Books by Frederic Gros
A Philosophy of Walking
“It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” —Nietzsche
In A Philosophy of Walking, a bestseller in France, leading thinker Frédéric Gros charts the many different ways we get from A to B – the pilgrimage, the promenade, the protest march, the nature ramble – and reveals what they say about us.
Gros draws attention to other thinkers who also saw walking as something central to their practice. On his travels he ponders Thoreau’s eager seclusion in Walden Woods; the reason Rimbaud walked in a fury, while Nerval rambled to cure his melancholy. He shows us how Rousseau walked in order to think, while Nietzsche wandered the mountainside to write. In contrast, Kant marched through his hometown every day, exactly at the same hour, to escape the compulsion of thought. Brilliant and erudite, A Philosophy of Walking is an entertaining and insightful manifesto for putting one foot in front of the other.
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A Philosophy of Walking
This philosophical ode to finding joy in simple things explores how walking has influenced history’s greatest thinkers—from Henry David Thoreau and John Muir to Gandhi and Nietzsche.
“It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” —Nietzsche
In this French bestseller, leading thinker and philosopher Frédéric Gros charts the many different ways we get from A to B—the pilgrimage, the promenade, the protest march, the nature ramble—and reveals what they say about us.
Gros draws attention to other thinkers who also saw walking as something central to their practice. On his travels he ponders Thoreau’s eager seclusion in Walden Woods; the reason Rimbaud walked in a fury, while Nerval rambled to cure his melancholy. He shows us how Rousseau walked in order to think, while Nietzsche wandered the mountainside to write. In contrast, Kant marched through his hometown every day, exactly at the same hour, to escape the compulsion of thought. Brilliant and erudite, A Philosophy of Walking is an entertaining and insightful manifesto for putting one foot in front of the other.
Copies
No copies available.
A Philosophy of Walking
This philosophical ode to finding joy in simple things explores how walking has influenced history’s greatest thinkers—from Henry David Thoreau and John Muir to Gandhi and Nietzsche.
“It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” —Nietzsche
In this French bestseller, leading thinker and philosopher Frédéric Gros charts the many different ways we get from A to B—the pilgrimage, the promenade, the protest march, the nature ramble—and reveals what they say about us.
Gros draws attention to other thinkers who also saw walking as something central to their practice. On his travels he ponders Thoreau’s eager seclusion in Walden Woods; the reason Rimbaud walked in a fury, while Nerval rambled to cure his melancholy. He shows us how Rousseau walked in order to think, while Nietzsche wandered the mountainside to write. In contrast, Kant marched through his hometown every day, exactly at the same hour, to escape the compulsion of thought. Brilliant and erudite, A Philosophy of Walking is an entertaining and insightful manifesto for putting one foot in front of the other.
Copies
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$19.95
A Philosophy of Shame: A Revolutionary Emotion
An original reflection on shame as the central feeling of our age, the expression of an anger that is the necessary condition for new struggles, from the author of the popular Philosophy of Walking
Can shame become a source of political strength? Faced with injustice, growing inequality and systemic violence, we cry out in shame. We feel ashamed of the world, of wealth in the face of those who have nothing, of the fortune of a few tycoons when it becomes indecent. We feel ashamed for a planet that humanity exploits without restraint, for sexist and racist behaviour. It is not just sadness and withdrawal into oneself, nor is it a paralyzing sense of inadequacy.
The feeling analyzed in this book arises when our gaze on reality renounces passivity and resignation, and instead makes imagination its critical tool: shame thus becomes the expression of an anger that is power, transformative energy, and assumes to all intents and purposes– as in the reading of Marx, recovered here–a radical value.
In a constant dialogue with authors such as Primo Levi and Annie Ernaux, Virginie Despentes and James Baldwin, Frédéric Gros explores a concept that is still little understood in its depth and in its articulations– anthropological and moral, psychological and political. Shame is a revolutionary sentiment because it lies at the foundation of any path of subjective recognition, transformation, and struggle.
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$24.95
A Philosophy of War: Why We Fight
War - what is it good for? The best-selling author of A Philosophy of Walking, Frédéric Gros returns with a book on this highly topical subject.
According to one wag, war ‘died in Hiroshima’ more than half a century ago. And yet it has never gone away.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, they said, it's the return of real war, with its atrocities, its horrors, its violence. But what is a real war? Was the violence we had been witnessing in of the war on terror, the implosion of Yugoslavia, Israel's destruction in the Middle East, or the war on women not real war?
By calling on the great political philosophers, from Plato to Marx, via Machiavelli and Hobbes, this book attempts to answer this question, along with a series of others: what is a just war? What moral forces are involved in a conflict? Does the state make war, or does war make the state? Finally, after exploring the meanings and stakes of the spectre of ‘total’ war, he tackles the ultimate question: why war?
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$17.95
The Security Principle: From Serenity to Regulation
The idea of security—from ancient Greece to the War on Terror
In The Security Principle, French philosopher Frédéric Gros takes a historical approach to the concept of security, looking at its evolution from the Stoics to the social network. With lucidity and rigour, Gros’s approach is fourfold, looking at security as a mental state, as developed by the Greeks; as an objective situation and absence of all danger, as prevailed in the Middle Ages; as guaranteed by the nation-state and its trio of judiciary, police, and military; and finally biosecurity, control, regulation, and protection in the flux of contemporary society. In this deeply thought-provoking account, Gros’s exploration of security shines a light both on its past meanings and its present uses, exposing the contemporary abuses of security and the pervasiveness of it in everyday life in the Global North.
