eric Weil fut professeur aux Université de Lille (1956-68) et de Nice (1968-74).Un premier colloque sur la pensée d'Eric Weil s'est tenu à l'Ecole Normale Supérieure de Pise, les 7 et 8 novembre 1979. A l'initiative de notre Centre et des Archives de Philosophie, un second colloque aura lieu les 21 et 22 mai 1982, à Chantilly, qui portera sur l'actualité d'Eric Weil.Les membres de l'équipe qui a fondée en 1979 à l'UER de Philosophie de Lille III le Centre Eric Weil ont, pour la plupart, suivi l'enseignement de Weil à Lille et participé à son séminaire dont aujourd'hui, cinq ans après la mort du philosophe, ils entendent encore la leçon. Ces Sept Etudes sur Eric Weil, présentées et discutées lors de rencontres régulières et amicales, prennent la suite de leurs contributions au numéro spécial de 1970 des Archives de Philosophie, au colloque de Pise de 1979, aux Cahiers philosophiques de 1981/82. Ont collaboré à cet ouvrage: Gérard AlmalehAlbert BaraquinLucien BescondMireille DepadtGilbert KirscherJean QuillienJean-François Robinet. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Breaking the Revolutionary Deadlock?Volney's Leçons and the Debate on the Value of HistoryNiccolò ValmoriThis article explores the crucial contribution of Constantin-François de Chasseboeuf, better known by his pen name, Volney, to the eighteenth-century debate on the nature of history as a discipline.1 My claim is that Volney's Leçons d'histoire is the result of a complex dynamic between two forces: on the one hand, a century-long debate on how (...) history should be both written and taught; on the other, the revolutionary calls for a thoroughgoing revision of the past amid concurrent references to the virtuous moral examples of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Volney had a very narrow gap to "save" history from deadlock between these opposite perspectives. His history course at the École normale supérieure showed how the eventful years of the French Revolution had changed his own understanding of the discipline of history.I argue that Volney's supposed distrust toward the importance of the study of history was not an attempt to devalue history itself.2 On the contrary, the French author approached history as a discipline based on the principle [End Page 773] of investigative doubt and on dialogue with other scientific domains such as geography, geology, and meteorology. As Jean Gaulmier puts it: "The true heirs of Volney's dream of a total history were Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch."3 However, if Volney's proposal for a new historiography is set within the eighteenth-century debate on how to write and teach history, it appears neither original nor new. Nonetheless, I argue, Volney attempted a synthesis between divergent positions on the role of history, as they emerged and were debated during the eighteenth century in the light of the first years of the French Revolution. The context of the French Revolution left Volney with more doubts than certainty on the value of the discipline, given the manifold and controversial uses of historical examples proposed in those years. As Minchul Kim has pointed out, Volney's Leçons are a "work in history rather than a work on history."4 While Kim is right to point out the importance of the revolutionary context for understanding Volney's skepticism toward the value of history, I argue that while Volney's personal understanding of how history should be written matured through the revolutionary experience, it was also the fruit of a dialogue with Enlightenment historiography.In the first part of the article, I present the main features of the eighteenth-century debate on the limits and meaning of writing history, with a particular focus on its relationship with ancient history and on the stature of history among the other disciplines. In the second part, I analyze how Volney dealt with this debate in some of his works that preceded his appointment to the chair of history at the École normale. Three of Volney's pre-1795 works are considered here: Voyages en Syrie et en Égypte (1787), Considérations sur la guerre actuelle des Turcs (1788), and Les Ruines (which was published during the Revolution). In the last section of the article I delve into the Leçons to highlight how this work represented Volney's provisional resolution of the long debate over the role of history as a scientific endeavor as well as a subject that could be taught. [End Page 774]ENLIGHTENMENT HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE TEACHING OF HISTORY: THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY QUESTIn this section I review the main contributors to the Enlightenment historiographical debate on the status of history as a discipline and on its relationship with antiquity. I do not claim to cover all aspects of Enlightenment historiography; rather I aim to set Volney's contribution to these two aspects of the debate in a broader context. His open skepticism toward the heuristic value of history cannot be reduced simply to a reaction to the political uses and misuses of history during the French Revolution. Volney's Leçons addressed a larger audience than the select group of French teachers attending his class. The philosopher-traveler, as his contemporaries called him, joined a conversation about history that had started at... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 34.2 (2006) 3-13 [Access article in PDF] Biographical Illusion and Methodological Reality Leland De La Durantaye Pierre Bourdieu. Esquisse Pour Une Auto-Analyse. Paris: Raisons d'Agir, 2004. 1 Like his student and friend Nietzsche, Jacob Burckhardt often stressed the necessity for a scholar to work in solitude. Like Nietzsche, he also possessed a gift for acidic analogy and likened the world of academia to a group of dogs (...) sniffing one another.Few observers of the academic interactions of his time had such sharp senses as Pierre Bourdieu, and few have been as torn between solitary reflection and communal exchange. Trained by France's most elite academic institutions (such as the celebrated Parisian lycée Louis-le-Grand and the even more celebrated École Normale Supérieure), Bourdieu was grateful for the opportunities that this training afforded him. And he felt that this gratitude could best be repaid by submitting those elite academic institutions and their insular world to an unsparing critique, to unveiling the distance that separated their stated ideals from their real effects.Like Bergson and Jaurès, like Sartre and Aron, like Foucault and Derrida, Bourdieu studied that which was most difficult and most prestigious where it was most difficult and prestigious: philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure. Like those famous fellow alumni, he was a brilliant student, and like them, he longed to distinguish his personal vision from those around him. This led him to do something surprising, something that, despite their separate and significant dissatisfactions with the philosophy of their day, neither Bergson nor Sartre, neither Foucault nor Derrida ever did: he abandoned philosophy. He left what he saw as the intellectual royal road for the most pedestrian of paths—that of sociology.As he often reminded his readers, sociology was in a sorry state when he entered it. Both in academic appraisal and the popular imagination, it was considered dry and provincial. It was thought to have no true intellectual adventure in it—nothing of the ethnologist tramping through the rain forests of the Amazon, nothing of the lone philosopher working through the night on an opus to end metaphysics. It was laborious and abstract; it dealt in statistical generalities. Bourdieu repeatedly described sociology as "the pariah of disciplines."1 He had, however, a special mission for it in mind. [End Page 3]In Bourdieu's posthumous memoir Esquisse pour une auto-analyse, published in February 2004—two years after his death—by the small publishing house he helped found, Raisons d'Agir, he notes how, "a bit as a joke," he had often defined himself as "the leader of a liberation movement aiming to free the social sciences from philosophy's imperialism" [94].2 From early on in his career, he had wished to revolt against the "empire of the total philosopher"—an empire reigned over by, more than any other, Jean-Paul Sartre [cf. 25].3 Looking back upon this decisive period of his development, Bourdieu goes so far as to state that the shaping of his identity was done "against everything which the Sartrian enterprise represented for me" [37]. In historical accounts, Sartre is often given as counterfigure his friend and fellow normalien Raymond Aron. In his Esquisse, Bourdieu proposes a different, and less conventional, counterfigure for the imperial philosopher: the brilliant Austrian satirist and cultural critic Karl Kraus. Bourdieu notes the particular affection he had always felt for Kraus and attributes it to the latter's singular capacity for "critical reflectivenesss" [37]. Subtly, and appropriately, Bourdieu follows this remark with something that occurs nowhere else in his memoir: an epigram (the composing of which Kraus excelled in). Bourdieu writes: "there are a great many intellectuals who question the world, but there are very few intellectuals who question the intellectual world" [37]. The remark could not more compactly and precisely reflect what Bourdieu had aspired all his life to do: to excel in the art and science of questioning the intellectual world. 2 Leo Spitzer liked to cite Friedrich Gundolf's dictum "Methode ist Erlebnis" (method is lived experience). Nearing the end of his career... (shrink)

