Introduction: Maine de Biran and the Afterlives of Biranism

François-Pierre-Gontier Maine de Biran (1766–1824), better known as Maine de Biran, has often been described as the man of a single book—a book that, nevertheless, he never wrote.1 As a matter of fact, he was a prolific and indefatigable writer, whose ideas, however, took a long time to be made public. If Biran himself published very little during his lifetime2, the considerable number of manuscripts that he left behind had several editorial vicissitudes. The first, partial, edition of his works, edited by Victor Cousin3, only appeared in 1834, ten years after Biran’s death. Titled Nouvelles considérations sur les rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme (New Considerations on the Relations of the Physical and the Moral of Man) (Paris: Lagrange), this edition only included a very limited selection of Biran’s texts.4 In a second edition in four volumes, published in 1841 with the more comprehensive title Œuvres philosophiques de Maine de Biran (The Philosophical Works of Maine de Biran) (Paris: Lagrange), Cousin finally added other key texts, such as the essay Influence de l’habitude sur la faculté de penser (Influence of Habit on the Faculty of Thinking), already published by Biran himself in 1802, and the Mémoire sur la décomposition de la pensée (Dissertation Concerning the Decomposition of Thought, 1804), which became known for the first time.5 However, it wasn’t until the 1859 edition in three volumes, Œuvres inédites de Maine de Biran (Unpublished Works by Maine de Biran) (Paris: Dezobry, E. Magdeleine), edited by Ernest Naville and Marc Debrit6, that we get a more accurate idea of what, from this moment on, will be called “Biranism,” meaning the proper Biranian doctrine supported or even shaped by the different layers of its reception. Together with the Essai sur les fondements de la psychologie et sur les rapports avec l’étude de la nature (Essay on the Foundations of Psychology and its Relationship to the Study of Nature), this new edition also revealed to the public for the first time other key texts, such as the Examen critique des opinions de M. de Bonald (Critical Examination of the Opinions of Louis de Bonald) and the Nouveaux essais d’anthropologie (New Essays on Anthropology), Biran’s final and comprehensive work, which nevertheless remained unfinished. Likewise, Naville and Debrit’s edition also made available the first complete and systematic catalog (Catalogue raisonné) of the philosophical works by Maine de Biran, drawn up for the purpose of allowing the foundation of a new “spiritualism” in line with what Biran himself had called, in his Critical Examination of the Opinions of Louis de Bonald, “the important problem of man.”7While his thought had never explicitly resulted in the establishment of a school and his philosophy remained for a long time outside institutional channels, Maine de Biran was well known among his contemporaries. During the nineteenth century, his ideas circulated widely in France and in Europe, often anonymously, crossing paths with and sometimes determining the developments of modern and contemporary philosophy, from Théodore Jouffroy (1796–1842) or Félix Ravaisson (1813–1900)8 to Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904)9 up to Existentialism and Phenomenology. According to Henri Bergson, Biran was the greatest French metaphysician since the time of Descartes and Malebranche and the undisputed founder of French spiritualism.10 In L’être et le néant (Being and Nothingness, 1943), in the chapter devoted to the body and the structures of consciousness, Jean-Paul Sartre cannot overlook, even while criticizing it, the “famous ‘sensation of effort’” theorized by Maine de Biran.11 In his 1959 lecture on “What is psychology?,” Georges Canguilhem proposed a well-known analysis of Biran’s psychology of interiority, in which Biran is presented not only as an exemplary figure at the intersections between psychology, anthropology, and epistemology but also as an essential milestone for an epistemology of the “Science of Man” in which psychology can properly resist its appropriation by physiology.12 At the end of the twentieth century, Gilles Deleuze still referred to Maine de Biran in his lectures as well as in his writings, in particular in the last essay published in his lifetime, “Immanence: A Life …”, where Biran’s “last philosophy” is evoked in dialogue with the reflections of Husserl and Sartre.13 But it is, above all, with the phenomenological movement, from Michel Henry14 to contemporary Eco-Phenomenology15, that philosophers have continued to look at Maine de Biran. If Merleau-Ponty owes to him the fundamental notion of corps propre (one’s own body)16, Paul Ricoeur and Marc Richir see in Maine de Biran the first to have grasped the relational structure of consciousness and the importance of the purely affective and intersubjective dimensions of our existence.17Even though Biran’s name is still largely forgotten today, this scattered constellation of references allows us to grasp, despite