Gérard Raulet (born 9 August 1949) is a

French philosopher French philosophy, here taken to mean philosophy in the French language, has been extremely diverse and has influenced Western philosophy as a whole for centuries, from the medieval scholasticism of Peter Abelard, through the founding of modern ph ...

Germanist German studies is an academic field that researches, documents and disseminates German language, German literature, literature, and culture in its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies therefore often focus on Culture ...

, and

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''trans ...

, specializing primarily in the thought of

Herbert Marcuse Herbert Marcuse ( ; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German–American philosopher, social critic, and Political philosophy, political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at ...

and

Ernst Bloch Ernst Simon Bloch (; ; July 8, 1885 – August 4, 1977; pseudonyms: Karl Jahraus, Jakob Knerz) was a German Marxist philosopher. Bloch was influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as by apocalyptic and religious thinker ...

. He is a professor emeritus of German History and Thought at the

Paris-Sorbonne University Paris-Sorbonne University (also known as Paris IV; ) was a public university, public research university in Paris, France, active from 1971 to 2017. It was the main inheritor of the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Paris. In 2018, it m ...

Early life and education

Raulet was born 9 August 1949 in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine. Raulet studied at Saint-Cloud École Normale Superieure, graduating in 1969. Raulet then qualified as a German instructor in 1973, earned his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in 1981, and ''doctorat d'État'' in 1985.

Career

A prolific author, Raulet has devoted several works to German philosophers such as

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...

Max Scheler Max Ferdinand Scheler (; 22 August 1874 – 19 May 1928) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Considered in his lifetime one of the most prominent German philosophers,Davis, Zacha ...

Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

. He is also the author of publications on the culture of Weimar and German political philosophy. He is the translator of the article by

Jürgen Habermas Jürgen Habermas ( , ; ; born 18 June 1929) is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere. Associated with the Frankfurt S ...

called "The Enlightenment, an unfinished project" in response to the postmodernist criticism, on which Raulet himself worked. Between 1975 and 1987, Raulet was first an instructor and then assistant professor at the

before joining the university of

University of Rennes 2 Rennes 2 University (UR2; , officially Université Rennes-II Haute-Bretagne) is a public university located in Upper Brittany, France. It is one of the four universities of the Academy of Rennes. The main campus is situated in the northwest of ...

as a professor in 1987. He then taught at the university of Paris-XII before joining the

École normale supérieure de Lyon École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * Éco ...

in 1997. Raulet taught at the École normale supérieure de Lyon until 2003, after which he rejoined the Paris-Sorbonne University where is currently a professor emeritus. From 1981 to 1999, he also oversaw the Weimar Cultural Study Group at the in Paris.

Herbert Marcuse

Raulet has written extensively on the subject of the Frankfurt School, with specific attention to

, the subject of his ''Herbert Marcuse: Philosophie de l'emancipation'' published in 1992. Raulet argues that the notion of emancipation is central to Marcuse's philosophy, as Marcuse sought to develop a third position between conceptions of utopian emancipation in

Soviet Marxism Before the perestroika reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev that promoted a more liberal form of socialism, the formal ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was Marxism–Leninism, a form of socialism consisting of a centralise ...

and those of

human nature Human nature comprises the fundamental dispositions and characteristics—including ways of Thought, thinking, feeling, and agency (philosophy), acting—that humans are said to have nature (philosophy), naturally. The term is often used to denote ...

latent in American

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...

. Philosopher Joseph Bien regarded the text as one of the most important works on Marcuse published in the late twentieth century, and Raulet as "one of France's more important, younger, social philosophers."

Bibliography

Selected Articles in English * "What Good is Schopenhauer? Remarks on Horkheimer's Pessimism." ''Telos'', no. 42 (1979): 98-106. doi: 10.3817/1279042098 * "The Agony of Marxism and the Victory of the Left." ''Telos'', no. 55 (1983): 163–178. doi: 10.3817/0383055163 * "Marxism and the post-modern condition." ''Telos'', no. 67 (1986): 147–162. doi: 10.3817/0386067147 * "The new utopia: communication technologies." ''Telos'', no. 87 (1991): 39–58. doi: 10.3817/0391087039 * "Legitimacy and globalization." ''Philosophy & Social Criticism'' 37, no. 3 (2011): 313–323. doi: 10.1177/0191453710389445 Books in English * ''Critical Cosmology: On Nations and Globalization: a Philosophical Essay''. Lexington books, 2005.

Notes

20th-century French philosophers 21st-century French philosophers Continental philosophers Walter Benjamin scholars German–French translators French Germanists École Normale Supérieure alumni Academic staff of Rennes 2 University People from Épernay 1949 births Living people {{France-academic-bio-stub