Dans sa présentation, Myriam Bienenstock évoque l’interrogation qui fait l’unité philosophique de ce recueil, issu d’un colloque qui s’est tenu en avril 1999 à la maison Heinrich Heine et à l’ENS de Fontenay/Saint-Cloud, associant des chercheurs français et étrangers autour d’une question posée par Hegel dans un fragment de 1801 (publié en 1998). Il s’agit pour Hegel d’interroger la relation de la philosophie avec la vie, le besoin de philosophie ne portant « en fin de compte, sur (...) rien d’autr.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Pound of Flesh: Lacan’s Reading of The Visible and the InvisibleCharles Shepherdson (bio)This cut in the signifying chain alone verifies the structure of the subject as discontinuity in the real.—Lacan, “Subversion of the Subject”This moment of cut is haunted by the form of a bloody scrap—the pound of flesh that life pays in order to turn it into the signifier of signifiers, which it is impossible to restore, (...) as such, to the imaginary body.—Lacan, “Direction of the Treatment”A philosophy of the flesh is the condition without which psychoanalysis remains anthropology.—Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible1. The Limit of LanguageWhen The Visible and the Invisible was published in 1964, Lacan was teaching for the first time at the École normale supérieure. In the fall of 1963, the previous semester, the French Society for Psychoanalysis had excluded Lacan from its list of approved training analysts, which also meant his rejection from the society founded by Freud himself, the International Psychoanalytic Association. 1 As a result, Lacan cancelled his seminar at Sainte-Anne [End Page 70] Hospital, where it had been running for ten years, and began teaching for the first time before a university audience (at the invitation of Fernand Braudel, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, and other supporters who had arranged for him to continue his teaching). Philosophers like Jean Wahl and Jean Hyppolite had of course taken an interest in his work for many years, but this was the first time that participants in his seminar no longer needed the special credentials required to enter the psychiatric clinic at the teaching hospital. The seminar was now open to the public, was considerably larger than it had ever been, and its participants came mainly from the university. Lacan was now obliged to make a case for his work before the academic world.The seminar he had planned for that year was called Les noms-du-père (The Names-of-the-Father), but only one session took place. 2 When he moved from Sainte-Anne to the École normale, he offered a different course, which was published as Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, although it was originally entitled Les fondements de la psychanalyse (The Foundations of Psychoanalysis). 3 It is clear, therefore, that this seminar constitutes a new beginning of sorts, a return to fundamental principles. It also involves a concerted effort, on Lacan’s part, to prove himself.If we begin with these historical details, it is not because of their intrinsic importance, or because a theoretical text can be reduced to its historical milieu, but because Lacan’s remarks on The Visible and the Invisible can be grasped only if we recognize the specific concerns that occupied him during this course. 4Before we turn to that course, however, let us sketch its horizon more precisely. The ill-fated session from the Names-of-the-Father seminar, which has been published in the English (but not the French) edition of Television, contains an analysis of the “voice” which is very close to the account of the “gaze” that organizes his discussion of Merleau-Ponty [see Salecl and Zizek]. The session on the “voice” develops through a reading of the biblical account of Abraham and Isaac [see Derrida], which is in turn elaborated by reference to Caravaggio’s depiction of the sacrifice of Isaac and Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling—the entire session providing a brief summary of Lacan’s course on anxiety from the previous semester (the unpublished Seminar X: L’angoisse, 1962–63), in which Heidegger is never far away. 5 The context for his treatment of Merleau-Ponty is therefore extremely complex and overdetermined, opening in many directions, but at the same time it is extremely precise, in the sense that Lacan’s purpose in exploring these materials is not primarily philosophical, but concerns the development of a fairly narrow and technical point within psychoanalytic theory, namely, the problem of the drive. 6 [End Page 71]We thus have an initial orientation: as objects of the drive, the “voice” and the “gaze” are not properties of the subject (the... (shrink)