its lack of systematicity, the decisive although hidden importance of Biranian thought in its intermittent resurfacing.If it is true, as Walter Benjamin argued, that for every work of the past there is a “now of knowability” (das Jetzt der Erkennbarkeit)18—a moment of readability in which it discloses a meaning that had until then remained blocked or forgotten,—it seems to us that the time is ripe for a complete resurfacing of Biranian philosophy, now finally freed from interpretative preconceptions and the various political, religious, and ideological frameworks that had hitherto prevented its full reception. Among these preconceptions, in particular, the idea of Maine de Biran as the “French Fichte,” according to a well-known formula first introduced by Victor Cousin.19 The association with Fichte and with German Idealism has for a long time concealed the originality of Biran’s philosophy, which goes hand in hand with the centrality assigned to the body and to the vital and physiological dimension of our existence.20 As Mark Sinclair noted, Maine de Biran is certainly not the first philosopher to have affirmed that consciousness or the self are founded on will; in his Dissertation Concerning the Decomposition of Thought, it is Biran himself who cites in this regard the names of Schelling and Fichte, whom he knew indirectly through Joseph-Marie Degérando (1772–1842) and the first edition of his Histoire comparée des systèmes de philosophie, relativement aux principes des conanissances humaines (Comparative History of the Systems of Philosophy, in Relation to the Principles of Human Knowledge) (Paris: Heinrichs, 1804). If Biran mentions them, however, it is not so much to recognize a filiation but rather to distance himself, because they did not see that “free, voluntary activity can be the origin of consciousness only insofar as it meets a resistant term. In pure activity without resistance […], as much as in pure passivity, consciousness would be absent.”21 This “resistant term,” however, is not an external body, for example a surface—as Sartre mistakenly believed when criticizing Biran—but our own body. Despite various attempts to bring Maine de Biran closer to German Idealism, he remains a thinker fundamentally alien to this tradition. Together with Montaigne, of whom he is a successor22, Maine de Biran is, in the French tradition, one of the first philosophers of the body. Putting the body back at the center of Biran’s philosophy—not only the lived body, which is the correlative of the self and consciousness, but also the living body, which is the origin and location of affective life—is therefore the first step towards a full rediscovery of the original meaning of his thought. This meaning would remain hidden without an examination of the ties between Biran’s philosophy and the medicine and physiology of his time.It is only recently, thanks to the monumental critical edition of Biran’s works in thirteen volumes, directed by François Azouvi (Maine de Biran, Œuvres, Paris: Vrin, 1984–2001), that scholars have started to acquire a growing understanding of the importance of this neglected thinker and of the transdisciplinary significance of his philosophy. The recent English translation of two of Biran’s major works—the 1811 Rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme (The Relationship between the Physical and the Moral in Man, edited by D. Meacham and J. Spadola, London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2016) and the 1807 essay De l’aperception immédiate (Of Immediate Apperception, edited by A. Aloisi, M. Piazza, and M. Sinclair, London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2020)—has confirmed that interest and attention are growing also on an international scale. Prior to these two recent translations, the only Biranian text available in English was the 1802 essay on the Influence of Habit on the Faculty of Thinking23—one of the few texts published by its author and the only one to circulate widely among his contemporaries (Stendhal, for instance, was among its passionate readers).24 Despite its importance, which has not escaped twentieth-century psychologists, neuroscientists, and cognitive scientists25, the essay on habit has given us, up until today, a quite embryonic image of Biran’s thought, still close to the Ideological philosophy of Antoine Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836) and Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis (1757–1808). These new translations, whose impact in the English-speaking world we have yet to measure fully, are contributing to a broadening reception of Maine de Biran internationally.This special issue intends to be part of (and to contribute to) this renewed vitality of Biranian studies. It is the outcome of a recent international event: the conference Maine de Biran et le Biranisme. Enjeux d’une histoire complexe entre physiologie, psychologie, philosophie et littérature (Maine de Biran and Biranism. Stakes of a Complex History between Physiology, Psychology, Philosophy and Literature), which