Luc Foisneau


Luc Foisneau, born in Blois on 30 March 1963, is a French philosopher specialising in contemporary political thought and that of the Early Modern period. Director of research at CNRS, he is a member of the Centre Raymond Aron, and teaches at School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.

Biography

A former student of the Ecole normale supérieure he has a PhD from Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne and his habilitation from Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales. From 1993-1995 he was a member of the Centre de philosophie politique et juridique, in the University of Caen, and from 1995-2003 a member of the Centre d'histoire de la philosophie moderne. In 2003 he joined the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, pursuing research there and at the Maison Française until 2006. He was also lecturer at Sciences Po, Paris, from 1993-2003.

Research Themes

Foisneau wrote his doctoral thesis on the notion of the absolute power of God in Thomas Hobbes' political theory, notwithstanding Hobbes' reputation as a renowned atheist. Foisneau analysed this under-explored conception of power in relation to the fundamental moral and political principles underpinning Leviathan. In 2001 he was awarded the Prix de l'association des professeurs et maîtres de conférences de Sciences Po, Paris. He is recognised as a world expert on the work of Thomas Hobbes, which he has edited and translated into French.
Foisneau also devoted fifteen years of research to one of the fundamental aspects of modern political thought: the connection between theories of sovereignty and theories of government. He has since turned his attention to the work of John Rawls, and in particular the manner in which Early Modern contract theories were reprised and transformed in the Rawlsian tradition of theories of justice. In particular, he has focused on the ways in which the idea of justification has had a profound effect in transforming theories of modern democracy. Between 2001 and 2015 Foisneau directed work on an encyclopaedia of French philosophers and their networks in the seventeenth century in which 167 scholars participated. An English edition of the encyclopaedia was published in 2008, entitled The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century Philosophers. An augmented French edition will be published in 2015 as Dictionnaire des philosophes français du XVIIe siècle : acteurs et réseaux de savoir.

Publications

Books