French philosophy begins in the medieval period with authors writing in Latin, brought by the Romanization of Gaul and Gallo-Roman culture. Cassiodorus (ca. 490–585) cites in his book Variae (dated 526) a letter to king Athalaric: "Finally you found Roman eloquence in regions that were not originally its own; and there the reading of Cicero rendered you eloquent where once the Gaulish language resounded." ChristianmonkGennadius of Massilia (died c. 496) wrote Of Church Doctrine (De Ecclesiasticis Dogmatibus), long attributed to Saint Augustine.
Ratramnus
Representation of Hincmar on a stained glass window in the Saint-Remi basilica of Reims.
Ratramnus also later supported Gottschalk in his conflict with archbishop Hincmar (806–882) of Rheims, advisor to Charles the Bald. Hincmar of Rheims altered a hymn, changing the words trina deitas (triune God) for summa deitas (supreme God). Gottschalk accused Hincmar of Sabellianism, and Hincmar accused Gottschalk of Arianism.
Roscellinus also stated the three persons of the Trinity were not one substance, arguing if they were then God the Father and the Holy Spirit would have become incarnate along with God the Son. This prompted Anselm's On Faith in the Trinity.
Ivo of Chartres (c. 1040–1115) was a student of Anselm at Bec. The best known philosophers at Chartres included Bernard (d. c. 1125) and Thierry (d. c. 1150) of Chartres, and Gilbert of Poitiers (c. 1086 –1154).
Gilbert of Poitiers studied under William of Champeaux, Anselm of Laon and Bernard of Chartres. Gilbert's views on the Trinity were controversial, contending the divine essence of God exists separately, and so he was condemned for teaching a "quaternity."
William of Champeaux was also the teacher of Walter of Mortagne (c. 1100–1174), leader of the "indifferentists", a type of platonist who attempts to avoid the more extreme forms of platonism, and according to whom the universal it itself indifferent, changing according to points of view. Raimbert's nominalism was attacked by Odo of Tournai (1060–1113).
Aristotelianism
Peter Abelard
Peter Abelard (1079–1142) was a scholastic philosopher, theologian and logician who taught at the cathedral schools of Paris. The Chambers Biographical Dictionary describes him as "the keenest thinker and boldest theologian of the 12th Century". He wrote Sic et Non (c. 1121) and fixed more decisively than anyone before him the scholastic manner of philosophizing. Abelard was also expelled by Anselm of Laon, and clashed with his master William of Champeaux, and opposed by Alberic of Paris. Abelard is also notable for his love affair and collaboration with Héloïse (1101–1164).
Abelard helped to establish the authority of Aristotle's logic. Abelard distinguished between de dicto modal sentences and de re modal sentences. Abelard also defended conceptualism on the problem of universals. Abelard further showed a great interest in ethics, writing Ethics (1139).
Abelard amended Augustine's doctrine of original sin. The Vatican and Pope Innocent III accepted the view that unbaptized babies did not, as at first believed, go straight to Hell but to a special area of limbo, limbus infantium. They would therefore feel no pain, but no supernatural happiness either, because they would not be able to see the deity who created them.
Petit-Pont as it looks today.
Abelard's lectures attracted students from across Europe, helping prepare the founding of the University of Paris a few decades after his death. The patronage of ItalianPeter Lombard (c. 1096–1160) by Odo, bishop of Lucca, who recommended him to Bernard of Clairvaux, allowed him to leave Italy and further his studies at Reims and Paris. Lombard became Bishop of Paris and is author of the Sentences (c. 1150).
The Summa aurea of William of Auxerre (1150–1231) shows a debt to Lombard. Bishop of Paris William of Auvergne (c. 1185–1249) extensively engaged with Aristotle. Franciscan John of La Rochelle (c. 1200–1245) taught at Paris.
A number of Jewish philosophers were in Southern France in the Middle Ages, such as Samuel ibn Tibbon (c. 1150–c. 1230), who wrote Biur meha-Millot ha-Zarot (1213), an explanation of the philosophical terms of Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190) by Maimonides, which seeks to reconcile Aristotelianism with Rabbinical Jewish theology. Gersonides (1288–1344) was a rigid Aristotelian.
Llullism
Catalan Ramon Llull (c. 1232–c. 1316) visited Paris in the 1280s and Llullism became popular. Llulism is a philosophical system known as 'the Art' which propounds a belief in the unity of Christianity influenced by neoplatonism.
While Llull was not himself an alchemist, a number of works on alchemy were attributed to him, as well as to Arnaldus de Villanova (c. 1240–1311). Influenced by Joachim of Fiore, Arnaldus claimed in On the Coming of the Antichrist (1288) that in 1378 the Antichrist would come and the world would end. He was imprisoned and the Sorbonne ordered his works to be burned. Both Llull and Villanova had some influence on alchemist John of Rupescissa (c. 1310–c. 1368), known for aqua vitae.
Ockhamism
Jean Buridan
The nominalist beliefs of British philosopher William of Ockham were banned in Paris in 1339. Despite this his views proved influential.
Jean Buridan
Jean Buridan (c. 1301–c. 1360) was a nominalist who is the namesake for Buridan's ass. Buridan criticized Aristotle's Physics, which could not explain e. g. why an arrow in flight continues to move once leaving the bow. Buridan in response developed the theory of impetus, a precursor to inertia.
Buridan was also one of the foremost logicians of the later Middle Ages, writing the textbook Compendium of Dialectic, influenced by Peter of Spain. For 200 years after Buridan, little was said about syllogistic logic.
