The Present Alone Is Our Happiness

THE PRESENT ALONE IS OUR HAPPINESS

. I Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson

Pierre Hadot Translated byMarc Djaballah

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 200 9

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Stanford University Press Stanford) California

English translation ©

200 9

by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford

Junior University. All tights reserved. The Present Alone Is Our Happiness: Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold J. Davidson was originally published in French under the title La Philosophic comme maniere de vivre. Entretiens avec Jeannie earlier et Arnold I. Davidson

© 2001, Editions Albin Michel. Publication assistance for this book was provided by the French Ministry of Culture-National Center for the Book. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means) electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. The translator wishes to thank Cheri Lynne Carr for her assistance in the translation of this volume. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hadot, Pierre. [Philosophie comme maniere de vivre. English] The present alone is our happiness: conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson / Pierre Hadot, Marc Djaballah. p. em. - (Cultural memory in the present) Originally published in French under the title La Philosophie comme maniere de vivre. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8°47-4835-3 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8047-4836-0 (pbk, : alk. paper) I. Hadot, Pierre-Interviews. 2. Philosophers-France-Interviews. 3. Philosophy, Ancient. II. Carlier, Jeannie. B2430.H334A5 194- dc22 [B]

4. Philosophy-History.

III. Davidson, Arnold Ira.

I. Djaballah, Marc, 1975IV. Title.

V. Series.

2009

2008011094

Contents

Introduction I

Tied to the Apron Strings of the Church

2

Researcher, Teacher, Philosopher

IX

3°

3 Philosophical Discourse

52

4 Interpretation, Objectivity, and Nonsense

61

5 Unitary Experience and Philosophical Life

6 Philosophical Discourse as Spiritual Exercise

7 Philosophy as Life and as Quest for Wisdom 8 From Socrates to Foucault. A Long Tradition

121

9 Unacceptable?

145

10

The Present Alone Is Our Happiness

Postface Notes

162

Introduction

To change life. Even to change a life. Few books have this effect. And yet, after reading Qu'est-ce que la philosophie antique? [What is Ancient philosophy?], this is what a young American, who was not a philosopher but a historian, wrote to Pierre Hadot: "You changed my life." This reader anticipated a question that I asked Hadot in these interviews: "Beyond their great erudition, are your books not protreptics, that is, books that aim to turn ttrepein in Greek) the reader toward philosophical life?" Carrying out this aim involves two distinct projects: on the one hand, to inform the reader of a set of facts that decisively show that for the Greeks philosophy was not the construction of a system but a choice of life; and on the other hand, to allow the reader to turn toward philosophy thus understood. The distinction is captured by the difference between the French title of Hader's book Exercices spirituels etphilosophie antique [Spiritual exercises and ancient philosophy], which certainly does not grab one's attention (although it sold well), and the title of the English translation, Philosophy as a Way ofLife. This unfaithful title is certainly not misleading, however. In the interviews contained in this volume, Hadot explains what might be called the indirectly protreptic character of his three great works of erudition on ancient philosophy: Exercices spirituels etphilosophie antique (1981), La Citadelle interieur [The inner citadel] (1992), and Qu'estceque fa philosophie antique?(1995). He invokes Kierkegaard's "method of indirect communication) and suggests that rather than telling people to "do this," one "allows a call to be heard"; by describing the "spiritual exercises lived by another, [one can] give a glimpse of and suggest a spiritual attitude, allow a call to be heard" (Chapter 9). These three books do this with irreproachable erudition that remains clear and is never weighty. Letters that Hadot has received from readers are) as it were, proof that the call has been heard. Perhaps the present book goes slightly beyond these dis-

x

Introduction

crete suggestions. The discussions presented in it do not attempt to answer the question What is ancient philosophy? even though they do often discuss Greek and Latin philosophers. "The main problem that poses itself to the philosopher," Hadot maintains-not at the beginning of these interviews, as a program, but at the end, as an assessment-"is ultimately to know what it is to do philosophy" (Chapter 8). To this central question-What is it to do philosophy?-Hadot ultimately gives only one answer, but an answer that is modulated in rather diverse forms, as though variations on a theme. These modulations of his response are inscribed in his intellectual and personal "path" of development, which is retraced in the first interviews and revisited in subsequent interviews in the course of discussing how to read and interpret ancient philosophy, what is perennial in it and what might no longer be acceptable for us; about the value we can find in the "experimental laboratories" that are the ancient philosophies; and in a word, about how they can help us to live better. In its first form, Hader's response is extraordinarily precocious: he was practically still a child when the sky-the starry sky-granted him an unforgettable, inexpressible experience (remarkably, the idea that what is most important cannot be said appeared already) that he subsequently recognized as what Romain Rolland called the "oceanic sentiment": "1 was filled with an anxiety that was both terrifying and delicious, provoked by the sentiment of the presence of the world, or of the Whole [Tout], and of myself as part of this world" (Chapter I). "1 think that I have been a philosopher since that time," Hadot says some sixty years later (Chapter I). Thus he did not wait for his encounter with ancient philosophers (he studied Thomism first, a systematic philosophy if ever there was one) to discover that philosophy is not the construction of a system but a lived experience. Hador identifies Rolland's "oceanic sentiment" with Michel Hulin's "savage mysticism," which he discusses several times in the conversations presented here. To the mysticism of negation and separation that in his youth had so fascinated him in Plotinus (aphele panta, "remove everything") he prefers a mysticism of welcoming: "welcome all things." Hadot's superb anthology that concludes this volume makes it clear that the "oceanic sentiment," felt many times throughout his life, has not ceased to nourish his philosophical reflection. This is the only theme that does not originate in ancient thought: in their admirable texts the ancients

Introduction

Xl

expressed their amazement before the cosmos and" the lived awareness of belonging to the great chain of being that puts us into solidarity with stones, trees, animals, men, and the stars; but if they felt this sense of fusion with the whole, they did not say so. Hadot's first real contact with ancient philosophy was indirect. It was through Montaigne that he discovered the famous Platonic definition: Philosophy is an exercise in dying. "Perhaps I did not understand' it properly at the time," Hadot says today, "but it was in fact one of the texts that led me to represent philosophy as something other than a theoretical discourse" (Chapter 8). Montaigne's text is rich precisely because, when it is not taken absolutely and out of context, it supports several interpretations, and it gradually migrates to the heart of Hader's reflection both as a scholar and as a human being. Yet it was not this Platonic phrase from Monraigne that allowed Hadot to discover that ancient philosophical discourses did not aim to construct systems; he came to see this through what (on reflection and without worrying about adhering to current trends, which is never a concern for him) he called "spiritual exercises." It was rather the realization of a Frenchman who by grade 9 had already been taught to write a well-formed essay with a clear discourse and without repetition or contradiction. Ancient philosophical discourse, by contrast, did not respond to criteria of order and clarity. The works of Aristotle and Augustine are poorly written, and those of Plato contradict themselves. Although Hadot is obviously not the first to have pointed out these facts, he calls our attention to a particularly important consequence. In the present interviews, addressing himself to the nonspecialist more directly than in perhaps any of his previous works, Hadot shows that the inconsistencies of ancient philosophers are explained by the fact that they are addressed to a specific audience or listener. Hadot aimed not to inform but rather to persuade, transform, or produce a "formative effect"-in short, to persuade the listener that the ancient treatises are, almost without exception, protreptics, and that at the same time these discourses, whether dialogues or not, are also "experiences of thought" or exercises in "how to think," for the benefit of the listener and sometimes with his or her collaboration. For the ancients, philosophy was above all a way of life, and this is why they called not only the Cynics, who had no theoretical discourse, philosophers, but

XlI

Introduction

also anyone-including women, simple citizens, and political men-who lived as a philosopher, even without writing or teaching, These people were called philosophers because the ancients considered philosophy to be above all a way of life. They admired Socrates for his life and his death more than for his doctrine, which was not written and was immediately captured and modified by those who used his name. In the present conversations, Hadot gives brief indications of this theme's resurgence beyond the Christian Middle Ages. He also emphasizes the temptation, for all philosophers, to believe that to do philosophy is to construct an impeccable and absolutely new theoretical discourse. "The more or less skillful construction of a conceptual edifice will become an end in itself" (Chapter 3), and "the philosopher always has a tendency to be content with his own discourse" (Chapter 8). This slope is especially steep in a country in which the formal philosophical essay sows the first seeds of many honorable merits. Hadot's interpretation of Plato's text on the exercise of death, reinforced by years of extensive work with the ancient texts from both the Platonic and the Stoic traditions, departs entirely from the fascination with death, from the Christian memento mori as from all exegesis that would make death preferable to life. For Hadot, to exercise death is really to exercise life, that is, to overcome "the partial and biased self" [Ie moi partiel et partial], to elevate oneself to a "vision from above," to a "universal perspective." This triadic, but ultimately unified theme is-like a leitmotif-constantly taken up in the course of these interviews, for Hadot sees possible applications in all the dimensions and situations of everyday life, for all human beings. To overcome the "partial and biased self" is first to become aware of our belonging to the human community, and of the necessity to keep the good of this koinonia in view when we act. Hadot masterfully shows the importance of this theme both in the discourse of ancient philosophy and in the practice of the ancient philosophers, from Socrates to Plotinus, as well as of all those who, without being "professional" philosophers, have been inspired by their precepts. Was it known that the Scaevolas, adepts of Stoicism, showed themselves to be honest magistrates? Or that governor Mucius Scaevola paid for his trips out of his own pocket rather than use his position to fill his pockets, and even demanded that his subordinates share this integrity? Or that when

