Το Ίδιο και το Άλλο

by Vincent Descombes, Λένα Κασίμη (Translator)

This is a critical introduction to modern French philosophy, commissioned from one of the liveliest contemporary practitioners and intended for an English-speaking readership. The dominant 'Anglo-Saxon' reaction to philosophical development in France has for some decades been one of suspicion, occasionally tempered by curiosity but more often hardening into dismissive rejection. But there are signs now of a more sympathetic interest and an increasing readiness to admit and explore shared concerns, even if these are still expressed in a very different idiom and intellectual context. Vincent Descombes offers here a personal guide to the main movements and figures of the last forty-five years. He traces over this period the evolution of thought from a generation preoccupied with the 'three H's' - Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, to a generation influenced since about 1960 by the 'three masters of suspicion' - Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. In this framework he deals in turn with the thought of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, the early structuralists, Foucault, Althusser, Serres, Derrida, and finally Deleuze and Lyotard. The 'internal' intellectual history of the period is related to its institutional setting and the wider cultural and political context which has given French philosophy so much of its distinctive character.

Genres: Philosophy, France

230 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Vincent Descombes is a French philosopher. His major work has been in the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. He is particularly noted for a lengthy critique in two volumes of the project he calls cognitivism, and which is, roughly, the view current in philosophy of mind that mental and psychological facts can ultimately be treated as, or reduced to, physical facts about the brain.

Descombes has also written an introduction to modern French philosophy (Le même et l'autre) focused on the transition, after 1960, from a focus on the three H's, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger to the "three masters of suspicion", Marx, Nietzsche and Freud.

Vincent Descombes teaches at the Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron, part of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. He holds an appointment in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Vincent Descombes was also a member of the French Marxist group Socialisme ou Barbarie.

Reviews

[Michael A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5: An excellent survey of what might be better called "French Philosophy from 1933-1975" or thereabouts. This book was written in 1980 and Descombes states its a book about (then) contemporary French Philosophy. I have a few scattered thoughts:


-Descombes expertly traces the intellectual development from Kojeve's lectures on Hegel all the way to Deleuze and Lyotard. He, as clearly and concisely as one can on a complicated topic, explicates the developments in French Philosophy during these periods and how thinkers responded to them.

-It seems as though there is sort of a rupture: 1933-1960 philosophers seem much more considered with "The Three H's" (Heidegger, Husserl, Hegel) and post-1960 the "masters of suspicion" (Marx, Freud, Nietzsche). Of course this is not universally applicable - for example Deleuze was influenced by Spinoza and Leibniz as well.

-Probably the clearest explanation of Derrida and Deleuze you can give in as many pages as he does (the entire book is only 190 pages, but it is rather dense. Definitely have a philosophical background before reading, but I would say you can get interesting things out of it without having a clue of what any of these philosophers are about)

-He is critical when he needs to be, and the only actual praise (and it wasn't effusive) he gave to a philosopher that I can remember is Michel Serres. I thought he was pretty harsh on Merleau-Ponty, saying his phenomenology is essentially Cartesian - but I believe he states it seemed as though MP was changing his view before he died suddenly. I also thought he was pretty critical of Althusser. Whether these criticisms are overly harsh or justified, I do not have the knowledge to accurately assess.

-This is a personal bias, but I would have liked to have seen at least a section on Bataille and Blanchot (both are talked about, but not much). More explication on Serres would have been interesting as well, as I do not know much about him at all.

-The first chapter is the longest and it deals with Kojeve - this chapter was very very good and it got me interested into looking more into Kojeve.

-Sartre and existentialism in general isn't really talked about much at all - Sartre is relegated to an appendix to the chapter on Kojeve. This is interesting to me.

The main French philosophers he discusses are: Kojeve, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Althusser, Derrida, and Deleuze. Others mentioned or briefly talked about are Sartre, Serres, Bataille, Klossowski, Lyotard, and Lacan (although he's not technically a philosopher...)

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in this time period of French philosophy - but keep in mind he was writing from 1980, and in the last section he admits we can't really assess exactly how these thinkers will be thought of or how influential they'll be, etc. Philosophical background required to comprehend this.

[Goatboy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have to admit there were many times I felt a bit lost and grasping - especially in the middle sections - but the last chapter on Deleuze, Klossowski and Lyotard really seemed to hit home for some reason. Definitely makes me realize I need to familiarize myself much more strongly with Kant and Hegel to have a firmer grasp on many of the main concepts being discussed. Yet was still able to get enough out of this thin work to feel it was worthwhile spending the time and energy on it.

[Katelis Viglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic book in its genre, a history of 20th's cent. French Philosophy. After this book the notion of alterity or otherness became something like the trade mark of post-modernism. The course of history of ideas, with its infinite details, its cross-roads of ideological meetings or the arguments of controversies, is outlined succesfully. The vivid figure of french philosopher, a pioneer of spirit, with great generative impact on society, with his political concerns, a philosopher-star, who enchants his audience, his readers, his followers, his students, is behind every line of the book. Frence philosophy of the last cent. was extroverted, open to sociological approach and to other related disciplines in contrast with the conservative philosophical tensions of the same time e.g. in England.
I love this book with an amor intellectualis, if such a thing exists. In Greece was translated fortunately rather early, so I had the opportunity to read it in '80s (editing by F. Terzakis, ed. PRAXIS).

