Reframing Twentieth-Century French Philosophy

Elodie Boublil is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Paris XII (UPEC).

• Introduction: Anthropology or Metaphysics? Another History of 20th Century French Philosophy, by Elodie BoublilPart I: Elucidating Desire: Embodiment and ReflexivityChapter 1: The Lived Body: From Maine de Biran to French Phenomenology, by Paula LorelleChapter 2: Jean Nabert: A Hidden Source of French Phenomenology? by Scott DavidsonChapter 3: The Source of Desire: Individuation and Responsive Care in Jean-Louis Chrétien’s Philosophy, by Elodie BoublilPart II: Desire, Drives, and Imagination Chapter 4: Seize Hold of the Hunger: Simone Weil’s Ethical Eros, by A. Rebecca Rozelle-StoneChapter 5: Sarah Kofman: Irony and Self-Writing as Philosophical Practice, by Melissa TheriaultChapter 6: Henri Maldiney’s Philosophy of Existence, by Till GrohmannChapter 7: Rhythm and Subjectivity in Maldiney and Deleuze, by Stefan KristensenPart III: Desire, Cosmology, and Metaphysics Chapter 8: The Reversibility of the Flesh: Jacques Garelli and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, by Renaud Barbaras (Translated b

There have been several attempts to tell the history of philosophy in France in the 20th century, and most of them tell that history by focusing on the same major thinkers. This collection, to its credit, draws attention to important figures overlooked by the standard histories, thinkers like Maine de Biran or Jean Nabert, whose works influenced their better-known compatriots; or thinkers like Simone Weil, Mikel Dufrenne, Henri Maldinay, or Sarah Kofman, who were their fellow travelers and interlocutors, but whose work has heretofore rarely been engaged by the English-speaking philosophical community. In order to correct this oversight, this volume brings together provocative essays that show how these philosophers’ reflections on desire, whether in dialogue with dialectics, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, ethics, or each other, tells a different history of 20th-century French philosophy, a history whose telling is long overdue.