Introduction

xru

Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was accountable for millions of subjects, learned of the deaths of child trapeze artists, he went to the trouble of commanding that these exercises should henceforth be protected by nets? Or that he asked himself about the legitimacy of the war in which he was involved as he defended the Roman borders against the Sarmatians somewhere in the Balkans? These principles and examples are useful for application to contemporary contexts without having to be updated. In line with the ancient philosophers, perhaps especially Aristotle, Hadot considers this rule-the overcoming of the "partial and biased self,' and the "look from above" or the "universal perspective"-also to constrain the scholar: "In order to study a text or microbes or the stars, one must undo oneself from one's subjectivity" (Chapter 4). Both in the practice ofdemocracy and in scientific work, "one must undo oneself from the partiality of the individual and impassioned self in order to elevate oneself to the universality of the rational self" (Chapter 4). Hadot breaks a spear on the timely idea that all discourses are of equal value, that all interpretations are equally subjective, that is, incapable not only of attaining objectivity but even of attempting to do so. Let there be no mistake, however: because the historian-in particular the historian of philosophy-is in question, it is clear that adopting a universal perspective can in no way imply the aim to interpret texts as though they were outside time, place, or the society in which they were produced. Hadot explains the shift in his course of development from an atemporal and atopical conception of philosophical discourse, which he considers to be. nefariously widespread, to one that takes its historical inscription into account with precision (Chapter 8). For the ancients, this self-overcoming or universal perspective concerns not only the scholar and the politician but the entire human genre. The Greeks were the first to conceive of the unity of the human community, slaves included, and to proclaim themselves citizens of the world. When asked about the meaning of chis "universal perspective," and about its relation to Kant's "universal law" (Chapter 8), Hadot underlines their resemblances: in Kant, "morality creates itself in the unexpected and, in a sense, heroic leap that brings us from a limited perspective to a universal perspective" (Chapter 8), or "from a self that sees only its own interest to a self open to other humans and to the universe" (Chapter 8). This is indeed

XIV

Introduction

the heritage ofSocrates, who said to the Athenians, "Who more than I has forgotten his personal interest to take care of you?" Three further, related themes are admirably expressed-much more effectively than I could do here in a few lines-in the small collection of texts that closes the volume. Hadot initially encountered the first theme in high school when writing an essay on a text by Henri Bergson that defined philosophy as "the decision taken once to look at the world naively in and around oneself." He found this naive perception in the ancients, for example, in Seneca's text that he cites, as well as in painters and poets closer to our time. Another connected theme is related to the awareness of the importance of the instant constantly expressed by the Stoics and the Epicureans (this is the actual meaning of the Epicurean Horace's carpe diem), but also by certain modern authors, such as Montaigne and Goethe-the present alone is our happiness. This wealth of the instant is tied to what Hadot calls "the pure happiness of existing"-wonder,. but also, for the moderns, anxiety and even terror before the enigma of existence. These themes are quite obviously intertwined. The "oceanic sentiment" is the fine point of what Hadot calls cosmic conscience: to experience the present instant-s-the only time and the only place we can grasp in the immensity of the times and places to which we belong-means "to live as though we were seeing the world both for the last and for the first time" (Chapter 10), as though looking at the world naively for the first time. And the consciousness of belonging to the world is also inclusion in the community of humans, with the ensuing duties. Will we say that Hadot has ceded in turn to the temptation to construct an impeccable system? In no way. Metaphysics and ontology are entirely absent from the present volume. Plato had previously attempted to prove rationally that virtue is more advantageous than vice, that it is in our interest to do good. This is not the case here. Nothing is proven. Happiness is not promised. In fact, nothing at all is promised. We are told only that today, as in the day of Socrates or Marcus Aurelius, a certain number of principles that guided the everyday life of these philosophers can also produce for us a life that is "more conscious, more rational, more open to others and to the immensity of the world" (Chapter 7).

Introduction

xv

Thus this is a book written for everyone. Does this mean it holds no interest for professional philosophers? I do not think so. A mix of coincidences and predictable consequences has given this book three voices, united by friendship. Arnold I. Davidson is professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago; he is the person primarily responsible for introducing Pierre Hadot to the United States, and for arranging for his works to be translated into English. For some time he had had the project of conducting interviews with Hadot. When Helene Monsacre, our editor-aware of my very old friendship with Hadot and his wife-approached him about a series of interviews, the four of us decided that Davidson and I would share the task. We were well aware that our questions, our interests, and our spheres ofcompetence were not the same. Davidson is really a philosopher and very attuned to all of the contemporary philosophical problems. For my part, I evoked themes that were only marginally philosophical, such as the critique of astrology, prayer, and Stoic determinism, as I do in my seminar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. The result is that, like ancient philosophical discourses, this book contains, if not contradictions, at least repetitions, themes approached from different points of view-one could almost say, answers that address the listener, whether "profane" or "professional" philosopher. Its unity is closer to that of a sonata than to that of an essay. Thus it is clear that the question here is not about the construction of a system but about philosophy as a way of life.

Jeannie Carlier

THE PRESENT ALONE IS OUR HAPPINESS

llTied to the Apron Strings

of the Church

Jeannie earlier: You were born in Paris to French parents, but your cousins spoke German. May we assume that it is not an accident that you are asfond ofGoethe as you are of'Montaigne?

My mother was the daughter of a man from Lorraine who had refused to opt for Germany at the time of the annex of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871. She had found work at Rheims as a cellar worker in a country house. Every year during my childhood, around 1930, we would go on vacation to the Lorraine repossessed by France afterthe First World War. My cousins lived in villages or in small cities close to the German border, not far from Sarreguemines and Sarralbe. Many of them spoke not French but a German dialect. In the train stations, for example, all the instructions for the travelers were written in German. The parish priests, who did not hide their hostility toward secular France, delivered their sermons in high German, which was also used by the children to say their prayers in Church. Catholicism was very rigorist. My shorts were scandalous. The boys of my age wore pants that fell below the knee, in order to hide their "pieces of flesh," as the Bliesbri.ickpriest would say. The parish priests, decently paid thanks to the concordat with the Vatican that was maintained in Alsace-Lorraine by France after the war, were absolute masters in their parish. For example, in the 1920S, the priest ofZetting had refused to give

2

Tied to theApron Strings ofthe Church

my cousin Communion, humiliating her in front of the other parishioners because, as was the fashion after the war, she had cut her hair. So I encountered the problem of the complex relations between France and Germany very early, during my childhood, through the experience of Lorraine vacations, but also by way of the stories of my grandfather and my parents, who had had to leave Rheims on foot in 1914 and had finally found refuge in Paris, where I was born in 1922. They returned to Rheims a month after my birth, to a city almost entirely destroyed by the bombings. It took twenty years to repair the cathedral, inaugurated in 1939-on the eve of the Second World War. I have always loved the good city of Rheims, famous for its cathedral and its champagne, where I lived from 1922 to 1945. To get back to Lorraine, I have always been annoyed by the ignorance of the French de l'interieur ["mainland"] (as those from Lorraine say) about the part of France in which German was spoken. At the beginning of the war, in 1939, Lorraine had been completely evacuated. One of my cousins from Lorraine, who was able to return to his village under exceptional conditions, found his house ransacked; stupidly, the pigs had even been locked in the closets. The French, seeing German inscriptions, thought they were in Germany. Speaking more generally, the ignorance that many French have of German realities irritates me. I think, for example, of a rather dramatic event that took place around 1970. A young German professor had been invited to give a paper in Paris. On this occasion, he met a professor, a French and Jewish historian, whose parents had died in the Holocaust. He refused to shake his German colleague's hand. He later told me this, and that he had suffered from it terribly because his own father, a communist, had died in a concentration- camp. Why would one have the systematic and blind attitude of this French historian, ignorant of or ignoring the fact that others in the opposing camp might have suffered' as well? But I think that everything worth saying on this subject has been said in Alfred Grosser's admirable book Le Crime et La memoire [Crime and memory], which addressed in certain intellectuals a "display of the will not to know."

Tied to the Apron Strings ofthe Church

3

]. C.: Your mother was a practicing Catholic? My mother was very pious; she went to Mass every morning. She was a very complex person: she was very happy, sang a great deal, and sometimes amused herself by making appalling grimaces. Despite being very sociable (as opposed to my father, who never wanted to see anyone), she was hostile to young people and to exaggerated" mortifications, but she was of an almost fanatical faith. In my childhood I felt that there was conflict between my parents. My mother made me pray for the conversion of my father, who no longer went to Mass and who sometimes made bizarre allusions to my mother's confessor, the father of Bretizel, Since then, I have come to understand that after my birth, my mother, who had been very ill, could not have children. As a result, her confessor had forbidden her to have conjugal relations, according to the doctrine of the Church: no union if it does not aim at procreation. My father and my mother slept in separate rooms. Eventually, my father went back to Sunday Mass, but always alone, at six or seven in the morning. Every year he also took his eight days of vacation, always alone, which, incidentally, was a privilege of the employees of country houses; it took until 1936 for the employees and the workers to be allowed paid vacations. He spent these vacations either in Alsace or in the Sarre.