took place on January 22, 2021 and was organized by Alessandra Aloisi and Delphine Antoine-Mahut, editors of this volume, in a collaboration between the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, the University of Oxford, and the University of Roma Tre. The aim of this conference, which was attended by some of the most internationally renowned Biranian scholars, such as François Azouvi, Bernard Baertschi, Anne Devarieux, Marco Piazza, and the medical anthropologist Samuel Lézé, was to explore the philosophical, psychological, physiological, and psychopathological origins and dimensions of Biranism, as well as the traces of its multifaceted cultural afterlife—direct and indirect, philosophical and literary—between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Graduate students were active and enthusiastic participants, and this online conference had more than forty attendees from all over the world, including Europe, Canada, the US, and South America. Among the various fields of investigation that this study day aimed to investigate, there was in particular the question of the unconscious. Characterized by an essentially heterodoxical position in relation to medicine and between philosophy, psychology, and literature, during the nineteenth century and beyond, Biranism was the ideal laboratory for the theorization of specific conceptions of the unconscious which resist its systematization by psychoanalysis.26 These conceptions prove to be particularly relevant and cutting-edge today, now that the centrality of the psychoanalytic paradigm, which widely dominated our representation of the unconscious over the course of the twentieth century, has been profoundly put into question by the emergence of the cognitive sciences and by a growing understanding of the historical and cultural dimensions of psychoanalysis.It is often underlined, as if to diminish its significance, how Biran’s philosophical writing was often determined by external circumstances, such as the participation in competition prizes. This is the case not only with the essay on The Influence of Habit, but also with the Dissertation Concerning the Decomposition of Thought, the essay Of Immediate Apperception, and The Relationship between the Physical and the Moral in Man, which were all written in response to competition questions proposed by the Institut de France, the Academy of Berlin, and the Academy of Copenhagen, respectively. The fact is that Maine de Biran, who was neither a philosopher by profession nor ever had an academic post, was always in search, throughout his life, of points d’appui (points of support) to anchor his philosophical reflection in the turmoil of the institutional and political commitments that marked his existence in one of the most turbulent periods in French history.27 This same search, of which Biran’s Journal offers a daily account, also inspired various initiatives, both private and public, that he undertook with the aim of creating spaces for free and independent philosophical and scientific discussion and exchange. Among these initiatives, the Societé Philosophique (Philosophical Society) that, starting from 1814, Biran periodically gathered in his house and whose meetings were also attended, among other prominent intellectuals and scientists, by Victor Cousin, at that time a “young professor of philosophy,”28 or the Société médicale de Bergerac, a proper multidisciplinary scientific community that Biran founded, together with local doctors and practitioners, when he was sub-prefect of Bergerac. Some of Biran’s most important philosophical contributions are indeed linked to the activities of this Society, active between 1807 and 1810, and animated by the wish to encourage dialogue and the circulation of knowledge between different scientific fields: the Mémoire sur les perceptions obscures (Dissertation Concerning Obscure Perceptions, 1807), the Observations sur les divisions organiques du cerveau (Observation on the Organic Divisions of the Brain, 1808), and the Nouvelles considérations sur le sommeil, les songes et le somnambulisme (New Considerations on Sleep, Dreams, and Somnambulism, 1809). It is above all in these texts—at the intersection between medical and philosophical debate, and between psychology and physiology—that the interest of Biran’s philosophy in relation to the question of the unconscious starts to emerge.As in other areas of his philosophical reflection, also with respect to the question of the unconscious, Biran proves to be one of the most acute, original, and yet unorthodox successors of Leibniz in France. According to Jeremy Dunham, throughout his philosophical career, and especially towards the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century, Maine de Biran never stopped thinking with Leibniz, carrying out a strategic operation of and of of philosophy that he most to his own philosophical questions and If of shaped Biran’s understanding of the of in the of and shaped Biran’s understanding of the unconscious, at the same to a of which is different from that of and