Jules Vuillemin (; ; 15 February 1920 – 16 January 2001) was a French philosopher, Professor of
Philosophy of Knowledge at the prestigious
Collège de France
The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment ('' grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris n ...
, 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. Si ...
, from 1962 to 1990, succeeding
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and
Professor emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
from 1991 to 2001. He was an Invited Professor at the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...
, in
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of w ...
(1968).
At the Collège de France, Vuillemin introduced
analytical philosophy to
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
. Vuillemin’s thought had a major influence on
Jacques Bouveresse
Jacques Bouveresse (; 20 August 1940 – 9 May 2021) was a French philosopher who wrote on subjects including Ludwig Wittgenstein, Robert Musil, Karl Kraus, philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of mathematics and analytical philosophy ...
's works.
Vuillemin himself vindicated the legacy of
Martial Gueroult.
A friend of
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and ho ...
, he supported his election at the Collège de France, and was also close to
Michel Serres.
Biography
After studying at the
Ecole Normale Supérieure, he completed his
agrégation
In France, the ''agrégation'' () is a competitive examination for civil service in the French public education system. Candidates for the examination, or ''agrégatifs'', become ''agrégés'' once they are admitted to the position of ''profe ...
in 1943, being received ''
premier ex aequo
Premier is a title for the head of government in central governments, state governments and local governments of some countries. A second in command to a premier is designated as a deputy premier.
A premier will normally be a head of gov ...
'' alongside
Tran Duc Thao
Trần Đức Thảo (Từ Sơn, Bắc Ninh, 26 September 1917 – Paris, 24 April 1993) was a Vietnamese philosopher. His work (written primarily in French) attempted to unite phenomenology with Marxist philosophy. His work had some currency ...
. A student of
French historical epistemologists
Gaston Bachelard and
Jean Cavaillès
Jean Cavaillès (; ; 15 May 1903 – 4 April 1944) was a French philosopher and logician who specialized in philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. He took part in the French Resistance within the '' Libération'' movement and was a ...
, he was however at first influenced by
phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
and
existentialism
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and val ...
, before shifting towards study of
logics
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premis ...
and
science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...
. In 1962, he published a book titled ''The Philosophy of Algebra'', dedicated to the mathematician
Pierre Samuel, a member of the
Bourbaki group
Nicolas Bourbaki () is the collective pseudonym of a group of mathematicians, predominantly French alumni of the École normale supérieure - PSL (ENS). Founded in 1934–1935, the Bourbaki group originally intended to prepare a new textbook ...
, as well as to
René Thom
René Frédéric Thom (; 2 September 1923 – 25 October 2002) was a French mathematician, who received the Fields Medal in 1958.
He made his reputation as a topologist, moving on to aspects of what would be called singularity theory; he becam ...
, to the physicist
Raymond Siestrunck and to the linguist
George Vallet. Vuillemin thought that renewals of methods in mathematics have influenced philosophy, thus relating the discovery of
irrational numbers to
Platonism
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at l ...
,
algebraic geometry
Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics, classically studying zeros of multivariate polynomials. Modern algebraic geometry is based on the use of abstract algebraic techniques, mainly from commutative algebra, for solving geometrical ...
to
Cartesianism, infinitesimal
calculus
Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematics, mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizati ...
to
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of ...
. Furthermore, he observed that philosophy had not yet taken into account the changes brought to mathematics by
Joseph Louis Lagrange and
Évariste Galois
Évariste Galois (; ; 25 October 1811 – 31 May 1832) was a French mathematician and political activist. While still in his teens, he was able to determine a necessary and sufficient condition for a polynomial to be solvable by radical ...
.
In 1968, he co-founded with
Gilles-Gaston Granger the journal ''L’Âge de la Science''. He was one of the main commentators of
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, a ...
,
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian- British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is consi ...
,
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. ...
and
Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine (; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century" ...
in France.
Vuillemin also took an interest into
aesthetics
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...
