A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Luc Ferry (ч. 3)

Theoria as ‘Auto-reflection’

Here, once again, we can distinguish three ages of knowledge. The first corresponds to Greek theoria. Contemplation of a divinely ordained world, the endeavour to comprehend the structure of the cosmos – this was hardly, as we have seen, a knowledge indifferent to the question of values. Or, to use the terminology of the great twentieth-century German sociologist, Max Weber, it was not ‘axiologically neutral’ – meaning ‘objective’, disinterested or devoid of bias. As we have seen in the case of Stoicism, knowledge and values are inextricably linked, in the sense that the discovery of the cosmic nature of the universe implies certain moral purposes for human existence.

The second age appears with the modern scientific revolution, which sees emerge, in opposition to the Greek world, the idea of a knowledge that is radically indifferent to the question of values. In the eyes of the Moderns, not only does nature not give us any ethical pointers whatsoever, but no longer provides a model for us to imitate; furthermore, true science must be rigorously neutral in respect of values, on pain of being accused of partisanship and lack of objectivity. In other words: science must describe what is, not what ought to be, not what we should or should not be doing morally. As we say in philosophical jargon, science does not possess any normative (as opposed to descriptive) purpose. The biologist, for example, can demonstrate to you that smoking is harmful to your health, and on this point is entirely correct. On the other hand, whether from a moral point of view the act of smoking is or is not a fault, and, consequently, whether stopping smoking is an ethical obligation, he has nothing to say. It is for us to decide, on the basis of values which are not, as such, scientific. In this context, generally designated by the term ‘positivist’ and which came to predominate during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, science questioned itself rather less than it focused upon understanding the world as it is.

We can go further: the scientific method could not remain content with evaluating phenomena. There must come a day when, if only by obeying its own principles, it includes itself in the story. The critical spirit must arrive sooner or later at self-criticism, which is what modern philosophy is only beginning to come to terms with, but which Nietzsche and the materialists para doxic ally refused to do. The genealogist and the deconstructionist worked wonders at firing bullets into metaphysics and religion, at breaking up our idols with a hammer, but on their own account it was a case of nothing doing. Their aversion to self-reflection constitutes their manner of seeing the world. Their clarity of analysis in respect of others is admirable, but it is equalled only by their blindness to their own positions.

A third age of knowledge arrives therefore to challenge but also to complete its precursor; namely an age of self-criticism or auto-reflection, which best defines contemporary post-Nietzschean humanism. This only began to occur just after the Second World War, when questions began to be asked about the potential misdeeds of a science in some sense responsible for the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This self-criticism was to continue more generally in all areas where the consequences of science might have moral or political implications – and latterly in the field of ecology or bio-ethics.

One could say that in the second half of the twentieth century science ceased to be essentially dogmatic and authoritarian, and began to apply to itself its own principles, method and critical spirit – which as a result became far more self-critical or ‘auto-reflective’. Physicists questioned themselves about the potential dangers of the atom, or the possible ravages of the greenhouse effect; biologists asked themselves if genetically modified organisms present a risk for humanity, or if the technology of cloning is morally legitimate, and many other questions of a similar nature, which displayed a complete reversal of the nineteenth-century perspective. Science, no longer imperious and certain, learnt to challenge itself, slowly but surely.

From where proceeds the formidable expansion of the sciences of the past – history and historiography, historical geography, archivism – over the course of the twentieth century. History itself becomes the queen of ‘human sciences’, and here too it is useful to reflect for a moment upon the significance of the extraordinary expansion of these practices. Borrowing from the model of psychoanalysis, history promises us that by progressively reclaiming and mastering our past, by practising this collective and heightened form of auto-reflection, we shall come to a better understanding of our present and orient ourselves more effectively towards our future.

The historical sciences in the broadest sense, therefore, including a large swathe of the social sciences, take root progressively, and more or less consciously, in the conviction that history weighs upon our lives and destinies in proportion to our ignorance of the past. To know one’s history, is, as in psychoanalysis, to work towards one’s own emancipation, and a democratic ideal of liberty of thought cannot dispense with the study of history, if it is to approach the present without prejudices.

From which also proceeds the current and widespread error that philosophy devotes itself entirely to self-appraisal. There is some truth in this error: in effect, modern theoria has well and truly entered the age of auto-reflection. What is false, however, is the deduction that philosophy as a whole should remain fixed at this point – as if henceforth theoria was the one and only dimension of philosophy, as if the problem of salvation, notably, must be abandoned. I shall show in a moment that this is not so, that it remains more than ever alive, provided that we accept the need to formulate it in terms which are not those of the past. But first let us see how, in the perspective of a humanism without metaphysical claims, modern morality is also enriched with new dimensions.

The Deification of the Human

Nietzsche perfectly understood, even if he was to draw hostile conclusions and take an ‘immoralist’ direction, that the problem of morality arises from the moment that a human being posits sacrificial values, values ‘superior to life’. There is a morality in play therefore as soon as principles present themselves to us, rightly or wrongly as so elevated, so ‘sacred’, as to seem worth risking or even sacrificing our lives for them.

I am sure, for example, that if you witnessed the lynching of somebody because of the colour of his skin, or on account of his religion, you would do what was in your power to help him, even if to do so was dangerous. And if you were to lack the courage, which is something everyone can understand, you would neverthe less admit to yourself that, morally, this is what ought to happen. And if the person being attacked was someone you love, then you would probably take enormous risks to save him or her. I give this small example – perhaps not a very likely scenario for us today, but all too likely in countries at war a mere plane journey away – in order to make the following reflection: counter to the inevitable logic of a thoroughgoing materialism, we continue to believe (whether or not we profess to be materialists) that certain values could, in a given situation, lead us to risk our lives.

In the early 1980s, when Soviet totalitarianism was still very much in place, German pacifists adopted a detestable slogan, Lieber rot als tod (‘Better red than dead’) – in other words, better to submit to oppression than risk death by resisting it. Evidently the slogan did not convince everyone, and there are still many people – not necessarily ‘believers’, either – who believe that the preservation of one’s own life, infinitely precious though it may be, is not necessarily and in all circumstances the only value that counts. I am even convinced that, if need be, my fellow citizens would still take up arms to defend their neighbours or resist a totalitarian menace – or at the least, that such an attitude, even if they did not themselves have the courage to carry it through, would not strike them as either contemptible or ridiculous.

Sacrifice, which returns us to the notion of a value regarded as sacred (both from Latin, ‘sacer’), paradoxically retains, even for the committed materialist, an aspect which can almost be described as religious. It implies, in effect, that we admit, however covertly, the existence of transcendent values, superior to our material and biological existence.

It is simply the case – and it is here that I would wish finally to identify what might be new about a humanist ethics in a contemporary context, as distinct from the morality of the Moderns – that the former motives for sacrifice have long departed. In our Occidental democracies, at least, very few individuals indeed would still be willing to sacrifice their lives for the glory of God, or for the homeland, or for the revolutionary proletariat. On the other hand, their freedom, and – still more likely – the lives of those they love, might well strike them in certain extreme circumstances, as worth fighting for. In other words, the radical immanence so dear to materialism (requiring a renunciation of the sacred, along with the very notion of sacrifice) has not in any way replaced the versions of transcendence formerly on offer – whether God, homeland or revolution. Instead, new forms of transcendence have intervened, ‘horizontal’ rather than vertical: rooted in our humanity, in other beings who are in the same frame as ourselves, rather than vested in abstract entities located above our heads.

In this respect, it seems to me that the evolution of the contemporary world has involved the intersection of two broad tendencies. There has been a humanising of the divine. To give an example: one could argue that the universal declaration of the rights of man is no more than (and again Nietzsche saw this clearly) a ‘secularised’ Christianity, in other words a restatement of the content of the Christian religion without belief in God being a requisite. And there is no doubt that we are living through a reversal of divinisation, or a making sacred of the human, in the sense I have just defined: it is only on behalf of another human being that we are prepared, in the case of necessity, to undertake risks, and certainly not to defend the abstract entities of the past. Because no one any longer believes that, in the words of the Cuban national anthem, ‘to die for the homeland is to live for eternity’. Of course, we can remain patriotic, but the nation as such has changed meaning: it refers less to a territory than to its human inhabitants, and it is less a repository of nationalism than of humanism.