[Alann Hollevoet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Biedt een interessant beeld van hoe de filosofie van de geschiedenis via auteurs als Kojève (Hegel) bepalend is geweest voor de franse traditie. Deze focus op de filosofie va de geschiedenis is volgens mij een sterkte en een zwakte van het boek, want waar het mij overtuigd heeft van het belang van geschiedenis voor de franse traditie en hoe deze innig verbonden is met zaken als betekenis, identiteit en verschil, laat ze andere relevante aspecten van bepaalde auteurs daardoor veel minder aan het licht komen waardoor je van geen enkele besproken auteur een, volgens mij, volwaardig beeld krijgt en steeds maar hoe ze zich verhouden tot de filosofie van de geschiedenis.

Ondanks deze kritiek kan het werk wel als vertrekpunt genomen worden om de besproken auteurs zelf te gaan lezen. Daarnaast geeft het ook een mooie beeld van hoe, in de Franse traditie, overgegaan is van de HHH-traditie (Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger) naar de "masters of suspicion" (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud).

Een aantal belangrijke figuren die, jammer genoeg, niet of nauwelijks aanbod komen, maar volgens mij zeker een plaats verdienen in een boek over "modern French philosophy": Het Frans Neokantianisme (Brunschvicg, Boutroux, Meyerson, ...), de Franse epistemologie (Bachelard, Canguilhem, Cavailes, Koyré, ...) (Foucault en Althusser als "derde generatie" franse epistemologen komen wel aan bod), Barthes, Bataille, de Beauvoir, Bergson, Lacan, Levinas, Lefebvre, Hyppolite, Fanon.

5/10

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

goed werk dat overzicht van - sommige - filosofische discussies in Frankrijk na de tweede wereldoorlog. het is echter geen historisch, maar veeleer een filosofisch (en misschien vaker dan nodig polemisch) overzicht, die overigens net iets te vaak reductief en gebrekkig blijft (fenomenolgie wordt gereduceerd tot subjectieve ervaring, Levinas wordt compleet genegeerd). Desalniettemin vind ik (ah, het subjectieve oordeel!) een mooi boek dat zich ook kritisch durft op te stellen in plaats van enkel exegetisch werk te verrichten.

[Pedro Pirata]

Fenomenal sobrevuelo a la filosofía francesa del siglo XX (hasta la década de los setenta). Descombes coge el hilo con los hegelianos franceses (Kojève, Sartre..) y lo va siguiento a través de los diferentes momentos y entorno a las diferentes escuelas, siempre manteniendo en el centro de la narración los puntos o problemas fundamentales, principalmente ontológicos y epistemólogicos, aunque también políticos y metafísicos, sobre los que los diferentes pensadores indexados fueron centrando su trabajo. Para ser una introducción que toca tantos terrenos, la rigurosidad de las argumentaciones y la pertinencia de las citas es encomiable, y logra mantenerse en el límite de la profundidad necesaria a cada autor y escuela.

[Chen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lo bueno de la lectura de un analítico acerca del pensamiento francés contemporáneo es que proporciona nuevas lecturas de las obras más emblemáticas sin lamerle el culo a sus autores. Lo mejor de que esa lectura esté hecha por un analítico francés como Descombes es que no llama directamente "vendehumos" a Derrida.

[blank · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars TBH.

This is an excellent resource for the critical consciousness curious about the French philosophical landscape from the 1940s-1980s. Descombes is clearly intimate with the theories that he mulls over with both charitable interpretation and historical, dialectical precision; and these theories are no obscurities. Descombes works, seemingly effortlessly I may add, through Kojève's interpretation of Hegel and the turn from 'the three H's: Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger' to the 'masters of suspicion: Marx, Freud and Nietzsche' in the Académie Français: Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Lacan, et. al., all come under the magnifying glass in this work. Understanding Kojève as emphasising negativity and desire in his interpretation of Hegel, "a dualist ontology" which pictures nature (read: Being) as unchanging and history to be dialectical, Descombes situates Modern French Philosophy as post-Kojèvian.

[David Williamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It claims to be an overview of Modern French Philosophy, but you have to be very aware of Modern French Philosophy to get to grips with it. I've read quite a lot of philosophy and continental philosophy, and I think this is quite a tough read.



Haven't finished yet so I cant give it a mark of any kind.

[Chant · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times it can be dense but considering the subject matter? Descombes does a great job giving a taste of post-60s French philosophy. I especially enjoyed his treatment of Kojeve's Hegel and his impact on French intellectuals.

[Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

"My subject has no conclusion. It would be presumptuous to 'infer the lessons' from these years that are still so close: already past, since we are commenting them, but not yet for us the past. As for
the future, there is little point in speculating. We all know that in predicting a brilliant future for such and such a school, we are above all expressing our own preferences."

[Zack2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty nice overview of French philosophy from Kojève to early Lyotard. Picked this up because it was mentioned in Judith Butler's Subjects of Desire and because it gives the time of day to Pierre Klossowski (only for a few pages unfortunately 😭). Maybe a bit myopic because of its closeness in time to the subject matter but infinitely more harmonious with the philosophers talked about than the utterly sterile French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century by Gary Gutting which I started reading but failed to finish last year.