Marlon Salomon

Alexandre Koyré and the writing of the history of the thought

Our aim is to study the conception of the history of A. Koyré's thought from four axes of investigation. Koyré insists on the importance of the present in the study of history. It establishes a new statute for the present-past relation and transforms the understanding of history as a science of the past. Secondly, it is a matter of understanding the object on which its historical analysis is exercised. His effort is to reconstitute a priori historical basis of thought. On that account, the importance of his concept of revolution, which marks exactly the transformation of this basis, with the theme of discontinuity, is introduced in historiography. Next, it is studied the contemporaneity of the constitution of the writing of the history of thought with the School of the Annales. Two different attitudes to historical time allow us to analyze this constitution. Finally, it is studied a major shift in Koyré's work, which will mark an important part of French philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century: with it, philosophy is shifted to archives.