Franck Fischbach

Franck Fischbach (born 3 June 1967) is a French philosopher and professor of German philosophy at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris 1). He is affiliated with the Centre for the History of Modern Philosophies at the Sorbonne and is a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (Class of 2025). He is recognized for his work in the fields of the history of German philosophy and social philosophy.

Family and early life His father was Fred Fischbach (1924–1993), an Alsatian who resisted forced conscription into the Wehrmacht in 1942, a volunteer fighter in the lsace-Lorraine Independent Brigade, a long-time member of the French Communist Party, a senior lecturer in German studies at the University of Lille 3, and a specialist on Bertolt Brecht, and Hanns Eisler.

His mother was Yvette Lemat (1931–2025), a French-Swiss native of the Canton of Vaud, a German teacher, and an honorary deputy headmistress of the Lycée Condorcet (Paris). Franck Fischbach completed his secondary education at that lycée, as well as two years of preparatory classes (including the khâgne in the philosophy class of Jean-Pierre Osier, a student of Louis Althusser and translator of Ludwig Feuerbach and Thomas Hodgskin.

Later education He studied at the École normale supérieure lettres et sciences humaines (promotion 1987), then achieved agregation in philosophy in 1991. He earned his doctorate from Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University in 1996. His doctoral thesis was supervised by Bernard Bourgeois and focused on Hegel and Schelling.

He completed a habilitation to direct research in philosophy in 2002. The habilitation was sponsored by Jean-François Kervégan, also at Paris 1, and investigated the formation of the modern ontology of activity spanning Fichte to Marx. It was titled .

Career Fischbach is a professor of the history of modern German philosophy at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University since 2021. He previously taught at the University of Poitiers, Rouen, Le Mirail (from 2003) and then at the Université Nice-Sophia-Antipolis. From 2014-2018, he was director of the faculty of philosophy at the University of Strasbourg. From 2019-2023, he presided over the section 17 (Philosophy) in the (CNU).

He coedits, with Sandra Laugier the collection "Problèmes & Controverses" at the Librairie philosophique J. Vrin (Paris) and, with Sylvia Giocanti, the collection "La philosophie à l'œuvre" at Éditions de la Sorbonne (Paris). His book Faire ensemble. Reconstruction sociale et sortie du capitalisme (Le Seuil, 2024) won the essay prize from Les Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco in 2025.

Research Fischbach’s work encompasses two fields: first, the history of modern and contemporary German philosophy (ranging from Fichte to Heidegger and the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory, including Hegel, the Young Hegelians, and Marx; and second, social philosophy It is within this theoretical framework that Fischbach has philosophically addressed the question of labor. He has proposed understanding labor as an activity that cannot be reduced merely to production (poiésis) but is instead characterized by a significant practical (or "praxic") dimension, evidenced by the stakes of self-realization or collective liberation pursued by those involved in the work process. If social labor consists of a set of activities through which a society regulates its interactions with nature and ensures its own reproduction, then the subjection of labor activities to the productivist imperative of accumulation under capitalist social relations leads to a crisis of social reproduction, a crisis that, according to Fischbach, constitutes a significant dimension of contemporary ecological crises.

Published works Books Du commencement en philosophie. Étude sur Hegel et Schelling, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1999. La reconnaissance. Fichte et Hegel, Paris: PUF, 1999. Fichte. Fondement du droit naturel, Paris: Ellipses, 2000. L'être et l'acte. Enquête sur les fondements de l'ontologie moderne de l'agir, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2002. La production des hommes. Marx avec Spinoza, Paris: PUF, 2005. 2nd edition revue & complete, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2014. Marx with Spinoza. Production, Alienation, History, translated by Jason Read, Edinburgh University Press, 2023 La producción de los hombres. Marx con Spinoza, translation by Julien Canavera, Prensas de la University of Zaragoza, 2023. Sans objet. Capitalisme, subjectivité, aliénation, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2009. 2nd edition in 2012 3rd edition en 2016. Brez predmeta. Kapitalizem, subjektivnost, odtujitev, translation by Aljosa Kravanja, Ljubljana, Zalozba Krtina, 2012. Marx. Relire Le Capital, Paris, PUF, coll. "Débats philosophiques", 2009 ; Marx. Releer El Capital. Translated by Francisco López Martín, Madrid: Ediciones Akal, 2012. Manifeste pour une philosophie sociale, Paris: La Découverte, 2009. Manifest fur eine Sozialphilosophie, Transcript Verlag: 2016. Translated by L. Peter, with an afterword by Th. Bedorf and K. Röttgers, Bielefeld. Manifest pentru o filosofie socialâ, translated by Andreea Ratiu, Budapest, Idea Editurā, "Praxi", 2024. La privation de monde. Temps, espace et capital, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2011. La critique sociale au cinéma, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2012. Translated in Persian by Kianoush Akhbari, chez Lega Press, Téhéran, 2023). Histoires et définitions de la philosophie sociale, work coedited by Eric Dufour and Emmanuel Renault, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2013. Philosophies de Marx, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2015. Le sens du social. Les puissances de la coopération, Montréal, Lux Éditeur, 2015. Qu'est-ce qu'un gouvernement socialiste? Ce qui est vivant et ce qui est mort dans le socialisme, Montréal, Lux Éditeur, 2017. Kaj je socialistična vlada ? Kar je zivo in kar je mrtvo v socializmu, translated by Aljosa Kravanja, Ljubljana, Zalozba Krtina, 2019. Après la production. Travail, nature et capital, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2019. Histoire philosophique du travail (in collaboration with Anne Merkel, Pierre-Marie Morel and Emmanuel Renault, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2022. Philosophie du travail. Activité, technicité, normativité (with Emmanuel Renault, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin 2022. Pour la Théorie critique. Raison, nature et société, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2024. Faire ensemble. Reconstruction sociale et sortie du capitalisme, Paris: Le Seuil, 2024.

Translations Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, L'esprit du christianisme et son destin, Paris: Agora, 1992. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Introduction à l'Esquisse d'un système de philosophie de la nature, with Emmanuel Renault, Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 2000. Karl Marx, Manuscrits économico-philosophiques de 1844, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2007. Axel Honneth, Les pathologies de la liberté. Une réactualisation de la philosophie du droit de Hegel, Paris: La Découverte, 2008. Les Jeunes Hégéliens : politique, religion, philosophie. Une anthologie, Paris: Gallimard, coll. "NRF, Bibliothèque de Philosophie", 384 p., 2022