French philosophy, here taken to mean philosophy in French language, has been extremely diverse, and influential to both the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy for centuries, from René Descartes through Voltaire and Henri Bergson to 20th century Existentialism and Post-structuralism.

17th century

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The modern period is usually taken to start with the seventeenth century and more specifically, with the work of René Descartes, who set much of the agenda as well as much of the methodology for those who came after him.

18th century

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Prominent Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire, Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau questioned and attacked the existing institutions of both Church and State.

19th century

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French philosophy of the 19th century was imbued with philosophers of the 18th century likeJean-Jacques Rousseau.

Post WW II

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After World War II there was an explosion of interest in German philosophy in France. On the one hand, the role of the French Communist Party in liberating France meant that it became for a brief period the largest political movement in the country. The attendant interest in communism translated into an interest in Marx and Hegel, who were both now studied extensively for the first time in the French university system. On the other hand, there was a major trend towards the ideas of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, and toward his former disciple Martin Heidegger. Most important in this popularisation of phenomenology was the author and philosophy teacher Jean-Paul Sartre (by then a noted intellectual), who called his philosophy existentialism.

See also

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Continental philosophy | Philosophy by region | Philosophers by language