Modern French Philosophy

February 1, 2004
Twentieth-century French philosophy has produced some of the most thought-provoking-as well as some of the most opaque and frustratingly incoherent-theories and ideas in the history of philosophy. From Bergson's and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological studies and Sartre and Camus's existentialism to the structuralism of Saussure, the psychoanalytic theories of Lacan, and the poststructuralism of Derrida and Foucault, modern French philosophy has contributed to the history of ideas and history of culture in ways comparable to the 19th-century German philosophy of Hegel and Nietzsche. Wicks (philosophy, Univ. of Auckland, New Zealand) offers a helpful but workmanlike survey of the works of French philosophers from Bergson to Baudrillard. He contends that modern French philosophy has been a response to the disillusionment with progress at the end of the 19th century and the death of God that Nietzsche proclaimed. Although Wicks offers helpful sketches of several important modern French philosophers, he leaves out significant thinkers such as L vinas, Ricoeur, and Merleau-Ponty for no apparent reason. Libraries that serve college or university communities will certainly want to have a copy of this book, and large public libraries will also find it useful.-Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Lancaster, PA

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.