J C.:

What memories do you have ofthis somewhat removedfather?

lowe him a great deal because of everything he taught me about the most diverse subjects. He was self-taught. He .was from a village in the area of Vertus in the Marne. His family was very poor and he had begun to work at the age of eleven or twelve, at Chdlons-sur-Marne (as they said at the time). This did not stop him from learning German and English, stenography and accounting. It was also the period of Esperanto, the attempt at a universal language. He had correspondents in Esperanto in various European cities. He owned a good library of German books and had done a study of the physical education associations (Turnvereine) in Germany. He drew and painted well; I kept one of his self-portraits. An accident left him blind toward the age of fifty. He endured this suffering with exemplary patience for twenty years, until his death. I learned braille from him. We were very complicit: I often read to him, took walks with him.

4

Tied to the Apron Strings ofthe Church

]. c.: Yourfather had thus somewhatmoved awayfrom religion, but you received a very religious education nonetheless? Yes, I would say, to invoke the title of a novel by Denise Bombardier, that 1 had a "holy water childhood." I went to the grade school of the Freres des Ecoles chretiennes, on rue de Contrai at Rheims. These religious men were very devout and gave us what seemed to be a very good education. They also went to the effort of organizing our games at recess. But we were quite scared by what they told us in the moral education that took place every morning. There was, for example, the question of the appearance of the devil in the seances at the Masonic lodges, and of the nun who appeared to another in a dream in order to reveal to her that she was suffering eternal torments because, despite her exemplary Christian life, she had hidden a mortal sin in confession. My mother had had three sons (I was the last, ten and fifteen years younger than my older brothers) and decided that her three sons would be priests. She had decided this with such passion that when one of my brothers, the one who she perhaps loved the most, asked her what she would say if he left the priesthood, she replied, "I would rather see you dead,' thereby repeating a phrase attributed in sermons to Blanche of Castile, who is alleged to have said it to her son, Saint Louis, about "mortal sin." In any case, I never imagined that I could do anything in life other than what my two brothers did, and thus I naturally found myself at the Petit Seminaire de Rheims at the age of ten. I boarded there for two years, and then I lived at home because of my delicate health. The priests who taught at the Petit Seminaire were very devoted and qualified, especially those who were in the upper classes, grades II and 12. They were really humanists who instilled in me the love of antiquity. But some of the teachers of the "grammar" classes [roughly grades 7 to 9] were not as qualified, and sometimes were of inferior moral character. One of them, a uniformly detested eighth-grade teacher by the name of Beuge, was even downright sadistic. Naively, I had taken him as a confessor. When I would confess in his room, sometimes he would leave me kneeling until I was so uncomfortable that I had to ask him to let me sit down. In his eighth-grade class it was not rare to see an unfortunate student sitting on the ground, holding a dictionary up in front of him in a position knowingly chosen to hurt the most. This type of attitude was

Tied to the Apron Strings ofthe Church

5

not, for that matter, foreign to the way the school was run in general. Besides the public spanking I witnessed in seventh grade, administered by the superior to a child who had misbehaved in the dormitory, on Monday nights-Monday being the day that grades were given for conduct and work from the previous week-one could see the elevated platform of the refectory, where the professors had their meal, decorated by punished children on their knees facing the other students or standing in a corner, deprived of their meal.

J C.: Were you a pious childyourself? Yes, I had a faith that was completely naive but, I must say, without enthusiasm. For example, the day of my first Communion my grandfather said, "This is the happiest day of your life," and I wasn't happy at all that he had told me that, because I did not feel anything special. When, at the age of twelve, I went to Rome on a pilgrimage with my two brothers and the pope appeared on the sedia gestatoria [portable throne], my brother Henri began to scream, "Long live the pope!" and I was completely surprised by this enthusiasm. I thought that it was interesting but that he did not need to put himself into such a state. Things changed at the time of my adolescence. Indeed, for a long time I have had the impression of having been in the world only from the time of my adolescence. I will always regret having thrown away-out of Christian humility-s-the first notes written that were like the echo of my personality, for it is very difficult for me now to rediscover the psychological content of the overwhelming discoveries I made then. I do remember their framework. One happened on rue Ruinart, on the path I took home to my parents' house every day from the Petit Serninaire, Night had fallen. The stars were shining in the immense sky. At this time one could still see them. Another took place in a room of our house. In both cases I was filled with an anxiety that was both terrifying and delicious, provoked by the sentiment of the presence of the world, or of the Whole, and of me in that world. In fact, I was incapable of formulating my experience, but after the fact I felt that it might correspond to questions such as What am I? Why am I here? What is this world I am.ini i experienced a sentiment of strangeness, of astonishment, and of wonder at being there. At the same time I had the sentiment of being immersed in the world, of being a part

6

Tied to the Apron Strings ofthe Church

of it, the world extending from the smallest blade of grass to the stars. This world was present to me, intensely present. Much later I would discover that this awareness of belonging to the Whole was what Romain Rolland called the "oceanic sentiment." I believe that I have been a philosopher since that time, ifby philosophy one means this awareness of existence, of being-in-the-world. At that time I did not know how to formulate what I felt, but I experienced the need to write, and I remember very clearly that the first text I wrote was a sort of monologue in which Adam discovers his body and the world around him. From this moment on I have had the sentiment of being apart from others, for it did not seem possible that my friends or even my parents could imagine things of the kind. It was only much later that I realized that many people have analogous experiences, _ but do not speak of them. I began to perceive the world in a new way. The sky, the clouds, the stars, the "evenings of the world," as I would say to myself, fascinated me. With my back on the window ledge, I looked toward the sky at night with the impression of being plunged into the starry immensity. This experience dominated my entire life. I experienced it many times again-several times, for example, in front of Lac Majeur at Ascona: or at the sight of the chain of the Alps from the bank of Lake Geneva at Lausanne or from Salvan, in Valais. This experience has been the discovery for me of something overwhelming and fascinating that was absolutely not connected to Christian faith. Thus it played an important role in my inner development. Moreover, it considerably influenced: my conception of philosophy. I have always conceived of philosophy as a transformation of one's perception of the world. Since then, I have been strongly impressed by the radical opposition between everyday life-which is 'lived in semiconsciousness and in which we are guided~ by autornatisms and habits without being aware of our exisrenee in the world-and of the privileged states in which we live intensely and are aware of our being in the world. Bergson as well as Heidegger clearly distinguished these two levels of the self: the self that remains at the level of what Heidegger calls the "they," and the one that rises to the level ofwhat he calls the "authentic." I did not dare tell anyone what I had experienced: I felt for the first time that there are things that cannot be said. I also remembered that when the priests spoke about God or about

Tied to the Apron Strings ofthe Church

7

death, crushing or terrifying realities, they recited ready-made phrases that appeared conventional and contrived to me. What was most essential for us could not be expressed.

J C.:

What is the relationship between the experience that would become the leitmotif ofyour philosophy-what you often also call "the pure joy ofexisting" and the certainty that what is most important cannot be said, which you had already had as an adolescent-and the religious education you receivedat the Seminaire and at home?

It was an experience that was entirely foreign to Christianity. This seemed much more essential, much more fundamental than the experience I could have in Christianity, in the liturgy, in the religious offices. Christianity seemed to be tied rather to everyday banality. The two worlds, the one of secret experience and the one of social convention, were ultimately juxtaposed for me because at this age Christianity did not pose any problems. Things were like that, and that is all there was to it. Later I encountered someone for whom this situation posed a problem. It was Reiner Schiirmann [the author of Principe d'anarchie [Principle of anarchy], Le Seuil, 1982], who attended my courses for at least a year at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in the 1970s, when he was a Dominican novice at Saulchoir.' He was highly influenced by Heidegger, and his Christian faith was juxtaposed without harmony onto his experience of "authentic" existence, of the openness to Being. He shared with me personal notes in which he expressed his helplessness, and I remained rather perplexed, not knowing how to help him. I tried to put myself into his Christian perspective and to persuade him of the possibility of accepting this coexistence in himself but I believe he ultimately renounced the Christian faith. Moreover, while still at the Petit Seminaire, thanks to my excellent professors, I also discovered Greek and Latin antiquity, Greek tragedy, Virgil, and his Aeneid. In the tenth grade we studied the episode of Dido and Aeneas. Although everything that had to do with love was hidden from us, here there were very moving verses about this theme. Again I had the confused impression-I did not clearly realize it-that there was an experience here that was also entirely foreign to Christianity,

