No one is better suited than François Dosse to take on such a challenge: to write a panoramic and systematic narrative of the historical and creative adventure of French intellectuals during their period of global hegemony.
The first volume—from 1944 to 1968—covers the years of Sartre and Beauvoir and their refutations, their complex relationship with communism, the upheaval of 1956, the Algerian War, the beginnings of Third Worldism, the emergence of the Gaullist movement and its subsequent challenge: an era dominated by the test of history, the influence of communism, and the gradual disillusionment that followed. The second volume—from 1968 to 1989—covers everything from left-wing utopianism, Solzhenitsyn, and the struggle against totalitarianism, to the "new philosophers," the rise of ecological consciousness, and the disorientation of the 1980s: an era marked by a crisis o...read more







