Jean Cavailles on the Effectiveness of Symbolic Thought

The philosopher of Mathematics Jean Cavailles (1903-1944) plays an important role in Claude lmbert's thought. His published work had a significant impact after the war. It is largely a reflection on debates on the foundation of mathematics and on two opposed models of axiomatics, foundationalist and constructionist. The philosophy he announced (cut short by his death during World War II) was to be a study of the generativity of conceptual structures, as opposed to a phenomenology of knowledge. He derived from his reflection on invention in mathematics a great scepticism on the ideas of the separateness and unity of consciousness and a criticism of the teleologies inherent in philosophies of consciousness. In that, his work, according to Claude Imbert, made possible the reflections on structures and symbolisms which were to dominate the French context in the following decades.