Nicole Oresme
Nicole Oresme. Miniature from Traité de l'espère, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France (c. 1410)
Nicole Oresme (1325–1382) studied with Buridan. Together they studied acceleration or "uniformly difform motion".
Oresme was a counselor of King Charles V, and his astronomical commentary on Aristotle's On the Heavens anticipated Copernicus with arguments that the Earth rotates. Oresme also criticized Aristotelian notions of space and time, considering time independent of motion, influenced by, (or at least agreeing with) Peter John Olivi (1248–1298) and Gerardus Odonis (1285–1349).
Oresme also contributed to economics and followed Aristotle in arguing against usury, even though Oresme said inflation was worse. His opposition to usury was shared by Thomists like Giles of Lessines (c. 1230–c. 1304), as well as Giles of Rome (c. 1243–1316) student and Italian Gerard of Siena (c. 1295–1336), and Peter John Olivi and Gerardus Odonis; and his master Buridan. Buridan and Oresme supported a metallist theory of money.
Condemnations of 1347
The nominalist and skeptical views of Nicholas of Autrecourt (c. 1299–1369) and John of Mirecourt, known as Monachus Albus ('the White Monk'), were condemned as heresy in 1347. Both wrote commentaries on the Sentences; and both rejected causality and Aristotelian substance theory. Mirecourt influenced Peter Ceffons.
University of Toulouse professor and physician Raymond Sebond (1385–1436) opposed the Ockhamists and was influenced by Llull. He attempted to reconcile reason and faith. Raymond declares that the Book of Nature and the Bible are both divine revelations. Sebond wrote the posthumously published Theologia naturalis (1484).
Logician and education reformer Petrus Ramus (1515–1572) wrote Everything that Aristotle has said is false (1536). The Ramists distrusted human thought and put faith in intuitive logical relations. The Dialogues (1557) of RamistGuy De Bruès (b. c. 1530) entertained skepticism. After Ramus's death, followers such as Banosius and Nancelius produced biographies. Ramism had a lasting influence in Europe and even New England.
Parisian printer Henri Estienne (1531–1598) transmitted the first Latin translation of ancient PyrrhonianskepticSextus Empiricus in 1562. Estienne's father Robert (1503–1559) was a Protestant convert and the "father of French lexicography", writing Latin and French dictionaries.
Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) was a skeptic, summed up in his personal motto of Que sais-je? ("what do I know?") His highly influential writing style consists of essays ('attempt', he coined the term) first published in 1580, filled with autobiographical and casual anecdotes.
Montaigne's best known skeptical essay is the circuitous Apology for Raymond Sebond, which recapitulates much from Sextus Empiricus, while defending Christianity and the cosmological argument. Montaigne maintains beasts and savages are better off than people. He propounded cultural primitivism in Of Cannibals.
Montaigne's follower was the Parisian and neostoicPierre Charron (1541–1603), who was also influenced by Guillaume du Vair (1556–1621). Charron is notable for On Wisdom (1601), which argued that ethics could be separated from religion, and that one attacks reason to boost faith and wisdom. Charron also wrote The Three Truths (1594), in which Charron sought to prove that God exists, Christianity is true, and the true church is Roman Catholicism. Francis Garasse (1585–1631) criticized Charron, believing he thought only nature was needed for wisdom and guidance.
Sanches
University of Toulouse professor Francisco Sanches (c. 1550–1623) published the skeptical That Nothing Is Known (1581). While Sanches does not develop the idea, he states the need for a method based on indubitable inner experience.
17th century
France in the early modern period became the cultural center of Europe, especially under the reign of "Sun King" Louis XIV, and saw a number of prominent philosophers. Louis XIV's tutor was libertineFrançois de La Mothe Le Vayer (1588–1672). Libertines were such skeptics that they believed the more knowledge, the more grief. Philosophy at this time often sought to reconcile dogmatism and skepticism.
René Descartes
René Descartes is considered the founder of modern philosophy.
It is often said Descartes changed the primary object of philosophy from ontology to epistemology. Concerned with the recent spread of skepticism, Descartes desired to find indubitable ground on which all the sciences could be placed and progressively built. Thus he doubted anything he could and accepted only certain (or apodeictic) knowledge as truth.
After invoking the possibility of dreaming to doubt the information from the senses and the external world, and further of an omnipotent deceiver to reject mathematics and logic, Descartes discovered at least one thing could be known for certain. Even if he doubted everything, if he himself was doubting, then he had to exist. Thus Cogito Ergo Sum—I think, therefore I am. This became his first principle.
Descartes claimed since the Cogito is perceived "clearly and distinctly", anything similarly clear and distinct must be true. Then he argues one can conceive of an infinite being, but finite beings cannot produce infinite ideas and hence an infinite being must have put the idea into his mind. He uses this ontological argument to invoke the existence of a benevolent God as the indubitable foundation making all sciences possible.
Jansenist controversy
Antoine Arnauld was a Cartesian Jansenist.
Cartesianism attracted several followers such as JansenistsolitairesAntoine Arnauld (1612–1694), Pierre Nicole (1625–1695), and Claude Lancelot (c. 1615–1695). Arnauld and Lancelot produced the Port-RoyalGrammar (1660); and Arnauld and Nicole produced the Port-Royal Logic (1662), the "most influential logic book after Aristotle and before the end of the nineteenth century". In 1649, Nicolas Cornet (1572–1663) sought the condemnation of five propositions from Cornelius Jansen's Augustinus. Arnauld defended the Jansenists.
