République des Savoirs

Laboratoire transdisciplinaire du CNRS, ENS et du Collège de France

CRRLPM

Centre de Recherches sur les Relations entre Littérature, Philosophie et Morale
Présentation :
This research centre was created in the spring of 2006 to promote trans-disciplinary projects that enrich our knowledge of the relationships between literature, philosophy and morals – and their interactions with the history of science. Depending on the topic addressed, the latter can lead all the way to the ancient sources of moral reflection and downstream to contemporary ethical issues.
Sitting at the crossroads of several disciplines and, as far as methods are concerned, it aims never to dissociate that which pertains to the history of ideas or philosophy, on the one hand, from that which belongs to the history of forms, genres, styles, and the evolution of language itself, on the other.

Two types of questioning are brought together:

  • Literature and philosophy: how to determine the dividing lines and points of passage between two forms of discourse which, in the classical age, could not be fully separated nor totally amalgamated? How do philosophy and “literature” interact with each other and advance together? In which ways were certain literary genres and traditions linked to the history of philosophy – not only to that of its modes of enunciation, but also to that of its objects and ends? Conversely, how were certain salient points of philosophical debates linked to the very status of literary activity in the Republic of Letters? How, moreover, should we interpret the uncertainties that have affected the reception of many texts? And how have these (various) questions evolved, depending on the moments under consideration, between the Classical Age and the contemporary period?
  • Literature and morals: it is not only a matter of reframing in a long-term perspective a very old question – which, since the origins of “literature” itself, has unfailingly gone hand in hand with its history –, but also one of reframing it in new terms, at the interface of significant developments currently taking place in literary theory and moral philosophy.