If you wish for an example, if not a proof, read the short but very important book by Henri Dunant entitled A Memory of Solferino. Dunant was the founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and thus the founder of modern humanitarianism, to which he dedicated his life. In this little book he describes how his extraordinary vocation came about. On a business assignment in 1859, reluctantly forced to cross the battlefield of Solferino (in its immediate aftermath), he witnessed a world of absolute horror. Thousands of dead and, worse still, countless wounded who were slowly dying in conditions of appalling suffering, without help or assistance of any kind. Dunant spent forty-eight hours, up to his elbows in blood, assisting the dying.

He drew an exemplary lesson from his experience, which is at the origin of a veritable moral revolution, that of modern humanitarianism and its protocols: according to which a soldier, once he is fallen, wounded and disarmed, ceases to belong to a particular nation or camp, but reverts to being a man, a simple human being who, as such, earns the right to be protected, assisted, cared for – irrespective of his participation in the conflict. Dunant here echoed the fundamental inspiration of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man: every human being merits respect without regard for community or for ethnic, linguistic, cultural or religious allegiances. But Dunant goes further than this, in that he asks us equally to disregard national allegiances, to the extent that the humanitarian mission, in this respect heir to Christianity, asks us to treat our enemy, in so far as he is reduced to a state of harmless humanity, in the same way as we would treat a friend.

As you see, we are a long way from Nietzsche, whose aversion to the notion even of compassion led him to detest all forms of charitable action, under suspicion of perpetuating Christianity, to the point of his literally jumping for joy when he learnt that an earthquake had struck Nice or a cyclone had devastated Fiji. Nietzsche strayed, of this there can be little doubt, but his diagnosis is not entirely wrong: by wearing a human face, the sacred does not diminish: the transcendent lives on, even lodged in the immanent, in the heart of man. Instead of deploring the situation, with Nietzsche, it is precisely this shift which must be thought afresh, if we are to stop living in denial together with the materialist: who recognises in his private experience the existence of values which bind absolutely, yet commits himself on a theoretical level to defending moral relativism.

It is on this basis that we can now raise our sights to a consideration of salvation, or at least to a consideration of what takes its place.

Rethinking Salvation

I would like to end by proposing three topics for reflection, on the manner in which a humanism without metaphysics might today give new life to the ancient problem of wisdom. First, the requirement of an ‘enlarged thought’; second, the wisdom of love; third, the experience of mourning.

The Kantian notion of an ‘enlarged thought’, which I mentioned at the end of the chapter on modern philosophy, takes on a new significance after Nietszche. It no longer merely designates, as for Kant, the need for a critical spirit, a disposition to see the other side of a question (‘putting oneself in the place of others, so as to understand their point of view’), but well and truly a new way of responding to the question of life’s meaning. I would like to say a word about this, before indicating some of its points of connection with the question of human salvation.

In contrast with a ‘restricted’ vision, the horizon of an enlarged thought could be defined, initially, as one that manages to displace itself, ‘to put itself in the place of another’ – the better to understand, but also to try, in a movement of return upon itself, to look upon its own judgements as if they were those of another. It is this aspect that requires the auto-reflection of which we spoke earlier: to become properly conscious, one must situate oneself in some sense at a distance. Whereas the restricted self remains bogged down in its place of origin, to the point of believing that this is the only possible community, or at least the only proper and legitimate community, the enlarged spirit manages, by occupying in so far as possible the point of view of the other, to contemplate the world in the guise of a benevolent and disinterested spectator. Agreeing to unseat his initial and inherited way of seeing and to remove himself from the closed circle of egocentrism, he is able to penetrate customs and values remote from his own; then, returning to himself, he can be aware of himself in a distanced and less dogmatic fashion, and can thereby enrich his own view of things.

In this respect, and it indicates how deep are the intellectual roots of humanism, the notion of ‘an enlarged thought’ is continuous with that of human ‘perfectibility’, which Rousseau isolated as the specifically human, as opposed to animal, property. Both notions suppose the idea of an extended liberty of action, considered as the faculty of self-withdrawal from a particular condition in order to accede to an increased universality, whether individual or collective – that of education on the one hand, or culture and politics on the other – in the course of which is effected what one might call the humanising of the human. It is precisely this human-ising process which gives all its meaning to life and which, in the quasi-theological meaning of the term, ‘justifies’ a life.

In my book What is a Good Life? I quoted at length from a speech given by the great Anglo-Indian writer V.S. Naipaul, on the occasion of his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. The passage in question seems to me to describe to perfection this experience of an ‘enlarged thought’ and the benefits it brings, not only in the writing of a book but also more profoundly in the conduct of a life. In the speech, entitled ‘Two Worlds’, Naipaul recalls his childhood in Trinidad and evokes the limitations inherent to the life of these small communities, enclosed upon themselves and folded back upon their particularisms:

We Indians, immigrants from India … lived for the most part ritualised lives, and were not yet capable of self-assessment, which is where learning begins … In Trinidad, where as new arrivals we were a disadvantaged community, that excluding idea was a kind of protection; it enabled us – for the time being, and only for the time being – to live in our own way and according to our own rules, to live in our own fading India. It made for an extraordinary self-centredness. We looked inwards; we lived out our days; the world outside existed in a kind of darkness; we inquired about nothing. (Extract from V.S. Naipaul’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech)

Naipaul goes on to explain how, once he became a writer, these ‘zones of shadow’ which surrounded the growing child – that is, everything that was more or less there and present on the island, but which self-absorption prevented him from seeing: the native population, the New World, India, the Muslim universe, Africa, England – became subjects of preoccupation which enabled him to establish a distance, and one day write a book about the island of his birth. As you can see, his entire itinerary as a man and a writer – the two are strictly inseparable here – has consisted of enlarging his horizon by making a profound effort of ‘decentering,’ uprooting himself with a view to being able to penetrate the ‘zones of shadow’ in question.

Then he adds this, which is perhaps the essential: The distance between the writer and his material grew with the two later books; the vision was wider. And then intuition led me to a large book about our family life. During this book my writing ambition grew. But when it was over I felt I had done all that I could do with my island material. No matter how much I meditated on it, no further fiction would come. Accident, then, rescued me. I became a traveller. I travelled in the Caribbean region and understood much more about the colonial set-up of which I had been part. I went to India, my ancestral land, for a year; it was a journey that broke my life in two. The books that I wrote about these two journeys took me to new realms of emotion, gave me a world-view I had never had, extended me technically. (Extract from V.S. Naipaul’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech)

No renunciation, here, nor any disowning of the particularities of his origin. Merely a distancing, an extending (it is striking that Naipaul himself uses a vocabulary of enlargement) which enables him to grasp these particularities from another perspective, less immersed, less egocentric – by means of which his writing, far from standing still, like the local craft industry, managed to elevate itself to the level of ‘world literature’. By which I mean it is not reserved for the ‘indigenous’ population of Trinidad, nor even a former colonial readership, because the itinerary it describes is not exclusively particu lar: it possesses a universal human meaning, which, beyond the particularity of Naipaul’s circumstances, is able to affect all readers.

The literary and even existential ideal traced by Naipaul in these pages requires that we uproot ourselves from our egocentrism. We need others and otherness in order to understand ourselves; we need their liberty, even their happiness if possible, to accomplish our own lives. In this sense, the consideration of morality points towards a deeper question of meaning.

In the Bible, to know means to love: traditionally, to speak of knowing somebody ‘biblically’ means to have carnal knowledge. The question of meaning is a secular version of this biblical equation: if knowing and loving are one and the same, then what must give sense above all to our lives – at once an orientation and a meaning – is indeed the ideal of an enlarged horizon. This alone, by its invitation au voyage, its exhorting us to come out of ourselves the better to find ourselves – which is Hegel’s dialectical definition of ‘experience’ – enables us better to know and love others.