François Poullain de la Barre (1647–1723) influenced Gabrielle Suchon (1632–1703), the first to produce a significant body of work solely on the topic of women. Claude Buffier (1661–1773) supported women's education.
While Descartes drew many followers, others were left unsatisfied. Some accused him of circularity, proclaiming his ontological argument uses his definition of truth as a premise, while his proof of his definition of truth uses his ontological argument as a premise.
Another famous problem arises from Descartes’ substance dualism; the interaction problem first pointed out by Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. For Descartes, a substance can be conceived of as existing independently of anything else. He defined the mind as an unextended substance and the body as an extended substance. This raised the fundamental question of how it is possible that mind and body interact with one another. Descartes also held as a result of his dualism that animals were mere machines.
Marin Mersenne
The Minim and polymath Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) wrote The Truth of Science (1625), a dialogue between an alchemist, a skeptic and a Christian philosopher, the latter opposing both the over-confidence of the first and the excessive doubts of the second. The rest of the book is an 800 page compilation of mathematics to prove there is knowledge immune from doubt.
Mersenne is notable as the father of acoustics and the namesake for Mersenne primes. He was "the center of the world of science and mathematics during the first half of the 1600s," and, because of his ability to make connections between people and ideas, "the post-box of Europe". As well as in France, Mersenne corresponded with scholars in the Dutch Republic, England, and Italy, including Constantijn Huygens, Thomas Hobbes, and Galileo Galilei.
Pascal is known for defending Jansenism and Arnauld in Provincial Letters (c. 1657). When Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet was asked which work he wished he had written aside from his own, he answered the Provincial Letters.
Pascal was also a fideist, and distinguished between using the head and using the heart. His aphoristic collection Pensées (Thoughts, 1670) is a name given posthumously to fragments that Pascal had been preparing of an apology for Christianity, which was never completed. Pensées contains Pascal's Wager, an early application of the mathematics of probability, which states people engage in a life-defining gamble regarding the belief in the existence of God.
Pascal was a Cartesian dualist, illustrated with a quote from the Pensées: "Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed." However, his disagreements can be illustrated by his calling Descartes' philosophy "useless and uncertain".
Nicolas Malebranche
Nicolas Malebranche was a Cartesian occasionalist.
Cartesian Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715) believed not even substances of the same kind could interact with each other, because no necessary causation could be perceived. He proposes then that it is God, an uncreated substance, who brings it about that each time one perceives a 'cause', one also perceives an 'effect'. Hence the doctrine is named occasionalism. This doctrine saw predecessors in Louis de La Forge (1632–1666), Géraud de Cordemoy (1626–1684), and the Flemish Arnold Geulincx.
Malebranche was well-known and celebrated in his own time, but has since become somewhat of an obscure figure. However, his philosophy had a direct influence upon Spinoza, and Scottish skeptic David Hume's questioning of causality, which awoke German idealist Immanuel Kant from his "dogmatic slumber."
Historian Richard Popkin states Gassendi was one of the first to formulate the modern "scientific outlook". Using the predictions of German Johannes Kepler's Rudolphine Tables (1627), Gassendi tracked the transit of planet Mercury across the Sun in 1631, projecting an image from a telescope onto a screen. Gassendi's disciples included François Bernier (1620–1688) and Samuel de Sorbiere (1615–1670). Gassendi may have also influenced playwright Molière (1622–1673).
Simon Foucher
Academic skepticSimon Foucher (1644–1696) opposed Descartes and Malebranche, arguing against representationalism in the philosophy of perception. Foucher wrote Dissertation on the Search for Truth (1673). Robert Desgabets (1610–1678) responded to Foucher. Desgabets quipped “Descartes is not always a good Cartesian.”
Pierre Huet
Pierre Bayle wrote the Historical and Critical Dictionary
Another influential critic of Descartes was churchman Pierre Daniel Huet (1630–1721), who worked as Bossuet's assistant, and wrote
Censura philosophiae cartesianae (1689), arguing for a return to Christian skepticism.
Pierre Bayle
Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) was a Huguenot at the Academy of Sedan, who fled to Rotterdam in the Dutch Republic, and wrote a biographical dictionary, the Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697). His views were dubbed "super skepticism" by Richard Popkin. Bayle would characterize his own views differently, stating "I know too much to be a Pyrrhonist, and I know too little to be a Dogmatist".
Bayle's comments on the problem of evil inspired Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who wrote in Latin and French, to publish his Théodicée (1710). Leibniz was an optimist who believed God created the best of all possible worlds. Bayle was also an influence on David Hume.
18th century
The 18th century saw the French Enlightenment and nearby Swiss Enlightenment. French Enlightenment philosophers, known as philosophes, were deeply political, and many became critics of church and state, and promoters of rationality and progress. They had a deep influence on the politics and ideologies of both the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834) supported both revolutions.
François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire (1694–1778), was a prominent Enlightenment figure who advocated the right to a free trial and freedom of religion. Voltaire was a deist, and was twice sentenced to prison, and once to temporary exile to England.
Voltaire is best remembered for his aphorisms and satire of Leibniz known as Candide (1759), written soon after the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, which tells the tale of a young believer in Leibnizian optimism who becomes disillusioned after a series of hardships.
Voltaire's anonymously published Philosophical Dictionary (1764) was censored in many countries, including Switzerland (Geneva) and France, where all available copies of the book were collected and burned in the town square.
Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) distinguished himself from the progressive scientism of the Enlightenment with his proclamation in Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750) that art and science are corruptors of human morality. Furthermore, he caused controversy with his theory that man is good by nature but corrupted by society, in contradiction to the Christian doctrine of original sin.
Rousseau's The Social Contract (1762) advances social contract theory and affirms only the general will of the people has the right to legislate. It famously begins “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Upon publication, its distribution in France was prohibited, and Rousseau fled the country to avoid imprisonment.
However it influenced the French Revolution. Rousseau was so highly praised by the revolutionaries that in 1794 his remains were moved to the Panthéon in Paris. Rousseau's Emile (1762), previously forbidden and publicly burned, became the basis of a new national system of education. His portrait graced the home of Kant, who called Rousseau "Newton of the moral world".
Some of his theories continue to be controversial, such as the general will, which has been accused of both fascism and communism. His critique of private property in works like Discourse on Inequality (1755) has been seen as a forebear to Marxist ideology. Both Étienne-Gabriel Morelly (1717–1778), who was mistaken for Rousseau, and Abbé de Mably (1709–1785), who was influenced by Rousseau, influenced socialism. Victor d'Hupay (1746–1818) coined the term communism.
A systematic collection of all the arts and sciences, the Encyclopédia caused great controversy. Diderot was harassed repeatedly by the police, and even arrested. The ecclesiastical party disliked the Encyclopédia, a threat to the aristocracy as it asserted the state should take care of the people. In the end, Le Breton began removing all articles he deemed controversial in fear of punishment.
Physician and materialistJulien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751) wrote Man a Machine (1747), affirming the Cartesian view of animals also applied to people, arguing against immortal souls. He had to flee France and settle in Berlin.
Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–1771), whose wife Madame Helvétius ran a salon, was also a materialist, and argued against Montesquieu's climate theory. Helvétius published the sensationalist On Mind (1758), which said the only real motive is self-interest, therefore there is no good and evil, only competitive pleasures. Its non-religious, utilitarian and egalitarian doctrines raised a public outcry, and the Sorbonne publicly burned it in 1759, forcing Helvétius to issue several retractions.
The sensationalists were opposed by Christian traditionalists like Louis de Bonald (1754–1840) who believed in revelation, and skeptic Félicité de La Mennais (1782–1854).
French revolutionary Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) birthed Saint-Simonianism, affirming science's ability to transform society in such works as Introduction to scientific discoveries of the 19th century (1803) and eulogy to Napoleon Notes on the study of man (1813). Saint-Simon was also a Christian who wrote The New Christianity (1825).
Saint-Simonian Pierre Leroux (1797–1871) and Paul-François Dubois (1793–1874) established Le Globe in 1824, the movement's main publication during the July Monarchy (1830–1848). French historian Augustin Thierry (1795–1856) followed Saint-Simon.
Cousin student was Théodore Jouffroy (1796–1842) was also influenced by Scottish philosophy. Along with Leroux and Dubois, Jouffroy and Jean-Philibert Damiron (1794–1862) helped establish Le Globe.Adolphe Garnier (1801–1864) continued Jouffroy's work. Garnier's Treatise on the Faculties of the Soul (1852) won the Montyon Prize.
French spiritualism was influenced by Maine de Biran (1766–1824), at first a follower of Condillac, but who became a mysticaltheosophist influenced by Malebranche and Pascal. Maine de Biran's diary covers the melancholy and tension of the Hundred Days, Napoleon's exile and return culminating in his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo (1815), and permanent exile. An idiosyncratic French philosopher likely influenced by Maine de Biran was Jules Lequier (1814–1862).
Félix Ravaisson-Mollien (1813–1900) and Jules Lachelier (1832–1918) were also influenced by German idealism, but distinguished their views from Cousin's, preferring spiritualism.
Lachelier taught Jules Lagneau (1851–1894), who taught the "reflexive method", and was a franc-tireur in the Franco-Prussian War.
Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830. Louvre Museum
Saint-Simon influenced the utopian socialism of Charles Fourier (1772–1837) and Fourierism. Fourier influenced Christian and utopian socialist Étienne Cabet (1788–1856), who was a more radical revolutionary than Fourier. Cabet saw Christianity as synonymous with socialism.
Blanc
Christian and socialist Louis Blanc (1811–1882), a historian of the 1830 Revolution who opposed the July Monarchy, was a member of the provisional government during the 1848 Revolution. Blanc was exiled but returned to France in time for the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. He did not support the revolutionary Paris Commune, but successfully proposed amnesty for the Communards.
Saint-Simon and the book by Philippe Buonarroti (1761–1837) History of Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals (1828) influenced socialist philosopher Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881), the founder of Blanquism. Blanquism believes socialist revolution should involve a coup d'etat by a relatively small group of highly organised and secretive conspirators. Blanqui participated in the 1830 Revolution, and was a leading voice in the radical clubs of the 1848 Revolution. Blanqui spent 33 years of his life in prison, earning him the nickname "The Prisoner".
Influenced by Fourier and Saint-Simon, Comte developed positivism to remedy the aftermath of the French Revolution, calling for a new social project based on the sciences. Comte proposed a theory of social evolution, with society undergoing three phases in its quest for the truth according to a general 'law of three stages': (1) the theological, (2) the metaphysical, and (3) the positive.
