New book involving Laval Thomists

Recently, a book in French has been published on various Canadian philosophers, including a few Thomists from Laval: Pierre-Alexandre Fradet’s book, Le désir du réel dans la philosophie québécoise. From a translation of the publisher’s release:

Who can spontaneously name philosophers from Québec? Who has ventured to read them? From which perspectives or through which lenses are they understood? Too few people are able to answer these questions, and that is why the present book does useful work by shining the spotlight on five major figures: Charles De Koninck, Thomas De Koninck, Jacques Lavigne, Charles Taylor, and Jean Grondin. These five philosophers of yesterday and today have kept afloat the desire to know the real, contrary to the many attempts at deconstruction that innervated the 20th century.

Rest assured: none of these philosophers claims to reveal once and for all the very essence of reality. But their works make it clear what absurdities one exposes oneself to when one affirms that the world is at worst a fabric of lies, at best, entirely a construct. By dwelling in turn on their various contributions, this work does not intend to play the card of Lionel Groulx against that of Paul-Émile Borduas, the card of tradition against that of modernity, the card of the past against that of the future. Rather, it seeks to show that there exists, before and after the Quiet Revolution, a Quebec philosophy worthy of the greatest attention.

Doctor of philosophy jointly supervised at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon and Laval University, Pierre-Alexandre Fradet undertook postdoctoral research on Quebec philosophy at the University of Montreal. He has published several books, including Philosopher à travers le cinéma québécois (Hermann), Derrida-Bergson: Sur l’immédiateté (Hermann) and Une vie sans bon sens: Regard philosophique sur Pierre Perrault (Nota bene, with Olivier Ducharme). He co-edits two reviews: one on Quebec cinema and philosophy for Nouvelles Vues (with Sylvano Santini), the other on speculative realism for Spirale (with Tristan Garcia). Winner of one of the Grands Prix for independent journalism, he teaches with passion at the Cégep de Saint-Laurent.

For more information, see the publisher’s website.