This is perhaps the one and only answer to the question: ‘What is the point of growing up?’ To enlarge our vision, to learn to relish the singularity of others, and on occasion – when this love of the other attains its greatest intensity – to experience the abolition of time. In which we succeed, if only momentarily (as the Greeks exhorted us) to free ourselves from the tyranny of past and future, to inhabit a present which is finally serene and cleansed of guilt. It is at this point– where the fear of death has no reality – that the question of meaning intersects with that of salvation.

But first I would like to press further the question of whether there exists a ‘wisdom of love’, a vision which allows us to understand fully the reasons why it alone, in a humanist perspective at least, gives meaning to our lives.

I would like to begin with a very simplified analysis of what constitutes a work of art. In whatever realm, the work of art is always initially defined by the particularity of its cultural context of origin. It is always historically and geographically marked by the epoch and the ‘spirit’ of the people among whom it originates. This might be described as its ‘folkloric’ aspect (from German Volk, meaning ‘people’), its debt to a common vocabulary or vernacular, if you like. We can tell immediately, without being in any way specialists, that a canvas by Vermeer belongs neither to the Asiatic world nor to the Arab world; that it obviously cannot be situated in terms of contemporary art, but rather belongs with Northern European art of the seventeenth century. Similarly, a few bars are often enough to tell us that a piece of music is Eastern or Western, that it is classical or modern, that it is religious music or dance music, and so on. Besides, even the greatest works of classical music borrow elements from popular dances, whose national characteristics are never far from the surface. A polonaise by Chopin, a Hungarian rhapsody by Brahms, the Romanian Dances of Bartok make these connections explicit. And even if it is not overt, the particularities of origin always leave their trace, and no matter how great a work of art, how universal its appeal, it never entirely breaks with its links to a place and a date.

However, it is equally the case that a great work is distinguished from a folkloric artefact in not being tethered to a particular ‘people’. It raises itself to the ‘universal’; it addresses itself potentially to the whole of humanity. This is what Goethe referred to, in terms of literary exchanges and relations, as Weltliteratur (world literature) – with which the notion of ‘globalisation’ has less than nothing in common: the access of the work of art to world status is not obtained by flouting its particularities of origin, but by assuming these from the outset, as its nourishment, so as to transfigure them in the space of art and make of them something other than simple folklore.

As a result, the particularities of origin are integrated into a larger context, to form an experience large enough to be potentially common to all of humanity. Which is why the work of art possesses the distinction of speaking to everyone, whatever the time or place in which we live.

Let us take a step further. In an attempt to understand Naipaul, I make use of two key concepts: particular and universal. The particular, to be specific, resides in the experience described by the writer, his point of departure: the small island and, more precisely, at the heart of the island, the Indian community to which Naipaul belonged. And the writing does absolutely concern a particular reality, with its own language, its religious traditions, its cuisine, its rituals etc. And then, at the other end of the spectrum, if you like, there is the universal. By which is meant not merely the vast world of others, but also the purpose of the itinerary to which Naipaul commits himself when he takes on the ‘zones of shadow’, or those elements of otherness which on first acquaintance he neither knows or understands.

What I would like you to understand, since it is crucial to grasp the senses in which love imparts meaning, is that between these two realities – the particu lar with its focus, and the universal which potentially includes all of humanity, there is room for a middle term: the singular, or the individual. And it is this latter reality, and this only, which is the object of our loves and the bearer of meaning.

Let us try to make sense of an idea which, quite simply, is the beam supporting the entire philosophical edifice of a secular humanism. To help us to see this more clearly, I will begin with a definition of singularity, inherited from German romanticism. If, as has been the case since classical antiquity, we designate by the term ‘singularity’ or ‘individuality’ a distinctive quality which is not merely that of the particular case, but graduates towards a broader horizon, to attain greater universality, it is immediately apparent that the work of art offers the most perfect model. And it is because they are, in this precise sense, the authors of singular works, at once rooted in their culture and epoch of origin, but at the same time capable of addressing themselves to all men in all ages, that we still read Plato or Homer, Molière or Shakespeare, and that we still listen to Bach or Chopin. The same is true of all great masterpieces and even great historical monuments: we can be English and Protestant and yet be profoundly moved by the temple of Angkor Wat, by the Great Mosque of Cairo, by a canvas of Vermeer or a scroll of Chinese calligraphy. Because they have raised themselves to the supreme level of ‘singularity’: meaning that they have dared to satisfy themselves neither with the particularities which formed them (as they form every individual) nor with an abstract, disembodied universality (like a chemical or mathematical formula, for example). The work of art worthy of the name is neither a local arte-fact nor is it a universal denuded of touch and taste, as is the product of pure scientific research. And it is to this singularity, this individuality that is neither entirely particular nor entirely universal, that we respond so powerfully.

From which you may also see how the notion of singularity links directly to our ideal of an enlarged thought: by uprooting myself to become another, by enlarging the field of my experiences, I become singular – because I go beyond the particularities of my origins to accede, not to pure unmediated universality, but to a broader and richer awareness of the possibilities which are those of humanity as a whole. One simple example: when I settle in another country to learn a foreign language, I enlarge my horizon continually, whether I am aware of it or not. I afford myself the means of entering into communication with a larger number of people; and an entire culture is attached to the language I am discovering, so that I enrich myself incomparably by this new and external addition to my original particularity. In other words, singularity is not merely the primary characteristic of a work of art – this ‘thing’ that is external to me – but is also a subjective and personal attribute of the human individual as such. And it is this attribute, to the exclusion of all others, which is the primary object of our love for each other. We never love the particular as such, nor the universal in its abstraction and vacancy. Who would fall in love with a hedgehog or an algebraic formula?

If we hold on a little longer to this notion of singularity, to which the ideal of an enlarged horizon has led us, we must add the dimension of love: because it is love that gives its ultimate justification and meaning to the whole business of ‘enlargement’ which can and should guide human experience. Considered as such, it is the fulfilment of a humanist soteriology (the branch of theology that deals with salvation), the only plausible response to the question of life’s meaning – in respect of which, once again, a humanism without metaphysics can easily look like a secularised Christianity.

We may be assisted in understanding this question by a fragment in Pascal’s Pensées, where he quizzes himself, in effect, about the exact nature of the objects of our affection, and of the self that experiences affection:

What then is this ‘I’?

Suppose a man places himself by a window to see those who pass by. If I pass by, can I say that he placed himself there to see me? No; for he does not think of me in particular. But does the man who loves someone on account of her beauty really love that person? No; for the smallpox, which will kill her beauty while sparing her person, will cause him to love her no more.

And if someone loves me for my judgement, or for my memory, he does not love me, for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where, then, is this ‘I’, if it be neither in the body nor in the soul? And how love the body or the soul, except for those qualities which do not constitute an ‘I’, since they are perishable? For it is impossible and would be unjust to love the soul of a person in the abstract and for whatever qualities might be therein.

We never, then, love a person, but only qualities.

Let us therefore no longer jeer at those who are honoured on account of rank and office; for we only ever love a person on account of borrowed qualities. (

Pensées

, 323)

The conclusion usually drawn from this text runs as follows: the ‘I’, which Pascal constantly refers to as ‘hateful’, because it is always more or less vowed to egotism, is not a tenable object of love. Quite simply because we all tend to attach ourselves to particularities, to the ‘external’ qualities of those we claim to love: to their beauty, strength, humour, intelligence etc. This is what initially seduces us. But given that such attributes are bound to fail, love sooner or later gives way to weariness and boredom. And this, for Pascal, is our most common experience:

He no longer loves the person whom he loved ten years ago. I can well believe it. She is no longer the same, nor is he. He was young, and she too; now she is quite different. He would perhaps love her still, were she as she was before. (

Pensées

, 123)

Yes, sadly. Far from having loved in the other person what we understood to be their most intimate essence – what I have been calling their singularity – we merely became attached to their particular and consequently entirely abstract qualities, which could as easily be found in any number of other people. Beauty, strength, intelligence etc. are not the preserve of this or that person, nor are they linked in any inward and essential sense to the ‘substance’ of this person as opposed to that person; these qualities are so to speak interchangeable. If Pascal’s bored husband persists in his folly, he will probably divorce her in order to find a younger and more beautiful woman, just like the one he married ten years earlier.

