Summer’s Days

■ The left’s Enlightenment origins
About: Stéphanie Roza, Lumières de la gauche, Éditions de la Sorbonne

By Marie Deschamps

For over a century, the left has owed its political identity and major political victories to a critical adherance to the Enlightenment. This is why, Stéphanie Roza argues, abandoning this legacy is dangerous.

■ A Catastrophic History of the World
About: Jean Vioulac, Anarchéologie. Fragments hérétiques sur la catastrophe historique, Puf

By Cyril Legrand

Jean Vioulac is one of a number of authors who have written a historical-philosophical saga of humanity as a way of reflecting on the coming catastrophe. It is not certain, however, that his saga will lead to anything other than a new catastrophic discourse with no prospect of a solution.

■ The Decomposed Passerby
About: Carole Gayet-Viaud, La civilité urbaine. Les formes élémentaires de la coexistence démocratique, Economica

By Clément Rivière

Carole Gayet-Viaud’s ethnographic study shows that city dwellers are far from always indifferent to their public environment. They sometimes interact with it, either by giving to beggars, getting into disputes, engaging in pure sociability, or perpetuating (but also combating) discrimination.

■ The Social Key to Dreams
About: Bernard Lahire, La part rêvée. L’interprétation sociologique des rêves, volume 2, La Découverte

By Claire Pagès

The unconscious, according to Bernard Lahire, is “socially structured.” This principle makes possible an individual sociology of dreams that requires—like all psychoanalytic interpretation—the presence of a third party to grasp the forces bearing down on the dreaming subject.

■ The First Biologist
About : Pierre Pellegrin,Des animaux dans le monde, cinq questions sur la biologie d’Aristote, CNRS / Animals in the World: Five Essays on Aristotle’s Biology, State University of New York

By Bertrand Vaillant

In a scholarly yet accessible study, Pierre Pellegrin argues that Aristotle is the true founder of biology, contrary to what a distorted perception of his finalism has long led us to believe.

■ Castes and State in India
Interview with Rohini Somanathan

Quotas in India contribute to the emancipation of lower castes while producing perverse effects that are difficult to control. Rohini Somanathan questions the right balance between targeted positive discrimination policies and public policies with a universal vocation.

■ The Advent of the Secularocene
About: Mohamad Amer Meziane, Des empires sous la terre. Histoire écologique et raciale de la sécularisation, La Découverte

by Jean Baubérot

Secularisation is often presented as a Western model that was exported during decolonisation; but according to M. A. Meziane, it was in fact spread by colonialism itself as an instrument of domination.

■ Jane Mansbridge, Political Science between Facts and Norms

by Samuel Hayat & Julien Talpin & Audric Vitiello

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.