This paper aims to analyze Pierre Janet’s interpretation of Maine de Biran’s notion of the “unconscious” through a comparative study between L’automatisme psychologique (1889) and some Biranian writings devoted to the problem of pure affections. The objective is to question whether Janet’s psychological reading of this very notion had been faithful to Biran’s intentions, and to understand what kind of Biranism Janet is referring to when dealing with the problem of the unconscious.

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)