New French Thought

Vincent Descombes is the author of Modern French Philosophy, Objects of All Sorts: A Philosophical Grammar, Proust: Philosophy of the Novel, and The Barometer of Modern Reason: On the Philosophies of Current Events. Stephen Adam Schwartz, who teaches in the Department of French, University College Dublin, translated Descombe's The Barometer of Modern Reason. Vincent Descombes brings together an astonishingly large body of philosophical and anthropological thought to present a thoroughgoing critique of contemporary cognitivism and to develop a powerful new philosophy of the mind. Beginning with a critical examination of American cognitivism and French structuralism, Descombes launches a more general critique of all philosophies that view the mind in strictly causal terms and suppose that the brain--and not the person--thinks. Providing a broad historical perspective, Descombes draws surprising links between cognitivism and earlier anthropological projects, such as Lévi-Strauss's work on the symbolic status of myths. He identifies as incoherent both the belief that mental states are detached from the world and the idea that states of mind are brain states; these assumptions beg the question of the relation between mind and brain. In place of cognitivism, Descombes offers an anthropologically based theory of mind that emphasizes the mind's collective nature. Drawing on Wittgenstein, he maintains that mental acts are properly attributed to the person, not the brain, and that states of mind, far from being detached from the world, require a historical and cultural context for their very intelligibility. Available in English for the first time, this is the most outstanding work of one of France's finest contemporary philosophers. It provides a much-needed link between the continental and Anglo-American traditions, and its impact will extend beyond philosophy to anthropology, psychology, critical theory, and French studies. "The real strength and the delight of Descombes' (and Schwartz's) book--once one struggles through the more difficult passages--is the treatment he offers to some of the most influential ideas (Jerry Fodor's language of thought) and thought experiments (Putnam's twin Earth, Alan Turing's imitation game, John Searle's Chinese room) in the recent history of philosophy of mind."---Joel Parthemore, Metapsychology Online Reviews

An engaging introduction to contemporary debates in literary theory In the late twentieth century, the common sense approach to literature was deemed naïve. Roland Barthes proclaimed the death of the author, and Hillis Miller declared that all interpretation is theoretical. In many a literature department, graduate students spent far more time on Derrida and Foucault than on Shakespeare and Milton. Despite this, common sense approaches to literature-including the belief that literature represents reality and authorial intentions matter-have resisted theory with tenacity. As a result, argues Antoine Compagnon, theorists have gone to extremes, boxed themselves into paradoxes, and distanced others from their ideas. Eloquently assessing the accomplishments and failings of literary theory, Compagnon ultimately defends the methods and goals of a theoretical commitment tempered by the wisdom of common sense. The book is organized not by school of thought but around seven central questions: literariness, the author, the world, the reader, style, history, and value. What makes a work literature? Does fiction imitate reality? Is the reader present in the text? What constitutes style? Is the context in which a work is written important to its apprehension? Are literary values universal? As he examines how theory has wrestled these themes, Compagnon establishes not a simple middle-ground but a state of productive tension between high theory and common sense. The result is a book that will be met with both controversy and sighs of relief. Antoine Compagnon is the Blanche W. Knopf Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and professor of literature at the Sorbonne. "A strong and eloquent book that skillfully combines intellectual rigor and personal reflection. The debate between theory and common sense provides a kind of dramatic tension that makes for lively and pleasurable reading. In its balanced approach and in its breadth, this is one of the best books I know of for introducing students to literary theory."-Robert Morrissey, University of Chicago "Like everything that Antoine Compagnon writes, [this book] is intelligent, oblique, ironic, surprising the reader with unexpected shifts and reversals. It may annoy both theorists and the advocates of common sense, but if they surrender to their annoyance, they will have missed the point."---Terence Cave, Times Literary Supplement

