Jacques Bouveresse: Being UnFrench, Metaphorically

Abstract

Jacques Bouveresse is professor of philosophy at the Collège de France in Paris. He has published widely on Wittgenstein, Robert Musil and Karl Kraus. As an analytical philosopher, he has been, as it were, the mirror image of an Adorno at pre-war Oxford. Unlike his Anglo-Saxon counterparts at Oxford, he is the beleaguered minority in France. He does not have the option either of lofty disdain or Ayerish japery. He grumbles. Anyone familiar with philosophical debate or its journalistic variant in France over the past 20 years, and indeed with the `affaire Sokal', will be aware of the charge (some have regarded it as more of a jibe) made by some `analytical' philosophers that what passes for philosophy in France is not `scientific' or `precise' enough: it is little more and even less than `littérature'. This article argues that while Bouveresse is one who makes such a charge, and is well armed to do so, he nevertheless provides an interesting case in that he is by no means immune to literary materials, and indeed his treatment of metaphor leads us to question the content as well as the effectiveness of the charge.