Notes prises par Jacques Lagrange lors du cours d'anthropologie donné par Michel Foucault en 1954-1955 à l'École Normale Supérieure.

These autobiographical and philosophical essays, in the form of expertly probing interviews, provide a superb introduction to the work of one of the most significant contemporary political philosophers and a marvelously readable perspective on the French intellectual and political arenas from the 1970s to the present. Those already familiar with Manent's work will find an indispensable reflection on his transition from the critique of modernity brilliantly represented in his earlier books (most notably Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy and The (...) City of Man), a critique at once original and significantly indebted to Leo Strauss, toward a perspective that emerges in his recent The Metamorphoses of the City, a monumental and profoundly original study that endeavors to situate modernity within the original Greek founding of the act of politics. The autobiographical passages in this vivid and engaging work invite the reader into, first, the world of postwar France in which Manent grew up, in which he was presented with the choice between the Communist hopes of his father and the opposing power and prestige of all things American. There is also an impressive portrait of the rigors and spirit of a provincial lycee where the first sparks of philosophical eros ignited in Manent's soul, and of his studies in the legendary Ecole Normale Superieur in the midst of the ideological confusion associated with the ferment of 1968. The reader then is invited to an inside view of the rise of a broadly Tocquevillean school of French thought around the journal Contrepoints and its successor Commentaire. (shrink)

Résumé Charles Wolfe vient de publier Lire le matérialisme (ENS Éditions, 2020), où il esquisse une histoire des différentes formes de matérialisme, y compris le matérialisme vitaliste et les versions du XXe et du XXIe siècle. Pierre-François Moreau, auteur de la préface de l’ouvrage, entame ici une discussion sur les problèmes et les ressources d’une telle histoire.