While originally a follower of Saint-Simon, Comte was not a Christian. He attempted to introduce a "religion of humanity" which, though largely unsuccessful, was influential for various Secular Humanist organizations in the 19th century. Comte coined the term "altruism".
Cousin and Comte influenced Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893), the founder of French literary naturalism, and a proponent of sociological positivism and historicism. Deeply shaken by the 1870 defeat and Paris Commune, Taine became devoted to his major historical work, The Origins of Contemporary France (1875–1893).
Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was popular during his lifetime, appealing to both academics and the general public, leading to the "Bergson boom". Bergson was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize for Literature. However, interest in his work decreased after World War II.
He also thought the experience of time was intrinsic to consciousness, calling it "the duration". Bergson regards the duration as a qualitative multiplicity, rather than quantitative; there is heterogeneity but no separation, juxtaposition or mechanistic causality. The duration can only be grasped through intuition. Bergson notably debated Einstein.
Catholic Léon Bloy (1846–1917) influenced neo-Thomism in France, through philosophers such as Bergson student Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), a mentor to Pope Paul VI, who presented to Maritain his "Message to Men of Thought and of Science" at the close of Vatican II.
The Neo-Thomists were opposed by World War I casualty and Bergsonian Catholic Charles Péguy (1873–1914), who influenced non-conformist personalists Emmanuel Mounier (1905–1950) and Alexandre Marc (1904–2000). The Neo-Thomists also opposed orientalist esotericist René Guénon (1886–1951).
Duhem also sought to revise the history of science from its anti-Catholicism and founded the history of medieval science with the ten volume The System of the World, beginning in 1913.
More recently, Marc Augé (1935–2023) was an anthropologist who in the book Non-Places (1995) explored the concept of "non-places", transient spaces where people remain anonymous, such as airports, gas stations, and shopping malls.
Simone Weil and Alain
Simone Weil (1909–1943) was an Alsatian Jewish mystic philosopher and political activist who wrote the posthumously published The Need for Roots (1949). Weil influenced Pope Paul VI and René Girard (1923–2015). Her ideas include uprootedness, decreation (renouncing the gift of free will), obligations as the basis of rights, the unjust character of misfortune, and compassion, which Weil believed involved attention, was patriotic, and must act in the area of metaxy.
Émile-Auguste Chartier, known as Alain (1868–1951), was taught by Lagneau, and himself taught Weil, Canguilhem, and existentialist Mikel Dufrenne (1910–1995). Alain supported the Radical Party.
Phenomenology
Emmanuel Lévinas
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Phenomenology is philosophy which emphasizes phenomena as it is given to consciousness, attempting to avoid imposed explanations, influenced by German thinkers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In France, phenomenology was also influenced by Bergson, and is still an important area of research in France today. One of the first to introduce phenomenology to France was Jean Héring (1890–1966).
Lévinas
Emmanuel Lévinas (1906–1995) propounded phenomenology and translated Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations (1931). Lévinas re-introduced ethics into phenomenology, absent since the demise of German Max Scheler; and further proclaimed ethics should be the first subject of philosophy. He is notable for such notions as the other and the face.
Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) was concerned with the foundations of perception and influenced by Gestalt psychology. His theory was produced in opposition to Cartesian doctrines like a "pre-reflective subject" in the Cogito and substance dualism. In contrast to the clear distinction between the mind and the external world, for Merleau-Ponty the mind and body are bound together as 'embodied subjectivity'. Merleau-Ponty explains the habitual use of tools as "dilation" of "being-in-the-world".
Ricœur
Paul Ricœur (1913–2005) was best known for combining phenomenology with hermeneutics. He was awarded the 2000 Kyoto Prize for having "revolutionized the methods of hermeneutic phenomenology." Ricoeur was imprisoned in prisoner-of-war campOflag II-D with Mikel Dufrenne, who later wrote The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience (1953).
Existentialism and Absurdism
Existentialism was a prominent school of thought in the first half of the 20th century, influenced by philosophers such as the Danish Søren Kierkegaard and German Friedrich Nietzsche. Existentialism is concerned with the human condition, exploring such topics as purpose and freedom.
Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
The most notable French existentialist was Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), also a phenomenologist and libertarian Marxist who thought his conclusions followed from atheism. He was a spokesman for a generation, but his influence waned with the advent of structuralism.
Sartre's main thesis is existence precedes essence, first stated in Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946). An artisan devises an essence for an object, such as a knife, for the purpose of slicing bread. However, without God, man has no essence; he is born free, thrown into the world solely responsible for his actions which create his essence. The denial of this responsibility through excuses is what Sartre termed bad faith.
Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973), a Christian who wrote The Mystery of Being (1951) tried to distance himself from similarities to Sartre, preferring "philosophy of existence" to existentialism.
Albert Camus (1913–1960), winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature, rejected being labelled an existentialist, preferring to be called an absurdist. In the opening pages of The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), he states what he considers to be the fundamental question of philosophy: is suicide the correct response to an absurd world? Likening a Godless life to the story of Sisyphus, where he is doomed forever to push a rock up a hill only for it to roll down again, Camus’ answer is "No. It requires revolt. [...] The struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." Camus also wrote The Stranger (1942), ranked greatest book of the 20th Century by Le Monde.
Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) was an existential feminist. Beauvoir in works like The Second Sex (1949) and The Ethics of Ambiguity (1948) believed that men had surrounded women in a false aura of mystery, stereotyping them into "the other" and an underclass, as an excuse for not understanding them and dominating them. But Beauvoir maintains that Sartre’s thesis (that is, existence precedes essence) applies to women as much as it does to men and that through their choices and actions, women can transcend this aura and reject being the underclass.
