NEITHER/NOR

An Atheism that is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought examines the advent of antihumanism as a cultural figure out of a network of intellectual crises in interwar and postwar France and ties this advent to the more general consequences of secularization in the modern age. Bracketing political judgments, and eschewing dialectical methods, Stefanos Geroulanos shows how the critique of humanism that emerged from disparate quarters of French intellectual life resulted in a series of negative positions that rendered the human void of any conceptual content and thereby unsuitable as a basis for future political action or philosophical investigation. In addition to basing his analysis on two rigorously sketched concepts of his own design, “antifoundational realism” and “negative anthropology,” Geroulanos deploys a striking use of conceptual irony to show how the critical efforts of his protagonists often led to theoretical cul‐de‐sacs and a heightened measure of existential despondency. The treatment of the emergence of antihumanism as a local phenomenon among a segment of French intellectuals nevertheless encounters problems when it abandons the terrain of historical argument for an engagement with broader metaphysical concerns. By participating in the discourse of its subjects, An Atheism that is Not Humanist finds its way into cul‐de‐sacs of its own, in which, for example, the ostensibly political bearing of efforts to transcend mere politics for broader considerations of the “theo‐political crisis of modernity” remains unclear. Finally, by accepting the terms of the phenomenological diagnosis of metaphysical crisis in the interwar years, the book compromises certain of its genealogical aspirations, especially with regard to the legacy of Third Republic idealism and the specific qualities of post‐phenomenological structuralism.     

Staging an encounter between anthropology and philosophy: Hits and misses in the work of Michael Jackson

This review essay assesses Michael Jackson’s ongoing project of staging an encounter between anthropology and philosophy in two books: Lifeworlds (2013) and As Wide as the World Is Wise (2016). Considering his philosophical enrichment of ethnographic theory and method, this essay addresses foundational questions about the prospects and practices of interdisciplinary engagement. It also suggests future avenues for continued dialogue between philosophy and anthropology.     

Existentialism as a Political Problem in Karl Löwith's Thought

The aim of this paper is to make a case for the claim that Karl Löwith's thought is predominately preoccupied with one major philosophic–historical problem that may be broadly labelled existentialism. This notion is usually employed by Löwith in order to grasp the various phenomena and developments within the European (or Western) history in the modern age. I claim that the meaning assigned by Löwith to the notion of existentialism is inseparable from its political consequences. In other words, I attempt to reconstruct the notion of existentialism in Löwith's thought primarily as a political problem. By advancing this argument, I am inclined towards the view that Löwith’s ?uvre deserves more careful reception from political theorists than it has yet received.     

Existentialist manifesto or conservative political science? Problems in interpreting Raymond Aron's Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire

Raymond Aron's Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire is often held to be a paradigmatic book because of either its rejection of positivism in the social sciences, or its anticipation of existentialism in philosophy. The common denominator in these paradigmatic interpretations of the work is its use of various German philosophical influences that, though relatively obscure in France at the time of its first publication in 1938, became prominent features of the postwar Parisian intellectual landscape. During the Cold War, however, Aron was not only a peripheral figure within the Parisian intelligentsia, but also one of its harshest critics. The apparent mismatch between the paradigmatic status claimed for the Introduction as the first French existentialist book and Aron's subsequent critical position towards the leading figures of existentialism in France forms the starting point for a critical re-examination of the book and its paradigmatic interpretations. After seeking an explanation for these interpretations of the Introduction in deeper trends of generational thought, this article suggests that the history of the idea of intellectual engagement offers a more useful angle from which to approach this challenging book.