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J c.: What you follow Romain Rolland in calling "oceanic sentiment, " one might be inclined to call "cosmic sentiment," because it is more general. Has it not, moreover, happened to everyone~ undoubtedly with less intensity? But one does nothing about it, as though it is just something that falls on us in this manner. Furthermore, you say that this "sentiment" is entirely foreign to Christianity. In fact, with the exception ofthe Old Testament (the heavens and the Earth tell the glory of'death), in all the Christian texts you cite-most notably the Christian spiritual exercises-this sentiment does not appear a great deal, whereas in antiquity, the sentiment ofwonder before nature is repeated with an extraordinary lyricism, not only amongpoets such as Lucretius, but even among the driest ofphilosophers, such as Epictetus. Is this not ultimately a deep rupture? I would defend the expression "oceanic sentiment" used by Romain Rolland, and on this basis I would distinguish this experience from the experience of wonder in the face of nature, which I have also experienced. In speaking of the oceanic sentiment, Romain Rolland wanted to express a very particular nuance, the impression of being a wave in a limitless ocean, of being part of a mysterious and infinite reality. Michel Hulin, in his admirable book La Mystique sauvage [Savage mysticism] (and for him, "savage mysticism" is nothing other than the oceanic sentiment), characterizes this experience as "the sentiment of being present here and now in a work that is itself intensely existing," and also speaks of a "sentiment of an essential co-belonging between myself and the ambient universe.'? What is capital is the impression of immersion, of dilation of the self in Another to which the self is not foreign, because it belongs to it. The sentiment of nature exists in the gospel. Jesus speaks of the splendor of the lilies of the field. But I said that the oceanic sentimentas I experienced it, which is different from the sentiment of nature-is foreign to Christianity because it does not involve either God or Christ. It is something situated at the level of the pure sentiment of existing. I am not certain that it was familiar to the Greeks. You are right to say that they had the sentiment of nature, and they had it to the highest degree, but they speak very rarely of immersion in the Whole. It is true that there is this phrase by Seneca-toti se inserens mundo, "plunging into the totality of the world"-with regard to the perfect soul." But in fact one cannot be sure that it corresponds to the experience we are talking about. Perhaps

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there is also an allusion to this experience when Lucretius speaks of the chill and of the divine will that seized him when thinking about infinite spaces." The absence of literary testimony does not signify the absence of the experience, but we are reduced to ignoring it. This experience is, in any case, by no means exceptional. The most diverse of writers allude to it, for example, Julien Green in his journal, Arthur Koestler in Darkness at Noon, Michel Polac in his journal, Jacqueline de Romilly in Sur les chemins de Sainte-Victoire [On the paths of Sainte-Victoire], Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, and perhaps Rousseau in The Reveries ofa Solitary Walker (the fifth reverie), to mention only a few names from a very long list. It is found in other cultures-such as Hindu (in Ramakrishna, for example)! or Chinese: one can see it in certain aspects of Chinese thought and painting.

j. C.: At the ageoffifteen, you enteredthe Grand Seminaire. What were your impressions at the time? What was a Grand Seminaire like at the end of the I930s? After the first part of my high school diploma, which included a French essay, I entered the Rheims Grand Seminaire in 1937. I was very happy there. We each had a room of our own, a luxury that had not been allowed before then. Once night had fallen, the electricity was cut. Often, before falling asleep, I looked at the immensity of the starry sky. Intellectually speaking, the setting we worked in was agreeable. There was meditation every morning, and we attended two Masses. The rest of the day was divided between courses and reading and studying works of spirituality. The philosophy class lasted two years. Thomist philosophy was studied, but so was Bergson, who, after having been condemned by the Church for writing L'euolution creatrice [Creative Evolution], had all but become a Church Father since writing Les Deux Sources de la Morale et de la Religion [The Two Sources of Morality and Religion]. Bergson has had a considerable influence on the development of my thought insofar as his philosophy centers on the experience of a bursting forth of existence, of life, that we experience in ourselves in the exercise of willpower and in duration, and when we see ourselves at work in the elan [motivating force] that produces living evolution. I passed my high school examination in philosophy in 1939, and the subject of the essay was this sentence by

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Bergson: "Philosophy is not the construction of a system, but the resolution made once to look naively at the world in and around onesel£" I have often, too often perhaps, told about the enthusiasm I felt while treating this subject. But this also testifies to the fact that it was a considerable event for me, and it shows that in 1939 philosophy professors also questioned themselves about the problem of the essence of philosophy.

J c.: The war would break out the sameyear. How did you experience it? After the period that was called the Phony War, there was the offensive of May 1940. All the inhabitants of Rheims had to be evacuated. The Grand Seminaire sought refuge in Lucon, in Vendee. This gave me the opportunity to discover the incredibly reactionary mentality of the clergy from Vendee. During Sunday Mass at the Lucon Cathedral, prayer for the Republic (in Latin at the time, Domine saluamfac rempublicam [God save the Republic]) was not said. I played the organ during the proceedings, and when the time came, I played the first notes and my co-disciples made a scandal by breaking into this, one might say, revolutionary prayer. I also think of a comment by a professor from the Lucon seminary when he announced the armistice of June 1940 and the formation of the Petain government: "At last we have a Catholic minister of national education!" Millions of French were thrown into the street, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were taken prisoner, France was defeated, humiliated, and that is all they could come up with to tell us! Shortly thereafter, I joined my parents, who had taken refuge near La Rochelle. We stayed in the village of Croix-Chapeau until October, during the course of which we were able to go back to Rheims. Then I went back to the Grand Serninaire.

J c.: Didyou stay there throughout the Occupation? No, only between 1940 and 1942. In our ivory tower, life continued as it did before. The only problem was nourishment, but the priests given this task proved themselves very skilled at transporting meat and potatoes into hiding, and the farmers were very generous. One day a German pilot who was doing acrobatics above the high school nearby in order to impress

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his mistress crashed into the steeple of the Grand Seminaire-s-but fortunately not into the adjacent refectory, where we were eating! The Germans rushed in and took over the seminary. We barely had time to hide the sheep and calves in a classroom, where they did their business copiously. Protected.in this way from famine, we could read the works of mystic writers. I was especially interested in the monumental His toire litteraire du sentiment religieux [A literary history of religious thought] by Abbe Bremond. But there was also Jean de la Croix [John of the Cross] and his admirable poems, and Teresa of Avila, and Therese of Lisieux. Then I fervently experienced the desire for mystical union. The idea of a direct contact with God fascinated me. Ever since, I have asked myself the following question: "Given that God is absolute, how can there be contact 'and especially identification between what is relative and what is absolute?" In the books of mysticism that we read, the director of conscience played a considerable role: he was the guide on the path of purgatory, or on the path of illumination, or on the path of unity-three steps, incidentally, inherited from Neoplatonism. I was thus very disappointed to discover that my director of conscience did not seem to be very interested in this. I even changed my director of conscience, thinking that the new one would be somewhat more inclined to address these questions, but they were all very reserved.

c.:

J Did you have the impression that the Churchs reserve toward mysticism was rather typical? Although there had been such great Christian mystics, mysticism was considered with suspicion. Was it not discouraged, just as today, when a miracle appears, the Church becomes involved as little as possible? I believe that there is a historical problem here. It seems to me that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at the time ofJean de la Croix, or later, of Fenelon, a great deal of attention was given to mystical phenomena and to the classical paths inherited from Neoplatonism: the purgative, illuminative, and unitary paths. The mentality has changed, but I do not know the reasons for this. Whatever the case may be, we were not at all encouraged to attain mystical experience, because ultimately it was thought to be a matter of exceptional phenomena. What mattered was to

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do one's duty. In any case, given that Christian mystical experience was a divine gift, one that cannot be attained by human forces alone, it was thought that God himself would take care of giving it according to his good graces. Whatever the case may be, I never had a mystical experience in the Christian sense, which is not surprising, but I had a very sentimental piety. During Holy Week, I participated in Christ's suffering so intensely that when he arrived at church on Holy Saturday or Easter Sunday, I had the impression of a real deliverance. During the night between Holy Thursday and Good Friday we took turns praying all night, and I tried to participate in Christ's agony. I had in fact read in Pascal that Christ would be in agony until the end of the world and that one should not sleep during this time.