Structuralism
French Structuralism played a major role in intellectual thought after World War II. It rejected existential concepts of freedom for the idea of man as determined by structures. However, by the end of the century it was seen as important not by itself, but for the schools of thought it produced, such as poststructuralism and deconstruction.
Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure founded linguistics, semiotics and structuralism.
Structuralism finds its roots in the thought of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), who taught in Paris, bringing the linguistic turn to France. He distinguished linguistics from philology by studying the underlying structures of language, rather than etymology. His small and mostly posthumously published output, such as the Course in General Linguistics (1916), became the foundation for linguistics, semiotics and structuralism.
Saussure divided language into two parts: the langue, the grammatical system of signs and rules, and parole, individual acts of speech. This was likened by Saussure to the difference between the rules of chess and chess pieces.
For Saussure, the essential unit of any language is the word, or sign. Like language, he divides the word into two parts: the signifier, which is the sound-image, and the signified, which is the referent or concept associated with the signifier. Saussure stressed this association was arbitrary, maintaining that any signifier can refer to any signified. A sign obtains its meaning by contrast with what it is not within the langue. For example, the word ‘dog’ means dog simply because it does not mean cat, bird, or cornflakes.
Saussure thought language could be studied synchronically, i.e. as a complete system within a frozen moment of time, or it can be studied diachronically, examining its historical development. It can be said that structuralists focused on the synchronic aspects of culture, while poststructuralists, focused on the diachronic aspects.
Jacques Lacan, a structuralist psychoanalyst
While Saussure was concerned with linguistics, soon structuralism was influenced by German thinkers such as Marx, Heidegger, and Sigmund Freud; and began to be applied to anthropology, social sciences and psychology.
Roland Barthes (1915–1980) applied structuralism to literary theory. In Mythologies (1957), Barthes explored media such as advertisements and films to demonstrate the bourgeoispropaganda found within. He described these myths as second-order signs, assigning or associating signifiers to signifiers, such as a bottle signifying wine also signifying high class.
Lacan
Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) was a structuralist psychoanalyst, who sought to correct perceived errors in Freud’s thought, plus errors in the interpretation of Freud. As well as Marx and Heidegger, Lacan was influenced by G. W. F. Hegel, through scholars Jean Hyppolite (1907–1968) and Alexandre Kojève (1902–1968).
Althusser
Louis Althusser (1918–1990) and his colleagues, prominently including Étienne Balibar (b. 1942), reworked Marxism using insights from structuralism, against the humanist trend in Sartrean and Western Marxisms. Althusser offered an influential, new reading of Marx's work, describing an "epistemological break" between the Young Hegelian Marx and the late Marx of Das Kapital. Althusser's focus on economics brought him into conflict with social historians, such as E. P. Thompson.
The late 20th-century saw the rise of so-called poststructuralist and postmodern thought, especially in France. Postmodernism is fairly hard to define, and some people maintain it is nothing but a slur applied to a group of disparate philosophers wrongly grouped together. However, it can also be seen as a critique of modernity and traditional western thought, influenced heavily by structuralism, phenomenology and existentialism.
Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) defined postmodernism as scepticism toward metanarratives. A metanarrative is a kind of grand arching story that encompasses—and claims to predict—everything. An example is whig history, which sees history as the inevitable march of progress. Another example is Marxism, which sees communism as the inevitable historical, dialectical consequence of class struggle.
Lyotard considered the metanarrative an essential feature of modernity. Hence the postmodern condition is the replacement of metanarratives with several micro-narratives, which lack any all-embracing structure, but were brought about by technological developments in such fields as communication and mass media, making metanarratives indefensible.
Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) maintained a similar scepticism about absolutes, such as right and wrong, sane and insane, and human nature. His method was not to deny such notions, but to historicize them, examining what in the supposedly necessary may be contingent, and demonstrating the relationships between power, politics, and knowledge.
His main fields of investigation were psychiatry, medicine, and institutions. In Madness and Civilization (1961), he argued psychiatry was not an obvious improvement on previous treatments of the insane, and are a form of controlling defiance of bourgeois society. Foucault introduced the idea of a disciplinary institution in Discipline and Punish (1975).
Derrida maintained that no meaning is stable and opposes binary oppositions. Deconstruction attempts to show the fluidity of the text, allowing highly original interpretations. It examines a text from several different standpoints of interpretation, to show the text is irreconcilably contradictory, unstable, ambiguous and historically and culturally defined. This method is called différance.
Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) in works like Simulacra and Simulation (1981) used the term simulacra to describe the concealment that there are no truths in a given field. An example he gives is the map–territory relation in a Borges story, where a map was so accurate that it laid over and covered the entire city it mapped. When the empire was destroyed, the only object left was the map. For Baudrillard, people live in the map and hence reality crumbles because of misuse. Eventually, the difference between reality and illusion becomes indistinguishable. Baudrillard called this hyperreality.
Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) developed a philosophy of difference which valued difference over identity, and the simulacrum higher than the idea and its copy, seen as an inversion of the method of Leibniz (on identity) and Plato (on mimesis). Deleuze led a revitalization of interest in Bergson, through Le Bergsonisme (1966).
