Félix Ravaisson: French Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century: (British Society for the History of Philosophy:New Texts in the History of Philosophy)

Félix Ravaisson's French Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century is one of the most influential and pivotal texts of modern French thought. Commissioned by the Minister of Public Instruction as one of a series of reports to record the progress of the French sciences and humanities for Paris' second world fair, the 1867 Exposition universelle d'arts et d'industrie, it was published with the others the following year. In the report Ravaisson argues, with verve and generosity, and with an unparalleled command of the century's intellectual developments, that the myriad voices in nineteenth-century French thinking were beginning to form a chorus, one that was advancing towards a new, more concrete form of spiritualist philosophy able to resist materialist, mechanist and sensualist doctrines while incorporating recent developments in the life-sciences. As Henri Bergson noted, it effected a "profound change of orientation in university philosophy" and for decades afterwards students learnt its concluding sections by heart in order to pass public examinations. Bergson's own Creative Evolution, which made him the world's most celebrated living philosopher at the end of the long nineteenth century, is, with its psychological interpretation of biological evolution, a direct expression of the new philosophical orientation that Ravaisson had divined in the report.

Table of Contents:
Editor's introduction I: History of philosophy prior to the nineteenth century II: Victor Cousin and the eclectic school III: Lamennais' metaphysics and theology IV: Socialism: Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon V: Socialist philosophy: Leroux and Reynaud VI: Iatromechanism and phrenology: Broussais and Gall VII: Comte's positivism VIII: Positivism in Britain IX: Comte's later philosophy X: Littré's positivist philosophy XI: The philosophy of Taine XII: Renan and Philosophy XIII: Renouvier's neo-criticism XIV: The philosophy of Vacherot XV: Claude Bernard's Physiology XVI: Philosophical theology: Gratry XVII: Philosophical theology: Saisset, Simon et Caro XVIII: Philosophical theology: ontologism XIX: De Strada's metaphysics XX: Magy on physics and metaphysics XXI: Physics and philosophy: de Rémusat and Martin XXII: Psychology: habit, memory and the association of ideas XXIII: Animism, vitalism, organicism XXIV: Old and new materialisms: on Paul Janet XXV: Organicism and Animism XXVI: Neurology XXVII: Instinct XXVIII: Sleep XXIX: Madness XXX: Genius and creativity XXXI: Language and physiognomy XXXXII: Probability and philosophy: Cournot XXXIII: Epistemology: analysis and synthesis XXXIV: Moral Philosophy XXXV: Aesthetics XXXVI: Summary and manifesto for a new spiritualist philosophy Notes

About the Author :
Mark Sinclair is Lecturer in Philosophy at Queen's University Belfast, and works on the history of modern French and German philosophy in relation to issues in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of mind. He is the author of Being Inclined: Félix Ravaisson's Philosophy of Habit (Oxford), Bergson (Routledge), and Heidegger, Aristotle and the Work of Art (Palgrave), and is a co-editor of the forthcoming The Oxford Handbook of Modern French Philosophy.

Review :
Today's readers could not hope for a better guide to the work than Sinclair (Queen's Univ. Belfast). His introduction is incisive; his translation precise; his editing, such as the addition of titles to the report's 36 chapters, clarifying...Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.