Behind the fa ade of unity, the French intelligentsia was riven by the same fundamental divisions that had characterized it before the war. For example, the Republican Left argued that German nationalism and militarism began after Kant, with Fichte or Hegel, while the Catholic and nationalistic reactionary Right denounced Kant as the evil inspiration of France's liberal democracy and public school system. The heated rhetoric of the war and the unbearable loss of young lives, says Hanna, lent weight to a redefinition of French culture in national terms--and this, ironically, ended in the cultural conservatism of Vichy France. This is the first study of the power of French pens and words during and after the Great War. It is a contribution to French and European history as well as to intellectual history.

An intellectual biography of the renowned and influential observer of the "era of tyrannies" Élie Halévy (1870-1937) was one of the most respected and influential intellectuals of the French Third Republic. In this densely contextualized biography, K. Steven Vincent describes how Halévy, best remembered as the historian of British Utilitarianism and nineteenth-century English history, was also a persistent, acute, and increasingly anxious observer of society in a period defined by industrialization and imperialism and by what Halévy famously called the "era of tyrannies." Vincent distinguishes three broad phases in the development of Halévy's thought. In the first, Halévy brought his version of neo-Kantianism to debates with sociologists and philosophers and to his study of English Utilitarianism. He forged ties with Xavier Léon, Léon Brunschvicg, and Alain (Émile-Auguste Chartier), life-long intellectual interlocutors. Together they founded the Revue de métaphysique et de morale, a continuing venue for Halévy's reflections. The Dreyfus Affair, Vincent argues, caused Halévy to shift his focus from philosophy to history and from metaphysics to politics. He became a philosopher-historian, less interested in abstract neo-Kantianism and more in real-world action, less given to rarified debates over truth and more to investigation of how theories and their applications were situated within broader political, economic, and cultural movements. World War I and its destabilizing effects provoked the third phase, Vincent explains. As he watched reason recede before rabid nationalism and a pox of political enthusiasms, Halévy sounded the alarm about liberal democracy's vulnerabilities. Vincent situates Halévy on the unsteady and narrowing middle ground between state socialism and fascism, showing how he defended liberalism while, at the same time, appreciating socialists' analyses of capitalism's negative impact and their calls for reform and greater economic equality. Through his analysis of Halévy's life and works, Vincent illuminates the complexity of the Third Republic's philosophical, historical, and political thought and concludes with an incisive summary of the distinctive nature of French liberalism.

Drawing on examples from Britain, France, and the United States, this book examines how scholars and scholarship found themselves mobilized to solve many problems created by modern warfare in World War I, and the many consequences of this for higher education which have lasted almost a century.

A critical account of the idea of intelligence in modern French literature and thought In the late nineteenth century, psychologists and philosophers became intensely interested in the possibility of quantifying, measuring, and evaluating “intelligence,” and using it to separate and compare individuals. Disarming Intelligence analyzes how this polyvalent term was consolidated and contested in competing discourses, from fin de siècle psychology and philosophy to literature, criticism, and cultural polemics around the First World War. Zakir Paul examines how Marcel Proust, Henri Bergson, Paul Valéry, and the critics of the influential Nouvelle revue française registered, negotiated, and subtly countered the ways intelligence was invoked across the political and aesthetic spectrum. For these writers, intelligence fluctuates between an individual, sovereign faculty for analyzing the world and something collective, accidental, and contingent. Disarming Intelligence shows how literary and critical styles questioned, suspended, and reimagined what intelligence could be by bringing elements of uncertainty and potentiality into its horizon. The book also explores interwar political tensions—from the extreme right to Walter Benjamin’s engaged essays on contemporary French writers. Finally, a brief coda recasts current debates about artificial intelligence by comparing them to these earlier crises of intelligence. By drawing together and untangling competing conceptions of intelligence, Disarming Intelligence exposes its mercurial but influential and urgent role in literary and cultural politics.

Paul and Marie Pireaud, a young peasant couple from southwest France, were newlyweds when World War I erupted. With Paul in the army from 1914 through 1919, they were forced to conduct their marriage mostly by correspondence. Drawing upon the hundreds of letters they wrote, Martha Hanna tells their moving story and reveals a powerful and personal perspective on war. Civilians and combatants alike maintained bonds of emotional commitment and suffered the inevitable miseries of extended absence. While under direct fire at Verdun, Paul wrote with equal intensity and poetic clarity of the brutality of battle and the dietary needs (as he understood them) of his pregnant wife. Marie, in turn, described the difficulties of working the family farm and caring for a sick infant, lamented the deaths of local men, and longed for the safe return of her husband. Through intimate avowals and careful observations, their letters reveal how war transformed their lives, reinforced their love, and permanently altered the character of rural France. Overwhelmed by one of the most tumultuous upheavals of the modern age, Paul and Marie found solace in family and strength in passion. Theirs is a human story of loneliness and longing, fear in the face of death, and the consolations of love. Your Death Would Be Mine is a poignant tale of ordinary people coping with the trauma of war.