J C.: What haveyou retainedfrom your theologicalformation? All of the studies in theology that I had begun at the time included a part devoted to biblical exegesis. Our professor of exegesis personified prudence, but we were nevertheless able to get a glimpse-notably in the exegesis of the New Testament, but of the Old Testament as well-that there was an important human element in this inspired text. At this point I read Jean Guitton's admirable book Portrait de Monsieur Pouget, which is devoted to the life and ideas of a blind Vincentian priest who seems indeed to have been an extraordinary character. His superiors had forbidden him to give his exegesis course because he used a historical and criticallet us say, scientificv--merhod to study the books of the Bible. He said that in these studies one must take into account the collective mentalities that had influenced the authors of the sacred books. This was the first stage of my education in the interpretation of texts, to which I have devoted a considerable part of my life. The superior ofthe Grand Seminaire had decided that for the 1941-42 year I would have to interrupt my theological studies because of my young age (there was a chance that I would be ordained at the age oftwenty-one), and that I would be a supervisor at the Petit Serninaire, At the same time, I was to begin my philosophy degree (incidentally, without being able to go to Paris to follow classes). In June and July of 1942, while supervising the study of the older boys [les grands] during the day and the younger boys

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[Ies petits] during the evening, I passed the Certificat d 'Etudes litteraires classiques [certificate of classical literary studies] (which required me to read all of Balzac's novels, the Arthurian novels, and the works of Chenier) and the Certificate d'Histoire de la philosophie [certificate of history of philosophy]. (The essay was on the cogito in Descartes and in Kant, and the Latin version with commentary of a text by Seneca). I came back to the Grand Serninaire in October 1942, where I spent the 1942-43 school year. But that year Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO) [compulsory work service] was decreed, and after a medical examination I was put into this service in Germany. I was supposed to leave in July 1943. Now, there were many of us in this situation and the superior had to give us, catastrophically and in a single sitting, the courses of initiation to the realities ofsexual life (we called them the diaconals) so that we would not seem too foolish. This entire world that had been totally unknown revealed itself to me that evening, and l must say that I was totally floored. One ofmy older brothers, who was a professor at the Grand Seminaire of Versailles, knew of channels one could take to do the STO in France. It was intended for the students of the major schools (the Centrale and so on). Officially it was for metal specialists, who were exempted from going to Germany because they were indispensable to French industry. I came to Paris to undertake the administrative procedures of which I no longer remember the details but that resulted in my assignment to the SNCF [the Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais, or French National Railway Company]. Thus I found myself in the locomotive repair factory of Vitry-sur-Seine, not far from the Rhone-Poulenc factory, which stunk and continues to make the whole city smell of-the strong odor of chlorine. Because while being welcomed I had made a naive remark that had made all my pseudo metal specialist companions laugh, the director of the factory put me in the most difficult workshop, in which locomotives are taken apart. We worked under the machines in order to take the different very heavy pieces apart while being splashed with mud. I did what I could, but I dragged down the team, for which my blunders made output levels plunge. The workers did not hold it against me. At the same time, I was made to take the metalworkers apprenticeship certification, which was granted to me even though I had to adjust my pieces with a hammer, having sawed everything crooked.

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J c.: You are not thefirst philosopher to have worked with his hands: Cleanthes wasa porter, I believe. But a metalworker-what a symbol! This allowed me to learn at least one important thing. Until then, in my literary, philosophical, or theological essays, I had adjusted not metal but ideas. In this case, one can always manage, in one way or another. Concepts are easily malleable. But with matter, things became more serious. No more give, no more approximating, no more or less artificial arrangements. This does not mean that no rigor is possible in the works of the spirit, but it is very rare, and it is very easy to delude both oneself and others.

J C.: Soyou were in Paris, far from Rheimsandfar from the ecclesiastical milieu? Dead tired every evening, I got up every day at about five o'clock in the morning to go to six o'clock Mass at the Peres du Saint-Esprit, on rue Lhomond. Afterward, I took the train to Vitry, On Sunday I got up early to spend my day at the Grand Seminaire of Versailles, where Ply brother was. I tried to remain tied to the Church's apron strings as much as possible. In September I was moved to another factory. Now I worked at the Massena station, repairing wagon bellows. It was less difficult. In October there was another change. As a result of the actions of the Resistance, trains were often derailed. To raise them back up there was a very powerful crane-the so-called most powerful crane in Europe-that was also stationed, I believe, at Massena. Obviously it might have been a target of destruction for those in the Resistance. The Germans thus required that it be guarded day and night. This guard remained close to it, in order to be blown up with it, in the event that it was destroyed. In sum, I became a hostage. When it left-accompanied by workers-to pull up a locomotive, we had to go with it, and even, in principle, to stay inside it. Only once a foreman obliged me to stay inside during the transport, even during the night, in the roar and the vibrations of this machine. But all the other trips were quite pleasant, all things considered. During the trip, which lasted several days, we slept in the freight car, we cooked-

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French fries, for example, which were an extremely rare dish in this time of restriction. This hostage situation had its advantages. Often I could read, because of the inattentiveness of the guards. I remember discovering Plato's Phaedo for the first time in this way. When I was on night duty, during the day I could go to the Parisian libraries, such as the one at the Guimet Museum. I was interested in Hindu mysticism at the time. Toward the end of the year it became clear that ultimately everyone would have to go to Germany. The exceptions were no longer accepted. Once again, the Grand Serninaire of Versailles intervened. I no longer remember the details, but I was summoned by a work inspector who, as I discovered afterward, belonged to the Resistance. He sent me for a medical visit. The doctor discovered a heart murmur, which was quite real. This was the beginning of cardiac problems that have followed me throughout my life. As a result, I was "posted at the Grand Seminaire," a statement that figured on my work card. I believe that the experience I had' just lived, and that had been lived by a certain number of seminarians, was one of the causes that provoked the development of the priest-worker movement at the time. They had come to the realization that there was an all but insuperable gulf between the workers' world and the ecclesiastical world, the latter being too tied to the prejudices and values of the bourgeoisie.

J C.: Your lastyear ofseminary school tookplace in Versailles in I944? Yes, and this issued in my ordination as apriest at Rheims, in a seminary entirely occupied by American soldiers. I was twenty-two at the time, and normally I should have obtained an age dispensation from Rome, but it was impossible to communicate with Rome. If I was ordained quickly, it was because a philosophy professor was needed at the Grand Seminaire of Rheims for the 1944-45 school year.

J C.: YOu enteredthepriesthood without hesitation and without qualms? This event should be situated in the framework of my childhood and youth. As I have said, my mother wanted her three sons to be pastors. I did not imagine that I could do anything else. There was pressure, not at

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all on the part of my father but on the part of my mother. When I was at Grand Serninaire, I felt certain that I would not be made a parish priestprofessor at the most. I was too intellectual to take care of the patronage of children, to do catechism, and so on. I told myself that the best would be to be a monk, perhaps a Dominican. I also thought of the Carmelites, because of Jean de la Croix. I did not consider the Jesuits because we were swayed by Pascal's dark depiction of them in his Lettres prouinciales [Provincial letters]: "There is nothing like Jesuits!" But when I spoke to my mother about it, she exclaimed, "That is impossible, it would be the death of your father" (my father was blind and very attached to me). In fact, she absolutely wanted to have us at her disposal. She could not allow me to be closed up in a convent, no longer able to visit her. My future was thus programmed from a very young age. I did not imagine anything else. One could say that everything that was not ecclesiastical was completely foreign to me, and my six months of military service did not allow me to see the allure of the outside world. But it remains that I was extremely reticent to take the Oath Against Modernism. I had not been warned of this formality and I was made to read a text almost every line ofwhich repelled me. I believe that this oath is no longer in use. It had been introduced in a directive by Pius X dated September I, 1910. I was to declare, among other things, that I believed that the doctrine of faith transmitted by the apostles and the Fathers had remained absolutely immutable since its origins and that the idea of the evolution of dogma was heretical. I also had to declare that a purely scientific exegesis of the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers was inadmissible and that freedom of judgment in this situation was forbidden. I remember that I was terribly perplexed in this unexpected situation, but I finally told myself: "Let us see how things turn aut"-an attitude that I can now, with the perspective of age, say is, like pity, disastrous and engenders many tragedies. Ultimately, aside from this doubt at the moment of the Oath Against Modernism, I had no hesitation; I simply had no idea what my commitment entailed. I did not make the decision in light of knowledge of what was involved. I only discovered the realities of life little by little.

J C.: So here you are, in the autumn ofI944, a freshly ordained priest, assigned to teach philosophy before having completed your degree. Under

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what conditions did you lead this double life, that ofa teacher and that ofa student?

I spent the 1944-45 school year teaching philosophy, not only in the Grand Seminaire but also in a young girls' boarding school (I was barely older than some of them) kept by nuns. In the back of the class, a sister watched over the orthodoxy and decency of my remarks. The archbishop of Rheims sent me to complete my degree in Paris at the end of this year of teaching. I was to follow courses at both the Institut Catholique and the Sorbonne. This is how I arrived in Paris in October 1945. I lived on rue Cassette, in a house that received the priests studying at the Institut Catholique, and where one can still see the door where the September massacres took place during the Revolution. At the Institut Carholique I followed courses, notably by Father Lallemand, an ultra-Thomist; by Verneaux, a scholar of Kant; and by Simeterre, a plato specialist. At the Sorbonne, Poirier taught modern logic (we were introduced· to formal logic, that is, ultimately Scholastics, at the Institur Catholique)." It was written in the stars that I would never acquire a mastery of modern logic. Poirier spoke about everything but logic, and when he did deign to speak of it, it was without pedagogy. This did not stop me from getting my logic certificate in February 1946, during a special session reserved for residents and those who refused to work for the STO during the war. Now I had received, without requesting it, a document concerning my visit to the work inspector of Versailles at the end of 1943. It attested that I was entitled to the status of rifractere au Service du Travail (a French civilian who worked in Germany during the war). This document was certified by the Association de Resistance "Les Negriers,' 14 rue Vergniaud, Paris. This was obviously completely false. In my life I used this fake, which I did not request, for no other purpose than to pass this exam quickly and easily. Easily because Poirier-whom some, I do not know why, accused of collaboration (by circulating tracts in his classes)-had decided that on the program for the semester there would be only formal logic. I was thus punished for this weakness by a serious flaw in my formation. I have since attempted to rectify this lacuna, but in all very poorly. There was also Albert Bayer, who gave ethics courses.' He spoke with a bit of a cocky tone, fervently believed in progress, and predicted

