2012/10/01 by Roger Scruton · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis #French Literature and Criticism #French Historical and Cultural Studies #Skepticism #Argument (complex analysis) #Nonsense #Politics #Epistemology #Philosophy #Sociology #Aesthetics #Law #Political science
paper · doi:10.1017/s0031819112000368
openalex publication_date 2012/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract In post-war France we have witnessed an upsurge in philosophical and quasi-philosophical literature, much of it nonsense and all of it radically politicised. What is the explanation of this? I advance the thesis that the post-1968 literary scene expresses a bid for a new kind of social membership, and that it is the hunger for membership that explains not only the intellectual structure of this literature but also its world-wide influence. I also suggest that there survives in this literature both an intellectual agenda and a historical memory, in which the war-time experience of France is all-important. In the course of my argument I try to explain the radical difference between analytical philosophy, which permits its practitioners to have unorthodox (i.e. non-left-wing) political views, and a particular post-war French intellectual tradition, which has until recently allowed no such deviation from its tacit norms.