Sandra Laugier

TV-Philosophy in Action is inspired by philosopher and series-devotee Sandra Laugier’s monthly columns published in the French journal Libération. It is her contribution to the collective reflection on TV series produced by critics, theorists, and the vast mass of individual watchers who evaluate and discuss these programmes every day. The book brings together a selection of articles from Libération, as well as longer pieces, to demonstrate ‘TV-Philosophy in action’: Laugier’s response as a philosopher-viewer to a range of particularly salient TV shows from the last 20 years, and their relationship to social and political issues of our times. Arranged under a number of important themes—relating to politics, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves about our world—the book shows how TV series provide a rich resource for thinking about our lives, and places them centre-stage as works of art, and of thought, in their own right.

A Matter of Detail inspires new ways of thinking about detail by bringing anthropology, philosophy, art history, and aesthetics into direct conversation. Co-editors Brandel, Das, Laugier, and Pitrou challenge a long-standing assumption that the history of detail begins with European modernity and follows a teleological course from an object of scorn to a sign of the good. In its place, they offer a history of attention to detail that draws on classical and vernacular histories and traditions found in grammar, ritual, and poetics around the world. Emphasizing detail as a method and moving between its usage as a noun (detail) and a verb (detailing) enables them to tell stories about the reassembly of detail across accidents, contingencies, and unintended consequences.From this vantage, the book argues that details are not always small and insignificant. Rather, there is a dynamic relationship between the minute and the grand, detail and surface, which makes the proliferation of details threatening to the idea of an authoritative and integrated imagination of the whole. This expanded context generates ways of conceiving detail as a conceptual and moral mode of self-formation and being toward others, both human and non-human.

A holistic introduction to Wittgenstein’s philosophy that approaches him as a philosopher of ordinary life. One of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s most consequential claims was that the meaning of the word, its sense, is its use in language. This deceptively simple claim, the foundation of what became known as ordinary language philosophy, has animated thinkers across disciplinary bounds from metaphysics to ethics and more. In The Senses of Use, Sandra Laugier embarks on a fresh journey through Wittgenstein’s corpus that emphasizes the place of ordinary life and language in its thought. Through his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Philosophical Investigations, and rich posthumously published works, Laugier offers a compelling new look at Wittgenstein as a philosopher of mind.

This is the first book to explore the hold of TV series on our lives from a philosophical and ethical perspective. Sandra Laugier argues that this vital and ubiquitous expression of popular culture throughout the world is transformative in its effects on the activity of philosophy in everyday life. Drawing on Stanley Cavell’s work on film and ordinary experience, Laugier contends that we are deeply affected by the formative role played by the TV series we watch, and by the ways they become interconnected with our daily lives. The philosophical thinking embodied in series empowers individuals in their capacity to experience, understand and appropriate elements of the world, and to educate themselves. Through our relationships with TV series, we develop our own tastes and competences, which are constitutive of our distinct experience of life. ‘Series-philosophy’ is thus a democratizing force. It also offers us a new ethics, for morality can be found not in general rules and abstract principles but in the narrative texture of characters in everyday situations facing particular ethical problems, and with whom we form attachments that result in our moral education—in sometimes surprising ways.

Ou va la philosophie francaise? Quelles sont les preoccupations majeures de celles et ceux qui pratiquent la philosophie en France aujourd'hui? Quels sont leurs liens avec la tradition philosophique francaise, et comment interrogentils le present? Comment percoivent-ils l'avenir? Ce volume rassemble les contributions d'une cinquantaine de philosophes qui exposent leurs influences, leurs questionnements et leurs pratiques face au monde contemporain. S'y dessine un etat des lieux de la philosophie de langue francaise, dont la grande force est sa remarquable diversite de methode, sa capacite a decloisonner les disciplines et un rapport singulier a l'ecriture. Le lecteur trouvera ici des etudes qui engagent la philosophie francaise a se penser vis-a-vis de courants aussi varies que la phenomenologie, la theorie critique, la tradition analytique, la deconstruction, l'hermeneutique, le neo-realisme ou realisme speculatif, les theories feministes et, la theorie de la race, les theories du soin ("care"). Ainsi confrontee a l'heterogeneite et a la vivacite des humanites et des sciences, la philosophie francaise precise ses contours et deploie la specificite de ses enjeux au coeur de la pensee contemporaine.

Now in paperback, Sandra Laugier's reconsideration of analytic philosophy and ordinary language. Sandra Laugier has long been a key liaison between American and European philosophical thought, responsible for bringing American philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Stanley Cavell to French readers—but until now her books have never been published in English. Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy rights that wrong with a topic perfect for English-language readers: the idea of analytic philosophy. Focused on clarity and logical argument, analytic philosophy has dominated the discipline in the United States, Australia, and Britain over the past one hundred years, and it is often seen as a unified, coherent, and inevitable advancement. Laugier questions this assumption, rethinking the very grounds that drove analytic philosophy to develop and uncovering its inherent tensions and confusions. Drawing on J. L. Austin and the later works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, she argues for the solution provided by ordinary language philosophy—a philosophy that trusts and utilizes the everyday use of language and the clarity of meaning it provides—and in doing so offers a major contribution to the philosophy of language and twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy as a whole.

