Books

Published Books:

2021: Lieux de savoir 

 ISBN:  978-2-7606-4360-4

392 pages

How do university or college campuses, through the many components that shape them, contribute to providing places conducive to the development and dissemination of knowledge? This is what this book aims to show by examining each of the elements that make up these complexes, from auditoriums to laboratories and libraries, including student residences, sports and cultural facilities, not to mention the green spaces and the public art that is displayed there. Drawn from the 300 or so institutions referred to by the author, the numerous examples, often illustrated by photos and plans, highlight the diversity and complexity of the solutions to the problems posed by the establishment of a place that fosters the university's teaching and research mission. The book highlights the often unsuspected riches that campuses hold for those who pay attention to them. It will be of interest to architects and urban planners, as well as to professors and researchers in a wide variety of fields, and to all those who are interested in universities, either to pursue their studies or to participate in various types of activities.  ERRATA

 

 

 

2017: Tout en même temps agnostique et croyant


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ISBN: 978-2-89578-604-7
288 pages

This book is not intended to give an overview of what a religion should be. Nor does it aim to put forward the case for atheism. Rather, it intends to show that a person who claims to be perfectly agnostic and a follower of a philosophy that values rationality above all else can be quite believer, and even practicing, without there being any contradiction. In such an approach, the cognitive framework to which many believers have deemed it appropriate to anchor their faith risks being somewhat debunked. On the other hand, many of the arguments that have contributed so much to the undermining of religious beliefs may be seriously weakened. In either case, such a position is based on the simple recognition that faith is in no way knowledge.

 

 

2010: Rationality and Explanation in Economics 

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ISBN: 978-0-415-55121-2
273 pages
 
Most economists would agree that the notion of rationality is fundamental for their science. But what do they mean by "rationality"? Roughly, most of them would answer that it refers to the idea that economic agents maximise their utility or, still more typically since the 1950s or so, that they are strictly consistent in their choices. But such idealised conceptions of rationality imply highly unrealistic assumptions that economists usually justify with the help of arguments whose shortcomings are discussed and illustrated in this book. Unsurprisingly, such assumptions have contributed to the fact that neoclassical economics has more and more distanced itself from its original function, namely to explain the workings of human economic societies.This book proposes solutions to these problems. In fact, rationality plays a crucial role in economics because it is the key of most economic explanations. Therefore analyses of rationality in this book are oriented towards revealing in which conditions the rationality assumption makes valuable explanations possible and what kinds of explanation are then involved. The last part of the book discusses and exemplifies alternative kinds of explanation in economics and applies to economics the most illuminating theories of scientific explanation developed in natural sciences. In all these discussions, the point is not to denounce neoclassical analyses, but to argue for a significant reinterpretation of their implicit philosophical foundations.

Table of contents:  

Introduction

Part I: Rationality in the history of economic thought
  • Chapter 1: Rationality in economics before World War II,
  • Chapter 2: The hardly consistent story of rationality consistency
Part II: Objections to the notion of minimal rationality
  • Chapter 3: Can methodological individualism survive?
  • Chapter 4: Is still some room left for irrationality?
  • Chapter 5: Minimal and maximal rationality: loosely defined concepts?
Part III: Is rationality really necessary in economics?
  • Chapter 6: Why unrealism of assumptions remains a predicament.
  • Chapter 7: Explaining in the absence of rationality.
Part IV: Regarding economic explanations
  • Chapter 8: Rationality and  natural selection in economics.
  • Chapter 9: Theories of explanation applied to economics.
Epilogue

 

 


2001: Actualité de la philosophie de l'histoire 

ISBN: 2-7637-7827-5

229 pages

 

This book aims to better understand the scope of the classical philosophies of history, often described as "speculative". These philosophies have long been viewed with great suspicion by those, philosophers and others, who have denounced their alleged attempt to take a global view of human history and predict its development without much concern for the scientific conclusions reached by historians. The book intends to show that, whatever the blunders rightly associated with such undertakings, the essence of the project from which they emerged cannot be ignored because it is still present in contemporary thought. The book therefore recalls how this project took shape among theologians of history before being radically secularized. It shows that this project has always been closely associated with a reflection on temporality, which cannot really be ignored in our time. He also shows that the reflection on what these philosophies designated by the expression "meaning of history" remains, in a less pretentious language, very present in contemporary thought. In the last chapter, the author questions more explicitly the relationship, which is closer than one generally assumes, between these philosophies of history and the work of several researchers, whether sociologists, political scientists or historians. Moreover, their relations with the philosophies concerning mostly the epistemology of historical science are considered.

 

 

 

1982: Le marxisme des années soixante

Governor General's Award, Essay section, 1982

 ISBN: 2-89045-512-2

350 pages

 

The 1960s and 1970s were characterized by an exceptional infatuation in Western intellectual circles with the thought of Karl Marx. While doing justice to the many contributions of the author of Capital that have made it possible to better understand the functioning of our world, this book also points out their limits and, on occasion, the misconceptions they convey. Above all, it intends to highlight the astonishing lightness of the argumentation of certain authors of this period who received praise despite their lack of rigor simply because they insisted on associating their words with Marx's thought, which for a very large audience, seemed to guarantee their scientific character. During these two decades, in fact, many intellectuals believed that Marx’s thought was the very foundation of all historical and social science worthy of the name. It is in this context that the writings of Louis Althusser are criticized in this book, as well as those of various authors, such as Étienne Balibar, Nikos Poulantzas or Michel Lowy, among others, who benefited from this situation. But things were to change dramatically towards the end of the 1970s, when what remained of this infatuation with Marxism melted like snow in the sun, leaving all the room for the rise of neo-liberalism and right-wing ideologies. The book seeks to take the measure of such strange reversals of situation.

 

 

Festschrift:

2007: La philosophie de l'histoire. Hommages offerts à Maurice Lagueux

 

ISBN: 978-2-7637-8588-2

493 pages