Notwithstanding the recent prominence of the term “problem” in the humanities, few scholars have analysed its history. This essay tries to partially fill that lack, principally covering the period from late modernity through to the 1960s, in order to understand the role that the term plays in “Continental” philosophy, with special emphasis on the writings of Gilles Deleuze. This analysis focuses on the strategies employed by different agents to define “philosophical” problems, or “philosophical” ways of posing problems. The term, originally (...) used in antiquity by knowledge-producers located in an autonomous position, implied an idea of cognition oscillating between production and reproduction. Once the term escaped the context of geometry, it was involved in symbolic struggles that radicalized during modernity. The Kantians placed “philosophy” in a supposedly neutral position of science treating “the problem of all the problems” and invented a new genre, the “history of philosophy,” focusing on the analysis of “philosophical problems.” This approach had great institutional success in the German and French universities and clashed, during the twentieth century, with another usage of philosophy as a practice of “dissolution of problems,” developed in the United Kingdom and the Austro-Habsburg Empire. (shrink)

In this Introduction we lay out the context of a ‘Continental philosophy of biology’ and suggest why Georges Canguilhem’s place in such a philosophy is important. There is not one single program for Continental philosophy of biology, but Canguilhem’s vision, which he referred to at one stage as ‘biological philosophy’, is a significant one, located in between the classic holism-reductionism tensions, significantly overlapping with philosophy of medicine, philosophy of technology and other themes moving away from the more common existential and (...) phenomenological motifs of post-war European thought. Chapters examine (among other themes) his relation to Lebensphilosophie, to authors such as Kant, Nietzsche and Marjorie Grene, and to current theoretical biology. (shrink)

Henri Bergson (1859–1940), the most prominent member of nineteenth-century French spiritualism, is the first philosopher who explicitly defined philosophy as a practice which consists in posing problems anew and in creating concepts. In this article, I will try to reconstruct the progressive importance acquired by the terms ‘problem’ and ‘concept’ in nineteenth-century French philosophy and how they combined in Bergson’s theories about creativity, invention and novelty. I will argue that Bergson’s conception of philosophy as a creative intellectual practice was the (...) result of a negotiation, inside a pre-existent spiritualist framework, between, on the one hand, neo-Kantianism and, on the other hand, evolutionism which strongly influenced empirical psychology and the emerging social sciences. Bergson’s solution, influenced by the evolution of mathematics and literary theory, was just one of the possible options, and the main alternative to a new form of transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

In one of his last writings, Life: Experience and Science, Michel Foucault argued that twentieth-century French philosophy could be read as dividing itself into two divergent lines: on the one hand, we have a philosophical stream which takes individual experience as its point of departure, conceiving it as irreducible to science. On the other hand, we have an analysis of knowledge which takes into account the concrete productions of the mind, as are found in science and human practices. In order (...) to account for this division, Foucault opposed epistemologists such as Cavaillès and Canguilhem to phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty and Sartre but, also, and more particularly, he opposed Poincaré to Bergson. The latter was presented by Foucault as being the key-figure of the ?philosophy of experience? at the beginning of the twentieth century. Fifteen years later, in his Deleuze and in the Logics of Worlds, Alain Badiou again uses this dual structure in his interpretation of the past hundred years of French thought. He employs a series of oppositional couples: himself and Deleuze, Lautmann and Sartre, and, finally, Brunschvicg and Bergson. On the one hand a ?mathematical Platonism? and on the other a ?philosophy of vital interiority.? This Manichean reading of philosophy, and the strategic use of the figure of Bergson has, itself, a long tradition. It was also proposed by Althusser who, following Bachelard, opposed his standpoint to any form of ?empiricism.? Althusser developed his thought from a tradition of Marxist thinkers and ideologists, which included Politzer's and Nizan's critique of bourgeois philosophy and, even before that, neo-Kantians such as the philosophers of the Revue de métaphysique et de morale. The aim of this essay is to deconstruct and to put into its precise context of production this series of genealogies which entails the mobilization of Bergsonism and of the name ?Bergson.? By doing so, I hope to weight the importance of Bergsonism in twentieth-century French philosophy, in both its ?positive? and its ?negative? aspect. The essay will proceed regressively, taking into account figures such as Althusser, Badiou, Deleuze, Foucault, Canguilhem, Cavaillès, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, but also Polizer, Brunschvicg and Alain. The conclusion of the essay is an attempt at reading the ?Bergson renaissance? in the light of new discoveries in genetics and the cognitive sciences and to tie it to the renewal of studies in the history of French philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper Giuseppe Bianco analyzes the ideological and epistemological coordinates and the space of possibilities proper to the cluster of philosophy students of which Tournier was part between 1943 and 1948; to do so he reconstructs their evolution in a context dominated by the currents of Neo-Scholasticism, Personalism, phenomenology, Marxism, and Existentialism. Finally, he focuses on the importance of Jean-Paul Sartre for these young people, underlining their particular interpretation of his work.

Le renouveau des études sur Canguilhem ces vingt dernières années est étroitement lié à la création d’un Fonds documentaire conservant ses archives à la bibliothèque du CAPHES ainsi qu’à la publication des Œuvres complètes. L’hétérogénéité de la production de Canguilhem pendant soixante ans de pratique de la philosophie peut gagner en intelligibilité si on l’aborde comme le résultat d’un métier, celui de philosophe, s’exerçant dans des contextes et des moments différents.

