Today, we are frequently told that many things are “problematic,” a term that has metonymically come to function at the limit as a simple pejorative. Here, we have convened a virtual collection of eminent scholars of French philosophy – overlapping with a concrete workshop of scholars convened at Deakin University in Melbourne in December 2015 on the same topic – to discuss the philosophical stakes of the notion of the “problem” as such, through the undertaking of the archaeology of twentieth-century French philosophy.
This special issue is thus dedicated to the operation of the concept of the problem, and its derivatives, in French philosophy during the twentieth century. Trying simultaneously to maintain focus on a single topic within a single geographical locus and a single time period has proved difficult, since none of these things exist in isolation. Inevitably, figures from outside France have become major interlocutors in some instances (which is unavoidable in so far as French philosophy in the twentieth century has been more influenced by German philosophy than earlier French philosophy), and ideas from previous centuries, and developments from the current century, bear on the problems discussed. Nevertheless, we have made sure that every article bears primarily on a philosopher from twentieth-century France. With the focus on the concept of the problem, things have become still blurrier, naturally enough inasmuch as the question of what counts as a problem is itself part of our remit, and inasmuch as this is quite a broad concept.
The papers comprising this collection take different types of approaches to the notions of problems and problematics, as well as to methods of problematization, in twentieth-century French thought – sometimes within a single article. Firstly, many contributions focus on clarifying the often obscure but always fundamental role played by a notion of problems or a problematizing method within the work of a given thinker. We thus find illuminating articles dealing with Bergson (Lundy, Bowden), Cavaillès (Cassou-Noguès), Lautman (Duffy), Bachelard (Bowden, Ross), Canguilhem (Bowden, Ross), Simondon (Voss), Marcel (Hernandez), Althusser (Kelly), Foucault (Kelly, Allen, Koopman) and Deleuze (Bowden, Koopman). Through this focus on problems, these papers augment our understanding of the philosophical programs of many twentieth-century French thinkers, including several who are little known and appreciated in the English-speaking academy. Moreover, the great diversity of treatments of notions of problems and methods of problematization highlight the fact that, despite the frequency with which these terms are used in philosophy, their meanings are far from transparent and univocal. One of the achievements of the special issue as a whole is thus to raise the following question: if it is true that genuine thought begins with problems, as philosophers often maintain, then how should the very notion of a problem be understood?
A second approach taken by several papers is to develop a critical genealogy of these notions of problems and methods of problematization, as well as of the lineages of philosophers for whom these notions and methods loom large. Bianco thus provides us with a history of a notion of problems from antiquity to the present; Kelly critically examines the relation between Althusser and Foucault vis-à-vis the notions of problematics and problematization; and Ross reassesses Foucault's philosophical proximity to the work of Bachelard and Canguilhem. In a related way, other papers bring to light some rather unique philosophical problematics, such as Allen on the problem posed by psychoanalysis to a Foucauldian conception of critical problematization, or Sharpe on Hadot's central philosophical problematic of a “phenomenology of sagesse.” Through the lens of a notion of problems, then, these papers trouble the often-invoked idea that there are distinct and homogeneous traditions or orientations in thought in twentieth-century France (e.g., French rationalism, philosophies of the concept, philosophies of experience, etc.). Moreover, they also allow us to see with greater clarity, beneath these homogenizing clichés, something of the philosophical diversity and wider philosophical stakes characterizing the French philosophical scene throughout the twentieth century.
Thirdly, several papers take up a particular thinker's notion of problems, or method of problematization, and bring it to bear on a particular issue. Exemplary in this regard is Hernandez on Marcel and the problem of evil, and Koopman on Foucault, Deleuze and the problem of sexuality. But we might also consider here Bowden's discussion of the relation between problems and the genesis of conceptual thinking and knowledge. These contributions highlight the theoretical richness and critical potential of certain notions of problems and methods of problematization for contemporary theory and practice.