In The Composer as Intellectual, musicologist Jane Fulcher reveals the extent to which leading French composers between the World Wars were not only aware of but also engaged intellectually and creatively with the central political and ideological issues of the period. Employing recent sociological and historical insights, she demonstrates the extent to which composers, particularly those in Paris since the Dreyfus Affair, considered themselves and were considered to be intellectuals, and interacted closely with intellectuals in other fields. Their consciousness raised by the First World War and the xenophobic nationalism of official culture, some joined parties or movements, allying themselves with and propagating different sets of cultural and political-social goals. Fulcher shows how these composers furthered their ideals through the specific language and means of their art, rejecting the dominant cultural exclusions or constraints of conservative postwar institutions and creatively translating their cultural values into terms of form and style. This was not only the case with Debussy in wartime, but with Ravel in the twenties, when he became a socialist and unequivocally refused to espouse a narrow, exclusionary nationalism. It was also the case with the group called "Les Six," who responded culturally in the twenties and then politically in the thirties, when most of them supported the programs of the Popular Front. Others could not be enthusiastic about the latter and, largely excluded from official culture, sought out more compatible movements or returned to the Catholic Church. Like many French Catholics, they faced the crisis of Catholicism in the thirties when the church not only supported Franco, but Mussolini's imperialistic aggression in Ethiopia. While Poulenc embraced traditional Catholicism, Messiaen turned to more progressive Catholic movements that embraced modern art and insisted that religion must cross national and racial boundaries. Fulcher demonstrates how closely music had become a field of clashing ideologies in this period. She shows also how certain French composers responded, and how their responses influenced specific aspects of their professional and stylistic development. She thus argues that, from this perspective, we can not only better understand specific aspects of the stylistic evolution of these composers, but also perceive the role that their art played in the ideological battles and in heightening cultural-political awareness of their time.

The relationship between intelligent systems and their environment is at the forefront of research in cognitive science. The Unexplained Intellect: Complexity, Time, and the Metaphysics of Embodied Thought shows how computational complexity theory and analytic metaphysics can together illuminate long-standing questions about the importance of that relationship. It argues that the most basic facts about a mind cannot just be facts about mental states, but must include facts about the dynamic, interactive mental occurrences that take place when a creature encounters its environment. In a discussion that is organised into four clear parts, Christopher Mole begins by examining the mathematics of computational complexity, arguing that the results from complexity theory create a puzzle about how human intelligence could possibly be explained. Mole then uses the tools of analytic metaphysics to draw a distinction between mental states and dynamic mental entities, and shows that, in order to answer the complexity-theoretic puzzle, dynamic entities must be understood to be among the most basic of mental phenomena. The picture of the mind that emerges has important implications for our understanding of intelligence, of action, and of the mind’s relationship to the passage of time. The Unexplained Intellect is the first book to bring insights from the mathematics of computational complexity to bear in an enquiry into the metaphysics of the mind. It will be essential reading for scholars and researchers in the philosophy of mind and psychology, for cognitive scientists, and for those interested in the philosophical importance of complexity.

An entertaining cultural history of music during World War I, covering all the major European nations as well as the United States, in both classical and popular genres. The book is lavishly illustrated and includes a CD.

Drawn from the popular TechVenture program at the Kellogg School of Management, this book provides a deep understanding of the key finance and business trends in e-commerce Viewing Silicon Valley as a test lab for e-commerce strategies, this book delivers the latest financial and business models shaping the e-commerce industry. TechVenture focuses on the Silicon Valley phenomenon, the new financial strategies, and evolving e-business models. Each chapter draws from field research and interviews with the top minds in business today, and covers the most recent advances in e-finance, including: technology incubators, start-up funds, measuring intellectual capital, valuation techniques for Internet firms, and emerging technologies. In addition, TechVenture features intriguing and informative case studies and examples of major companies, including Idealab, Merrill Lynch, Pfizer, and Amazon.com. General business and finance readers, as well as those fascinated by the Internet economy, will find TechVenture an invaluable read that is on the cutting edge of e-business. Mohanbir Sawhney (Evanston, IL) is the McCormick Tribune Professor of Electronic Commerce and Technology at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University. Mr. Sawhney was recently named one of the twenty-five most influential people in e-business by Business Week magazine. Ranjay Gulati (Chicago, IL) is the Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and the Director of the Center for Resource on E-Business Innovation. Anthony Paoni (Chicago, IL) is Associate Professor at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

"Latin: A Symbol's Empire is a work of reference and a piece of cultural history: the story of a language that became a symbol with its own, highly significant empire."--BOOK JACKET.