Relationship between the Physical and the Moral in Man

Maine de Biran's work has had an enormous influence on the development of French Philosophy - Henri Bergson called him the greatest French metaphysician since Descartes and Malebranche Jules Lachelier referred to him as the French Kant and Royer-Collard called him simply 'the master of us all' - and yet the philosopher and his work remain unknown to many English speaking readers.<br/><br/>From Ravaisson and Bergson through to the phenomenology of major figures such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty Michel Henry and Paul Ricoeur Biran's influence is evident and acknowledged as a major contribution. The notion of <i>corps propre</i> so important to phenomenology in the twentieth century originates in his thought. His work also had a huge impact on the distinction between the virtual and the actual as well as the concepts of effort and <i>puissance</i> enormously important to the development of Deleuze's and Foucault's work.<br/><br/>This volume the first English translation of Maine de Biran in nearly a century introduces Anglophone readers to the work of this seminal thinker. <i>The Relationship Between the Physical and the Moral in Man</i> is an expression of Biran's mature 'spiritualism' and philosophy of the will as well as perhaps the clearest articulation of his understanding of what would later come to be called the mind-body problem. In this text Biran sets out forcefully his case for the autonomy of mental or spiritual life against the reductive explanatory power of the physicalist natural sciences. <br/><br/>The translation is accompanied by critical essays from experts in France and the United Kingdom situating Biran's work and its reception in its proper historical and intellectual context.