Quelles ont été la réception, la circulation, les lectures et les réappropriations des textes d’Henri Bergson à l’intérieur du champ philosophique français? L’auteur écrit «après», après le succès relativement récent de l’oeuvre de Bergson, mais aussi «sur l’après», sur ce qui est arrivé à l’ensemble de la philosophie française après Bergson. Il prend en considération la période qui va des lendemains du traité de Versailles au début du XXIe siècle et introduit une approche «chorale» à l’histoire de la philosophie : (...) textes, concepts, auteurs et groupes sont évoqués pour l’importance qu’ils ont dans la construction des schémas d’analyses déployés, et non pas à cause de leur valeur supposée. Dans cette ample fresque sont ainsi mobilisées des ressources analytiques originales, tirées de l’épistémologie historique et pragmatique, de l’histoire intellectuelle, de la sociologie de la connaissance et des récentes études sur les aspects rituels de la philosophie. (shrink)

This edited volume presents papers on this alternative philosophy of biology that could be called “continental philosophy of biology,” and the variety of positions and solutions that it has spawned. In doing so, it contributes to debates in the history and philosophy of science and the history of philosophy of science, as well as to the craving for ‘history’ and/or ‘theory’ in the theoretical biological disciplines. In addition, however, it also provides inspiration for a broader image of philosophy of biology, (...) in which these traditional issues may have a place. The volume devotes specific attention to the work of Georges Canguilhem, which is central to this alternative tradition of “continental philosophy of biology”. This is the first collection on Georges Canguilhem and the Continental tradition in philosophy of biology. The book should be of interest to philosophers of biology, continental philosophers, historians of biology and those interested in broader traditions in philosophy of science. (shrink)

Célèbre traducteur et commentateur de Hegel, historien de la philosophie contemporaine, passeur de textes et de concepts, professeur et directeur de travaux universitaires, Jean Hyppolite (1906 - 1968) fut un vrai " protecteur de la nouveauté " et, partant, une figure essentielle au développement de la philosophie française du XXe siècle. Ce livre rassemble, avec les contributions de certains de ses anciens élèves les plus éminents (Badiou, Balibar, Macherey) et de chercheurs étrangers, nombre de ses écrits - dont son premier (...) et son dernier essai - restés inédits ou devenus indisponibles. Un entretien de 1965 entre Jean Hyppolite et Alain Badiou complète le livre. (shrink)

À la fin des années soixante-dix, Michel Foucault rédige, pour un numéro monographique de la Revue de métaphysique, un essai consacré à son ancien directeur de thèse Georges Canguilhem qui, quelques années plus tard, sera publié, sous une forme légèrement modifiée, en guise d’introduction à la traduction anglaise du Normal et le pathologique. Dans cet écrit célèbre, « La vie : l’expérience et la science...

Résumé Cet article cherche à éclairer l’élection de Martial Gueroult (1891-1976) à la chaire d’Histoire et technologie des systèmes philosophiques en 1951, et, indirectement, le succès de son approche « structurale » de l’histoire de la philosophie. Ceux qui occupaient des rôles clés dans la gestion de l’économie disciplinaire des sciences humaines ne devaient pas contredire dans leur travaux les axiomes qui avaient réglé la pratique de l’histoire de la philosophie depuis le début du XIXe siècle tout en faisant montre (...) d’innovation dans ce champ. Dans un premier temps nous résumons la méthode historiographique proposée par Gueroult ; un deuxième temps l’inscrit dans une tradition d’historiographie de la philosophie ; le troisième temps situe sommairement la pratique de l’histoire de la philosophie au Collège de France et à la Sorbonne ; dans de quatrième et cinquième temps nous décrivons les rapporteurs et les candidats lors de l’élection au Collège de France, et les pièces pertinentes ; enfin nous considérons les stratégies adoptées pendant la campagne qui ont pu déterminer le résultat de l’élection. (shrink)

In the introduction to the Normal and the Pathological, Canguilhem’s doctoral dissertation in medicine, defended in 1943, he claimed, “philosophy is a reflection for which all unknown material [matière étrangère] is good.” In this case the “unknown material” was precisely medicine; “a technique or art at the crossroads of several sciences” which was supposed to provide “an introduction to concrete human problems.” Canguilhem had started studying medicine six years before, while he was a high-school professor in Toulouse. At the time (...) he was distancing himself from the philosophical framework that had marked his studies and writings during the previous decade. This framework implied an anti-vitalist, Kantian and Cartesian approach to man, strongly influenced by his mentor Emile Chartier, also known as Alain. In this chapter, I try to provide concrete explanations concerning his decision to study medicine. I will not rely on those proposed by the existent scholarship, which frequently relate his decision to his interest in technology and technique. On the contrary, by examining unpublished material, such as a series of lectures given between 1933 and 1935, I claim that the motivation of his turn has to be related to the readings of works in psychology and ethology undertaken during this period. (shrink)

The Care of Life: Transdisciplinary Perspectives in Bioethics and Biopolitics is a striking collection of interdisciplinary essays exploring key debates in, and the relationship between, bioethics and biopolitics.

Dans cet article, je défends l’hypothèse que l’analyse éthico-politique de l’histoire des sciences par Georges Canguilhem est le résultat d’une synthèse originale de différentes interprétations de l’œuvre d’Auguste Comte soutenues par les philosophes français venus du milieu académique. Ces interprétations n’étaient elles-mêmes pas sans lien avec la reconfiguration progressive des institutions d’enseignement et de recherche sous la Troisième République (1870-1940). Je montre que cette synthèse est à l’œuvre dans la première lecture de Comte par Canguilhem, à savoir dans sa dissertation (...) inédite La théorie de l’ordre et du progrès chez Auguste Comte (1926). J’examine d’abord la pénétration du positivisme dans le champ philosophique français sous la Monarchie de Juillet, le Second Empire et la Troisième République ; j’aborde ensuite l’interprétation de Comte proposée par Émile Chartier (1868-1951), dit Alain, mentor philosophique de Canguilhem au lycée Henri-IV ; enfin, je me concentre sur la première lecture de Comte par Canguilhem. (shrink)