For 15 years, Henri Bergson, the most important French philosopher of the early 20th-century, taught at the Collège de France. Speaking without notes, most of his classes are now lost to history, but records of a handful of courses fortuitously survived thanks to stenographic transcripts. Conveying Bergson’s very voice, these extraordinary documents are finally presented here in English.
The 1904–1905 lectures are dedicated to the topic of freedom, or as Bergson put it, “the evolution of the problem of freedom.” Building on the philosophy of freedom from his first book, Time and Free Will, he proposes that freedom is not only a fundamental human experience but characteristic of all life as such. By retracing how ancient and modern philosophers have dealt with the delicate question of freedom, Bergson demonstrates the necessity, and also the radically new character, of his own theory of freedom.
Bergson’s lectures are a feast for many audiences. For philosophers, they give a fuller picture of his thought and contain deep reflections on many core topics in philosophy today, from the nature of time to the difference between brain and mind, the relation between memory and perception, and the vindication of freedom over determinism. For intellectual historians, the lectures are a treasure trove: as a slice of the living thought of a great thinker; as an extended analysis of the natural and human sciences of his day; and as a rich commentary on the history of ancient and modern philosophy. Finally, for cultural historians and literary scholars, the lectures were the cultural capital of Belle Époque France, consumed by elites and a vast educated public. They are also part of an exceedingly rare genre in modern philosophy: spoken, not written, lectures and expressed as a veritable stream of philosophical consciousness that is remarkably structured and analytically lucid.
Foucault and Marx Ambivalences, Legacies, and Future Struggles International Symposium 18–19 October 2024 University of Vienna, Austria
The symposium aims to explore the tense relationship between Foucault and Marx and, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Foucault’s death in 2024, to put it into perspective with regard to Foucault’s intellectual legacy. Foucault is generally perceived as a harsh critic of Marxism, both in terms of its analytical possibilities and political dangers. This contrasts strongly not only with Foucault’s repeated emphasis on the centrality of Marx, but also with clear theoretical parallels. The subject of the symposium is therefore the question of how this ambivalence is to be understood, what it means for possible continuations of the Foucauldian project and to what extent the Foucault-Marx connection can be made fruitful for current and future questions.
The event takes place at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Vienna and is part of the World Congress Foucault: 40 years after which is coordinating over 50 events worldwide to mark the 40th anniversary of Foucault’s death in 2024.
Stuart Hall’s work on culture, politics, race, and media is familiar to readers throughout the world. Equally important was his decades-long commitment to visual art. As the first collection to bring together Hall’s work on the visual, this volume assembles two dozen of Hall’s essays, lectures, reviews, catalog texts, and conversations on art, film, and photography. Providing rare insights into Hall’s engagement with the “radically different” intellectual and aesthetic space of the visual imaginary, these works articulate the importance of the visual as a site of contestation at the same time as it is a space in which Black artists and filmmakers reframe questions about diaspora, identity, and globalization. Selected Writings on Visual Arts and Culturedemonstrates the breadth and range of Hall’s thinking on art, film, photography, archives, and museums. In so doing, it enables us to arrive at radical and innovative ways of understanding the world.
Two books by friends – Stefanos Geroulanos, The Invention of Prehistoryand Eduardo Mendieta, The Philosophical Animal, the reprint edition of Antoine Meillet’s Linguistique historique et linguistique générale, a hard-to-find copy of Georges Dumézil’s Aspects de la fonction guerrière chez les indo-européens, and R.O. Paxton, O. Corpet and C. Paulhan’s Archives de la vie littéraire sous l’occupation.
I discuss how this book of Dumézil’s is revised into Heur et malheur du Guerrier: Aspects mythiques de la fonction guerrière chez les Indo-Européens, in two editions, the first of which is in English as The Destiny of the Warrior, here.
Many thanks to Eduardo and W.W. Norton for sending those books.
The other papers are available here – papers by Frédéric Gros, Lynne Huffer, Laurie Laufer, Arianna Sforzini, Judith Revel, Orazio Irrera, Selin Islekel, Zachary Schwarze, Biko Mandela Gray, Daniel Wyche, Federico Testa, Sandra Boehringer, Philippe Chevallier, Philippe Sabot and others…
Thanks to dmf for the link – and to Niki Kasumi Clements for organising this event and sharing the material.