Finally, several contributions focus on articulating the requirements of a method of problematization or of a concept of problems, such as Koopman on the requirements of a contemporary, experimental method of problematization, or Bowden on the conceptual requirements of an “anti-positivist” conception of problems. Such papers highlight that the very notions of problems, problematics and problematization remain a problem for us today. In other words, if, as is often affirmed, problems are the motor of thinking and practice, then this issue suggests that we would do well do understand the structure of these motors.
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A sweeping historical study of the notion of the problem and its role within philosophy, including in particular philosophical programs and philosophy's own self-understanding, opens the issue. Commencing in antiquity, Giuseppe Bianco traces the transformations and philosophical and strategic uses of a concept of problems through medieval, modern and contemporary thought, up to late twentieth-century France. With a particular focus on Kantianism and Deleuze, his study not only establishes the broadest possible context for the thematic focus of this special issue but also uses the notion of the problem to give a sense of unity to philosophy's multiply bifurcated history.
Craig Lundy's contribution, focusing on Bergson, brings us back to the turn of the twentieth century. Lundy articulates the various aspects of what he calls Bergson's “problematic philosophy,” which he takes to be simultaneously metaphysical and methodological. Focusing in particular on the two lengthy introductions to The Creative Mind, Lundy argues that Bergson's concern with the problem of “metaphysical precision” leads him to develop a “method of problematisation” capable of delivering a precise knowledge of reality. The metaphysical reality in question, of course, is time or duration, understood as the continuous creation of unforeseeable novelty. However, the human intellect's tendency to think in terms of concepts whose objects are properly static entities cannot deliver knowledge of this mobile reality. As a result of this epistemological gap, Lundy argues, Bergson develops his problematizing “method of intuition” which, pace Deleuze, has both a negative and a positive moment. Negatively, the method involves the identification and dissolution of those “false problems” which, because of their dependence on the static conceptions and other operations of the pragmatic and spatializing intellect, lead the metaphysician astray in their search for a knowledge of reality. On the other hand, positively, the method of intuition involves “posing problems in terms of time,” or a certain “thinking in time,” which is adequate to grasp real duration as ongoing self-differentiation. Lundy thus concludes that Bergson's problematizing method of intuition is both motivated by and confirms his metaphysics.
Sean Bowden's article is also concerned with Bergson's account of problems. It critically examines the relation between problems and the formation and development of concepts in Bergson's work, as well as in Bachelard, Canguilhem and Deleuze. Building on work by Elie During, Bowden argues that it is not only Bergson but also Deleuze who shares with the French epistemological tradition an “anti-positivist” conception of concept formation, founded upon the posing and solving of novel problems as opposed to the acquisition of verified empirical facts. Contrary to During, however, Bowden argues that it is not Bergson but Deleuze who furnishes us with an “anti-positivist” conception of problems that is adequate to this anti-positivist conception of concept formation. Deleuze's anti-positivist view of problems holds, firstly, that genuine problems require the creation of novel terms in which to state and solve them. He shares this view with Bergson, Bachelard and Canguilhem. Secondly, however, Deleuze holds that a problem's “truth” is not to be evaluated with reference to its eventual solutions (as is the de facto position of Bachelard and Canguilhem), nor with reference to some privileged and contentful experience of reality (as with Bergson). The truth of a problem, for Deleuze, is a matter of its purely intrinsic genetic power. A false problem, by contrast, is one that is extrinsically conditioned.
