IntermittencyThe Concept of Historical Reason in Recent French Philosophy
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About this book
Explores the concept of historical intermittency in 5 recent French philosophers
- Reflects on the character of contemporary philosophy of history
- Looks at the writings of authors from Wordsworth and Kleist through Flaubert, Rimbaud and Orwell to Lampedusa, Carlo Levi and Sebald
Andrew Gibson engages with five recent and contemporary French philosophers, Badiou, Jambet, Lardreau, Françoise Proust and Rancière, who each produce a post-Hegelian philosophy of history founded on an assertion of the intermittency of historical value. Gibson explores this `anti-schematics of historical reason' and its implication for politics, ethics and aesthetics in a wide range of modern intellectual contexts, finding its necessary complement and most powerful expression in a wealth of modern art, chiefly modern literature. The result is a sustained reflection on the possible character of a contemporary philosophy of history and an important contribution to our knowledge of contemporary French philosophy.
Reviews
This book is to my knowledge the most subtle and original study of a crucial orientation in French philosophy that took place after the heyday of the best-known great masters, now dead (Althusser, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan etc.), but which refused to ally itself with the nouvelle philosophie (Lévy, Finkielkraut and their followers). Gibson clarifies what the principal representatives of this orientation have in common, what separates them, and why thought must set out from them today, even if it preserves – as Gibson does – a real critical distance from them. The book is without equal or rival anywhere, including France.
Gibson is not merely a skilful interpreter of texts, not merely a passeur, who enables us to discover new vistas in contemporary French philosophy, but also a philosopher in his own right... the book you are going to read is not merely a book, it is a landmark.