Jean-Claude Milner

In 2010, Milner became Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Université de Paris VII.

Since 2000, particularly in France, Milner has been recognised for his essays concerning anti-Semitism in European history and culture. For several years, he has held a seminar devoted to this theme at the Institut d’études levinassiennes in Paris.

After his initial association with Chomsky's linguistic theories, Milner's work took a different turn. He published Introduction to a Science of Language (1989) which melds a general linguistics theory, that rests on a radical separation between sense and syntax (theory of syntactic positions) together with an epistemology that combines concepts of Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos. This work tackles a key epistemological problem of the scientific status of Lacan's theories. Milner also follows developments of Chomskyian theory though he does not adhere to the hypothesis of a biological justification for it which Chomsky defended.

From 1968 to 1971, Milner was affiliated with the Maoist movement of the proletarian Left and discovered the path of his own political evolution. Milner seems to have disavowed, or moved away from, these early affiliations. Alain Badiou, who has remained steadfast in his Maoist affiliations, has engaged in a long-standing contretemps with Milner over these changing affiliations (and many other differences, including accusing Badiou of Anti-Semitism). Milner also received training and education from Roland Barthes and made a close reading of Roman Jakobson.

Jean-Claude Milner (French: [milnɛʁ]; born 3 January 1941) is a linguist, philosopher and essayist. His specialist fields of endeavour are linguistics (which he studied with Roland Barthes) and psychoanalysis (through the teaching and friendship of Jacques Lacan). In 1971, Milner was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he translated Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax into French. His work helped to establish the terminology of theory of syntax in the French school of generative grammar. Milner is now a professor at the University Paris Diderot and lives in Paris.