French philosophy
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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French philosophy, here taken to mean philosophy in French language, has been extremely diverse and influential to both the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy for centuries, from René Descartes through Voltaire and Henri Bergson to 20th century Existentialism and Post-structuralism.
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17th century
The modern period is usually taken to start with the seventeenth century and more specifically, with the work of René Descartes, who set much of the agenda as well as much of the methodology for those who came after him. Much of this started in Paris.
18th century
Prominent Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire, Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau questioned and attacked the existing institutions of both Church and State.
19th century
French philosophy of the 19th century was imbued with philosophers of the 18th century, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
20th century
Twentieth-Century French Philosophy was influenced by German philosophy, and the role of the French Communist Party in liberating France, meaning that it became for a brief period the largest political movement in the country. The attendant interest in communism translated into an interest in Marx and Hegel, who were both now studied extensively for the first time in the French university system. On the other hand, there was a major trend towards the ideas of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, and toward his former disciple Martin Heidegger. Most important in this popularisation of phenomenology was the author and philosophy teacher Jean-Paul Sartre (by then a noted intellectual), who called his philosophy existentialism.
