A compilation of contemporary French thinkers
In a compilation featuring interviews with 60 intellectuals from various fields of knowledge, Philippe Petit creates a valuable map of contemporary thought in France. The book, titled ABC Penser: l'abécédaire de la pensée contemporaine, offers a detailed look at the current intellectual landscape through a series of in-depth conversations with leading thinkers.The decline of intellectual life debated
The decline of intellectual life has become such a common idea in public debate that those who promote it no longer know which historical moment to identify to understand this shift towards an era of emptiness. After the death of Sartre, Beauvoir, Aron, Foucault, Barthes, Bourdieu, Derrida, Lévi-Strauss and all the masters of structuralist and post-structuralist thought, the question arises: should this decline be attributed to the idea of an "after" (the time of a fertile and still resourceful university) or to an appearance, that of experts and media intellectuals who have taken control of scholarly production criticized by an anti-intellectual atmosphere that has existed for at least twenty years?A response to the idea of decline
To dispel this absurdity of an established decline, it is sufficient to read L'Abécédaire de la pensée contemporaine, edited by Philippe Petit, a paper version of a long-term project, "ABC Penser," which the journalist-author has conducted over the years by interviewing dozens of thinkers and thinkers on a dedicated website, who are animating intellectual life in the most intense way. From Tristan Garcia to Patrick Boucheron, from Clotilde Leguil to François Hartog, from Élie During to Catherine Malabou..., the list of renowned authors highlights the value of the project.Structure and diversity of the interviews
Organized by alphabetical entries, from A as Love (André Comte-Sponville) to Z as Zone (Jeanne Etelain), from D as Desire (Chantal Jaquet) to G as Gender (Éric Marty), from I as Intensity (Tristan Garcia) to V as Violence (Marc Crépon)..., the interviews, conducted with attention and vigor that honor their author, form a set as disparate as coherent. Disparate in the sense that the perspectives, approaches, political sensitivities, conceptual tools are so varied, even opposed, that nothing allows to define this intellectual landscape with a single trait.A call for collective understanding
Trying to understand collectively, Philippe Petit measures well that "our era is not that of discussion" and that the communicative reason that Habermas defended "has not won". "The necessity to judge, the capacity to judge, which Hannah Arendt thought was a requirement, have run into the wall of 'différend'", suggests Petit reasonably. However, "faced with what assails us, faced with what we do not understand; there are no other solutions than to immerse ourselves in the 'différend' that constitutes us."A practical tool for thought
Indeed, what else do we have but this necessity to speak to each other, to try to understand collectively what is happening to us, that mediation between analysis and life, between understanding the world and the fullness of existence? How to find one's way, how to live together, without this mediation that the book offers a perfect concentration of? A practical tool as much as a theoretical resource, this bottle thrown into the anti-intellectual sea has only its contagious generosity to oppose to skeptics and followers of resentment. This is how thought happens in France, here is the proof. ABC Penser: l'abécédaire de la pensée contemporaine, edited by Philippe Petit, Puf, 704 pages, 29 euros.
