Thank you to everyone who engaged with yesterday’s post Alexandre Koyré and a network of ideas. A few comments here and on Mastodon, but mostly on Twitter. Despite all its problems, I’ve yet to find anything which can replicate the engagement that still provides.

I said I’d link to the suggestions I received, so they are listed below. There are a lot of journal articles on Koyré or related questions, which I didn’t survey in the initial post, but I’ve included suggestions made by others below. I am aware there is a lot more, in multiple languages.

Stefanos Geroulanos, An Atheism that Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought (Stanford, 2010) – a great book which I used for The Early Foucault, but to which I should return. Koyré is one of several figures treated.

Jacques Lacan, “Science and Truth”, Cahiers pour l’analyse, reprinted in Écrits – “Koyré is my guide here and, as we know, he is still unrecognised [Koyré ici est notre guide et l’on sait que il est encore méconnu]”. Short bio of Koyré at the Concept and Form website on the Cahiers.  

On Lacan’s use of Koyré, Jean-Claude Milner, L’œuvre claire: Lacan, la science, la philosophie (Seuil, 1995) and Samo Tomšič, “Mathematical Realism and the Impossible Structure of the Real“, Psychoanalytische Perspectieven 35 (1), 2017, 9-34.

The work of Hallhane Machado (researchgate) and Marlon Salomon (cv).

Thanks to Justin Clemens, Stefanos Geroulanos, Marcela Becerra Batán, Marcio Miotto, Dany Nobus, Ted Byfield, Lachy Wells for these suggestions, and others who liked or retweeted to boost the post’s reach.

I’ll add more if there are further suggestions.

Dany said that an in-depth biography is long overdue, and while Zambelli has done a lot I too think much more could be done. But formidable challenges would lie ahead for anyone who tried to tackle it. The breadth of subject matter, from mathematics, physics, philosophy, religion and other themes; he worked in Russian, French, German and English, at least, and I suspect correspondence is in those multiple languages; issues of access to archives, perhaps especially in Russia given the current situation. His position in a network of thinkers and ideas would be part of the appeal of such a project, but it would mean a real challenge in terms of tracking down material and tracing connections.

Update: Rafael Garcia-Suarez has suggested Émilie Hache (ed.), De l’Univers Clos au Monde Infini (Editions Dehors, 2014) and Patrick Flack indicated Michel Espagne’s chapter, “Le détour par l’Allemagne : itinéraires intellectuels de Koyré, Kojève, Gurvitch” in his book L’Ambre et le fossile, 2014.

Update 2: David Liakos has suggested the work of Karsten Harries particularly Infinity and Perspective (MIT, 2001).

Update 3: Zambelli’s biography is translated into French as Alexandre Koyré, un juif errant? and available open access.