New French Thought Series

The New Social Question: Rethinking the Welfare State Pierre Rosanvallon
Translated by Barbara Harshav

How social and intellectual changes undermine our justifications for the welfare state

The Mechanization of the Mind: On the Origins of Cognitive Science Jean-Pierre Dupuy
Translated by M. B. DeBevoise

In March 1946, some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century--among them John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, and Walter Pitts--gathered at the Beekman Hotel in New York City with the aim of constructing a science...

Moral Disquiet and Human Life Monique Canto-Sperber
Translated by Silvia Pavel

Attempting to steer moral philosophy away from abstract theorizing, Moral Disquiet and Human Life argues that moral philosophy should be a practical, rational, and argumentative engagement with reality, and that moral reflection should...

The Era of the Individual: A Contribution to a History of Subjectivity Alain Renaut
Translated by M. B. DeBevoise and Franklin Philip

With the publication of French Philosophy of the Sixties, Alain Renaut and Luc Ferry in 1985 launched their famous critique against canonical figures such as Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan, bringing under rigorous scrutiny the entire...

New French Thought: Political Philosophy Edited by Mark Lilla

The past fifteen years in France have seen a remarkable flourishing of new work in political philosophy. This anthology brings into English for the first time essays by some of the best young French political thinkers writing today...

A World beyond Politics?: A Defense of the Nation-State Pierre Manent
Translated by Marc A. LePain

We live in the grip of a great illusion about politics, Pierre Manent argues in A World beyond Politics? It's the illusion that we would be better off without politics--at least national politics, and perhaps all politics. It is a...

Madness and Democracy: The Modern Psychiatric Universe Marcel Gauchet and Gladys Swain
Translated by Catherine Porter

How the insane asylum became a laboratory of democracy is revealed in this provocative look at the treatment of the mentally ill in nineteenth-century France. Political thinkers reasoned that if government was to rest in the hands of...

The Mind's Provisions: A Critique of Cognitivism Vincent Descombes

Vincent Descombes brings together an astonishingly large body of philosophical and anthropological thought to present a thoroughgoing critique of contemporary cognitivism and to develop a powerful new philosophy of the mind.

Beginning...

Art of the Modern Age: Philosophy of Art from Kant to Heidegger Jean-Marie Schaeffer
Translated by Steven Rendall

This is a sweeping and provocative work of aesthetic theory: a trenchant critique of the philosophy of art as it developed from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, combined with a carefully reasoned plea for a new and...

Literature, Theory, and Common Sense Antoine Compagnon
Translated by Carol Cosman

An engaging introduction to contemporary debates in literary theory

The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy Gilles Lipovetsky
Translated by Catherine Porter

In a book full of playful irony and striking insights, the controversial social philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky draws on the history of fashion to demonstrate that the modern cult of appearance and superficiality actually serves the...

The City of Man Pierre Manent
Translated by Marc A. LePain

The "City of God" or the "City of Man"? This is the choice St. Augustine offered 1500 years ago--and according to Pierre Manent the modern West has decisively and irreversibly chosen the latter. In this subtle and wide-ranging book on...

An Intellectual History of Liberalism Pierre Manent
Translated by Rebecca Balinski

Highlighting the social tensions that confront the liberal tradition, Pierre Manent draws a portrait of what we, citizens of modern liberal democracies, have become. For Manent, a discussion of liberalism encompasses the foundations of...

The State and the Rule of Law Blandine Kriegel
Translated by Marc A. LePain and Jeffrey C. Cohen

Blandine Kriegel, at one time a collaborator with Michel Foucault, is one of France's foremost political theorists. This translation of her celebrated work L'Etat et les esclaves makes available for English-speaking readers her...