This is the first book to explore the hold of TV series on our lives from a philosophical and ethical perspective. Sandra Laugier argues that this vital and ubiquitous expression of popular culture throughout the world is transformative in its effects on the activity of philosophy in everyday life. Drawing on Stanley Cavell’s work on film and ordinary experience, Laugier contends that we are deeply affected by the formative role played by the TV series we watch, and by the ways they become interconnected with our daily lives. The philosophical thinking embodied in series empowers individuals in their capacity to experience, understand and appropriate elements of the world, and to educate themselves. Through our relationships with TV series, we develop our own tastes and competences, which are constitutive of our distinct experience of life. ‘Series-philosophy’ is thus a democratizing force. It also offers us a new ethics, for morality can be found not in general rules and abstract principles but in the narrative texture of characters in everyday situations facing particular ethical problems, and with whom we form attachments that result in our moral education—in sometimes surprising ways.

TV-Philosophy in Action is inspired by philosopher and series-devotee Sandra Laugier’s monthly columns published in the French journal Libération. It is her contribution to the collective reflection on TV series produced by critics, theorists, and the vast mass of individual watchers who evaluate and discuss these programmes every day. The book brings together a selection of articles from Libération, as well as longer pieces, to demonstrate ‘TV-Philosophy in action’: Laugier’s response as a philosopher-viewer to a range of particularly salient TV shows from the last 20 years, and their relationship to social and political issues of our times. Arranged under a number of important themes—relating to politics, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves about our world—the book shows how TV series provide a rich resource for thinking about our lives, and places them centre-stage as works of art, and of thought, in their own right.

La signification politique et sociale de l'oeuvre de Wittgenstein n'est pas l'aspect de son oeuvre le mieux reconnu. Elle fait pourtant l'objet d'un debat permanent chez ses lecteurs, surtout depuis que la methode du second Wittgenstein est une reference dans differents domaines des sciences sociales, de l'anthropologie a la theorie critique. Longtemps consideree comme pronant l'acceptation des formes de vie et l'immanence aux pratiques, la philosophie de Wittgenstein semble peu ouverte aux modes de pensee critiques et a la possibilite du changement social. Pourtant, par l'examen attentif des usages du langage et des transformations qu'ils produisent et requierent, elle eclaire nos efforts pour imaginer de nouvelles possibilites de vie, des changements progressifs ou radicaux. Les formes de vie ne sont pas limitees par la portee de nos concepts. Ce volume explore cette dimension de plus en plus vivante de la philosophie de Wittgenstein.

English summary: Through the concept of the ordinary, and what is ordinary, the present volume explores contemporary American philosophy. More specifically, the author presents Stanley Cavells role at the center of this movement to examine its innovative approach to philosophy, one that draws on what we have at hand, but also seeks to discover and invent. French description: Savons-nous vraiment ce qu'est l'ordinaire, ce qui nous est ordinaire? Penser la philosophie americaine, et le role qu'a son coeur joue Stanley Cavell, signifie poser de nouveau ces questions, afin de mettre en evidence une nouvelle voix ou tradition contemporaine qui, a partir du langage ordinaire, parvient a redonner de la vie a des enjeux philosophiques devenus trop conformistes ou etroits, et a rearticuler les questions de langage (ordinaire) au moral et a l'esthetique, comme au politique. A la fois objet de rejet et de fascination, l'ordinaire est comme l'autre de la philosophie, ce qu'elle veut, dans son arrogance, depasser, mais aussi ce vers quoi elle aspire, nostalgiquement, a retourner. Penser la philosophie americaine signifie repenser l'ordinaire en dehors de ces deux tendances: recommencer la philosophie, non pas a zero, mais avec ce qu'on a sous la main, sous les yeux, et qui reste a decouvrir, ou a inventer.

Sandra Laugier has long been a key liaison between American and European philosophical thought, responsible for bringing American philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Stanley Cavell to French readers - but until now her books have never been published in English. "Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy" rights that wrong with a topic perfect for English-language readers: the idea of analytic philosophy. Focused on clarity and logical argument, analytic philosophy has dominated the discipline in the United States, Australia, and Britain over the past one hundred years, and it is often seen as a unified, coherent, and inevitable advancement. Laugier questions this assumption, rethinking the very grounds that drove analytic philosophy to develop and uncovering its inherent tensions and confusions. Drawing on J. L. Austin and the later works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, she argues for the solution provided by ordinary language philosophy - a philosophy that trusts and utilizes the everyday use of language and the clarity of meaning it provides - and in doing so offers a major contribution to the philosophy of language and twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy as a whole.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) est desormais reconnu pour l'un des plus grands philosophes du XXe siecle; il reste cependant a part. Philosophe phare de la philosophie analytique naissante, il ne cadre pas avec elle, ou ce qu'elle est devenue. C'est evidemment un philosophe, mais il fait une critique de la philosophie. Il parait ne faire que detruire tout ce qui est grand et important (... en ne laissant que des debris et des gravats.) (Recherches Philosophiques, 118). Mais c'est pour detruire ou renverser notre idee de ce qui est grand et important, nous ramener a la vie et au langage ordinaires.

L'histoire contemporaine de la philosophie anglo-americaine semble parfois se confondre avec le developpement de la philosophie analytique , le plus souvent presente comme a la fois unifie, coherent et inevitable. Or, il n'est pas certain que le concept meme de philosophie analytique soit si clair, ni a fortiori qu'une certaine version imposee de cette philosophie (ou methode) doive avoir le monopole de la pensee rigoureuse dans le contexte actuel. Il serait donc interessant de repenser les raisons memes du mouvement qui, tout au long du XXe siecle, a conduit la philosophie analytique a se constituer en difference d'autres courants. Quoi qu'il en soit, il est peut-etre temps, en suivant l'exemple de ses representants americains les plus inventifs, d'examiner la constitution de la philosophie analytique. Nous allons donc tenter ici de montrer les tensions inherentes a la definition de cette philosophie.