Well before the German romantics of the early nineteenth century, Pascal discovered that the irreducibly particular and the interchangeably abstract and universal, far from being opposites, ‘merge into each other’, and are but two sides of the same coin. Reflect for a moment on the following all-too-common experience: you telephone a friend and you simply say, ‘Hello, it’s me’, but this tells them nothing about who is speaking. This ‘I’ is abstract and lacking in singularity because everyone in the world calls themselves ‘I’. Only by taking other information into account – your voice, for example – will your friend be able to identify you. But not by simple reference to an ‘I’ that remains paradoxically generalised and unlovably abstract.

In the same way, I think I have penetrated to the quick of another being, to what is most essential and irreplaceable about the beloved by loving them for their abstract and most undifferentiated qualities, but the reality is quite different: all I have identified are attributes as anonymous as a badge of office occupation or the letters that come after a name. In other words, the particular is not the same as the singular.

And we need to grasp that singularity alone, which transcends equally the particular and the universal, can be the proper object of love.

If we content ourselves with itemising particularities, we end up by failing ever to love anybody, in which case Pascal is correct: let us stop jeering at those who value only the borrowings of rank and office. After all, whether we go after beauty or medals comes down to the same thing: the first is (almost) as external to the person as the second. What makes an individual lovable, what creates the conviction that we could continue loving them even if their looks are ravaged by illness, is not reducible to an external attribute, a quality, however important it may be. What we love in the beloved (and are loved for in return, at least potentially), is neither pure particularity nor abstract universal attributes, but the singularity which distinguishes and renders he or she unlike any other. Of the one we love, we may say, affectionately, with Montaigne, ‘because he was he, because I was I’, but not, ‘because he was handsome, strong, intelligent …’

And this singularity, you may be sure of it, was not handed out at birth. It is formed of a thousand details, and habits, of which moreover we are not even conscious. It is formed over the course of existence, and through experience; which is why, precisely, it is irreplaceable. Hedgehogs are all alike. As are kittens. Adorable, certainly. But it is only slowly, when it begins to smile, that the child becomes humanly lovable. From the moment he enters into a specifically human history, that of his relation to others.

In this sense, we can reinvest the Greek ideal of the ‘eternal instant’: this present moment which is freed from the anxieties of mortality – by virtue of its singularity, and because we regard it as irreplaceable, preferring to weigh it on its own terms rather than discard it in the name of nostalgia for what came before or hopes for what might follow.

It is here, once more, that the question of meaning connects with that of salvation. If withdrawal from the particular and exposure to what is universal are what create singularity of experience – if this double process gives singularity to our lives and allows us recognise what is singular in others – it offers us simultaneously the means of enlarging our thought and of acceding to moments of grace, where the fear of death (linked as it is to dimensions of time that are outside the present) is itself removed.

You might object that, compared to the doctrine of Christianity – whose promise of the resurrection of the body means that we shall be reunited with those we love after death – a humanism without metaphysics is small beer. I grant you that amongst the available doctrines of salvation, nothing can compete with Christianity – provided, that is, that you are a believer. If one is not a believer – and one cannot force oneself to believe, nor pretend to believe – then we must learn to think differently about the ultimate question posed by all doctrines of salvation, namely that of the death of a loved one.

There are, it seems to me, three ways of considering the loss of a loved one and three ways of preparing yourself for it. We can be tempted by the counsels of Buddhism, which can be reduced to a fundamental principle: do not become attached. Not from indifference – Buddhism, like Stoicism, speaks up for human compassion and the obligations of friendship, with the precaution that if we allow ourselves to be trapped by the net of attachments in which love invariably entangles us, we are without doubt preparing the worst of sufferings for ourselves: because life is a state of flux and impermanence, and human beings are perishable. We do not deprive ourselves only of happiness and serenity, in advance of the fact, but also of freedom. The words we use for these things are themselves suggestive: to be attached is to be linked or bound, as opposed to free; and if we wish to emancipate ourselves from the bonds forged by love, we must practise as early as possible that form of wisdom known as non-attachment.

Another response, diametrically opposed to the above, characterises the great monotheisms – Christianity above all, since only Christianity professes the resurrection of the body as well as the soul. This consists of promising that as long as we practise love in God – in other words, a love that bears upon what is immortal in our loved ones rather than upon what is mortal – we shall experi ence the bliss of finding them again. In other words, attachment is not prohibited as long as it is correctly oriented. This promise is symbolised in the Gospels through the episode of the death of Lazarus, a friend of Christ. Christ weeps when he learns that his friend is dead – which Buddha would never allow himself to do. He weeps because, having taken human form, he is experiencing this separation as grief, as suffering. But he also knows, of course, that he will soon be united once more with Lazarus: that love is stronger than death.

Here are two forms of wisdom, then, two doctrines of salvation, which although opposed in almost every respect, deal nonetheless with the same problem: that of the death of loved ones. To put it bluntly, neither of these attitudes persuades me. Not only am I unable to prevent myself from forming attachments, I have no wish to do so. Nor am I in the least ignorant as to the sufferings to come – indeed I am already familiar with some of their bitterness. However, as the Dalai-Lama acknowledges, the only way of truly living according to the rules of non-attachment is to follow the monastic life, to be solitary (monastikos) in order to be free, to avoid all bonds. I believe that to be the case. Therefore I must renounce the wisdom of Buddhism, as I renounce that of Stoicism – with respect and esteem, but also with a sense of unbridgeable difference.

I find the Christian proposition infinitely more tempting – except for the fact that I do not believe in it. But were it to be true I would be certainly be a taker. I remember my friend, the atheist and historian François Furet, being asked on television what he would wish God to say to him were they ever to meet. To which he gave an immediate answer: ‘Come quickly, your loved ones are waiting for you!’ I would have given the same answer, and with the same undertow of disbelief.

What remains, then, other than to await the inevitable without paying it too much attention? Nothing, perhaps. Except, despite everything, to develop on one’s own account, without any illusions, something resembling a ‘wisdom of love’ – as well as a love of wisdom. We each of us know that we must be reconciled with our parents before they die, whatever the tensions of that relationship. Because later, whatever Christianity may say, is too late. If we acknowledge that the dialogue with our loved ones must have a stop, then we must draw the consequences in this life.

It also strikes me that parents should not lie to their children about important things. I know several people who have discovered, after the death of their father, that he was not their biological parent – either that their mother had taken a lover, or that there was a concealed adoption. In every case, this kind of untruth causes considerable pain. Not merely because the belated discovery of the truth will always be unhappy; but above all because, after the death of the father who was not a father in the usual sense, it is impossible for the child turned adult to have that conversation: to grasp the meaning of a silence, or of a remark, or of an attitude which has left its trace on him, to which he would like to have given a meaning – but which he is now for ever prevented from doing.

To me this form of wisdom – a wisdom of love – is elaborated by each of us largely in silence. But I think that, to one side of Christianity or Buddhism, we can learn how to live and love as adults, even if this means thinking of death every day. Not out of morbidity, but to discover what needs doing, here and now, with those whom we love and whom we shall lose, unless they lose us first. I am convinced, even if I myself am still far from possessing it, that this type of wisdom exists, and that it is the crowning achievement of a humanism released finally from the illusions of metaphysics and religion.

In Conclusion …

As you will have guessed, I love philosophy and above all I revere Kant’s notion of an enlarged horizon of thought – upon which I have placed a lot of emphasis in these pages – as perhaps the central truth of modern philosophy and contemporary humanism. I think it permits us to create a theoria which gives the necessary space to self-reflection, an ethics which is open to the globalised world with which we are going to have to deal from now on, and also offers us a post-Nietzschean doctrine of salvation. Beyond these three great axes of enquiry, the dream of an enlarged thought also allows us to perceive differently – bypassing scepticism and dogmatism – the enigmatic prospect of there being a plurality of philosophical truths.