Deleuze's best known work is Difference and Repetition (1968). Deleuze and Félix Guattari developed schizoanalysis in Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980). Deleuze also developed a constructivist view of philosophy as the job of developing concepts, as it is the poet’s job to produce poems and the painter’s job to paint paintings. So Deleuze read philosophers in an idiosyncratic way which he once referred to as "buggery;" creating new concepts utterly different from the philosopher he’s reading. An example is Spinoza, whom Deleuze read as an empiricist.
Feminism
Hélène Cixous
Hélène Cixous (born 1937) developed a feminist interpretation of post-structuralism most influenced by Derrida. She argued that patriarchal cultures build male domination into their language and literary canon, and that a feminist revolution must account for this. She urged female writers to adopt deconstructionist methods and forward their own vision of life as a woman.
Luce Irigaray (born 1930) is a feminist, post-structuralist ostracized by the followers of Lacan. She is considered one of the founders of French difference feminism.
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↑Joughin, J. T. (1973). The Paris Commune in French Politics, 1871-1880; the History of the Amnesty of 1880. United States: Russell & Russell. p. 262
↑Jones TC. French Republicanism after 1848. In: Moggach D, Stedman Jones G, eds. The 1848 Revolutions and European Political Thought. Cambridge University Press; 2018:70-93.
↑Carr, E. H. (1975). Mikhail Bakunin. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 327
↑Bourdeau, Michel (Aug 1, 2026). Zalta, Edward N.; Nodelman, Uri (eds.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved August 1, 2026– via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
↑Némedi, D., et al. “Durkheim’s Friendship with the Philosopher Octave Hamelin: Together with Translations of Two Items by Durkheim.” The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 46, no. 1, 1995, pp. 107–25. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/591625. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.
↑Seuren, P. (2018). Saussure and Sechehaye: Myth and Genius: A Study in the History of Linguistics and the Foundations of Language. Netherlands: Brill. p. 47
↑Maxwell, D. R. (1999). The Abacus and the Rainbow: Bergson, Proust, and the Digital-analogic Opposition. Austria: P. Lang.
↑DOUGLASS, PAUL. Bergson, Eliot, and American Literature. University Press of Kentucky, 1986. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130hx47. Accessed 7 Sept. 2026.
↑Randall E. Auxier; Influence as Confluence: Bergson and Whitehead. Process Studies 1 October 1999; 28 (3-4): 301–338. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/44789317
↑Dunham, J. (2023). Flights in the resting places: James and Bergson on mental synthesis and the experience of time. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 31(2), 183–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2022.2136138
↑Copleston, F. C. (2003). History of Philosophy Volume 9: 19th and 20th Century French Philosophy. United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic. p. 201
↑Widder, N. (2008). Reflections on time and politics. United Kingdom: Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 41
↑Falke, G. (2019). Lebensphilosophie: Bergson. In: Klein, R., Kreuzer, J., Müller-Doohm, S. (eds) Adorno-Handbuch. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05458-6_53
↑MULLARKEY, JOHN C. “BERGSON’S METHOD OF MULTIPLICITY.” Metaphilosophy, vol. 26, no. 3, 1995, pp. 230–59. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24438894. Accessed 7 Sept. 2026.
↑Henri Bergson (1946), The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, pages 159 to 200.
↑Canales, J. (2015). The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time. United Kingdom: Princeton University Press.
12Russell, B. (1945). A history of Western philosophy. Simon & Schuster. p. 819
↑Understanding Maritain: Philosopher and Friend. (1987). United States: Mercer University Press.
↑de Tavernier, Johan (2009). The Historical Roots of Personalism. Ethical Perspectives 16 (3):361-392.
↑Laurant, Jean-Pierre (2006). René Guénon, Les enjeux d'une lecture. Dervy Livres.
↑Breton, A. (1969). Manifestoes of Surrealism. United States: University of Michigan Press.
↑Jones, Sue Stedman. “Durkheim and Bataille: Constraint, Transgression and the Concept of the Sacred.” Durkheimian Studies / Études Durkheimiennes, vol. 7, 2001, pp. 53–63. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23866655. Accessed 6 Sept. 2026.
↑Baring, E. (2019). Converts to the Real: Catholicism and the Making of Continental Philosophy. United Kingdom: Harvard University Press. p. 168
↑Sfetcu, N. (1900). Philosophy - Basic Notions, Volume 1. Romania: MultiMedia Publishing. p. 188
↑José Lopez, Society and Its Metaphors: Language, Social Theory and Social Structure, Bloomsbury Academic, 2003, p. 117.
↑E. Reck (ed.), The Historical Turn in Analytic Philosophy, Springer, 2016: ch. 2.1.
↑Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time: Michel Serres Interviewed by Bruno Latour, University of Michigan Press, 1995, p. 8.
↑Paz, María de (2021). Poincaré, Le Roy, and the Nouveau positivisme. Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 11 (2):446-460.
↑Szałek, Piotr K. (2020). The Duhem-Quine Thesis Reconsidered. Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 62 (1):73-93.
↑ARIEW, Roger, and Peter BARKER. “DUHEM AND CONTINUITY IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, vol. 46, no. 182 (3), 1992, pp. 323–43. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23949417. Accessed 9 Aug. 2026.
↑Dupont, C. (2013). Phenomenology in French Philosophy: Early Encounters. Netherlands: Springer Netherlands. p. 35
↑Gunn, J. Alexander. “THE PHILOSOPHY OF EMILE BOUTROUX.” The Monist, vol. 32, no. 2, 1922, pp. 164–79. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27900900. Accessed 6 Sept. 2026.
