The Concrete and the Abstract in Modern French Philosophy

In 1929, Georges Politzer, a young high-school professor of philosophy, and then director of the short-lived Revue de psychologie concrete (1929–1930), declared, in his famous pamphlet La fin d’une parade philosophique: le bergsonisme [The End of a Philosophical Parade: Bergsonism], that the notion of the concrete had become ‘la tarte à la crème’, that is, the buzz of the moment in French academia. Politzer (2013) added, disgusted, that even ‘reactionary’ and ‘hateful’ philosophers would simulate ‘emotion in front of the concrete’, while they were just producing empty and abstract concepts. He was of course alluding to his arch-enemy Henri Bergson, but also to his admirers Jean Wahl and Gabriel Marcel, who used the term extensively during the 1920s. A year before, in his Critique of the Fundaments of Psychology, Politzer (1994) had opposed his project of a ‘concrete psychology’ to the abstractions of French philosophy and psychology, which often presented itself as ‘concrete.’ Politzer’s remarks were prophetic: during the following two decades, the term ‘concrete’ became a buzzword and was used by authors from the political left and right, including Hegelians, phenomenologists, existentialists, Marxists, and personalist Catholics.