THINKING THE IMPOSSIBLE:FRENCH PHILOSOPHY SINCE 1960 OHPHIL PAPER: French Philosophy Since 1960

by Gary Gutting

The late 20th century saw a remarkable flourishing of philosophy in France. The work of French philosophers is wide ranging, historically informed, often reaching out beyond the boundaries of philosophy; they are public intellectuals, taken seriously as contributors to debates outside the academy. Gary Gutting tells the story of the development of a distinctively French philosophy in the last four decades of the 20th century. His aim is to arrive at an account of what it was to "do philosophy" in France, what this sort of philosophizing was able to achieve, and how it differs from the analytic philosophy dominant in Anglophone countries.
His initial focus is on the three most important philosophers who came to prominence in the 1960s: Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida. He sets out the educational and cultural context of their work, as a basis for a detailed treatment of how they formulated and began to carry out their philosophical projects in the 1960s and 1970s. He gives a fresh assessment of their responses to the key influences of Hegel and Heidegger, and the fraught relationship of the new generation to their father-figure Sartre. He concludes that Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze can all be seen as developing their fundamental philosophical stances out of distinctive readings of Nietzsche. The second part of the book considers topics and philosophers that became prominent in the 1980s and 1990s, such as the revival of ethics in Levinas, Derrida, and Foucault, the return to phenomenology and its use to revive religious experience as a philosophical topic, and Alain Badiou's new ontology of the event. Finally Gutting brings to the fore the meta-philosophical theme of the book, that French philosophy since the 1960s has been primarily concerned with thinking the impossible.

Genres: Philosophy, History, France

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Gary Gutting was an American philosopher and holder of an endowed chair in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.

Reviews

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gutting does a good job of making the incomprehensible clear, namely explaining what some recent recondite philosophers actually mean. His book opens with a short sociology of haute philosophy (institutionalized in the École Normale and the Sorbonne), then drags us through some arduous pages on Hegel and his interpreters. After that initiation it quickly improves – past Heidegger, Sartre and Nietzsche, into some stimulating readings of Levinas, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Jean-Luc Marion (new to me) and Badiou.

When it comes to this crew, I'm accustomed to either reverence from their epigones or polemics from their skeptics. Gutting eschews either extreme, although his conclusion suggests he's less than impressed. Derrida comes in for the roughest treatment:

Derrida's deconstructions fail because they lack the logical rigor that his own standards of success require. His treatment of différance… [cuts itself] off from the basic pre-philosophical concerns that lead us to philosophy in the first place.

Gutting later quotes John Searle, who was quoting Foucault, about Derrida's "obscurantist terrorism." I hunted down the reference for the full remark.

With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he's so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me." But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that's not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, "What the hell do you mean by that?" And he said, "He writes so obscurely you can't tell what he's saying, that's the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, 'You didn't understand me; you're an idiot.' That's the terrorism part."

That's worth a chuckle. I came to a similar conclusion following L’affaire Derrida in the exchange between Derrida and Thomas Sheehan in The New York Review of Books back in 1993.

Gutting praises French philosophers for keeping "an admirable connection to the richness of personal, social and political action" – yet their "disdain for the obvious," their deliberate hermeticism, severs them from the larger, genuinely philosophic questions they intend to address.

[Kerr · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tough read but worthwhile.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book - short, clear, and beautifully written. It's neither a partisan of the French thought of the 1960s-70s nor overly hostile. I'd describe Gutting as a sympathetic reader who brings an "analytic" eye to ways that French writers could make themselves more accessible to more readers and less vulnerable to accusations of obscurantism. Other than that, it's a great introduction to the thinkers included (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Badiou) and a worthwhile defense of their controversial styles of "thinking the impossible."

[Oliver P. Cornell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not for the weak of heart.

In the early 1960's I discovered Heidegger, Merlou-Ponty, and Foucault. I went to Graduate School at Northwestern and studied with Bill Earle, James Edie and Molke Gram. There I discovered Derrida. To this day some 60 years later I am still not sure what truth they have to offer the none academic reader. Or for any reader for that matter. I often thought I was fooling myself into believing they were important thinkers. So reading this book by Professor Gutting hasn't made it easier. But is a fun slog.

[Mavaddat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains several invaluable editorial evaluations of the thinkers, their styles, and their projects by the author himself; however, these comments usually act as capstones marking the tail end of his summary of the ideas and their presentation, which is unfortunate since these are moments of lucid insight that deserve to be pulled out and discussed at the top of the discussion (at the outset).

[Alexander Fitoussi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gary Gutting writes with a clear voice which is essential when you're reading dense philosophy. However, this is not a book that can be recommended to anyone. It is filled with words like phenomenology and expects the reader to already have the base knowledge to know what that is. While I found this book to be well worth the time I would only recommend it to people who already have an avid interest in philosophy.

[Nathan Bonney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Part 1, which consists of the first 5 chapters, to be the most interesting. Gutting’s close account of the education and careers of Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze is worth the read and his critique of all three philosophers from an analytic perspective at the end of the book has some legitimacy even though it is fairly stereotypical.

[Jeff Samuelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

[Uğur Yıldırım · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half was really comprehensive reading of Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze and their relation with Hegel, Nietzsche and structuralism. The second half was, I think, not that good but has some really good points.

[Deena Lin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The history he presents is the best part of the book. I was focused on Derrida in the text, and I felt his argument against his work was shallow at best.