The primary focus of Pierre Cassou-Noguès's contribution is to clarify the role that a notion of problems plays in Cavaillès's account of the history and becoming of mathematics. In Cavaillès's early work, open mathematical problems – in the sense of “problems” used by working mathematicians – are understood to propel mathematical becoming. These problems take shape within the tensions of an existing mathematical theory and, if they are not solvable within that theory, demand the introduction of new mathematical notions in order to be solved, which in turn opens up a new theory, with new problems, and so on. This view of problems as both emerging from and transforming the mathematical field – which correspondingly presents features of both continuity and discontinuity – brings Cavaillès to attribute a certain necessity to mathematical becoming. And as Cassou-Noguès then argues, this claim about necessity, brought to light by the role of open mathematical problems in mathematical becoming, lies at the heart both of what is most questionable and what is most interesting in Cavaillès's work. On the one hand, it leads Cavaillès to claim for mathematical becoming a kind of universality that is in fact difficult to justify. On the other, however, it illuminates Cavaillès's most well-known claims about the autonomy of mathematics in his posthumously published On the Logic and Theory of Science, even if the vocabulary of “problems” has disappeared: his valorization of a “dialectic of concepts” and critique of the “philosophy of consciousness.” Finally, Cassou-Noguès indicates another kind of “problem” that was alluded to but never explored by Cavaillès, namely, those “questions” or “enigmas” that are not so much opened and closed within mathematical becoming but rather pervade the entire history of mathematics (“what is a number?,” “what is a deduction?,” etc.). Although Cavaillès did not give an account of the status of such persistent or transcendent kinds of questions and their repetition within mathematical becoming, Cassou-Noguès argues that Albert Lautman, Cavaillès's student and friend, can be understood to have done so after a fashion, as the contribution from Simon Duffy confirms.
Duffy elucidates Lautman's thesis that mathematics, the mathematical problems it grapples with, and the solutions to these problems, are governed by a “dialectic of Ideas.” The Ideas of this dialectic constitute an abstract “problematic” in so far as they take the form of a problem of establishing connections between opposing notions or concepts, such as local–global, continuous–discrete, finite–infinite, and so on. Importantly, however, the connections between these notions can only be specified within effective mathematical theories. Problematic Ideas are thus, simultaneously, transcendent and immanent with respect to mathematical theory. They transcend and govern mathematics in the sense that, for Lautman, effective mathematical theories are to be understood as a response to the abstract problem posed by problematic Ideas. However, problematic Ideas are also immanent with respect to effective mathematical theory, in so far as the specification of abstract problematic Ideas is inseparable from the progress of the concrete mathematical theories which give them substance, which is to say, as working mathematicians grapple with particular mathematical problems that arise in the history of mathematics and resolve them in the form of new theories, definitions or axioms.
Daniela Voss examines Simondon's genetic theory of individuation and clarifies the role played therein by a notion of problems. She is concerned, in particular, to recover Simondon's original use of a notion of problems against the influential interpretation proposed by Deleuze. Voss argues that, while Deleuze “universalised” the Simondonian notion of problems, Simondon himself tends to employ a notion of problems only when speaking of living beings, which is to say, of vital and psycho-social individuation, as opposed to physical individuation. The reason for this, Voss argues, is that Simondon is motivated by a concern to clearly distinguish non-living from living systems, along with the specific conditions underpinning their very different processes of individuation, even if both types of systems impact upon one another within a larger evolutionary process. After discussing physical individuation and differentiating it from vital individuation, Voss thus brings into focus Simondon's use of a notion of problems in relation to the living, clarifying for us why the living is said to be a “problematic being”: an element in a “problematic greater than its own being,” as well as the “agent and theatre of an ‘interior problematic’” which requires an inventive solution.
Turning to the French existentialist tradition, Jill Hernandez's article explores the distinction in Gabriel Marcel's work between problem and mystery, the latter of which Marcel also calls the “meta-problematical.” For Marcel, problems are disruptions of the functional world and can be studied and solved in a detached way, isolated from the persons who are touched by them. A problem is an obstacle to be overcome using an appropriate technique that could be employed by any person facing an obstacle of that type. A mystery or meta-problematic, by contrast, is a problem in which the being of the person for whom it is a problem is bound up. Taking up this distinction as well as Marcel's reflections on the subject, Hernandez argues that evil in the world can be treated either as a problem – as something whose causes are to be discovered and eliminated – or as a mystery – as something in which the self is inextricably involved, in the form of suffering. However, these two approaches to evil are in fact, for Hernandez, the two arms of an antinomy: on the one hand, some forms of evil have a subjective dimension to them that makes the treatment of them as objective problems inappropriate and existentially fraught; on the other hand, concrete experiences of suffering in the world cannot simply be overcome by reflecting upon evil as a mystery with which the sufferer is bound up. What is needed, then, Hernandez argues, is a dissolution of this antinomy and corresponding transformation of evil through an existentially engaged and communal encounter with hope.
