Jules Vuillemin

Infobox_Philosopher
region = Western Philosophers
era = 20th-century philosophy
color = #B0C4DE


image_caption =
name = Jules Vuillemin
birth = February 15, 1920
death = January 16, 2001
school_tradition = Analytic Philosophy
main_interests = Logic, Science, epistemology
influences = Kant, Joseph Louis Lagrange, Evariste Galois, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Foucault, Bertrand Russell, Gilles Gaston Granger
influenced = Jacques Bouveresse, Jean Bricmont

Jules Vuillemin (February 15, 1920 - January 16, 2001) was a French philosopher, succeeding to Maurice Merleau-Ponty at the College de France from 1962 to his death. A friend of Michel Foucault, he supported his election at the College, and was also close to Michel Serres. Vuillemin was one of the first French philosophers to interest himself in analytical philosophy, and influenced Jacques Bouveresse. Vuillemin himself vindicated the legacy of Martial Gueroult.

Life

After studying at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, he completed his agrégation in 1943, being received premier ex aequo alongside Tran Duc Thao. A student of Bachelard and Cavaillès, he was however at first influenced by phenomenology and existentialism, before shifting towards study of logics and science. In 1962, he published a book titled "The Philosophy of Algebra", dedicated to the mathematician Pierre Samuel, a member of the Bourbaki group, as well as to the physicist Raymond Siestrunck and to the linguist George Vallet. Vuillemin thought that any renewal of methods in mathematics influenced philosophy, thus relating the discovery of irrational numbers to platonism, algebraic geometry to cartesianism, infinitesimal calculus to Leibniz. Furthermore, he observed that philosophy had not yet taken into account the changes brought to mathematics by Joseph Louis Lagrange and Evariste Galois.

In 1969, he co-founded with Gilles Gaston Granger the journal "L’Âge de la Science", and was one of the main vector of transmission of Wittgenstein's thought in France [http://cairn.webnext.com/revue-histoire-des-sciences-humaines-2004-2-page-69.htm] .

Vuillemin also took an interest into aesthetics, beside writing several books on Kant, Anselm or on Diodorus's master argument (see problem of future contingents).

Bibliography

* "What are Philosophical Systems?", Cambridge University Press, 1986 en icon
* " [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Vuillemin%2C%20Jules Necessity or Contingency. The Master Argument] ", Stanford, CSLI Publications, 1996 en icon

* "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.
* "Le Miroir de Venise", Paris, Julliard, 1995.
* "De la Logique à la théologie. Cinq études sur Aristote", Paris, Flammarion, 1967.
* "Rebâtir l'Université", Paris, Fayard, 1968.
* "Leçons sur la première philosophie de Russell", Paris, Armand Colin, 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.
* "L'intuitionnisme kantien", Paris, Vrin, 1994.
* "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.
* « Nouvelles réflexions sur l'argument dominateur : une double référence au temps dans la seconde prémisse ». In : "Philosophie" 55 (1997), p. 14-30. (important complément à "Nécessité ou contingence")
* "Mathématiques pythagoriciennes et platoniciennes. Recueil d'études", Paris, Albert Blanchard, coll. Sciences dans l'histoire, 2001.

Works on Vuillemin

* 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

* Jacques Bouveresse: Hommage à Jules Vuillemin(1920-2001), Paris: Collège de France, 2001. [http://www.college-de-france.fr/media/ins_dis/UPL53971_necrovuill.pdf on-line] )
* Pascal Engel, [http://www.unige.ch/lettres/philo/enseignants/pe/Engel%202005%20Jules%20Vuillemin%20systemes%20philosophiques%20verite.pdf Jules Vuillemin, les systèmes philosophiques et la vérité] (2002 symposium on Vuillemin in Paris, published in Pierre Pellegrin and Roshdi Rashed, "Philosophie des mathématiques et théorie de la connaissance, l'oeuvre de Jules Vuillemin", Paris, Blanchard, 2005
*Jules Vuillemin, " [http://www.erudit.org/revue/philoso/1983/v10/n1/203211ar.pdf Le chapitre IX du De Interpretatione d'Aristote - Vers une réhabilitation de l'opinion comme connaissance probable des choses contingentes] , in "Philosophiques", vol. X, n°1, April 1983 (On "De Interpretatione", IX) fr icon
*Jules Vuillemin, " [http://www.reds.msh-paris.fr/publications/revue/html/ds020021/ds020021-08.htm Régime civil, droit et raison] " (Civil System, Law and Reason) in "Droit et Société" n°20-21/1992
* Jules Vuillemin, [http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1746-8361.1990.tb00958.x?journalCode=dltc On the Method] of Ferdinand Gonseth in "Dialectica", Volume 44 Issue 3-4 Page 225-228, December 1990