Victor Frangeul Baron | Doktorand Stipendiat

Critical Thinking in the Plural. Conceptual Approaches in Research in the Social Sciences
Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstraße 191, D-10117 Berlin
Email: victor.frangeul  ( at )  cmb.hu-berlin.de Tel: +49(0) 30 / 20 93 70700

Home Institution : ENS Paris/Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main | Position : Grant-funded PhD candidate | Disciplines : Philosophy |

Biography

Victor Frangeul Baron is working on a doctoral thesis in philosophy under the joint supervision of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt/Main. His research focuses on the genealogy of Theodor W. Adorno's historical thought and the way in which it recaptures the sociology of knowledge and the historical character of theory itself. A former student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and holder of a master's degree in history of philosophy from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne with a specialisation in German philosophy, he obtained a specific three-year doctoral contract and taught at the ENS Paris and in a Parisian high school, before moving to Berlin to continue his archival. He has also received grants from the UFA, the DAAD and the Berlin Parliament.

Researchtopic

Negative interpretation of history : nature, forgetfullness and remembrance in Th. W. Adorno
 

Title of thesis
Negative interpretation of history : nature, forgetfullness and remembrance in Th. W. Adorno

Negative interpretation of history : nature, forgetfullness and remembrance in Th. W. Adorno

By teaming up the history of ideas with the critical theory of history, this dissertation aims at enlightening the crisis of the concept of historical consciousness. The examination of the critical model unfolded by Adorno in order to think history presents two main stakes. From a philosophical point of view, his thought is topical due to its elucidation of the connection between individual subjects and history. From a philological perspective, the interpretation of the first works of Adorno allows to take another look at the widespread diagnostic of a failure of his philosophy of history. A double goal lies at the core of this study. The negative one sets his sights on the presumption of a pessimistic principle involving the unfolding history according to Adorno; we will show that his critic only appears desperate because of his attention to the psychosocial reality. Our positive goal involves revealing how the analysis of the Adornian critic of the belief in progress far from closing historical perspectives unveils a certain confidence in the feasibility of history. The concept of history-nature allows revising the dominant reception of Dialectic of enlightenment by correcting the idealist remnants of Marxism through a heuristic consideration of the naturalization of history. After having inspected the accusation of pessimism, the study shows how Adorno builds up a coherent theory of history in which men would not be objects anymore, but rather subjects. Through the concepts of history, forgetfulness and remembrance, Adorno restores at a theoretical level the feasibility of history through the reformulation of the Benjaminian remembrance of the suffering settled down in layers throughout the history and through a peculiar interpretative model.

Publications

-[planned for Nov. 2024] "Sens et violence du sacrifice chez Th. W. Adorno et René Girard", in Trajectoires.


-With the translation group of the Centre Marc Bloch: French translation of Adorno's "Über Tradition" - published in: DAVID, Christophe, PERRIER, Florent (éd.) Où en sommes-nous avec la théorie esthétique d'Adorno, Rennes, Pontcerq, 2018, pp.427-440.