This is a sweeping and provocative work of aesthetic theory: a trenchant critique of the philosophy of art as it developed from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, combined with a carefully reasoned plea for a new and more flexible approach to art. Jean-Marie Schaeffer, one of France's leading aestheticians, explores the writings of Kant, Schlegel, Novalis, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger to show that these diverse thinkers shared a common approach to art, which he calls the "speculative theory." According to this theory, art offers a special kind of intuitive, quasi-mystical knowledge, radically different from the rational knowledge acquired by science. This view encouraged theorists to consider artistic geniuses the high-priests of humanity, creators of works that reveal the invisible essence of the world. Philosophers came to regard inexpressibility as the aim of art, refused to consider second-tier creations genuine art, and helped to create conditions in which the genius was expected to shock, puzzle, and mystify the public. Schaeffer shows that this speculative theory helped give birth to romanticism, modernism, and the avant-garde, and paved the way for an unfortunate divorce between art and enjoyment, between "high art" and popular art, and between artists and their public. Rejecting the speculative approach, Schaeffer concludes by defending a more tolerant theory of art that gives pleasure its due, includes popular art, tolerates less successful works, and accounts for personal tastes. "[A] remarkable work.... [Schaeffer's] writing is governed by ... the ideals of clarity and consequence, the ideas of logic, truth, and evidence.... Schaeffer is so precise and unrelenting a philosophical critic that one wonders how some of the philosophies he anatomizes here can possibly survive the operation."--From the foreword by Arthur C. Danto Jean-Marie Schaeffer is Research Director at the Centre National de la recherche scientifique in Paris. He is also a member of the Centre de recherches sur les arts et la langage (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris). His books include Les Célibataires de l'Art: Pour une esthétique sans mythes and Qu'est-ce qu'un genre littèraire? Arthur C. Danto is Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University. "Art of the Modern Age is an important contribution to the field, and its readership should not be limited to philosophers. While Schaeffer is not afraid to do the necessary detail work, he never gets mired in issues of merely scholastic interest."---F.L. Rush, Bookforum "This academically solid, well-documented book . . . [offers] very good background for courses in the history of aesthetics or art theory."

Pierre Rosanvallon is Professor of History and Political Philosophy and Director of the Centre de Recherche Politique Raymond Aron at the École des Hautes Études en Science Sociales in Paris. He is the chairman of Fondation Saint-Simon, a think tank that produces ideas and projects for the renewal of the left in France. His previous books include Le peuple introuvable, Le Sacre de Citoyen, and La Crise de l'état Providence. Nathan Glazer is Professor of Education and Sociology, Emeritus, at Harvard University. How social and intellectual changes undermine our justifications for the welfare state The welfare state has come under severe pressure internationally, partly for the well-known reasons of slowing economic growth and declining confidence in the public sector. According to the influential social theorist Pierre Rosanvallon, however, there is also a deeper and less familiar reason for the crisis of the welfare state. He shows here that a fundamental practical and philosophical justification for traditional welfare policies-that all citizens share equal risks-has been undermined by social and intellectual change. If we wish to achieve the goals of social solidarity and civic equality for which the welfare state was founded, Rosanvallon argues, we must radically rethink social programs. Rosanvallon begins by tracing the history of the welfare state and its founding premise that risks, especially the risks of illness and unemployment, are equally distributed and unpredictable. He shows that this idea has become untenable because of economic diversification and advances in statistical and risk analysis. It is truer than ever before-and far more susceptible to analysis-that some individuals will face much greater risks than others because of their jobs and lifestyle choices. Rosanvallon argues that social policies must be more narrowly targeted. And he draws on evidence from around the world, in particular France and the United States, to show that such programs as unemployment insurance and workfare could better reflect individual needs by, for example, making more explicit use of contracts between the providers and receivers of benefits. His arguments have broad implications for welfare programs everywhere and for our understanding of citizenship in modern democracies and economies. "Of all the new French liberals, Pierre Rosanvallon has the most to say about issues of great concern to Americans. The New Social Question explores with great subtlety the core question of social solidarity and its meanings, in the present and for the future. It is an essential meditation on what can and should be done with the welfare state."-Sean Wilentz, Princeton University

Pierre Manent is director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and coeditor of the journal La Pensée politique. Highlighting the social tensions that confront the liberal tradition, Pierre Manent draws a portrait of what we, citizens of modern liberal democracies, have become. For Manent, a discussion of liberalism encompasses the foundations of modern society, its secularism, its individualism, and its conception of rights. The frequent incapacity of the morally neutral, democratic state to further social causes, he argues, derives from the liberal stance that political life does not serve a higher purpose. Through quick-moving, highly synthetic essays, he explores the development of liberal thinking in terms of a single theme: the decline of theological politics. The author traces the liberal stance to Machiavelli, who, in seeking to divorce everyday life from the pervasive influence of the Catholic church, separated politics from all notions of a cosmological order. What followed, as Manent demonstrates in his analyses of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Guizot, and Constant, was the evolving concept of an individual with no goals outside the confines of the self and a state with no purpose but to prevent individuals from dominating one another. Weighing both the positive and negative effects of such a political arrangement, Manent raises important questions about the fundamental political issues of the day, among them the possibility of individual rights being reconciled with the necessary demands of political organization, and the desirability of a government system neutral about religion but not about public morals. "Pierre Manent has the lively and free step of a man who has chosen the society of great minds. After so many books that make the reader consider the great authors in the context of an inventory of their neuroses or an account of their property, it is good to encounter a work where the content of the thoughts is more important than the conditions of their production."---Mona Ozouf, Le Nouvel observateur "Manent has written a concise and graceful essay on the history of liberal thought. . . . [This] book makes clear that even the most emphatically political liberalisms always involve more than opinions about forms of government. Liberalism, as he reconstructs it, is an elaborate edifice of beliefs, practices and institutions. To neglect any one of these elements is, in Manent's account, to endanger the whole."---Peter Berkowitz, The Boston Book Review "[This book] is situated in what can be seen as the most important cultural current of the end of the twentieth century, that is to say the systematic reevaluation of modernity. . . . Pierre Manent explains to us with remarkable clarity and conciseness that our comprehension of modern politics must be re-placed in the frame of religious dilemmas from which it has emerged."---Jean Marejko, L'Impact "Manent's striking claim is that to make sense of liberalism as a form of life one must see it in the light of the spirit that animates it, and that that animating spirit comes into sharpest focus in the writings of the great European political theorists. . . . [He] has written a concise and graceful essay on the history of liberal thought." "Manent's whirlwind tour through the major works of modern political philosophy attempts to answer the question, "Where are we heading?" . . . Manent's approach . . . exhibits a profundity not often encountered in contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy. . . . [his] book can be placed proudly next to the classic works of two of his teachers: Raymond Aron and Leo Strauss." "He has not offered us one of those academic tomes that seem more concerned with scoring points against rivals in the academy than with the material itself. Instead, Manent has, in 10 pointed "lessons," taken up the central questions animating some of the major works of modernity. . . . [Manent's work] is filled with re