In general, the idea that there are several philosophical systems and that these do not agree with each other tends to provoke two responses: scepticism or dogmatism. Scepticism argues more or less as follows: since the dawn of time, different philosophies have done battle with each other without ever arriving at agreement about what constitutes the truth. And this plurality, because it is insurmountable, proves that philosophy is not an exact science; that it is lost in mist and unable to create a clearing for truth, which by definition must be single and unique. If there exist several versions of reality, and these fail to come to an agreement, we must then admit that none can claim seriously to hold the true answer to the questions we ask ourselves about knowledge, morality and salvation. Consequently, all philosophy is idle.

Dogmatism takes the opposite stance: certainly, there are several possible ways of looking at reality; and mine – the one I have ended up opting for – is manifestly superior to and truer than the others, which are nothing but a maze of endless errors. How many times must we listen to Spinozists telling us that Kant was off the wall, or Kantians denouncing the structural weaknesses of Spinoza?

Tired of these old debates, undermined by relativism, guilt-stricken too by the memory of its own imperialisms, the democratic impulse today sides willingly with positions of compromise, which, in the name of a commendable concern to ‘respect differences’, end up resigning themselves to slack notions of ‘tolerance’, ‘dialogue’, ‘respect for others’, to which it is not easy to assign a meaning.

The notion of an enlarged horizon suggests a different way forward. Sidestepping the choice between a pluralism of belief that is all façade, on the one hand, and a wholesale renunciation of convictions on the other, it invites us to extricate – case by case – what truth there might be in a vision of the world that is not ours, thereby affording us the means by which to understand it, and to take from it what we need for our own purposes.

I once wrote a book with a friend, André ComteSponville, the materialist philosopher whom I respect above all others. Everything stood between us: we are of the same age – room therefore for potential rivalry; politically he was coming from a communist background, and I from the republican right. Philosophically, he drew his inspiration entirely from Spinoza and the sages of the East, whereas mine derives from Kant and from Christianity. But instead of hating each other, we ended almost by trading places. By which I mean that, far from presuming that the other was acting in bad faith, we separately attempted to understand as fully as possible what might be persuasive and convincing about a vision of the world that is not ours.

Thanks to which, I have come to understand the grandeur of Stoicism, of Buddhism, of Spinozism – all those philosophies which invite us ‘to hope a little less and love a little more’. I have understood, too, how the combined weight of past and future deadens our relish in the present; I have come to a greater liking for Nietzsche, even, and his doctrine of the innocence of becoming. As it happens I did not turn into a materialist, but I can no longer ignore materialism if I am to comprehend and describe certain aspects of human experience. In summary, I think that I enlarged the horizon that had been mine hitherto.

Every great philosophical system epitomises in the form of thought a fundamental human experience, just as every great work of art or literature translates human possibility into the most concrete and sensuous form. Respect for the Other does not after all exclude personal choice. On the contrary, it is its primary condition.

Further Reading

It would be easy to provide a bibliography, as we used to do in universities. The first hour of the philosophy course was spent in taking down a dictated list of a hundred and fifty titles, together with the secondary literature – all of which to be read without fail by the end of the year. The only problem is that this did not really serve any purpose; even less so today when you can find all the bibliographies you could wish for online within a few seconds. So I prefer to offer a short but ‘reasoned’ list for further reading, merely to call to your attention the few necessary books with which you should make a start – without trying to anticipate what will follow. And, to be quite honest, there is enough here to be getting on with.

Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? (Harvard University Press, 2002)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (translated by Patrick Coleman, Oxford University Press, 1999)

Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (translated by H. J. Paton, Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2009)

Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (translated by Duncan Large, Oxford University Press, 1998)

Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism (translated by Carol Macomber, Yale University Press, 2007)

André Comte-Sponville, Le Bonheur, désespérément (Editions Librio, 2003)

Martin Heidegger, ‘What is Metaphysics?’ and ‘After Metaphysics’, in Basic Writings (ed. David Farrell Krell, Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2008)

Index

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.

absolute commandments, 119–20

active forces, 157, 163–68, 169, 172, 175, 179

Adorno, Theodor, 194

affectivity, 104, 105

Althusser, Louis, 203

altruism, 118, 168

amor fati, 44, 189–91, 193–95, 203, 204, 223, 224, 226, 227, 231

analytical philosophy, 202

anarchy, 169–70, 173

animals:

consequences of new distinction between humans and, 110–14

denatured, humans as, 114–17

difference between humans and, 103–10

education in, 111–12

essence of, 112

societies of, 111

animism, 22

Antichrist, The (Nietzsche), 182, 183

Antoninus, 79

Apologists, 79

Appel, Karl-Otto, 202

Arendt, Hannah, 33–34, 35

aristocracy, aristocratic model, 72, 73, 77, 118

meritocratic model vs., 120–27

Nietzsche and, 157, 163–64

Aristotle, 16, 25, 73, 78, 104

Nicomachean Ethics,

39–40, 122, 123–24

Arrian, 18–19

art, artists, 156–57, 161, 163–64, 165, 177, 178, 180, 252–56

beauty and, 236, 237

classical vs. romantic, 179–81

cultural context of, 252–53

economy and, 170

greatness of, 172–73

astronomy, 97–98, 132, 164

atheism, 10, 105, 136, 137, 145

attachment, 47–49, 80–87, 261, 262

Augustine, Saint, 6, 64, 65, 82

The City of God,

65, 66, 67–68

Confessions,

83–87

Auschwitz, 194, 227

authority, arguments from, 132–33, 211

auto-reflection, 239–43, 248, 265

baptism, 88

barbarians, 77

beauty, 14, 24–25, 98, 99, 120, 236–38, 258–60

bees, 111

Bernard, Claude, 99–100, 156

Between Past and Future (Arendt), 33–34, 35

Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche), 146–47, 154

Bible, 69–70, 251–52

Corinthians, 66–67, 88

First Epistle of Saint John, 64

Galatians, 82

Genesis, 9–10

Gospels, 3, 57, 60, 61–62, 64, 75, 76, 262

Romans, 89

bioethics, 220–21, 241–42

biology, 202, 241

blasphemy, 185–86

Bosnian Muslims, 228–29

Bruller, Jean, 114

Buddhism, 41, 43, 44, 47, 48, 50–51, 80–82, 84–87, 190, 191, 193–95, 224, 225, 261, 262, 264, 267

