Jean Cavaillès

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Jean Cavaillès, born on May 15 1903 in Saint-Maixent, was a French philosopher. He took part in the French Resistance within the Libération movement and was shot by the Gestapo on February 17 1944.

1 Biography
2 Military honours
- 2.1 External

[edit] Biography

Cavaillès became Professor at the University of Amiens in 1936, and was made Doctor of Arts in 1938. Later he was a lecturer in general and Logical Philosophy to the Faculty of Arts at Strasbourg University.

He was mobilized in 1939 as an infantry lieutenant with the 43rd Regiment, and was later attached to the Staff of the 4th Colonial Division. He was honoured for bravery twice, and was captured on June 11, 1940. At the end of July he escaped from Belgium and fled to Clermont-Ferrand.

At the end of December 1940, he met Emmanuel d' Astier of Vigerie, with whom he created a small group of resistance fighters, known as the “the Last Column”. To reach a broader audience, it was decided to create a newspaper, which was to become Libération. Cavaillès took an active part in editing the paper. The first edition appeared in July 1941.

He was appointed professor at the Sorbonne in 1941, and left Clermont-Ferrand for Paris, where he helped form the “Libération-North” resistance group becoming part of the management committee.

In April 1942, at the instigation of Christian Pineau, the central Office of Information and Action (BCRA) of London charged him with the task of forming an intelligence network in the Northern Zone, known as “Cohors”. He was ordered by Christian Pineau to pass into the Southern Zone, and Cavaillès headed the network and formed similar groups in Belgium and the north of France.

In Narbonne with Pineau he was arrested by French police in September 1942, after a failed attempt at flying to London, he was interned in Montpellier at the Saint-Paul d' Eyjeaux prison camp from where he escaped at the end of December 1942. The book Cavaillès wrote in prison in Montpellier in 1942 was published posthumously in 1946, edited by Canguilhem and Ehresmann under the title 'Sur la logique et la theorie de la science' .

Denounced as a public enemy by the Vichy, and sought by the police force, he fled clandestinely to London in February 1943. He met General de Gaulle on several occasions.

Back in France on April 15 he resigned from the management Committee of “Liberation” to be able to devote himself entirely to the direct action. He is in charge of the sabotage of the stores of Kriegsmarine in Brittany and German radio installations on the coast.

Betrayed by one of his liaison officers, he was arrested on August 28, 1943 in Paris with his sister and her brother-in-law. Tortured, imprisoned in Fresnes then in Compiegne, he was transferred to the Citadel from Arras and will be shot on February 17, 1944. Buried in Arras under a wooden cross marked “unknown n°5”, his body was exhumed in 1946 to be buried in the Crypt in the Sorbonne, in Paris.

In homage the 'Centre Cavaillès de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure' was established in Paris in 1969, at 3e étage au 29 rue d'Ulm, as centre for the study of the history and philosophy of science. At the formal opening the philosopher Vladimir Tasic said "A philosopher-mathematician loaded with explosives, lucid and reckless, resolute without optimism. If that’s not a hero, what is a hero?

A fictional account of Cavailles life during WW2 with the resistance is L’Armée des ombres(1969) directed by Jean-Pierre Melville

[edit] Bibliography

Briefwechsel Cantor-Dedekind, hrsg. von E.Noether und J.Cavaillès, Paris, Hermann, 1937.
Axiomatic method and formalism, Paris, Hermann, 1938.
Remarks on the formation of the abstract set theory, Paris, Hermann, 1938.
Philosophical tests, Paris, Hermann, 1939
“Of the collective with the bet”, Review of metaphysics and morals, XLVII, 1940, pp. 139-163.
“The mathematical thought”, discussion with Albert Lautman (February 4, 1939), Bulletin of the French Company of philosophy, T. XL, 1946.
Transfinite and continuous, Paris, Hermann, 1947.
On the Logic and the theory of science, Paris, PUF, 1947.
Complete works of philosophy of sciences, Paris, Hermann, 1994.

[edit] Critical bibliography

Canguilhem, George, Life and died of Jean Cavaillès, Paris: Combined, 1996
Cassou-Noguès, Pierre, Of the mathematical experiment: test on the philosophy of sciences of *Jean Cavaillès, Paris: Vrin, 2001
Azema, Jean-Pierre and Aglan, Alya, Jean Cavaillès - Resisting or the thought in acts, Paris, Flammarion, 2002
Gabrielle, Jean Cavaillès: a philosopher in the war, 1903 - 1944, Paris: Cat-like, 2003

[edit] References

POSTMODERN AT AN EARLY AGE-A review of Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought, by Vladimir Tasic (http://www.math.jussieu.fr/~harris/MPRT.pdf)