The formalism , of Latin " forma" , " forme" , is an esthetic concept. It indicates:

• the literary and artistic movements stressing " the forme" rather than " the fond" (for example in the doctrines of " art for the art". In music, certain schools stylistics were based rather on preset forms whereas others created a more personal musical style to leave even the sound material. See in particular the controversy between Sérialisme er spectral)

• an excessive adherence with the artistic forms in opposition to the naturalism or realism (pejorative connotation)
• By extension, the adoption of abstract forms, distant from their real subject, in other disciplines
• In linguistic : a theoretical approach regarding the language as a system of forms rather than a clean matter. This approach was popularized by the group of the formal Russian and largely inspired the Structuralisme.

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“No art can refuse reality absolutely… The formalism can manage to empty real contents more and more, but a limit always awaits it… The true formalism is silence. In the same way, realism cannot do without a minimum of interpretation and arbitrary. ”

(Albert Camus. - The revolted man. - Paris: Gallimard, 1972, p. 332).

According to Klages, the formalism is “the thought by sign pure”. This definition, at the beginning of the 20th century, anticipates the best illustration of the formal language, the data-processing programming, whose recurring terms, protocols, orders, routines, sequences, do not admit any approximation.

Philosophical and mathematical formalism

The concept of formalism is often associated, justifiably, with the Philosophie, but especially with the Mathématiques. At the time when Descartes invented the analytical geometry and where Leibniz provided the foundations of formal logic, the Stock Exchange, an institution where the Signe has more importance than the Signifié, appeared in Europe.

So in art, the formalism is summarized by the paradigm " art for the art" , in morals, it finds its form the most led in the Kantian requirement: " do not do with others what you would not like that one makes you with you-même". This formal approach of morals inspired celebrates it formula about Kant: " Kantian philosophy has the clean hands, but it does not have a mains" ; in other words, it is too formal to find its application in the real life.

Other aspects of the contemporary formalism

This formal encoding of the thought affects many aspects of the modern life; in addition to the place of digital technologies, which are the most concrete illustration, an arsenal of figures are usually used to decipher the human society: intelligence quotient, GDP, birth rate, surveys, whose formal slope can be criticized, in particular in the economic choices of management.

Joseph E. Stiglitz criticized the formal ideology of the IMF and the World Bank, which concede loans with the developing countries only in bond of formal criteria of rate of inflation, growth rate and other parameters which are seldom appropriate for the diversity of the economies concerned. The Asian crisis of 1997 would be a consequence of the application of this formal policy in the countries of Southeast Asia. This economist denounces also the liberalization of the financial markets, where, sémiologiquement speaking, the sign - dimensions of purse - has more importance than meant - industries in their context socio-policy. This meaning of the formalism also finds an echo in the concept deleuzien of deterritorialisation.

Bonds

• Esthetic
• Logical