capitalism, 204–7

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 89–90

categorical imperatives, 119–20

cats, 106, 107, 108, 109, 112

causality, 99, 100–101

chaos, 14, 94, 95, 98, 99

Nietzsche and, 154–57, 167

Christ, 3–4, 57, 69, 75, 87–90, 262

crucifixion of, 67

Logos,

59–66, 78, 89

Christianity, 10, 45, 55–91, 136, 233, 236, 245, 257, 264, 267

apologias and, 79

body and, 89–90, 160

devil in, 9–10

ethics and, 58, 71–77

humanism and, 94–97

humanitarianism and, 247

love in, 4, 60, 77–91

and modern idea of humanity, 58, 60, 71–78

Nietzsche and, 150, 160, 168, 174–75

reason in, 57

reason replaced by faith in, 59–71

resurrection in, 84–85, 87–90, 261

salvation in, 3–4, 53, 56–60, 70, 77–91, 93, 94, 261–63

science and, 94, 132

Stoicism and, 52–53, 56, 57, 59–71, 93

theory in, 58–71

truths in, 69, 70, 132

Chrysippus, 18, 26, 32

Cicero, 18, 38

On Moral Ends,

30–31

On the Nature of the Gods,

21–22, 26, 32, 38

City of God, The (Augustine), 65, 66, 67–68

classicism, romanticism vs., 179–81

Cleanthes, 18, 26

commandments, absolute, 119–20

common good, 117, 119

communism, 136–39, 170, 186, 244

compassion, 81, 85, 87, 168, 247, 261

competition, 207, 212–14, 215, 218

Comte-Sponville, André, 43, 224–25, 266–67

Confessions (Augustine), 83–87

conscience, 75–76, 132

consciousness, 236

contemporary philosophy, 199–204

deconstruction and, 201–4, 217–18, 219

ethics and, 222, 223

Heidegger and, 143–44, 196–97, 205–9, 210, 214–19

humanism in, 239

moving beyond deconstruction in, 204–8

Nietzsche and, 199–205, 207, 208, 219

possible avenues for, 219–23

and retreat of meaning, 205–11

salvation and, 222–23, 247–64

technology and, 205–11

theory and, 222, 223

transcendence and, 232–39

Copernicus, Nicolaus, 93–94, 96, 164

Corinthians, 66–67, 88

Corneille, Pierre, 181

cosmos, cosmic order, 121, 126, 136, 144, 145, 233, 239

Christianity and, 61, 62

contemplation of, 19–28

Epictetus and, 45, 48

humanism and, 94–103, 114, 124–27, 128, 133, 135

justice based on, 28–32

natural catastrophes and, 23, 24, 120–21, 168–69, 211–12, 247

Nietzsche and, 150, 151, 155–57, 166–67, 184, 192

science and, 97–101, 127

Stoics and, 19–28, 45, 48, 52, 59, 93

Crates, 29, 30

Crescens, 79

critical reflection, 1–2, 221–22

Critique of Practical Reason (Kant), 117

Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 98, 100–101, 102

culture, 111, 112, 116, 249

cynicism, 199, 203–4, 223

Cynics, 29–30, 79

Dalai-Lama, 262

death, 2–8, 10, 11, 13, 33–40, 49–53, 57, 58, 77, 90, 140, 260, 264

heroic deeds and, 33–36

of loved ones, 3, 80–81, 248, 261–64

procreation and, 33–34

Declaration of the Rights of Man, 74, 102, 103, 199, 245, 246

deconstruction, 140, 199, 222, 223, 224, 241

contemporary philosophy and, 201–8, 217–18, 219

moving beyond, 204–8

see also

postmodernism

Deleuze, Gilles, 201, 203

democracy, 17, 31, 72, 74–75, 76, 108, 126, 144–47, 149, 157, 161, 166, 196, 202, 206, 208–9, 217, 218, 222

De rerum natura (“On the Nature of Things”) (Lucretius), 6–7

Derrida, Jacques, 203

Descartes, René, 10, 55, 94, 104–5, 127–32, 144, 164, 209–11

The Discourse on Method,

128

Meditations,

128

devil, 9–10

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Galileo), 94

Dionysus, 190

Discourse on Method, The (Descartes), 128

Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Rousseau), 104–10, 111

Discourses (Epictetus), 18, 36–37, 45–48, 51

disinterestedness, 117–18, 119, 153

divinity, 151, 233

Christianity and, 61–63, 65, 67–68, 70, 78

humanising of, 245, 247

humanism and, 98, 102, 103, 114, 121, 125, 126, 128

Nietzsche and, 151, 155–57, 184

Plato on, 38–39

Stoicism and, 20–21

dogmatism, 265–66

Donne, John, 96, 97, 127–28

doubt, 128, 129, 132, 144, 148, 216

about future, 191, 193

Dunant, Henri, 246–47

earthquakes, 120–21, 168–69, 211–12, 247

Ecce Homo (Nietzsche), 145–46, 183, 189

ecology, 31–32, 215–16, 220–21

education, 111–12, 127, 249

egotism, 114, 118, 119, 121, 125, 126, 257

enlarged thought, 139–40, 248–52, 256, 260, 265, 266

Enlightenment, 143–45, 150, 184, 196, 199, 200, 204, 211–13, 215, 216

Epictetus, 7, 18–19, 36, 37, 189, 194–95, 227

Discourses,

18, 36–37, 45–48, 51

Meditations,

Epicureans, 24

Epicurus, 4, 6, 21–22, 41

equality, 72–75, 77, 102, 125–26

erudition, 221, 222

eternal instant, 260

see also

present moment

eternal recurrence, 183–89, 190–91, 192

ethics and morals, 12–15, 223, 236, 237, 265

in aristocratic vs. meritocratic models, 120–27

bioethics, 220–21

Christianity and, 58, 71–77

and consequences of new distinction between humans and animals, 110–14

contemporary philosophy and, 222, 223

and difference between animals and humans, 103–10

humanism and, 95, 96, 102–35

Kantian, 117–20, 121–22, 127, 149

and man as denatured animal, 114–17

Nietzsche and, 150, 168–76, 178, 181–82, 185, 195–96, 243

ontology and, 181

relativism in, 247

salvation and, 133–35

science and, 220–21, 240, 241–42

secular, definition of, 133

Stoicism and, 23, 28–33

use of terms, 12–13

ethology, 105

evil, 108–10, 114, 116, 184

Existentialism is a Humanism (Sartre), 112–13

facts, 153–54

faith, 4–6, 9, 12, 56, 57, 93, 132

reason replaced by, 59–71

fascism, 162–63, 199, 224, 227

fears, 10, 42, 45, 50

of death,

see

death

Foucault, Michel, 201, 203

freedom and free will, 144, 153, 228–32, 261

Christianity and, 72–74

equality and, 77

fear and, 10

Greeks and, 10, 17

humanism and, 105–8, 111–14, 117–19, 121–22, 125, 126, 133–34

Kant and, 117–18, 121–22, 125

religion and, 11–12

Rousseau and, 105–8, 111–12, 113–14, 119

French Communist Party, 136–37

French republicanism, 127

French Revolution, 74, 130–31, 211

Freud, Sigmund, 41, 148, 156, 167, 201, 203

From the Closed World to the Infinite (Koyré), 95–96

Furet, François, 263

future, 8, 40–44, 189, 190, 231, 252

doubts about, 191, 193

hopes for, 7, 8, 41, 43–47, 190, 194–95, 224–26, 232, 260, 267

Galatians, 82

Galileo Galilei, 94, 132

Gay Science, The (Nietzsche), 156, 187

genealogy, 150, 152–55, 185, 195–96, 201, 223, 224, 229, 232, 241

Genesis, 9–10

Germany, 244

Nazi,

see

Nazis

globalisation, 205–7, 212–13, 215–16, 218, 265

God, 2, 10, 11, 14, 45, 135, 230, 233–34, 236, 238

humanism and, 95–96

pantheism and, 22

salvation and, 4–6, 8, 10, 33

transcendence of, 26

gods, 17, 38

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 253

good will, 118, 119–20, 126

Gospels, 3, 57, 60, 61–62, 64, 75, 76, 262

grace, 50, 226, 260

Greek philosophy, 15–16, 17, 24, 55, 102

Christianity and, 52–53, 93

see also

Stoicism

grief, 248, 261–64

guilt, regret and remorse, 8, 40–41, 47, 49, 176–77, 179, 187–88, 190–95, 252

Habermas, Jürgens, 202

harmony, 171–72, 175–76

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 221

Heidegger, Martin, 143–44, 196–97, 205–9, 210, 214–19

Overcoming Metaphysics,

208

hierarchical order, 72–73, 77, 94

in aristocratic world, 72, 73, 77, 118, 120–27

Hiroshima, 241

Hitler, Adolf, 196

hope, 7, 8, 41, 43–47, 190, 194–95, 224–26, 232, 260, 267

horizon, 235

Hugo, Victor, 181

human(s):

