Books & Ideas is the English-language mirror website of La Vie des Idées, a free online journal which has gained a large readership and established itself in France as a major place for intellectual debate since 2007.
Time is the hardest thing for us to understand, as we cannot be sure whether it exists in and of itself, or whether it can even be defined. This is an age-old conundrum, but Francis Wolff offers a new answer rooted in neither physics nor phenomenology.
Michel Crozier’s work was shaped by the conviction that organizational phenomena create society. He helped pioneer the tools for analyzing groups established to carry out a common project according to a specific system of action and rules of the game.
Katharina Pistor has renewed the critique of economic inequality by showing how the institutions of private law form the lock of an unequal economic and social system.
Maritime spaces are the focus of the major economic, ecological, and geopolitical challenges of our time. Lest they become the site of routine legal violations (ranging from pollution to overfishing), a government of the seas is necessary.
Philosophy has something to say about wine: about its definition, how to savor it, what it inspires, but also about the virtues of inebriation.
About: Marie-Claire Willems, Musulman. Une assignation ?, Éditions du Détour
About: Marie Cabadi, Lesbiennes et Gays au charbon : Solidarités avec les mineurs britanniques en grève, 1984-1985, EHESS
About: Isabelle Poutrin, Les convertis du pape. Une famille de banquiers juifs à Rome au XVIe siècle, Seuil
The EU aims for net climate neutrality by 2050, utilizing the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) as its main tool. But the climate crisis demands more than market mechanisms. It requires comprehensive planning and legal frameworks that prioritize public over private interests.
Jane Mansbridge has made a major contribution to political theory. She has spent her life combining empirical research with a theoretical approach, and has played a vital role in developing the critique of rational choice and the study of democracy as a permanent process continually in flux.
Rorty made conversation a philosophical genre in its own right, which led him to reject any distinctions he considered futile: between analytic and continental philosophy, between the Enlightenment and postmodernity, between philosophy and literature.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be offering weekly selections of reviews and essays published over the last year. This week’s selection focuses on digital tools, their relationship to political power and capitalism.
How to renew the currently dwindling support for democratic governance? To the minds of theorists and historians, whether advocating going back to classical political traditions like Republicanism or drawing lots, or experimenting new approaches, increased political participation may be the best path to follow.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be offering weekly selections of reviews and essays published over the last year. This week’s selection questions the social construction of racial identities, and the history of domination.
Fred Block & Margaret Somers, two key members of an international network of scholars appealing to Karl Polanyi’s masterpiece of 1944, forcefully argue that it constitutes a critical resource for understanding not only the nature and origins of the market economy but also its recurrent crises, including the current one.
Kenzaburō Ōe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is a controversial figure in Japan. And rightly so, for there are a great many contradictions in both his fictional and theoretical work. He is a fierce opponent of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, and yet continues to celebrate the heroism of the soldier who finds glory through sacrifice.
Le retour de milliers de Palestiniens sur leur terre après les Accords d’Oslo a suscité une abondante littérature, en partie autobiographique. Loin de célébrer les retrouvailles, elle porte la marque d’un déchirement. Comment dire la patrie, lorsque l’on ne la reconnaît plus, et se dire quand on est pour toujours un exilé ?
Dans un ouvrage récemment paru en Allemagne, Onur Erdur analyse le rôle souvent inaperçu du contexte colonial sur la pensée de plusieurs auteurs français de premier plan. Une entreprise éclairante, même si elle ne manque pas elle-même d’angles morts.
En juin 1942, la « nuit fantastique » de Bir Hakeim, fait d’armes modeste en soi, devient un événement d’envergure mondiale, redonnant espoir à ceux qui refusaient d’être d’éternels vaincus. La guerre du désert, vue au plus près.
À propos de : Johann Chapoutot, Christian Ingrao, Nicolas Patin, Le Monde nazi. 1919-1945, Éditions Tallandier
À propos de : Olivier Tinland, Le grand principe de l’expérience, Hegel et la philosophie anglaise, Vrin
À propos de : Jean-Claude Schmitt, Les Images médiévales. La figure et le corps, Gallimard