↑Terzi, P. (2022). Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism: Philosophy, History and Science in the Third Republic. United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 120
↑Terzi, P. (2022). Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg’s Critical Idealism: Philosophy, History and Science in the Third Republic. United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 14
↑Lawlor, L. (2002). Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology. Ukraine: Indiana University Press. p. 65
↑Kusch, M. (2012). Foucault’s Strata and Fields: An Investigation Into Archaeological and Genealogical Science Studies. Germany: Springer Netherlands.
↑Vissio, Gabriele (2020). Reasoning in Life: Values and Normativity in Georges Canguilhem. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique 33 (4):1019-1031.
↑See 1962-1990. Résumés des cours et travaux, Annuaires du Collège de France, Paris.
↑Augé, Marc; Augé, Marc; Augé, Marc (2006). Non-places: introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity (Reprinted.). London: Verso. p.63. ISBN978-1-85984-051-1.
↑E. Jane Doering, “René Girard’s Mimetic Desire as Seen in the Writings of Simone Weil” at Transforming Violence: Cult, Culture, and Acculturation, (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University, 2010).
↑Bergson and Phenomenology.(2010).United Kingdom:Palgrave Macmillan UK.
↑Dupont, Christian. Jean Hering and the Introduction of Husserl’s Phenomenology to France.
↑Face to Face with Lévinas. (1986). United States: State University of New York Press.
↑Cohen, L. (1986). Descartes and Merleau-Ponty on the Cogito as the Foundation of Philosophy. In: Donagan, A., Perovich, A.N., Wedin, M.V. (eds) Human Nature and Natural Knowledge. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 89. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5349-9_15
↑The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology. (n.d.). (n.p.): (n.p.). p. 541
↑Hass, L. (2008). Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy. United Kingdom: Indiana University Press. p. 90
↑Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of Influence. (2009). United Kingdom: Indiana University Press. p. 18
↑The Process of Becoming Other in the Classical and Contemporary World: Philosophical, Cultural, and Humanistic Perspectives on Communication Across Difference. (2024). Germany: Springer Nature Switzerland. p. 163
↑Volume 9: Kierkegaard and Existentialism. (2016). United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis.
↑Segal, Ronald. The Black Diaspora, London: Faber, 1996, p. 275.
↑Daigle, C. (2009). Jean-Paul Sartre. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. p. 129
12Herrington, S. (2016). Landscape Theory in Design. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. p. 201
↑Hirschkop, K. (2019). Linguistic Turns, 1890-1950: Writing on Language as Social Theory. United Kingdom: OUP Oxford. p. 18
↑Ambrose, G. (2016). The Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet: Overcoming Onto-Theology with the Sacramental Tradition. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. p. 57
↑Hornby, A. S. "Linguistic Pedagogy: A Series of Articles on the Teaching and Learning of English as a Foreign Language: I. The Doctrines of de Saussure." ELT Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, Nov. 1946, pp. 34–38,
↑Noth, W. (1990). Handbook of Semiotics. United Kingdom: Indiana University Press. p. 60
↑Harris, R. (1987). Reading Saussure: a critical commentary on the Cours de linguistique générale. London: Duckworth. p. 86
↑Linguistics Inside Out: Roy Harris and His Critics. (1997). Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company. p .201
↑Rockmore, T. (2002). Heidegger and French Philosophy: Humanism, Antihumanism and Being. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. p. 56
↑Harris, R. (2019). Saussure and His Interpreters. Germany: Edinburgh University Press. p. 142
↑Roudinesco, E. (1990). Jacques Lacan & Co.: a history of psychoanalysis in France, 1925-1985. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 138
↑Dafermos, M. (2025). Dialectics as Mode of Thought and Method in History. Germany: Springer Nature Switzerland. p. 331
↑Fuchs, C. (2019). Revisiting the Althusser/E. P. Thompson-Controversy: Towards a Marxist theory of communication. Communication and the Public, 4(1), 3-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057047319829586
↑Center and Periphery: Studies on Power in the Medieval World in Honor of William Chester Jordan. (2013). Netherlands: Brill. p. 256
↑Merleau-Ponty, Hermeneutics, and Postmodernism. (1992). United States: State University of New York Press.
↑Ankersmit, F. R. (2021). History and Tropology: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor. United States: University of California Press. p. 184
↑The title of Gaunilo's book repeats Anselm's use of the fool mentioned in the Psalms who doubts the existence of God (Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1).
↑Full title De Fide Trinitatis et de Incarnatione Verbi Contra Blasphemias Ruzelini (On Faith in the Trinity and on the Incarnation of the Word Against the Blasphemies of Roscelin).
↑Known as "the discourse on the machine" in the original.
↑Mercury was much smaller relative to the Sun than expected.
↑According to Maurice Rat, Huet "was after Ménage the best etymologist of his time". For example, it was he who understood that the final "bec" of certain toponyms of Normandy (such as Bec Abbey or Houlbec) means "stream" and is related to the German word of the same meaning "Bach", also present at the end of many toponyms.
↑This theory may possibly have been influenced by similar sentiment expressed in Germania, an ethnographic writing by Tacitus, a writer frequently studied by Montesquieu.
↑American analytic philosopher W. V. O. Quine independently came to similar views to Duhem in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", and so the idea has come to be called the "Duhem–Quine thesis."
↑Vuillemin also introduced analytic philosophy to France. While more associated with analytic philosophy, Scottish logician Hugh MacColl lived in France.
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