Today I was given a copy of this edition of the Magazine Littéraire from September 1977 (thank you Philip).

Its centrefold is a diagram seeking to represent flows of influence between contemporary philosophers. The table provides a fascinating snapshot…

• Marx is top and centre, flanked by Freud and Nietzsche.
• Influences are split between the two poles of ancient Greece and German idealism.
• No Beauvoir (no women at all!), no Camus. Merleau-Ponty and Sartre are supposed to have influenced each other (there is no way of representing mutual antipathy here, though a diagram of philosophical rivalries would be a fascinating project for someone…).
• The generation of the 1960s-1980s includes Axelos, Althusser, Desanti, Serres, Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard, Derrida and Barthes.
• The latest generation to be represented reads like the betting card of a punter who backs a winner one time out of every two: Balibar, Lecourt, Glucksmann, Dollé, Benoist, Jambet-and-Lardreau, Lévy. The nouveaux…