Christianity and modern idea of, 58, 60, 71–78

consequences of new distinction between animals and, 110–14

deification of, 243–47

as denatured animals, 114–17

difference between animals and, 103–10

equality of, 72–75, 77, 102, 125–26

rights of, 60, 74, 102, 103, 133–35, 196, 199, 202, 238, 245, 246

Human, All Too Human (Nietzsche), 171, 172

humanism and modern philosophy, 93–141, 144–45, 184, 196, 203, 204, 209, 224, 227

contemporary, 239

ethics and, 95, 96, 102–35

origin of, 127–33

postmodernism and, 143–45, 148, 149

post-Nietzschean, 232–33, 241

salvation and, 95, 96–97, 102, 103, 128, 133–39

theory in, 95, 97–101, 103

without metaphysics, 236–39, 243, 247–48, 257, 261, 264

humanitarianism, 246–47

human nature, 112–13

humility, 5–6, 9, 10, 64–69, 93

Husserl, Edmund, 232, 234–36

ideals, 136–39, 145–48, 168, 171, 175, 178, 185–86, 189, 195–96, 204, 207, 217–18, 224

idols, 136, 145–48, 178, 185, 195, 196, 200–204, 207, 215, 217, 234–35, 237

immanence, 25–26, 224, 233, 245

transcendence within, 234–38

impermanence, 48, 81

individualism, 125, 126

individuality, 255

innocence of becoming, 49, 191–96, 267

instinct, 105–6, 108, 112

intelligence, 104, 105, 120, 258, 260

Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (Bernard), 99–100

Islam, 10, 55, 56, 76, 233

Jacobins, 130

Jesus, see Christ

John, Saint, 3, 61–62, 64

Jonas, Hans, 32, 123

Jews, 10, 20, 55, 66–67, 75–76, 233

genocide against, 194, 227

judgements, 153–54, 169, 228–31

justice and law, 23–24, 75–76, 236–38

cosmic order and, 28–32

Justin, Saint, 62, 78–80

Kant, Immanuel, 7, 10, 13, 100, 114, 125, 127, 128, 139, 146, 202, 210, 227, 230, 232, 234, 248, 265–67

Critique of Practical Reason,

117

Critique of Pure Reason,

98, 100–101, 102

ethics and, 117–20, 121–22, 127, 149

Nietzsche and, 155–56, 186–87

knowledge, 97–101, 128, 150, 151, 209, 211, 223

absolute, 234, 236

Nietzsche and, 152–55, 182

self-, 239–43, 248, 265

three ages of, 239–42

Koyré, Alexander, 95–96

Lacan, Jacques, 203

Lanzky, Paul, 169

law, see justice and law

Lazarus, 3, 262

Letters to Lucilius (Seneca), 42–43

liberalism, 206

libertarians, 173, 174

liver, 100

Logos, 26, 45, 59–66, 78, 89

love, 3, 4, 60, 77–91, 93, 135, 190, 224, 236–38, 248, 251–62, 267

death and, 3, 80–81, 248, 261–64

wisdom of, 252, 263, 264

Lucretius, 6–7, 41

Marcus Aurelius, 19, 61, 62, 79, 189

Meditations,

23, 24–25, 37, 41–42, 48–49

Marx, Karl, 136, 148, 149, 201, 203, 229

materialism, 195–96, 205, 223, 236–39, 241, 244, 245, 247, 267

failure of, 223–32

Meditations (Descartes), 128

Meditations (Epictetus), 49

Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), 23, 24–25, 37, 41–42, 48–49

Memory of Solferino, A (Dunant), 246–47

meritocratic model, 73–74

aristocratic model vs., 120–27

Michelet, Jules, 103

misfortune, 227

monotheism, 45

Montaigne, Michel de, 7, 10, 260

morals, see ethics and morals

mourning, 248, 261–64

music, 156–57, 164, 181, 237, 253, 255

Muslims, 10, 55, 56, 76, 233

Bosnian, 228–29

Musonius Rufus, 18

Mussolini, Benito, 196

Nagasaki, 241

Naipaul, V.S., 249–51, 254

nationalism, 138–39, 246–47

natural catastrophes, 23, 24, 120–21, 168–69, 211–12, 247

nature, 240

mastery of, 209–14

Nazis, 147, 149, 196, 218, 219

Auschwitz, 194, 227

Newton, Isaac, 94, 102, 114, 155–56, 164

Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 39–40, 122, 123–24

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 41, 55, 139, 140–41, 143–97, 220, 221, 224, 225, 229, 241, 245, 247, 248, 267

active forces and, 157, 163–68, 169, 172, 175, 179

amor fati

and, 44, 189–91, 193–95, 203, 204, 226, 231

as anarchist, 169–70, 173

The Antichrist,

182, 183

aristocracy and, 157, 163–64

Beyond Good and Evil,

146–47, 154

chaos and, 154–57, 167

Christianity and, 150, 160, 168, 174–75

contemporary philosophy and, 199–205, 207, 208, 219

cosmos and, 150, 151, 155–57, 166–67, 184, 192

divinity and, 151, 155–57, 184

Ecce Homo,

145–46, 183, 189

eternal recurrence and, 183–89, 190–91, 192

The Gay Science,

156, 187

as genealogist, 150, 152–55, 185, 195–96, 201

“grand style” and, 168, 172–75, 177–82, 185, 191, 192, 195–97, 217

harmony and, 171–72, 175–76

Human, All Too Human,

171, 172

idols and, 136, 145–48, 178, 185, 195, 196, 200–204, 207, 215, 217

and innocence of becoming, 49, 191–96, 267

interpretations of, 196–97

knowledge and, 152–55

morality and, 150, 168–76, 178, 181–82, 185, 195–96, 243

Nazis and, 147, 149, 196

nihilism and, 147–48, 182–83, 195, 203

praxis

and, 149, 150–51

reactive forces and, 157–63, 165, 167, 169, 171–75, 179, 185, 191–93, 203

religion and, 160, 184–85

salvation and, 149, 150–51, 182–89, 223–24

Socrates and, 158–60, 162–63, 165–66, 178

theory and, 149–55, 157, 166, 168, 185, 195–96

Thus Spake Zarathustra,

185–88

Twilight of the Idols,

150, 152–53, 162, 170, 173–74

The Will to Power,

155, 168, 170–71, 172–73, 175, 179–81, 189–90, 192

will to power and, 176–77, 181–82, 186, 215, 217

nihilism, 147–48, 182–83, 195, 203

nostalgia, 8, 40–43, 191, 226, 260

omniscience, 234

On Moral Ends (Cicero), 30–31

On the Nature of the Gods (Cicero), 21–22, 26, 32, 38

“On the Nature of Things” (De rerum natura) (Lucretius), 6–7

On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies (Copernicus), 93–94

ontology, 151, 181

Overcoming Metaphysics (Heidegger), 208

pantheism, 22, 45

parents, 263–64

particularity, 251, 254, 258–60

Pascal, Blaise, 6, 65, 259

Pensées,

83, 257–58

past, 8, 40–44, 189, 190, 231, 252

guilt, regret and remorse over, 8, 40–41, 47, 49, 176–77, 179, 187–88, 190–95, 252

nostalgia for, 8, 40–43, 191, 226, 260

patriotism, 136, 137–38, 246–47

Paul, Saint, 66–67, 69

Pensées (Pascal), 83, 257–58

perfectibility, 105–6, 111, 230, 249

Peter Damian, Saint, 69

philosophy, 1–16

analytical, 202

beginning of, 17

contemporary,

see

contemporary philosophy

critical reflection in, 1–2, 221–22

definitions of, 1–2, 6

Greek,

see

Greek philosophy

modern,

see

humanism and modern philosophy

plurality of truths in, 265–67

postmodern,

see

postmodernism

religion and, 3, 5–12, 16, 57, 63, 91

replacement of one by another, 51–52, 60, 199

as scholastic discipline, 70–71, 219–22

self-appraisal in, 242–43

specialised categories of, 219–21

three dimensions of, 12–15;

see also

ethics and morals; salvation (wisdom), in philosophy; theory

physics, 94, 95, 114, 156, 164, 209, 241

Picasso, Pablo, 149, 156–57

pigeons, 106, 107, 112

Plato, 14, 16, 67, 78, 130, 158, 221

Timaeus,

38–39

Poe, Edgar Allan, 4–5

politics, 125, 145–46, 218, 227, 249

and consequences of new distinction between humans and animals, 110–14

democracy, 17, 31, 72, 74–75, 76, 108, 126, 144–47, 149, 157, 161, 166, 196, 202, 206, 208–9, 217, 218, 222

