French Philosophers in Conversation, by Raoul Mortley

Chapter VI. Jacques Derrida

Raoul Mortley — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:18:58 PDT

Jacques Derrida was born in Algeria in 1930. His early work, Plato's Pharmacy, published in three sections in the journal Tel Quel, was to establish a style and a set of concerns. More orthodox philosophical papers, such as Differance, establish the intellectual grounds for the course which he now pursues. His links with French institutional life have been as innovative as his thought: he was a founder of the International College of Philosophy in Paris, and is presently attached to the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Boulevard Raspail, Paris. He is a critic of institutions, yet demands the standards and continuity which flow from them. Derrida looks towards German philosophy more than any other, and clues to his programme may be found in Heidegger, Hegel and Husserl. The major concern of his work is meaning and its relation to text: semiotics is particularly associated with his name, and this involves a theory of symbols, signs and meaning. His work has also been associated with the critique of the idea of the author.

Chapter V. Michèle Le Doeuff

Raoul Mortley — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:34:40 PDT

Michèle Le Doeuff was born in 1948, and currently holds a research post in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Paris). She previously taught at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Fontenay-aux¬Roses). Her work is united by certain thematic lines of enquiry, though it is quite disparate in appearance. The impressive body of her historical work on Francis Bacon, and the history of science, is less well-known in Anglo-Saxon countries than her work on feminism, and the idea of the subject. Outside France she is particularly identified by her work on the philosophic 'imaginary'. Her own exploration of this theme gives her historical writing and her contemporary writing a consistency which turns on certain observations about philosophical method. Some of these observations are gender-based, but all could be described as critical: there is an enquiry into philosophy itself in Le Doeuff's work.

Chapter IV. Luce Irigaray

Raoul Mortley — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:23:45 PDT

Luce Irigaray is a French national, born in Belgium in 1930. Her initial training was undertaken at Louvain, and her earlier work was on Paul Valéry. She then moved into psychology, linguistics and psychoanalysis. The book Speculum formed the substance of her Doctorate of Letters thesis, at the University of Paris VIII. She is a now Director of Research in Philosophy at the National Centre for Scientific Research, Paris. Her network goes far beyond the academic, and her influence in the field of ideas is very widespread, in academic circles, among feminists, and among the thinking public in general. She is a frequent visitor to Italy, and contributes regularly to the newspaper of the Italian Communist Party. Luce Irigaray's recent work takes her to the forefront of psycho-linguistic enquiry, particularly in the area of gender in language.

Chapter III. Michel Serres

Raoul Mortley — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:19:36 PDT

Michel Serres was born in France in 1930, and is Professor in History of Science at the Sorbonne (Paris 1). He began his adult life by training for the navy, and a love for the sea and its metaphors is always evident in his work. Originally from the south of France, Michel Serres is keenly interested in rugby. His philosophical work began with the study of Leibniz, but following this he embarked on his own self-expression, which led him to the five-volume Hermes series of books. Some of Leibniz' themes persist throughout his work, particularly those concerned with combination, communication and invention. His method is based on an encyclopaedic approach, and this holism is evident in his writing: all kinds of data are held to contribute to philosophy, and the philosopher must not cut himself off from any form of investigation. His most recent work bridges the gap between philosophy and literature, and it has a wide readership.

Chapter II. Monique Schneider

Raoul Mortley — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:13:18 PDT

Monique Schneider was born in France in 1935, and works partly in philosophy and partly in psychoanalysis. Her work is beginning to be better known, though it is still not widely read in English-speaking countries. Her major works are not translated into English. What distinguishes her writing is a rigorous analytic method, juxtaposed with an interest in psychoanalysis in the Lacan mode. Her interest in Freud goes far beyond Freud to a general philosophy of psychological states, and to an ontology of personality. Her analytic method brings her to an examination of metaphor and image which is at once carefully reasoned and imaginative. Her professional career is divided between psychoanalysis and philosophy.

Chapter I. Emmanuel Levinas

Raoul Mortley — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:03:56 PDT

Emmanuel Levinas was born in Lithuania in 1905, though he received a French university education, at Strasbourg. From here, as a student, he travelled to Freiburg where he heard both Husserl and Heidegger lecture. Through his Jewish background he knew Yiddish, and therefore enough German to comprehend the lectures of the two Freiburg philosophers: it was through this social coincidence that a conduit was created from Germany to Paris. As a philosopher in Paris, Levinas introduced and developed phenomenological themes, and became an immensely important influence, widely respected amongst younger philosophers. His institutional career was based on his position as Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne (Paris IV); now in his eighties, he has exercised a growing influence in his retirement. His work has evolved considerably in recent years. He suffered under the Nazis, and his work has always had a strong Jewish aspect: especially lately he has become a conscious philosopher of Judaism.

Frontismatter, table of contents, and Introduction

Raoul Mortley — Wed, 30 May 2007 18:03:55 PDT

"French Philosophers in Conversation" eavesdrops on contemporary themes in French intellectual life. Well-known figures Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Levinas and Michel Serras are joined by those only now beginning to make an impact on the English-speaking world: Michele Le Doueff and Monique Schneider.

Raoul Mortley draws out the ideas, personalities and society of these interesting and important figures. Representing many strands in the Parisian philosophical scene, feminism, phenomenology, literature, semiotics, psychoanalysis and communication are but a few of the subjects covered in the book.