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that we would see men go to the moon. Rene Le Senne gave admirable courses, written as formal essays, with an introduction, a development, and a conclusion. I also learned a great deal from his Traite de morale generale [Treatise 01) general morals]." Georges Davy taught us sociology," and Raymond Bayer, aesthetics, with projections of works of art." As a result of a scheduling conflict, I unfortunately was not able to follow Jean Wahl's course on Heidegger." 1945-46 was a year of dense intellectual activity, in the effervescence of the end of the war and of existentialism. Aside from two educarions-sfrom the Institut Carholique and from the Sorbonne-and from completing the two corresponding certificates, I also attended many lectures, by Henri-Irenee Marrou, Berdyaev, and Albert Camus, among others.'? Every Friday, I went to the circle led by Gabriel Marcel. I had read several of his books at the Grand Serninaire, and even his dramatic play, The Broken World, and I had learned a great deal. I was admitted, by way of an intermediary I no longer recall, to the discussions he held late in the afternoon every Friday. I attended them for a year, but his personality seen close-up, as well as the people around him, displeased me by its artificial verbiage.

J C.: So your first contact with existentialism was through Christian existentialism? I tried to reconcile Thomism and existentialism. I thought I was following Jacques Maritain. In his Sept leconssur I' etre [Seven lectures on being], he said that in order to have the sense of being, which is the object of metaphysics, speculation was insufficient. One must "feel things vividly and deeply." I especially intended to follow the example of Etienne Gilson, who proposed a version of the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas that was strongly tainted by the philosophy of the moment. Real existentialism, in his eyes, was found in the Thomistic distinction between essence and existence. He also gave a sustained homage to Merleau-Ponty: «For the first time in a long time, philosophy decides to speak of serious things." On this point he also evoked an experience of the whole being in which "the body is vitally interested." For him, philosophy consisted in knowing, and not in constructing and producing a system. I do not regret, incidentally, having begun with Thomism. It was at least a philosophy that attempted

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to speak "formally," and I have always been disappointed by the vagueness of the concepts of modern philosophy. Then I met Father Paul Henry, Jesuit and editor ofworks of Plot in us, who would playa very important role in my choice of thesis topic for the Institut Catholique and for the Sorbonne, but especially in the general orientation of my methods of study and perhaps even in my spiritual evolution." This stage in my development also involved a nun who was also preparing her certificate at the Institut Catholique and whom I would see regularly. I felt a love for her that was as Platonic as it was passionate. Father Louis, having noticed this, asked us not to see each other any longer. But in fact we continued to correspond and we remained friends.

J c.: Paul Henry suggesteda thesis topicthat did not really correspond to your wishes and which, assuredly, was not designed to guarantee large printings and a career sustained by the interest ofa vast audience.

In effect. I hesitated between a thesis on Rilke and Heidegger, under the direction of Jean Wahl, and a thesis on Marius Victorinus, a Neoplatonic Christian writer from the fourth century of our era who is far from having given up all his secrets, which would have been officially under the direction of Raymond Bayer but in fact under the direction of Paul Henry. I ultimately opted for Victorinus. Since my youth I had experienced a great attraction to mysticism in all its forms, which, it seemed to me, would open me to the inexpressible experience of God. Saint Jean de la Croix but also Plotinus were among my favorite authors. As a result, I thought I could unify my university work and my interest in mysticism. When I went to see Father Henry, I was expecting him to propose a thesis on Plotinus. To my great surprise, he recommended that I study an obscure Latin author, Marins Vicrorinus. He thought that in the Latin I would be able to make sense of this author, taken to be almost incomprehensible on the basis of the pieces translated by Plotinus, Thus I worked on this author for more than twenty years, until the publication of my doctoral thesis. In it I found neither mysticism nor Plotinus, but, it seemed to me, traces of his disciple Porphyry. The archbishop of Rheims had granted me a supplementary year (1946-47) to begin this work, but at the beginning of the academic year

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there was an emergency and he called me back. The priest and professor of philosophy at Saint-Remy College in Charleville had left with a young girl. Thus I found myself in the cold Ardennes, teaching in a boys' school and in a boarding school for young women. The library of the city owned the old nineteenth-century translations of Proclus and of Damascius, potentially very useful for my thesis research. I still remember reading these two Neoplatonic writers during lunch break, at the summit of Mount Olympus, beside the Meuse. The following year (1947-48) I felt it was necessary to go to Paris to work on my thesis seriously. Thus I traveled back and forth between Paris and Charleville every week. During my Parisian sojourns, I stayed at Antony, where I gave classes in a girls' boarding school to pay for my travels and lodging. But I did not hold to this regimen and had to stop all teaching as a result of extreme fatigue. After resting in the Vosges and in Switzerland, I was received that year and the next at Saint-Germain-enLaye by the sisters responsible for the nursing services in that city. It was in 1949-50 that I began to follow Henri-Charles Puech's courses in the fifth section," and Pierre Courcelle's course in the fourth section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes." It was also in 1949 that Raymond Bayer had me admitted to the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) [National Center for Scientific Research], to work on both a doctoral dissertation, still on Victorinus, and the catalog of philosophical vocabulary of the Middle Ages that he directed. The same year, my thesis at the Institut Catholique was accepted. It was a study of the notion of God causa sui in Marius Victorinus. My thesis director was a very mysterious character, the priest Cadiou." Paul Henry and, I believe, Dominique Dubarle were on the committee. I gave a doctoral lecture on an eminently Thomistic subject, but treated it in an existentialist spirit, as the real distinction between essence and existence. Henri-Charles Puech and Pierre Courcelle attended this defense. The same study relating to Victorinus served as my Diplome d'etudes superieurs [post-master's, predoctoral degree of advanced studies], presented at the Sorbonne under the direction of Raymond Bayer. Puech encouraged me to apply for a degree at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, still on Victorinus. The required text was submitted to Alexandre Koyre, This time I presented a translation of the Christian works of Victorinus. I devoted myself to it

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from 1950-60. The work was published in 1960 in the collection Sources Cbretiennes [Christian sources].

J C.: The year I949-50 thus marked a turning point: a thesis for the Institut Catholique, a degree of Etudes Superieurs, and especially entering the CNRS. YOu left secondary teaching definitively, and, with a salary, you became less dependent on the Church. What have your relations with the ecclesiasticalworld been since I949? In 1949 I obtained authorization from the parish priest (of the "students' parish") to live in the presbytery, which was very close to the Sorbonne, and to participate in the communal life of the parish. Thanks to him, I lived in this magnificent context for two years. I never tired of this beautiful church, with its forest of pillars. In exchange for this hospitality, I was expected to offer certain services, including to take charge of the parish newspaper. In this manner I discovered what it is to make a newspaper. It is very interesting. I wrote several articles in it-notably, a rather lengthy review of L'Homme reuolte [The Rebe{J, by Albert Camus, who on this occasion wrote me a letter that I have unfortunately since lost. I was working on my dissertation and I attended Jean Hyppolite's courses on Hegel and on Heidegger. He explained, most remarkably, the chapter in Heidegger's Holzwege [Offthe beaten track] devoted to Holderlin: "Why Poets in a Time of Distress?" I greatly admired the clarity with which he explained difficult texts. The years I spent at Saint-Severin represent a turning point in my life. During this period I began to adopt a critical attitude toward the Church. I had more than one reason for this. For example, there was a vicar in the clergy of the parish who wanted to reestablish February 2 as the day of purification for women who had just givep birth, a ceremony analogous to the one to which Mary had submitted herself in conformity with Jewish law. For this vicar-who incidentally was a medical doctorthe ceremony implied that women were impure as a result of sexual relations and of childbirth. This seemed crazy to me. There were also two seminarians there who were supposed to be initiated into parish life and who, in their juvenile ardor, were revolted by the ecclesiastical mentality, which they did not consider to be evangelical. I must say that I agreed with them completely. They often showed a zeal that the parish priest

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found untimely, especially on certain days, or rather on certain nights, when he discovered that people in difficulty, homeless people, were lodged on all of the floors of his presbytery, and he had to throw them out. The seminarians reproached him then for lacking an evangelical spirit. But the practice of the Gospel would have required a complete upheaval of our mode of life! There was also Jean Massin, the future musicologist, who directed spiritual teams. They assembled many students, a good number of them from the Ecole Normale. He gradually developed a criticism ofthe Church as well. I was assigned by the parish priest to bring a more orthodox dimension to these teams. Thus 1participated in the movement that offered the students, among other things, an initiation into biblical problems by using historical and exegetical methods that aimed to be rigorous. Here again, especially in the domain of exegesis, I recognized that there was a basis to Massin's criticisms. I struck a pale figure next to his personality, next to his eloquence (I heard students from the Ecole Normale cry while listening to him; I heard him talk for a whole hour, if not two, about these simple words from Genesis: "Abraham sits")-and next to "his satirical spirit, often inspired by what was perhaps a somewhat broad psychoanalysis (he would say "well oedipalized" instead of "well educated"). A terrible shock added itself to this: the encyclical Humani Generis of August 12, 1950. Everything that was keeping me in the Church was condemned: Teilhard de Chardin's evolutionism, and ecumenicalism. (I also read the Protestant journal Riformewith great interest.) Moreover, the proclamation of the dogma of Assumption on November I, 1950, added itself to my disappointment. This development of martial theology had deviated, it seemed to me, from the very essence of Christianity. Why attempt to attach Mary to the human condition? Finally, a sentimental problem added itself to this. Since 1949 I had loved the one who for more than ten years would be my wife and I thought I did not have the right, as many of my colleagues did, to lead a double life. All these factors together resulted in my decision to leave Saint-Severin and the Church in June of 1952, and I was married in August 1953, despite the warnings from people in my entourage who knew the one I would marry and told me that our marriage was a very poor match from every point ofview. (It would in fact end in divorce eleven years later.)

