Writing the History of the Mind: Philosophy and Science in France, 1900 to 1960s

For much of the twentieth century, French intellectual life was dominated by theoreticians and historians of mentalité. Traditionally, the study of the mind and of its limits and capabilities was the domain of philosophy, however in the first decades of the twentieth century practitioners of the emergent human and social sciences were increasingly competing with philosophers: ethnologists, sociologists, psychologists and historians of science were all claiming to study 'how people think'. Scholars, including Gavron Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, Léon Brunschvicg, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Lucine Febvre, Abel Ray, Alexandre Koyré and Hélène Metzger, were all investigating the mind historically and had participated in shared research projects, but as they have since been appropriated by the different disciplines, literature on their findings has so far failed to recognise the connections between their research and their place in intellectual history.In this excellent and lucid book, Cristina Chimisso reconstructs the world of these intellectuals and the key debates in the philosophy of mind, particularly in the tension between an a historical, or analytical, approach to the study of mind, and those who thought it possible to write a history of the mind, outlining the evolution of ways of thinking that had produced the modern mentality. Dr Chimisso goes on to situate the key French scholars in their historical context, to show how their ideas and agendas were indissolubly linked with their social and institutional positions, such as their political and religious allegiances, their status in academia, and their familial situation.The author employs a vast range of original research, using philosophical and scientific texts as well as archive documents, correspondence and seminar minutes from the period covered, to recreate the milieu in which these relatively neglected scholars made advances in the history of philosophy and science, and produced ideas that would greatly influence later intellectuals such as Foucault, Derrida and Bourdieu. This book will appeal to historians of science and philosophy, particularly Continental philosophy, and those with interest in the history of ideas and the historiography of the disciplines of the social sciences, particularly sociology.

Cristina Chimisso is a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at The Open University, UK.