A review of Alan Schrift’s Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers
Schrift offers an unusual and original perspective on the development of French philosophy in the twentieth century, by which he means, not “a unified tradition that shares certain philosophical assumptions” (p.2), but simply “a historical unfolding of philosophical discourse that took place in the French language in the twentieth century”. There is, indeed, in his opinion no such thing as a uniquely “French” philosophy, if that means a unified tradition of the kind just referred to. What gives twentieth century French philosophy such unity as it has is rather “the empirical fact that the figures discussed below . . . did their philosophical work in the French language and were engaged with and informed by the institutional practices of the French academic world” (p.2). It is above all, Schrift has come to believe, these institutional practices which are responsible for some of the characteristic features of French philosophy in this period. He goes so far as to say (p.188) that “It is impossible to understand the evolution of French philosophy in the twentieth century without understanding some of the unique aspects of French academic culture”.