La “filosofía de campo” en Francia: filosofía parasitaria

Abstract

This article addresses the question: What is field philosophy (philosophie de terrain) in France? It does so through four key dimensions: its institutionalization, its origins, its method, and its uniqueness. Over the past decade, field philosophy has gained visibility and institutional support within some of the country’s most prominent academic and publishing institutions. Its defining feature lies in the fact that philosophical reflection and concept creation begin with prior fieldwork. Engaging in such fieldwork has led practitioners of field philosophy to adopt research tools traditionally associated with the social sciences, thereby generating inevitable tensions both between dogmatic philosophy and field philosophy, and between field philosophy and the social sciences themselves. In response to these criticisms, and in an effort to clarify its contours, this article argues that field philosophy is in fact the reactivation of a mode of philosophizing that was already present in the eighteenth century (through the figure of «the writer-philosopher») and in the second half of the twentieth century (through the figure of the «militant-philosopher» and the «pirate-philosopher»). The article also briefly examines the history of the social sciences —particularly sociology— as well as that of ethnography, in order to show that both their emergence and their methodological procedures are deeply indebted to the history of philosophy. Finally, it proposes that the uniqueness of field philosophy lies in its parasitic capacity and in its ongoing efforts toward institutionalization.