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![Michel Foucault OEuvres (Tome 1) [ Bibliotheque de la Pleiade ] (French Edition)](https://images.isbndb.com/covers/1209513482925.jpg)
Michel Foucault OEuvres (Tome 1) [ Bibliotheque de la Pleiade ] (French Edition)
by Michel Foucault, Frederic Gros
Son oeuvre, entre philosophie, histoire et littérature, est difficile à situer. Les disciplines traditionnelles peinent à la contenir. Sa chaire au Collège de France s'intitulait Histoire des systèmes de pensée. Lui-même ne cessa jamais de relire Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, mais il cite moins les classiques de la philosophie que d'obscurs traités, règlements ou manuels conservés dans des fonds d'archives, royaumes des historiens. Des historiens «professionnels de son temps Foucault partage d'ailleurs l'ambition : ouvrir l'histoire à de nouveaux objets. Il reste que ce sont bien des problématiques philosophiques que renouvellent ses «histoires» (de la folie, de la sexualité), ses «archéologies» (des sciences humaines, du savoir), ses récits de «naissance» (de la clinique, de la prison). Et j'ai beau dire que je ne suis pas un philosophe, si c'est tout de même de la vérité que je m'occupe, je suis malgré tout philosophe. Philosophe malgré tout, Foucault a inventé une nouvelle manière de faire de la philosophie. Il n'a pas apporté une pierre de plus à l'édifice compartimenté de la pensée : en en abattant les cloisons, il en a bouleversé l'architecture. Il a rendu les disciplines communicantes. Certains spécialistes n'ont pas manqué de le lui reprocher. Et la littérature ? Ses livres sont savants. Ils témoignent d'une érudition stupéfiante. Encore faut-il donner forme à l'informe de l'archive. Les citations, le maillage de références, la mise en scène d'épisodes historiques, tout, chez Foucault, est déplié, exposé dans une écriture tour à tour baroque et rigoureuse, austère et splendide, démesurée et classique. En bibliothèque, il se sent porté par les mots des autres. Leur intensité nourrit son écriture. La lecture se prolonge, se renforce, se réactive par l'écriture, écriture qui est elle aussi un exercice, elle aussi un élément de méditation. Le matériau des historiens et l'horizon tracé par les philosophes s'augmentent chez lui d'une exigence littéraire apprise auprès de Flaubert, Blanchot, Beckett. Le traiter de styliste serait réducteur. Foucault, qui se disait artisan, est un écrivain. Outre un choix de textes brefs, articles, préfaces ou conférences, cette édition rassemble tous ses livres personnels. Leur influence est immense. Mais leur réunion ne vise pas à former une autobiographie intellectuelle. Je ne veux pas de ce qui pourrait donner l'impression de rassembler ce que j'ai fait en une espèce d'unité qui me caractériserait et me justifierait. Voyons plutôt en elle ce que Foucault disait d'Histoire de la folie en 1975 : J'envisageais ce livre comme une espèce de souffle vraiment matériel, et je continue à le rêver comme ça, une espèce de souffle faisant éclater des portes et des fenêtres.
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Disobey: A Philosophy of Resistance
Exploring the philosophy of disobedience
The world is out of joint, so much so that disobeying should be an urgent question for everyone. In this provocative essay, Frédéric Gros explores the roots of political obedience. Social conformity, economic subjection, respect for authorities, constitutional consensus? Examining the various styles of obedience provides tools to study, invent and induce new forms of civic disobedience and lyrical protest. Nothing can be taken for granted: neither supposed certainties nor social conventions, economic injustice or moral conviction.
Thinking philosophically requires us never to accept truths and generalities that seem obvious. It restores a sense of political responsibility. At a time when the decisions of experts are presented as the result of icy statistics and anonymous calculations, disobeying becomes an assertion of humanity.
To philosophize is to disobey. This book is a call for critical democracy and ethical resistance.
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States of Violence: An Essay on the End of War (The French List)
According to political philosopher Frédéric Gros, traditional notions of war and peace are currently being replaced by ideas of intervention and security. But while we may be able to speak of an end to war, this does not imply an end to violence. On the contrary, Gros argues that what we are witnessing is a reconfiguration of our ideas of war, resulting in new forms of violence—terrorist attacks, armed groups jockeying for territory, the use of precision missiles, and the dangerous belief that conflict can be undertaken without casualties.
In States of Violence, Gros explains how war was once conducted to defend or increase the power of a city, an empire, or a state, but today conflict is directed at the very fragility of the individual and based upon a logic of unilateral destruction inflicted upon deprived civilian populations. While war was once rationalized as justified bloodshed, these new states of violence are instead centered on the spectacle of stark, publicized civilian suffering. By charting the history of the philosophy of conflict in Western discourse, Gros offers a stimulating and timely critique of contemporary notions of war and terror.
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$19.95