French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century

French philosophers have a reputation as some of the most perplexing. American readers tend to dismiss them with a huff or venerate them over cigarettes and coffee. Gary Gutting does neither. His approach in French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century is scholarly, judicious, and clear. The result is an exceptional look at a rich philosophical tradition. Gutting is one of the world's leading authorities on the work of Michel Foucault, and his depth on the century's other Gallic thinkers is comparable. The book is more than a general survey; it is a careful history of ideas, as well as an excellent series of essays on the main French thinkers of the last 100 years.

Gutting devotes much of his time to the half dozen giants of recent French thought: Henri Bergson, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. Of course, there are legions of other influences--such as Marcel, Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Kristeva, Lyotard, Deleuze, Irigaray, Levinas--and these get attention too, though in fewer pages. Gutting weaves the book together with a narrative history that accounts for the influences of literature and German thought. In addition, the carefully selected chapter epigraphs do more than supplement the text; they are windows into the vivid philosophy of Marcel Proust's literature. --Eric de Place