Rediscovering Léon Brunschvicg's Critical Idealism

Léon Brunschvicg's contribution to philosophical thought in fin-de-siècle France receives full explication in the first English-language study on his work. Arguing that Brunschvicg is crucial to understanding the philosophical schools which took root in 20th-century France, Pietro Terzi locates Brunschvicg alongside his contemporary Henri Bergson, as well as the range of thinkers he taught and influenced, including Lévinas, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, and Sartre. Brunschvicg's deep engagement with debates concerning spiritualism and rationalism, neo-Kantian philosophy, and the role of mathematics in philosophy made him the perfect supervisor for a whole host of nascent philosophical ideas which were forming in the work of his students.

Terzi outlines Brunchvicg's defence of neo-Kantian judgement, historical analysis and the inextricability of the natural and humanist sciences to any rigorous system of philosophy, with wide-ranging implications for contemporary scholarship.

Auteur

Pietro Terzi is Associate Researcher at Paris Nanterre University, France.

Contenu

Introduction

1. The Man, the Context
2. The Nature of Intelligence and the Critique of Bergsonism
3. Brunschvicg and the History of Philosophy
4. The Legacy of the Nineteenth Century
5. A Philosophy of Judgement
6. History: The Philosopher's Laboratory
7. Lessons of Science
8. The Last Years: From the Sorbonne to Exile

Epilogue

Index