Ferdinand Alquié

Ferdinand Alquié (18 December 1906 – 28 February 1985) was a French philosopher and member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques from 1978.

In the years 1931 to 1945 he was a professor in various provincial and Parisian lycees, and later at the University of Montpellier and Sorbonne where he worked until he retired in 1979.

Alquié's career was dominated by the decades-long polemic between himself as a Cartesian and the Spinozian perspective of his rival Martial Gueroult.

He was vehemently opposed to all forms of philosophical monism and felt that human life is permeated by various forms of dualism.

He was opposed to totalitarianism as well as to Marxism; as a close friend of André Breton, he aligned himself with the surrealist project.

He was an instructor of Gilles Deleuze, whom, according to Michael Hardt, he accused of drawing on biology, psychology, and other fields, neglecting philosophy.

Deleuze responded by agreeing with Alquié and moreover, he argued that his primary interest was precisely in the metaphysics science needs rather than in the science philosophy needs.

Alquié went on to direct Deleuze's secondary thesis, "Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza."

Also among his students at the Sorbonne was the Finnish feminist philosopher and Descartes specialist Lilli Alanen.

Alquié has published many books about Descartes, Kant and Spinoza, as well as a book on Nicolas Malebranche.

He was close to the artist André Breton and wrote Philosophy of Surrealism (1955), which espoused a view of surrealism as a form of humanism that values the vibrant potential of the unconscious mind.