The establishment of a journal covering all of the humanities was considered to be a major desideratum when CIPSH was founded in 1949. In the early 1950s, the journal Diogenes was established by Roger Caillois; it is owned by CIPSH and has a long and powerful intellectual tradition, encompassing the entire scope of the humanities and their connections to the social and natural sciences in the spirit of Caillois’s diagonal science. Its defining features are transdisciplinary, cross-culturally, and the desire to bring together scholars from different cultures, horizons, and disciplines.
Diogenes is a platform for high-quality scholarly publications and welcomes submissions of high academic standards from all parts of the humanities, expressing new ideas and the latest developments in the field. Diogenes invites open submissions but also curates thematically coherent special issues coordinated by guest editors.
Part of the mission of Diogenes is the promotion of the capacity of the humanities to respond to emerging cultural, societal, political, and environmental challenges, in particular by serving as a driver for transversal understanding.
During its history, Diogenes was published with issues in many languages, among them French, English, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, and Hindi. Past editors of Diogenes were Roger Caillois, Comte Jean d’Ormesson, Paola Costa Giovangigli, and Maurice Aymard and Luca Scarantino. Until 2015, the multilingual issues of Diogenes were translations of each other. From 2016 onwards, the content in different languages diverged and different editions formed. Diogenes currently has an English, a French and a Chinese edition.
English Edition
The English edition was recently published in two volumes by the publisher Sage (Volume 63 in 2016 and Volume 64 in 2017) and another volume published by Cambridge University Press (Volume 65 in 2024). The English edition is currently re-organised in order to re-launch it in 2026. Digitized versions of all past volumes are freely available on both the Sage and the Cambridge University Press websites.
French Edition
The French edition is published under the name Diogène by Presses Universitaires de France (PUF). The Managing Editor of the French edition is Nicole Albert (Paris). Digitized versions of the past issues after the year 2001 are freely available on cairn.info.
Chinese Edition
The Chinese edition publishes Chinese translations of papers that were published in either the English or French edition of Diogenes. It is funded and coordinated by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). Digitized versions of the past issues are freely available at CASS National Center for Philosophy and Social Sciences Documentation.