A quoi reconnaît-on un prophète? Quelles sont ses caractéristiques? Après avoir rappelé la structure et les articulations du Traité théologico-politique de Spinoza, l'auteur présente les différentes figures du prophète qui y sont décrites, selon l'ordre institué par les exigences propres du Traité.

Les passages du Traité théologico-politique qui décrivent la République des Hébreux ont un enjeu politique concernant la relation entre Église et État au xviie siècle ; ils révèlent aussi une conception précise de la nature humaine. Les institutions d’un peuple affrontent et utilisent des mécanismes anthropologiques généraux (obéissance et rébellion, désir de changement, soif de reconnaissance, transfert des affects) qui ne se présentent pas dans le même ordre que dans l’Éthique. Ils les gèrent dans des circonstances particulières, marquées par l’histoire (...) propre de chaque peuple et par les conséquences de cette histoire sur son ingenium. (shrink)

Un spectre hante l’Europe classique, l’antitrinitarisme – et sa variante la plus connue : le socinianisme. L’histoire commence par un double itinéraire européen, de l’Italie catholique et intolérante à la Suisse protestante et non moins intolérante, puis à la Pologne qui représente alors un havre de la liberté de conscience. Lelio Sozzini (1525-1562) s’était enfui de Sienne à Zurich en 1548, mais, traité d’hérétique par Calvin, il avait dû fuir de nouveau en Pologne. Dix ans plus tard, son ne..

Aujourd'hui inconnu du public, Henri Marion (1846-1896) est avec Ferdinand Buisson l'un des philosophes les plus influents de la révolution scolaire de la IIIe République. Par ses travaux théoriques et son enseignement universitaire de "science de l'éducation", Marion se place au coeur de la rénovation pédagogique voulue par Jules Ferry. Il voit dans la cohérence des trois niveaux de l'instruction publique - primaire, secondaire, supérieur - un principe fondateur de la nouvelle école républicaine. Il se préoccupe de la manière dont (...) l'instituteur et le professeur de lycée "font la classe", avec la conviction que les questions pédagogiques les plus modestes engagent une idée de l'humanité et de la société. Son rationalisme critique le situe au centre des controverses entre positivistes, scientistes, vitalistes et spiritualistes. Théoricien d'une "éducation libérale" fondée sur la raison, il rejette la discipline autoritaire mais soutient les pédagogies de l'effort. Henri Marion associe intimement l'éducation et l'instruction. Philosophe de la solidarité, il repère dans l'individualisme une menace pour l'éducation républicaine et met en avant la portée morale de l'instruction civique. Ses convictions républicaines et son professionnalisme lui font pressentir les dérives technicistes des méthodes pédagogiques prétendument actives et les risques d'un détournement utilitariste de l'éducation nationale. La réflexion philosophique de Marion rappelle que l'école de la IIIe République fut traversée de contradictions qui aident à comprendre les dévoiements et les enjeux de l'éducation du XXIe siècle. (shrink)

Le constat que fait Spinoza dans le Traité de la réforme de l ’ entendement selon lequel on ne connaît ses parents que par ouï-dire fournit l’occasion de développer, à partir de l’exemple de la famille, la conception originale qu’offre le point de vue spinoziste sur les institutions. En reprenant une distinction que fait Julie Henry, on peut dire que la famille n’existe pas par nature, mais qu’elle est un effet naturel. L’univocité de la causalité et la diversité des causes (...) qui président à sa constitution permettent d’échapper à l’opposition nature – culture comme à toute tentative de réduire les phénomènes sociaux à des principes biologiques ou environnementaux. (shrink)

Pour comprendre la correspondance de Spinoza, il faut s’appuyer sur les règles généralement en usage au XVIIe siècle, ainsi que sur les caractères spécifiques de l’écriture spinozienne : ses lettres sont toujours des réponses, elles s’adaptent à des questions extérieures et, loin d’être autonomes, elles renvoient à l’ensemble du système.