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Luc Foisneau, born in Blois on 30 March 1963, is a French philosopher specialising in contemporary political thought and that of the Early Modern period. Director of research at CNRS, he is a member of the Centre Raymond Aron, and teaches at School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. [1]
A former student of the Ecole normale supérieure (Fontenay-St Cloud) he has a PhD from Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne and his habilitation (HDR) from Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales. From 1993 to 1995 he was a member of the Centre de philosophie politique et juridique, in the University of Caen, and from 1995 to 2003 a member of the Centre d'histoire de la philosophie moderne. In 2003 he joined the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, pursuing research there and at the Maison Française until 2006. He was also lecturer at Sciences Po, Paris, from 1993 to 2003.
Foisneau wrote his doctoral thesis on the notion of the absolute power of God in Thomas Hobbes' political theory, notwithstanding Hobbes' reputation as a renowned atheist. Foisneau analysed this under-explored conception of power in relation to the fundamental moral and political principles underpinning Leviathan. [2] In 2001 he was awarded the Prix de l'association des professeurs et maîtres de conférences de Sciences Po, Paris. He is recognised as a world expert on the work of Thomas Hobbes, which he has edited and translated into French. [3] Foisneau also devoted fifteen years of research to one of the fundamental aspects of modern political thought: the connection between theories of sovereignty and theories of government. [4] He has since turned his attention to the work of John Rawls, and in particular the manner in which Early Modern contract theories were reprised and transformed in the Rawlsian tradition of theories of justice. [5] In particular, he has focused on the ways in which the idea of justification has had a profound effect in transforming theories of modern democracy. [6] Between 2001 and 2015 Foisneau directed work on an encyclopaedia of French philosophers and their networks in the seventeenth century in which 167 scholars participated. An English edition of the encyclopaedia was published in 2008, entitled Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century French Philosophers . [7] An augmented French edition will be published in 2015 as Dictionnaire des philosophes français du XVIIe siècle : acteurs et réseaux de savoir. [8]
Sovereignty can generally be defined as supreme authority. Sovereignty entails hierarchy within a state as well as external autonomy for states. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body or institution that has the ultimate authority over other people and to change existing laws. In political theory, sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme legitimate authority over some polity. In international law, sovereignty is the exercise of power by a state. De jure sovereignty refers to the legal right to do so; de facto sovereignty refers to the factual ability to do so. This can become an issue of special concern upon the failure of the usual expectation that de jure and de facto sovereignty exist at the place and time of concern, and reside within the same organization.
Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy.
Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac was a French novelist, playwright, epistolarian, and duelist.
Jean Bodin was a French jurist and political philosopher, member of the Parlement of Paris and professor of law in Toulouse. Bodin lived during the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation and wrote against the background of religious conflict in France. He seemed to be a nominal Catholic throughout his life but was critical of papal authority over governments and there was evidence he may have converted to Protestantism during his time in Geneva. Known for his theory of sovereignty, he favoured the strong central control of a national monarchy as an antidote to factional strife.
In ethics, political philosophy, social contract theory, religion, and international law, the term state of nature describes the hypothetical way of life that existed before humans organised themselves into societies or civilizations. Philosophers of the state of nature theory propose that there was a historical period before societies existed, and seek answers to the questions: "What was life like before civil society?", "How did government emerge from such a primitive start?", and "What are the hypothetical reasons for entering a state of society by establishing a nation-state?".
Georges Edmond Raoul Dumézil was a French philologist, linguist, and religious studies scholar who specialized in comparative linguistics and mythology. He was a professor at Istanbul University, École pratique des hautes études and the Collège de France, and a member of the Académie Française. Dumézil is well known for his formulation of the trifunctional hypothesis on Proto-Indo-European mythology and society. His research has had a major influence on the fields of comparative mythology and Indo-European studies.
Abraham Bosse was a French artist, mainly as a printmaker in etching, but also in watercolour.
Jules Régis Debray is a French philosopher, journalist, former government official and academic. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society, and for associating with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967 and advancing Salvador Allende's presidency in Chile in the early 1970s. He returned to France in 1973 and later held various official posts in the French government.
Henri Lefebvre was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of social space, and for his work on dialectical materialism, alienation, and criticism of Stalinism, existentialism, and structuralism. In his prolific career, Lefebvre wrote more than sixty books and three hundred articles. He founded or took part in the founding of several intellectual and academic journals such as Philosophies, La Revue Marxiste, Arguments, Socialisme ou Barbarie, and Espaces et Sociétés.
Clément Rosset was a French philosopher and writer. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, and the author of books on 20th-century philosophy and postmodern philosophy.
Michel Laclotte was a French art historian and museum director, specialising in 14th and 15th century Italian and French painting.
Paul Gochet was a Belgian logician, philosopher, and emeritus professor of the University of Liège. His research was mainly in the fields of logic and analytic philosophy. He is perhaps best known for his works on Quine's philosophy.
Pierre Grégoire (c.1540–1597) was a French jurist and philosopher
Anne Cheng is a French Sinologist who teaches at the Collège de France and specializes in Chinese history and the history of Chinese philosophy. Pablo Ariel Blitstein, the author of "A new debate about alterity," describes her as an "important representative of French sinology".
The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century French Philosophers is a dictionary of philosophical writers in France between 1601 and 1700, edited by Luc Foisneau. An augmented and revised French edition has been published in 2015.
Joseph Vialatoux was a French Catholic philosopher based in Lyon, a leading member of the Catholic social activist Chronique sociale. He had liberal Christian democratic views. He was a prolific author, and an early critic of the right-wing Action Française.
Claude Nicolet was a 20th-21st century French historian, a specialist of the institutions and political ideas of ancient Rome.
The Société d'étude du XVIIe is a French learned society established in Paris in 1948 along the status of an association loi de 1901 in order to bring together specialists of this period and to develop studies on this century.
Tom Sorell is a Canadian philosopher based in the UK. His interests range from the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of science to early modern philosophy, ethics and political philosophy. He is noted for his writings on Hobbes, scientism and applied ethics. Since 2008, he has worked in ethics and technology both as a researcher and as a consultant. He is the author of Hobbes (1986); Descartes (1987); Moral Theory and Capital Punishment (1987); Scientism (1992); Business Ethics (1994); Moral Theory and Anomaly (1999); Descartes Reinvented (2005); and Emergencies and Politics (2013).
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