Description
Read through the lens of a single key concept in twentieth-century French philosophy, that of the "problem", this book relates the concept to specific thinkers and situates it in relation both to the wider history of philosophy and contemporary concerns.
How exactly should the notion of problems be understood? What must a problem be in order to play an inaugurating role in thought? Does the word "problem" have a univocal sense? What is at stake – theoretically, ethically, politically, and institutionally – when philosophers use the word? This book addresses these and other questions, and is devoted to making historical and philosophical sense of the various uses and conceptualisations of notions of problems, problematics, and problematisations in twentieth-century French thought. In the process, it augments our understanding of the philosophical programs of a number of recent French thinkers, reconfigures our perception of the history and wider stakes of twentieth-century French philosophy, and reveals the ongoing theoretical richness and critical potential of the notion of the problem and its cognates.
Working through the twentieth-century, and focussing on specific thinkers including Foucault and Deleuze, this book will be of interest to all scholars of French philosophy.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.
Table of Contents
Foreword: Problems in Twentieth-Century French Philosophy
Sean Bowden and Mark G.E. Kelly
Introduction: Problematizing Problems
Sean Bowden and Mark G.E. Kelly
1. The Misadventures of the "Problem" in "Philosophy": From Kant to Deleuze
Giuseppe Bianco
2. Bergson’s Method of Problematisation and the Pursuit of Metaphysical Precision
Craig Lundy
3. An Anti-Positivist Conception of Problems: Deleuze, Bergson and the French Epistemological Tradition
Sean Bowden
4. Cavaillès, Mathematical Problems and Questions
Pierre Cassou-Noguès
5. Lautman on Problems as the Conditions of Existence of Solutions
Simon B. Duffy
6. Simondon on the Notion of the Problem: A Genetic Schema of Individuation
Daniela Voss
7. On the Problem and Mystery of Evil: Marcel’s Existential Dissolution of an Antinomy
Jill Hernandez
8. Towards A Phenomenology of Sagesse: Uncovering the Unique Philosophical Problematic of Pierre Hadot
Matthew Sharpe
9. The Errors of History: Knowledge and Epistemology in Bachelard, Canguilhem and Foucault
Alison Ross
10. Problematizing the Problematic: Foucault and Althusser
Mark G.E. Kelly
11. Foucault, Psychoanalysis, and Critique: Two Aspects of Problematization
Amy Allen
12. Problematization in Foucault’s Genealogy and Deleuze’s Symptomatology: Or, How to Study Sexuality Without Invoking Oppositions
Colin Koopman