Matthew Sharpe turns his attention to an eminent twentieth-century French philosopher outside of the usual canon of “French theory,” Pierre Hadot, known to anglophone scholars primarily through the influence of his studies of antiquity on Foucault's work on the same period. Sharpe follows other readers of Hadot in insisting on the richness and importance of Hadot's contribution as a philosopher in his own right, while bringing him again into conversation with Foucault, arguing here that Foucault's late position is closer to Hadot's than is often allowed, pace Hadot's own explicit disagreements with Foucault.
Alison Ross then tackles Foucault's relation to his great precursory influences in the twentieth-century tradition of the French philosophy of science, Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem. She challenges now-standard readings that Foucault is simply following in this lineage, noting that his full-scale scepticism in relation to all knowledge claims diverges discretely from the earlier thinkers' attempts to provide a systematic account of scientific development.
Unsurprisingly given its theme, the figure of Foucault is of central importance to this special issue. In his contribution, Mark G.E. Kelly revisits the relationship between Foucault and his sometime mentor Louis Althusser. He asks firstly how Althusser's notion of the problematic may relate to Foucault's system of thought, concluding that despite some semblances in fact no equivalent notion exists for Foucault, though this is not to say that the notion is incompatible with Foucault's thought, but rather Kelly argues that it provides an additional useful concept. He then turns his attention to Foucault's notion of problematization, disagreeing pointedly with Koopman's understanding of the term, and arguing that Althusser is very close to Foucault here, with Foucault exceeding Althusser only in coming up with a specific concept to refer to problematization as such.
Amy Allen reassesses the question of Michel Foucault's ambiguous relation to psychoanalysis by considering this relation through Foucault's notion of critique as critical problematization. After patiently serially explicating and dealing with the points of alleged disagreement between Foucault and psychoanalysis, she concludes that psychoanalysis is in fact compatible with Foucauldian critique, despite Foucault's own reservations about it, including the Lacanian modality of psychoanalysis that he explicitly criticizes. Indeed, Allen argues furthermore that psychoanalysis is internal to Foucault's critical method itself as such.
In the issue's concluding contribution, Colin Koopman undertakes a comparison of Michel Foucault's and Gilles Deleuze's thoughts around their shared project of a “critical problematization of sexuality.” For Koopman, what is singularly important and shared between the two thinkers is a critical method of a new type, ultimately Kantian but immanent rather than transcendental, and experimentally abductive unlike the deductive and dialectical Hegelian form of immanent critique. In this regard, Koopman builds on his body of work associating French philosophy with American pragmatism. Koopman substantiates his thesis through readings of Foucault's well-known History of Sexuality, Volume 1 for its genealogical method, and of Deleuze's rather more obscure symptomatological method, which Koopman follows Daniel W. Smith in suggesting that it may be more fundamental for understanding Deleuze than his metaphysics is.
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The editors would like to acknowledge those who contributed to the realization of this special issue, whether directly or indirectly. Particular thanks are due to Angelaki's editors and especially Gerard Greenway, copy-editor James Hypher, and our hard-working and collegial contributors and reviewers. The Faculty of Arts and Education, the Alfred Deakin Institute and the PHI research group at Deakin University generously contributed to the initial workshop that formed the basis for the special issue. Thanks are also owed to Max Lowdin for his editorial assistance at different stages. Finally, Sean Bowden would like to thank Miriam, Ellis and Laurence for their patience and support throughout the project.
The foreword and cover image, Effigy – Black Beach, is by Jade Suine, depicting a photograph of the artist in the process of being covered by the sea on a volcanic black sand beach on the northern coast of Iceland. Our use of it here is a deliberate allusion to the final words of Foucault's The Order of Things: “l’homme s’effacerait, comme à la limite de la mer un visage de sable.”