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J C.: Was this a terrible disappointment for your mother, and even maybe, for her, afeeling offailure? I must say that I did Dot have the courage to go to Rheims to confront her face-to-face. I wrote her a letter, feeling as though I had committed a murder. I had in my mind the image of an aviator who drops his bombs on a city. For her it was the crumbling of all her hopes. The idea that she would not have the right to see me anymore added itself to this. But finally the tension calmed, and in the following years I visited her from time to time at Rheims.

J C.: J imagine that in addition to all the heartbreak involvedin your decision, you also had to deal with crassly materialproblems? In fact, when I informed the CNRS of the change in my situation, the result was a rather substantial increase in salary. This was because, if I recall correctly, the CNRS attributed only a quarter of its research allocation to ecclesiastics, on the basis of the principle that they have other revenues available to them. But my material situation was rather difficult nonetheless. I was lodged in a maid's room in the sixth arrondissement [the Parisian administrative circumscriptions], at 14 rue des Pyramides, which Jean Massin lent to me. During the 1952-53 year, I was able to appreciate the comfort that the good Parisian bourgeoisie provided for its help: one or two toilets for twenty rooms or so, no heating, and torrid heat in the summer. One day when I had invited someone over for lunch, the books balanced precariously atop the cupboard fell.into the bowl of fries, still full of oil. ... After I was married, I moved to Vitry-sur-Seine, where the smell of the chlorine from Rhone-Poulenc was always floating in the air. We were with my mother's aunt, but under very uncomfortable material conditions. These years were very difficult. Beyond family problems, I was always worried about my future. At the time, CNRS researchers did not have the comfortable security of the functionary that they now know. They were submitted to a yearly renewal, and it was understood that one could stay at CNRS only temporarily. One year, their decisional committee, overtaken by untimely zeal, fired a great number of researchers. 1 was saved from shipwreck and welfare by Maurice de Gandillac, who intervened so that

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I would be retained. I am very grateful to him for this, as I am for the very understanding letter he wrote to me when I informed him that I was leaving the Church. Pierre-Maxime Schuhl, whose seminar I attended, became worried about my plight. 1? He told me that I had no hope for a position at the university because I was not a certified teacher [agrege1. He recommended that I take the exams to become a librarian, which I did, and during the year of preparation I learned many things. But the career of a librarian did not attract me. So I stayed at CNRS and continued to work on my doctoral dissertation.

J C.:

In short, you stayed tied to the apron strings of the Church for twenty years, from your tenth to your thirtieth year. What do you now think ofthis ecclesiastical world that you knew wellfrom the inside? I must say first that I have a great deal of gratitude for the complete intellectual education that I received from most of the professors who devoted themselves to giving it to me-c-all the more so in that, I realized only much later, all my studies, secondary and advanced, were financed by the archbishop of Rheims. If I had not gone to the Petit, then to the Grand Seminaire, my parents would surely not have been able to pay for my studies. Moreover, I would say that my rupture with the Church was not a rupture with my friends, who continued to display much sympathy toward me, especially Paul Henry, Jean Daniele, and Claude Mondesert, as well as my very good friend Georges Folliet. I moved away from Christian faith very slowly. For a time I would sometimes attend religious ceremonies, but they always seemed rather artificial because, following the council of Vatican II, they were recited or sung in French. I was not opposed to the translation in principle, bur it always seemed to reveal the immense distance between the world of the twentieth century and the mythical or stereotypical formulas of Christian liturgy-a distance that was sensed less when the people did not understand what was being said. I believe that Henri-Charles Puech had the same impression I did when he told me with a big smile, "Jesus, God's sheep," alluding to the translation of the Agnus Dei. It was not the Latin that was incomprehensible, but the concepts and the images hidden behind Latin for centuries.

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The ecclesiastical world that I knew from 1930-50 is obviously extremely different than the actual ecclesiastical world. Since then, there has been the Council ofVatican II, which took the unfortunate experiences of the first half of the century and the biblical criticism of great theologians from that period into account. I had read with enthusiasm the writings of Father Henri de Lubac, Father YvesCongar, and Father Marie-Dominique Chenu, who played important roles in the reform brought about by the Council. But I also have certain grievances. My main reproach to the clergy of the past is aimed especially at the Sulpicians, a society of priests established in the seventeenth century, who directed most of the large seminaries in France. Whether at Rheims or at Versailles, one might say that, for the most part, they still lived in the time of their founding father, Jean-Jacques Olier, a bizarre character whom the curious reader can read a page about in Father Mugnier's [ournal." To give a single example, every day before eating, both in Rheims and in Versailles, we gathered for readings of the examinations of conscience of Monsieur Tronson, a Sulpician from the seventeenth century. These examinations had been somewhat modernized, the stagecoaches had been removed, but all the situations envisaged in fact supposed the daily life of the seventeenth and not the twentieth century. We irreverently called these exercises the tronsonnade; it was the Sulpicians' aperitif But this is merely an amusing detail. What is more serious is this artificial space, entirely isolated from the exterior world, where all personal initiative, all originality, all taking responsibility were repressed. We were totally ignorant of the reality of the world, and especially of the reality of the feminine world/ When my mother offered, much to my surprise, to ask Mademoiselle Chevrot, the young and beautiful organist of the Rheims cathedral, to give me organ lessons, I refused out of fear, because in my subconscious th-ere was something diabolical about women. The result of this confined education is that, for my part, when I was ordained as a priest in 1944, I was absolutely not prepared to face the concrete realities of the daily life of normal people. It is only little by little that I freed and affirmed myself. We were capable, at the limit, of exercising our ministry in the conservative, chic world of a bourgeois parish, but, for example, completely disarmed in the face of the sad reality of the suburbs of the big cities.

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I believe that things have changed considerably now. However, I think the real source of harm is what I would call surnaturalism. What I understand by surnaturalism is the idea that it is especially by supernatural means that one can modify one's way of conducting oneself: It is the blind confidence in the omnipotence of grace that allows one to face all situations. On television these days, one hears stories of pedophile priests. On this occasion one can very clearly see what surnaturalism is. The confessors and the bishops too often have the tendency to think that if someone cannot dominate certain impulses, it is enough to pray, especially to the Virgin Mary, and he will end up being cured of these impulses. In fact, there is a total lack of psychology in this attitude, and in these recent matters of pedophilia of which I was speaking, one can say that those who are really responsible are the confessors who had these priests believe that confidence in the grace of God was enough, that one can through prayer easily get out of these difficulties; and also the bishops, who should-it is simple common sense, for that matter-find a ministry for these priests that keeps them far from contact with children. In the ,past I have seen situations in which the priest, conscious of his weaknesses, asked to be taken away from the place in which he was exposed to dangers, and the bishop or the superior responded, "If God put you here, it is that he also gives you the grace to overcome your difficulties; all you need to do is pray, and" everything will be well." In fact, in Thomistic theology-and perhaps even in a general way in all Christian theology-surnaturalism is based on the idea that since the Revelation and the Redemption there is no longer a natural morality. In the scholastic philosophy textbook that I used in my studies, all the parts of philosophy were treated, except morality, for it was expressly said that it was useless to teach purely natural morals to seminary students-on the one hand, because the only true morality is theological morality; and on the other hand, because if one explained natural morality, one would risk exposing the students to the danger of naturalism, which consists in believing that one can practice virtues without grace. This tendency has another noteworthy aspect. One says to oneself: What counts is faith in God, and the fact that one remains a sinner is of little importance. Father Henry sometimes cited, approvingly, Luther's phrase, Peccafortiter et crede