whose have not yet been which this special the of that Maine de Biran out in the last decade of his philosophical this is thanks to his with philosophy, Biran the notion of by the of and the It is idea of a that Biran to the idea of with that of and it to the fact of step by step the in which this fundamental took throughout Biran’s from his Dissertation Concerning the Decomposition of in which he still his to the Ideological school inspired by to his last texts written in such as the sur Concerning the of and the Nouveaux essais d’anthropologie (New Essays on behind a Biran as a that much to If Leibniz by at the very of Biran in by the idea of a and by on the fact of second by a which goes from Biran’s to his last texts, allowing us to the of his philosophy. to one of the most and of Maine de Biran’s that of the of the self with affective in its intersubjective in particular on the of which and throughout Biran’s in the essay on The Influence of Habit despite a moral significance, is and through the of in the Dissertation Concerning Obscure it a more and physiological Biran to and it with particular to the between and in the in the last of his philosophy, to the aux fondements de la et de la Concerning the of and Biran a different of which is on the activity of the self and can therefore in a proper foundation for and on Maine de Biran’s with the notion of in the last of his philosophical activity when this physiological notion is to the of existence in its essential with respect to the that the self has of its own existence A that has into today, and often with other such as or between the end of the century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, was a at the of the most recent in the of medical It a specific of to a of the living body, from the the end the nineteenth century, with the of this notion circulated widely not only in but also in France, contributing to the theorization of the unconscious. Maine de Biran, however, was the first to of in France. The aim of is to how this notion Biran with for a of unconscious in on the reception of Maine de Biran by the philosopher of a of inspired by Leibniz, in Maine de Biran one the first of the in particular du corps la (The of the Human through which an to a new of inspired by a specific reception of Biranism. how the study of the notion of corps propre (one’s own for a of its phenomenological as well as its and moral Biran’s philosophy allows to a critique of which it to the of the of own body with the of physiology and his by how this to an the aim of which is to Biranism with the most recent scientific though Maine de Biran never a of the a this was introduced only at the end of the nineteenth Biran’s such as the philosopher Paul and his the Pierre or such as Pierre were very much of the importance of this of his philosophical According to François Azouvi, one of the of Biran’s reflection of the existence of an that is to the between consciousness and is an among scholars the nature of the Biranian unconscious, it is to be as is, or The contributions of and Marco into this of discussion and the and of Biran’s of the unconscious in literature, psychology, and on the of and of the and key of these were first and described by Maine de Biran and Victor one of the of nineteenth century French psychology and the tradition, who much to Biran’s reflection on habit and the two the but also the between the Maine de Biran habit as the of a according to through voluntary and and unconscious, of the as an and unconscious that the of new However, in both as and of the in its own one of the most of habit as it was described by Maine de that of by the of the voluntary and the and of the and the author of can be as one of the most well-known successors of Biran’s ideas the unconscious in French was one of at the of according to some scholars, himself of Biran’s ideas through the study of at the that Maine de Biran on theorization of the unconscious. In Biran’s of the unconscious a from the physiological to the that according to can be in two first, by at the philosophical and through which and Biran’s texts, by into own strategic of Biran’s reflection in the of his own these two to Biran’s in the of French reflection on the unconscious, together with the philosophical of Pierre with Marco which the of the unconscious as it was by in his la du of and in a of and aim is to the to which whose of the unconscious remains be as part of a of French thought that with the work of Maine de Biran and in the reception of Biranism by French in the second of the nineteenth into specific both and which took place in a moment in which the question of the unconscious was and knowledge of psychology, to which he was introduced by his professor of at the Faculty of in and author of several medical that this special issue will be only the first step towards a rediscovery of Maine de Biran’s philosophy and its cultural work remains to be not only with respect to the French philosophical tradition, but also in relation to the and

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