The campaign against reason. Irrationalism in Contemporary French Bourgeois Philosophy: Kyiv, Vydavnytstvo AN URSR [Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR], 1960, 156 p.

The aim of the work is to criticize the philosophical foundations of irrationalism on the example of 20th century French philosophy. The book is based on the author's PhD thesis. Analyzing the genesis of the phenomenon of irrationalism, the author seeks to reveal the organic connection between the irrationalist self-negation of philosophy and philosophical idealism, and also proves the ideological and theoretical affinity of “atheistic” irrationalism with religious “rationalism”. Irrationalism is considered as a phenomenon inherent in various philosophical trends - “atheistic” and Catholic existentialism, spiritualism, Bergsonianism, phenomenology, neotomism, and neopositivism. Popovych draws on thematic French-language works by Ferdinand Alquié, Jean-François Lyotard , Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Étienne Gilson, Jean Wahl, Vladimir Jankélévitch, and others.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter I. Social roots and ideological sources of contemporary French irrationalism

Social roots of irrationalism in modern France

Ideological sources of contemporary French irrationalism

Chapter II. The irrationalist denial of the objectivity of the laws of nature

Contemporary French idealists on their attitude to irrationalism

What lies behind the talk about the ‘reasonableness of the world’

More about the ‘reasonableness of the world’. Irrationalism and dialectic

Chapter III. The irrationalist campaign against reason

Irrationalism on the nature of thinking

Reason and intuition

Irrationalism and the problem of freedom and necessity

Conclusion. French Communists at the forefront of the struggle against irrationalism

Appendices