This book forms a summary of the arguments against the holism in American philosophy (collectivist holism inspired by the Duhem-Quine thesis in philosophy of science), and the naturalist and atomistic tradition in general. It details the arguments for overcoming these objections to restore, as the thesis of semantic holism and mentalistique that the structural or anthropological holism, which is specifically based on the definition of the subject of social action and institutions as a dyadic subject ( formed by the complementarity of the Statute of view of the rules). The chapters devoted to the defense of semantic holism and mentalistique essentially based on the resumption of analytical philosophy in debates between advocates of logical reductionism of intentional physical causal relationships (Russell and first Wittgenstein) and pro-autonomy ( non-reducible) and contextuality of intentional, which CS Peirce and Wittgenstein of Philosophical Investigations. Intentional was the new name of the spirit, since Franz Brentano. This part of the book is the driest and most difficult for the newcomer in analytic philosophy, and it is not likely to convince him to abandon the old continental philosophy. Chapters 18 to 20 are more easily readable. They have in my opinion the summary of the book elements that are applicable to social theory and which are of interest to enrich and guide research. They contain a critique of the doctrine of formal constraints (one of three variants of structuralism developed by Levi-Strauss, is lon = Descombes) and critical shortcomings of phenomenological reappropriation of the objective concept of mind. These analyzes are a prelude to the final response Descombes to the following objection: How can we identify beliefs if they form a whole, and if they make sense, as such? The fact that the answer lies in the title is not the slightest interest. The sense of the Institutions is a beefy reading, which could drive making its way to despair and not to reward his desire to recover ideas for its own account. But it offers a new understanding of what the social sciences (at least their philosophy) have specific.