patriotism, 136, 137–38, 246–47

Popper, Karl, 202

postmodernism, 143–45, 148, 149, 200

irreverence of, 149

Nietzsche and,

see

Nietzsche, Friedrich

poverty, 206, 207

power, 218

praxis, 32–33

Nietzsche and, 149, 150–51

Stoicism and, 33–40

present moment, 8, 42–44, 47, 48, 51, 189, 225–26, 231–32, 252, 260

amor fati

and, 44, 189–91, 193–95, 203, 204, 223, 224, 226, 227, 231

pride and arrogance, 6, 64–68

Principia Mathematica (Newton), 94

Principles of Philosophy (Descartes), 94

progress, 212–13, 215

psychoanalysis, 148, 167, 242

Rabaut Saint-Etienne, Jean-Paul, 131

rabbits, 100, 156

racism, 113

“Raven, The” (Poe), 4–5

Rawls, John, 202

reactive forces, 157–63, 165, 167, 169, 171–75, 179, 185, 191–93, 203

reason and rationalism, 6, 9, 12, 17, 26, 48, 56, 104, 105, 143–45, 148, 149, 156, 160, 167, 173, 180, 204, 209, 211, 212

in Christianity, 57

replaced by faith, 59–71

recurrence, 183–89, 190–91, 192

regret, remorse, and guilt, 8, 40–41, 47, 49, 176–77, 179, 187–88, 190–95, 252

relativism, moral, 247

religion(s), 17, 55–56, 93, 144–45, 211, 233–34

Christianity,

see

Christianity

faith in, 4–6, 9, 12, 56, 57, 59–71, 93, 132

humility demanded by, 5–6, 9, 10, 64–69, 93

Islam, 10, 55, 56, 76, 233

Judaism, 10, 20, 55, 66–67, 75–76, 233

Nietzsche and, 160, 184–85

philosophy and, 3, 5–12, 16, 57, 63, 91

promises of, 8, 10, 11

salvation through,

see

salvation, religious

science and, 94, 132, 160

substitute, 136–39

truths in, 69

remorse, regret, and guilt, 8, 40–41, 47, 49, 176–77, 179, 187–88, 190–95, 252

resurrection, 84–85, 87–90, 261

revolution, 130–31, 170, 227

rights, 60, 74, 102, 103, 133–35, 196, 199, 202, 238, 245, 246

Rinpoche, Sogyal, 82

Romans (Biblical book), 89

romanticism, classicism vs., 179–81

Rosset, Clément, 194

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 112–17, 119, 125, 127, 128, 139, 226, 227, 230, 249

Discourse on the Origin of Inequality,

104–10, 111

sacrifice, 243–47

salvation (wisdom), in philosophy, 6, 10, 12, 14, 15, 57, 58, 70, 71, 93, 221, 224, 243, 265

contemporary philosophy and, 222–23, 247–64

humanism and, 95, 96–97, 102, 103, 128, 133–39

materialism and, 225

morality and, 133–35

Nietzsche and, 149, 150–51, 182–89, 223–24

rethinking, 247–64

Stoicism and, 32–53, 59–60, 78, 80, 86, 93

substitute religions and, 136–39

salvation, religious, 3, 5–6, 8–12, 17, 33, 53, 56

Christian, 3–4, 53, 56–60, 70, 77–91, 93, 94, 261–63

resurrection in, 84–85, 87–90, 261

universal, 77

Sartre, Jean-Paul, 112

scepticism, 128, 265–66

Schoenberg, Arnold, 149, 156–57

science(s), 14, 21, 27–28, 94, 97–101, 102, 127, 144–45, 149, 153–54, 156, 157, 160–62, 164, 165, 209–11, 220, 240–42

astronomy, 97–98, 132, 164

biology, 202, 241

and death of great ideas, 212–19

ethics and, 220–21, 240, 241–42

and mastery of nature, 209–14

movement to technology from, 210–19

physics, 94, 95, 114, 156, 164, 209, 241

religion and, 94, 132, 160

self-criticism in, 241–42

sociology, 201–2

scientific method, 99, 101, 144, 240

scientism, 136, 138–39

self-knowledge, 239–43, 248, 265

Seneca, 18, 44

Letters to Lucilius,

42–43

sexism, 113

singularity, 255–56, 258–60

slaves, 72, 73, 77, 127

socialism, 170, 186

sociology, 201–2

Socrates, 158–60, 162–63, 165–66, 178

Solferino, 246

solitude, 82

Sophists, 158, 165–66

soteriology, 33

Soviet Union, 244

Spinoza, Baruch, 7, 41, 226, 227, 266, 267

spirituality, 223

materialist, 226

Srebrenica massacre, 228–29

Stalin, Joseph, 137

stars, 97

Stoicism, 7, 16, 17–53, 55, 76, 77, 79, 80, 84, 87, 90, 192, 224, 225, 233, 239–40, 261, 262, 267

Christianity and, 52–53, 56, 57, 59–61, 93

ethics and, 23, 28–33

Logos

in, 26, 45, 59–66, 78

present moment and, 42–44, 47, 48, 51, 190–95, 226

salvation in, 32–53, 59–60, 78, 80, 86, 93

theory in, 19–28

subjectivity, 127–30

synthesis, 100–101

tabula rasa, 130, 131, 144

technique, 214–15

technology, 205–19

and death of great ideas, 212–19

and disappearance of ends and triumph of means, 210–12

movement from science to, 210–19

and retreat of meaning, 205–11

theoria, 239

origins of word, 19–20

two aspects of, 151

theory, 12, 14, 15, 19–20, 27–28

as auto-reflection, 239–43, 248

in Christianity, 58–71

in contemporary philosophy, 222, 223

in humanism, 95, 97–101, 103

Nietzsche and, 149–55, 157, 166, 168, 185, 195–96

practical dimension and, 181

in Stoicism, 19–28

Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 70

Thus Spake Zarathustra (Nietzsche), 185–88

Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, The (Rinpoche), 82

Timaeus (Plato), 38–39

time, 13, 33, 40–41, 252, 260

see also

future; past; present moment

Tocqueville, Alexis de, 130

torture, 109–10, 194, 228

transcendence, 25–26, 205, 224, 245

horizontal, 245

in immanence, 234–38

materialism and, 223, 230–32

new idea of, 232–39

Nietzsche and, 147, 148, 178, 185, 192, 195

three conceptions of, 233–36

trust, 9, 63, 66, 128, 132–33

see also

faith

truth(s), 129, 131, 132, 144, 154, 158, 231, 236

and arguments from authority, 132–33

in Christianity, 69, 70, 132

mathematical, 236, 237, 238

Nietzsche and, 160–62, 164–66, 182

in philosophy, plurality of, 265–67

turtles, 111–12

Twilight of the Idols (Nietzsche), 150, 152–53, 162, 170, 173–74

“Two Worlds” (Naipaul), 249–51, 254

universalism, 77

universality, 117, 119, 161, 249, 251, 254–56, 259–60

utopias, 136, 147–48, 185, 204, 217

value judgements, 153–54, 169, 228–31

values:

sacrificial, 243–47

see also

ethics and morals

Verne, Jules, 136, 138

virtue, 73, 74, 122–26

disinterested action and, 118

Voltaire, 196

Weber, Max, 239

What is a Good Life? (Ferry), 249

will to power, 176–77, 181–82, 186, 215, 217

Will to Power, The (Nietzsche), 155, 168, 170–71, 172–73, 175, 179–81, 189–90, 192

wisdom, see salvation, in philosophy

work, value of, 125, 126–27

World War II:

atomic bombs in, 241

Auschwitz in, 194, 227

You Shall Know Them (Vercors), 114–17

Zeno, 17–18, 26, 28

About the Author

Professor Luc Ferry teaches philosophy at the Sorbonne (University of Paris VII, Denis Diderot). He has won numerous awards, including the Prix Médicis, Prix Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, and Prix Aujourd’hui, in addition to being an officer of the French Legion of Honor and a knight of the Order of Arts and Letters. From 2002 to 2004 Ferry served as French Minister of National Education. He lives in Paris.

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Also by Luc Ferry, available in English

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Political Philosophy

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As Editor

Why We Are Not Nietzscheans

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Credits

Cover design by Milan Bozic

Society (ARS), New York/ Bank of Images of VEGAP, Madrid.

First published under the title Learning to Live in Great Britain in 2010 by Canongate Books.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THOUGHT. Copyright © 2011 by Plon. Translation copyright © 2010 by Theo Cuffe. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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