, beside writing several books on
Kant,
Anselm or on
Diodorus's master argument (see
problem of future contingents
Future contingent propositions (or simply, future contingents) are statements about states of affairs in the future that are '' contingent:'' neither necessarily true nor necessarily false.
The problem of future contingents seems to have been fi ...
).
Jules Vuillemin’s Archives
Th
Jules Vuillemin's Archivesare located in France at the Laboratoire d'Histoire des Sciences et de Philosophie - Archives
Henri Poincaré
Jules Henri Poincaré ( S: stress final syllable ; 29 April 1854 – 17 July 1912) was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "Th ...
.
Gilles-Gaston Granger was, until his death in 2016, the president of the scientific committee of Jules Vuillemin's Archives.
Jules Vuillemin's Archives.
/ref>
Bibliography
* ''Le Sens du destin'', en collaboration avec Louis Guillermit, Neuchâtel, Éditions de La Baconnière, 1948.
* ''Essai sur la signification de la mort'', Paris, PUF, 1948.
* ''L'Être et le travail. Les conditions dialectiques de la psychologie et de la sociologie'', Paris, PUF, 1949.
* ''L'héritage kantien et la révolution copernicienne. Fichte — Cohen — Heidegger'', Paris, PUF, 1954.
* ''Physique et métaphysique kantiennes'', Paris, PUF, 1955, rééd. PUF, coll. Dito, 1987.
* ''Mathématiques et métaphysique chez Descartes'', Paris, PUF, 1960, rééd. PUF, 1987.
* ''La Philosophie de l'algèbre'', Vol. I : ''Recherches sur quelques concepts et méthodes de l'Algèbre Moderne''. Paris, PUF, 1962, rééd. 1993.
* ''De la Logique à la théologie. Cinq études sur Aristote'', Paris, Flammarion, 1967, nouvelle version remaniée et augmentée par l'auteur / editée et prefacée par T. Benatouil. - Louvain-La-Neuve, Peeters, 2008.
* ''Leçons sur la première philosophie de Russell'', Paris, Armand Colin, 1968, in reference to The Principles of Mathematics.
* ''Rebâtir l'Université'', Paris, Fayard, 1968.
* ''La logique et le monde sensible. Étude sur les théories contemporaines de l'abstraction'', Paris, Flammarion, 1971.
* ''Le Dieu d'Anselme et les apparences de la raison'', Paris, Aubier, 1971.
* ''Nécessité ou contingence. L'aporie de Diodore et les systèmes philosophiques'', Paris, Minuit, 1984, réed. 1997.
* ''Éléments de poétique'', Paris, Vrin, 1991.
* ''Trois Histoires de guerre'', Besançon, Cêtre, 1992.
* ''Dettes'', Besançon, Cêtre, 1992.
* ''L'intuitionnisme kantien'', Paris, Vrin, 1994.
* ''Le Miroir de Venise'', Paris, Julliard, 1995.
* « Nouvelles réflexions sur l'argument dominateur : une double référence au temps dans la seconde prémisse ». In : ''Philosophie'' 55 (1997), p. 14–30.
* ''Mathématiques pythagoriciennes et platoniciennes. Recueil d'études'', Paris, Albert Blanchard, coll. Sciences dans l'histoire, 2001.
;English translations
*
Necessity or Contingency. The Master Argument
', Stanford, CSLI Publications, 1996
* ''What are Philosophical Systems?'' Cambridge University Press, 1986
References
Further reading
* G.G. Brittan Jr. (Hrsg.): Causality, Method and Modality. Essays in Honor of Jules Vuillemin. Dordrecht u.a.: Kluwer, 1991.
* Pierre Pellegrin and R. Rashed, ''Philosophie des mathématiques et théorie de la connaissance, l'oeuvre de Jules Vuillemin'', Paris, Blanchard, 2005.
External links
*
Jules Vuillemin's Lectures
*
Jules Vuillemin’s Archives
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vuillemin, Jules
1920 births
2001 deaths
People from Doubs
École Normale Supérieure alumni
Collège de France faculty
20th-century French philosophers
Philosophers of science
Analytic philosophers
French male non-fiction writers
20th-century French male writers