Vincent Descombes (; born 1943) is a French

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

. His major work has been in the

philosophy of language In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, ...

and

philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addre ...

Philosophical work

Descombes is particularly noted for a lengthy critique in two volumes of the project he calls cognitivism, and which is, roughly, the view current in philosophy of mind that mental and psychological facts can ultimately be treated as, or reduced to, physical facts about the

brain A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a v ...

. Descombes has also written an introduction to modern French philosophy (''Le même et l'autre'') focused on the transition, after 1960, from a focus on the three H's,

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends ...

Edmund Husserl , thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations) , thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view , thesis1_year = 1883 , thesis2_title ...

and

Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...

to the "three masters of suspicion",

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...

and

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

. In the same book, he introduced the term "post-Kojèvian discourse" to designate the period of French philosophy after the 1930sVincent Descombes, ''Modern French Philosophy'', Cambridge University Press, 1980, pp. 158–9. (from 1933 to 1939,

Alexandre Kojève Alexandre Kojève ( , ; 28 April 1902 – 4 June 1968) was a Russian-born French philosopher and statesman whose philosophical seminars had an immense influence on 20th-century French philosophy, particularly via his integration of Hegelian conce ...

delivered in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

a series of lectures on Hegel's work ''

The Phenomenology of Spirit ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'' (german: Phänomenologie des Geistes) is the most widely-discussed philosophical work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; its German title can be translated as either ''The Phenomenology of Spirit'' or ''The Phenomen ...

'' that had an immense influence on

20th-century French philosophy 20th-century French philosophy is a strand of contemporary philosophy generally associated with post-World War II French thinkers, although it is directly influenced by previous philosophical movements. Bergson The work of Henri Bergson (1859� ...

). Descombes teaches at the

Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron The Centre de recherche politiques Raymond Aron is the research center of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales that specializes in political philosophy. Created by François Furet in 1982, the center's goal was to give a new basis to ...

, part of the

École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (french: École des hautes études en sciences sociales; EHESS) is a graduate ''grande école'' and ''grand établissement'' in Paris focused on academic research in the social sciences. The ...

. He holds an appointment in the

Committee on Social Thought The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought is one of several PhD-granting committees at the University of Chicago. It was started in 1941 by historian John Ulric Nef along with economist Frank Knight, anthropologist Robert Redfield, and Univers ...

at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. Descombes was a member of the French

libertarian socialist Libertarian socialism, also known by various other names, is a left-wing,Diemer, Ulli (1997)"What Is Libertarian Socialism?" The Anarchist Library. Retrieved 4 August 2019. anti-authoritarian, anti-statist and libertarianLong, Roderick T. (201 ...

group

Socialisme ou Barbarie Socialisme ou Barbarie () was a French-based radical libertarian socialist group of the post-World War II period whose name comes from a phrase which was misattributed to Friedrich Engels by Rosa Luxemburg in the ''Junius Pamphlet'', but which pro ...

Works

* ''Le platonisme'', 1970 * ''L'inconscient malgré lui'', 1977 * ''Le même et l'autre. Quarante-cinq ans de philosophie française'' (1933–1978), Editions de Minuit, 1979. Trans. ''Modern French Philosophy'', Cambridge University Press, 1980. . * ''Grammaire d'objets en tous genres'', 1983. Trans. ''Objects of All Sorts: A Philosophical Grammar'', Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. . * ''Proust: Philosophie du roman'', Editions de Minuit, 1987. Trans. ''Proust: Philosophy of the Novel'', Stanford University Press, 1992. * ''Philosophie par gros temps'', 1989 Trans. ''The Barometer of Modern Reason: On the Philosophies of Current Events'', Oxford University Press, 1993. . * ''La denrée mentale'', 1995. Trans. ''The Mind's Provisions: A Critique of Cognitivism'', Princeton University Press, 2001. . * ''Les institutions du sens'', 1996. Trans. ''The Institutions of Meaning: A Defense of Anthropological Holism'', Harvard University Press, 2014. . * ''Le complément de sujet'', 2004 * ''Le raisonnement de l'ours, et d'autres essais de philosophie pratique'', 2007 * ''Les embarras de l'identité'', 2013. Trans. ''Puzzling Identities'', Harvard University Press, 2016. . * ''Exercices d'humanité'', 2013 * ''Le parler de soi'', 2014

References

External links

Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron Staff biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Descombes, Vincent 1943 births Living people 20th-century French philosophers French male non-fiction writers