This contribution explores the concept of the unconscious as articulated by Proust in his À la recherche du temps perdu (Proust ([1913–1927] 1998–1999) and in a series of documents and texts that preceded it. It aims at understanding whether and to what extent Proust can be placed in a line of French thought that begins with the work of Maine de Biran and culminates in the reception in the second half of the nineteenth century of Biranism by French alienists: doctors (...) specialized in the study of mental alienation. This type of interpretation of Biran’s doctrine is attuned to the increasing attention which, at the time of Proust’s education, was given to the unconscious and to the idea that, alongside the conscious self, there is an unconscious self, understood as a secondary personality that can manifest itself in the life of the individual in both normal and pathological ways. Following the interpretative path pursued in Piazza (1997, 2017), Bizub (2006), and Fraisse (2013), this article takes into account both Proust’s secondary and university education and his familiarity with experimental psychology, to which he was introduced by his father. (shrink)

Focusing on the reception of Maine de Biran by Alexis Bertrand in his thesis, L’aperception du corps humain par la conscience (1880), I will demonstrate how the “corps propre” (one’s own body) becomes a key concept in order to re-orientate the French spiritualist movement. To do so, Bertrand’s neo-Biranism uses a new methodology with phenomenological issues. The image of the body, the primitive space or the engagement within the world becomes new research themes for spiritualism. His interpretation of Biran’s philosophy (...) leads him to criticize mechanistic epistemology, and especially the concept of reflex. In this context, Bertrand proposes an animist metaphysics, aiming to reconcile his Biranism with the advances of science. As a consequence, the history of the concept of one’s own body must take into account metaphysical perspectives and not only scientific and experimental researches. (shrink)

This article compares the phenomena of “tic” and “slip of the tongue” [lapsus] as they have been described by Maine de Biran and Victor Egger, including a possible reception of Biran’s thought by Egger. In the twentieth century these phenomena will be analysed by psychoanalysts, but their first description appears in nineteenth-century French philosophy. Emerging from the analysis of Biran’s “tics” and Egger’s “slips” in the nineteenth century, the concept of habit becomes linked to a reflection on the unconscious. Tic (...) and slip of the tongue constitute, each in its own way, the place where habit exhibits its most peculiar characteristic, that of being always suspended in the dual dialectic of the voluntary and the involuntary, of the conscious and the unconscious. Maine de Biran’s “habit tics” underline the tendency set by habit for which voluntary and conscious actions become involuntary and unconscious, whereas Egger defines slip of the tongue as an involuntary and unconscious event that allows the birth of new habits. (shrink)