Blandine Kriegel teaches philosophy at the University of Lyons, and is the author of the four-volume Les historiens et la monarchie, among other works. She is the editor of the new journal Philosophie politique. Blandine Kriegel, at one time a collaborator with Michel Foucault, is one of France's foremost political theorists. This translation of her celebrated work L'Etat et les esclaves makes available for English-speaking readers her impassioned defense of the state. Published in France in 1979 and republished in 1989, this work challenged not only the anti-statism of the 1960s but also generations of romanticism in politics that, in Kriegel's view, inadvertently threatened the cause of liberty by refusing to distinguish between the despotic and the lawful state. In a work that addresses the urgent concerns of Europe and the contemporary world as a whole, Kriegel examines the background of modern liberal democracy in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and argues cogently for the future of constitutional social-democracy. She maintains, among other positions, that European liberal democracies would have been impossible without the political basis provided by the lawful state first developed by monarchies. She also shows that early modern centralized states became liberal insofar as they developed a centralized legal system, rather than a centralized administration. In developing these ideas, she presents a picture of the state as a major force for human liberty. "An exciting and impassioned book in which the author proudly states her case."---Maurice Duverger, Le Monde "The State and the Rule of Law is interesting in a great many different ways: as one of the seminal essays in the revival of French liberalism after so many years of utopianism on the left and authoritarianism on the right, as a reminder to Anglo-American liberals of the debt they owe to French historians and legal theorists, as a useful critique of the romantic hatred of the state, and as a wonderfully stylish and imaginative essay in polemical intellectual history."-Alan Ryan

Marcel Gauchet is the editor of Le Débat and the author of The Disenchantment of the World (Princeton). Gladys Swain was a practicing psychiatrist and the author of Dialogue avec l'insensé (Gallimard). How the insane asylum became a laboratory of democracy is revealed in this provocative look at the treatment of the mentally ill in nineteenth-century France. Political thinkers reasoned that if government was to rest in the hands of individuals, then measures should be taken to understand the deepest reaches of the self, including the state of madness. Marcel Gauchet and Gladys Swain maintain that the asylum originally embodied the revolutionary hope of curing all the insane by saving the glimmer of sanity left in them. Their analysis of why this utopian vision failed ultimately constitutes both a powerful argument for liberalism and a direct challenge to Michel Foucault's indictment of liberal institutions. The creation of an artificial environment was meant to encourage the mentally ill to live as social beings, in conditions that resembled as much as possible those prevailing in real life. The asylum was therefore the first instance of a modern utopian community in which a scientifically designed environment was supposed to achieve complete control over the minds of a whole category of human beings. Gauchet and Swain argue that the social domination of the inner self, far from being the hidden truth of emancipation, represented the failure of its overly optimistic beginnings. Madness and Democracy combines rich details of nineteenth-century asylum life with reflections on the crucial role of subjectivity and difference within modernism. Its final achievement is to show that the lessons learned from the failure of the asylum led to the rise of psychoanalysis, an endeavor focused on individual care and on the cooperation between psychiatrist and patient. By linking the rise of liberalism to a chapter in the history of psychiatry, Gauchet and Swain offer a fascinating reassessment of political modernity. "[A] new model of the insane . . . prompted the modern understanding of the self. Furthermore, [the authors] contend, the asylum system was structured as an ideal community that crystallized the totalitarian exercise of power in postrevolutionary democratic society. . . . [S]ure to stimulate much theoretical speculation." "A fertile interpretation of the history of the idea of insanity and of political efforts to cure the insane. . . . As much philosophy and cultural history, this work deserves a thoughtful audience."