Puts forward a bold, polemical interpretation of democracy as an emancipatory political project through the work of Jacques Rancière, Claude Lefort and Miguel Abensour
For the first time in a single volume, this book carefully assembles, introduces and critically evaluates some of the most important strains of the political thought of Jacques Rancière, Claude Lefort and Miguel Abensour specifically tailored for the English reader and student of social and political theory
Through a series of detailed exegetical studies of important primary sources, this book cultivates a bold, polemical interpretation of democracy as an emancipatory political project irreducible to a form of government, collection of institutions or State-form
Situating its analysis in the context of the history of political philosophy and integrating a breadth of recent scholarship, this book contributes to a range of fiercely debated topics in the current academic literature on democracy and political theory (including domination and emancipation; democratisation and social transformation; anarchy, indeterminacy and social contingency; the identity of the demos or political subject; the nature and function of political philosophy; the symbolic constitution of society; rule, government and governmentality; the State and its forms; the continuity between ancient and modern democracy)
This book explores an often neglected current in contemporary French political thought that challenges the limits of the concept of democracy. It situates the projects of Jacques Rancière, Claude Lefort and Miguel Abensour in relation to each other, as well as to the larger philosophical question of the nature of democracy itself. In doing so, Bryan Nelson illuminates democracy’s potential as a profound emancipatory and transformative project, offering an unprecedented challenge to modes of domination, strategies of inequality and hierarchies of all kinds. Against prevailing interpretations, the author draws on the central concepts, problems and polemics in the works of Rancière, Lefort and Abensour to develop a bold conception of democracy that allows us to rethink its character, power and broader social and political.
En 1943, au terme d’études de médecine entamées en 1936, l’agrégé de philosophie Georges Canguilhem (1904-1995) soutient une thèse de doctorat en médecine intitulée Essai sur quelques problèmes concernant le normal et le pathologique. Éclairant de manière magistrale l’histoire du concept de norme, distinguant anomalie et anormalité dans le fonctionnement organique, soutenant que la « maladie » doit être rapportée à la mesure du sujet individuel que constitue le patient évaluant son propre état, cette thèse demeure le plus célèbre de ses ouvrages.
Mais qui a contribué à cette célébrité ? Quelle est l’histoire de la réception de l’Essai ? Qu’est-ce qui en a fait une référence majeure, y compris dans le domaine de la psychiatrie ou de la psychanalyse ? Et, plus de quatre-vingts ans après, quelles hypothèses et quels concepts de ce livre décisif ont gardé toute leur pertinence sur le plan philosophique, biologique ou médical ?
Avec les contributions de Jean-François BRAUNSTEIN, Claude DEBRU, Pierre-Frédéric DALED, Giulia GANDOLFI, Guillaume LE BLANC, Anne-Marie MOULIN, Tiago SANTOS ALMEIDA, Henning SCHMIDGEN, Maël MONTÉVIL, Nathalie QUEYROUX, Élisabeth ROUDINESCO, Frédéric WORMS.
This book outlines a critical theory of citizenship, with an emphasis on how citizenship institutes power relations and organises the rights and obligations of those who become its subjects.
Whether it is the question of the rights of animals, children, migrants, minorities, mothers, or mountains, and whether such rights are protected or guaranteed by national law, international law, or human rights law, the issue of citizenship has already indelibly marked the 21st century. As an institution, citizenship governs the relationship between a polity and its peoples by dividing them into citizens and noncitizens, with differentiated rights and obligations. So necessarily, this book argues, citizenship is an institution of domination and emancipation that brings into play the struggles of those who want to protect certain privileges and the struggles of those who are against being caught in either second-class or noncitizen categories. Deconstructing dominant theories and practices of citizenship, a critical theory of citizenship must, therefore, not only analyse intersecting rights, but also connect citizenship to these broader social struggles. For it is these struggles, the book maintains, that give meaning to citizenship itself.
The book will be of interest to scholars and students in sociolegal studies, sociology, politics, and as well as those working in citizenship, migration, and refugee studies.
When we look at the artworks on display in museums, there is always a real possibility that some of these objects once belonged to victims of the Nazis – a possibility that has remained unacknowledged for far too long. Countless artworks were seized or forcibly sold, with many ending up in museum collections around the world, even in countries which actively fought to defeat Nazi Germany.
Nazi-Era Provenance of Museum Collections equips readers with the knowledge and strategies essential for confronting the shadow of the Nazi past in museum collections. Jacques Schuhmacher provides the vital historical orientation required to understand the Nazis’ complex campaign of systematic dispossession and extermination, and highlights the current environment in which museum-based Nazi-era provenance research takes place.
This book introduces readers to the research methods and resources that can be used to reveal the moving stories behind the objects, highlighting the absorbing work of provenance researchers as it plays out in practice.
Provenance research not only seeks to recover erased names and experiences and to reinsert them into a historical record, but also to ensure that the Nazis’ actions and worldview do not remain unchallenged in the galleries and storerooms of our museums today.
The executive, associate, and advisory editors and all of the editorial board members of one of the most influential journals in moral and political philosophy, Philosophy & Public Affairs, have resigned en masse.
According to their statement (below), crucial aims of scholarly journals are “not well-served by commercial publishing.” Philosophy & Public Affairs is published by Wiley, the sixth largest publishing corporation in the world by revenue (over $2 billion annually).
