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.
The June protests which shook Brazil in 2013 stunned the world. This dossier, published by Books&Ideas, discusses the main issues at the core of these protests, analyzing them in the light of previous mobilizations and explaining why they are essential to the understanding of contemporary Brazil.
How do images shape our worldview ? What do their study bring to our understanding of society ? Through interviews, essays and reviews this dossier shows how the close study of still or moving images has become central to the social sciences. From anthropology to history or literature, taking into account the overwhelming presence of visual representation yields unexpected and original information about human, social and political relationships.
After four years of monetary crisis in Europe, with serious political and social consequences for some countries, as well as a general mistrust of Europe’s political and economic models, new analyses bring light on what happened in 2009 and on how to improve the current situation. Books&Ideas presents them in a selection of essays and reviews on Europe, its money, its construction, and its politics.
From the margins to which he was confined, Georges Devereux (1908-1985) formulated some of the most original scientific work of his century. In the wake of Freud, whose legacy he firmly defended, Devereux initiated the transcultural practice of psychiatry. François Laplantine, one of his former disciples, reconsiders the legacy of ethnopsychoanalysis’ founder.
Ronald Coase (1910-2013), the 1991 Nobel Laureate in Economics, is famous for his oft-quoted and just as often misunderstood “theorem.” His seminal works on transaction costs, property rights, and regulation continue to stimulate a rich reflection in economics and beyond.
Ronald Dworkin’s innovative and politically ambitious work has become essential reading in political and legal theory. Taking issue with classical political liberalism, he argues that liberty and equality are not mutually exclusive, and are indeed inseparable. And against traditional interpretations of law, he argues that law must be understood by comparing it to a collective novel, a mixture of creativity and interpretation.
S’il s’est professionnalisé et développé depuis les années 1970, le théâtre palestinien bénéficie du soutien économique et logistique de l’Europe, lequel a des conséquences esthétiques et politiques.
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
