Serres, Michel (b. 1930). French philosopher and imaginative writer and member of the Académie Française who has moved from the rational analysis of his early work on Leibniz, mathematics, and information theory (see Hermès, I-V) to non-systematic creative thinking, grounded in sensual awareness of the world. Among his numerous works, Le Parasite (1980), Genèse (1982), Rome: le livre des fondations (1983), and Détachement (1983) deal centrally and peripherally with the origin of knowledge and the balance of power in relationships. Les Cinq Sens (1985) is an extended literary meditation on intuition and practical sense-knowledge. Statues (1987) links aesthetics, religion, and philosophy. Le Contrat naturel (1990) proposes a new pact with nature to replace the social contract. Finally, Le Tiers-Instruit (1991) presents the motley result of all education, seeing knowledge as elliptical, a way from, not a way through (exodus not method).

Serres's work has become increasingly a kind of poetic philosophy, or a philosophical narration, mainly about knowledge and communication, rooted in lived experience, typically that of the seaman and the peasant; it constitutes an ecstatic personal quest for truth and an attempt to recover our primitive inheritance, too often obscured or atrophied by language, and his thought is shaped by his vibrant, exploratory, and culturally allusive writing.

[Peter Sharratt]

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.