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fortius ("Sin with all your forces, but believe even more forcefully"). This is fundamentally the theme of Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory. It is all well and good to confess that one is a sinner, but it would be even better to think of the harm that one does to another through one's sin. In Le Canard enchaine of December 6, 2000 (yes, I do read Le Canard enchain! from time to time), the following remarks of Monseigneur Jacques David, bishop of Evreux, who had advised a pedophile priest to . turn himself in, were reported: "I had also advised colleagues [that is, other bishops] confronted by priests in difficulty to do the same thing." This is all well and good but, Le Canard added, accurately, "It is especially the kids who are in difficulty." Here we are in fact in the presence of a rather ecclesiastical reaction. What counts above all, in the aim of the Church, is the priest in difficulty, and the Church he puts into difficulty. The victims are not considered first; it is not thought that the danger to which they are exposed should be put to an end immediately. One can imagine all the unhappy children who, in the past were, and still now are, victims of the conspiracy of silence that surrounded such actions. The Church is not, for that matter, the only one practicing hypocrisy. In analogous situations, the army or the police are not outdone; they also have esprit de corps. Reasons of state, reasons of the Church-there are always good reasons. One of the consequences of this surnaturalism is also that priests often consider themselves to be excused from practicing the natural virtues if it is useful to the Church, or to themselves-hence the pious lies, the infringements on the virtue of justice. For example, the employees in the businesses run by the clergy are often poorly paid because these employees are in the service of the Church and are expected to sacrifice themselves for it; or as I myself observed, the readers who cut pages out of Migne's Pathologie in the library of the Institut Catholique are most likely ecclesiastics. On this score, it is perhaps useful to recall an old history, that of Americanism. Americanism was a movement that corresponded to certain characteristics proper to American Catholicism at the end of the nineteenth century: attention to moral and social problems more than to dogmas and devotions, and respect for the individual freedom and responsibility of laymen. By translating the works of an American bishop, Monseigneur Ireland, in 1894, and by prefacing a translation of Walter

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Elliott's Life ofFather Heeke (1897), arguably the inspiration for tendencies proper to American Catholicism, in France, Father Klein had provoked a quarrel that Pope Leon XIII thought he could end in 1899 by issuing Testem Benevolentiae, which condemns Americanism, to Cardinal Gibbons, bishop of Baltimore. According to this letter, the Americanists maintained, among other things, that in order to attract dissidents more effectively, it is appropriate to leave in the shade or to attenuate certain elements of the doctrine as being of lesser importance. They also maintained the need to let go of the relation that the faithful have to ecclesiastical authority, in order to guarantee laymen's freedom of thought and to leave them greater freedom to follow the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I remember that the opposition between clerical domination and the initiatives of laymen had always been a problem in the Church, as one can see, for example, in Ruedi Imbach's book Dante, la philosophie et les laics [Dante, philosophy, and laymen]. Finally, the Americanists think that natural and active virtues are better suited to the present day than surnatural and passive virtues. This Roman wariness with regard to naturalism is still alive today, a century later, and I believe that the ecclesiastics still too often neglect natural morals.

J C.: You have briefly evoked the Oath Against Modernism that was imposed on you in the course ofyour ordination, and at the beginning of the movement ofpriest-workers. How did you experience the attitude ofthe Church on these matters? I have just evoked Roman condemnations. I believe that the brutality of these condemnations is to be deplored. Notably, this began with modernism, at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Alfred Loisy, accused of modernism, was hit with excommunication. This means, for example, that as a professor at the College de France, he was not able to attend the religious burial of the administrator, because his presence alone would have obliged the officiator to interrupt the religious ceremony. After the Second World War, under the pontificate of Pious XII, the priest-workers were condemned. On this subject, I would mention Francois Leprieur's utterly remarkable book Quand Rome condamne: Dominicains et pritres ouvrier [When Rome condemns: Dominicans and priest-workers], which shows how the Dominicans, tied

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to the movement of priest-workers, were condemned in a way that is "prejudicial to natural law.'"? Many were sanctioned (banned from teaching, exiled sometimes) without knowing the exact reasons that something was happening to them. And when there was a trial, the accused, entering the tribunal, did not know what he was accused of; he had not been previously informed about his dossier, he did not even know that, at the end of the trial, he would be imposed with the obligation to keep secret everything that was said during the interrogation and the condemnation. Leprieur, in his conclusion, speaks of the unhealable wound left in their hearts by the Roman condemnation. I cannot enter into all the details, but one must indeed recognize that we are in the presence here, and probably since Pope Pious IX, of a both centralist and dictatorial system that, if fortunately it no longer turns the guilty over to the secular arm to be executed, nevertheless retains an inquisitional mark and, too often, shows a serious lack of respect toward the human person. A worthy effort was made at the Council of Vatican II to remedy this attitude. But it seems, unfortunately, that this system, which has nothing evangelical in it, continues to be used today. What is extraordinary is that since Galileo (to take a famous example), Roman theologians-persuaded that the truth is their own and absolutely immutable-at given times have severely condemned opinions or methods that a few years later everyone, including Roman theologians, has recognized are correct. The most flagrant case is in the domain of exegeSIS.

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Jeannie Carlier: Were you free to devoteyourselfentirelytoyour doctoral dissertation as ofI953? I began preparing the critical edition ofMarius Victorinus with Father Henry. This collaboration marks a decisive turning point in the method of my work. Until then I had been a "pure philosopher." I was interested in metaphysics and, truth be told, in mysticism, especially Plotinus. But from that point on, I undertook training as a philologist and historian. I discovered philological disciplines that I had never practiced-the critique of texts, the reading of manuscripts, at least of Latin manuscripts. To prepare for this reading, I took courses at the Ecole des Chartes and at the Fourth Section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE). Many philosophers do not realize what is involved in the study of ancient texts. When translating Marcus Aurelius, for example, it is possible to spend an entire day determining what a particular Greek word can mean in a given context. Thus, with Paul Henry, I edited the complete theological works ofMarius Victorinus. Alone I edited Ambrose of Milan's Apology ofDavid, and the fragments of the commentary On Parmenedes that I attributed to Porphyry. I collaborated in the preparation of the critical edition of a very interesting Greek fragment found at Ai-Khanoum, at the border of Afghanistan, and which may be a passage from a lost dialogue of Aristotle. Finally, I edited the first book of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. I am currently undertaking further editing projects.

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During this period I also discovered the methodology of the history of philosophy. Previously I treated philosophical texts, whether of Aristotle, Saint Thomas, or Bergson, as though they were aternporal, as though words had the same meaning in every philosophical period. I understood that the evolution of thoughts and mentalities throughout the centuries had to be taken into account. Henri-Irenee Marrou once dedicated an offprint to me by writing, "To the philosopher who has become a historian. A historian who has become a philosopher." The discipline of philology is exhausting, but it often gives a certain pleasure, for example, when one realizes that the text that is accepted by everyone is obviously mistaken, and that, thanks to the examination of manuscripts or of the context or of the grammar, one has rediscovered the right lesson, which has happened to me a few times with Marcus Aurelius, and with Ambrose. It is a discipline that is useful to the philosopher in that it teaches humility; the texts are very often problematic and one must be prudent when one attempts to interpret them. It is also a discipline that can be dangerous to him, to the extent that it runs the risk of being satisfied with itself: and holds up real philosophical reflection. I think that for Paul Henry himself it was a way to avoid asking serious theological questions.

J C.: Who is this Marius Victorinus with whom no one isfamiliar? He is a rhetorician from the city of Rome who translated the treatises of Plotinus and finally converted to Christianity. He left an apologetics oeuvre, in which he defends the doctrine of the consubstanriality of the three persons of the Trinity, affirmed at the council of Nicea. This is a very enigmatic oeuvre. He cites Plotinus, and develops a Neoplatonic metaphysics that I thought I could attribute to Porphyry, the disciple of Plotinus; but recently Michel Tardieu discovered that entire passages of Victorinus' oeuvre correspond literally to a Gnostic text, the Apocalypse de Zostrien [Apocalypse ofZostrien], which we know only through its copied version. There is also likely a common source to this passage ofVictorinus and the passage from the Gnostic text, but which one? I spent twenty years of my life (from 1946 to 1968), at least in part, translating Victorinus and writing a doctoral dissertation about him. Ultimately this has not been time totally lost. I have learned many things by working on it, from the point of view of historical method as well as

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critical method, I discovered little-known aspects of Neoplatonism, notably, the magnificent fragments of a commentary on. the Parmenedes that I attributed to Porphyry. But finally, perhaps I spent too much time on this enigma. I would like to see someone solve the enigma of Victorinus' sources nonetheless.

]. C.,, In I959 you wereamong thefirst in France to speakofWittgenstein. Is therea relation to Victorinus? In a certain sense. In effect, my research on Victorinus in no way satisfied my passion for philosophy, This is why, especially during the years 1958-60, I participated in different research circles: the philosophical research group of the journal Esprit, led by Paul Ricoeur, where I met, most notably, Jean-Pierre Faye; Ignace Meyerson's Centre de Recherches de psychologie comparatives [Research center of comparative psychology], where I met, among others, Jean-Pierre Vernant, Madeleine Biardeau, and the doctor Hecaen. In 1960, Ignace Meyerson organized at Royaumont a very interesting colloquium on the person, in which I participated and during which I became friends with Louis Dumont, with whom I have remained in contact. I also discovered Wittgenstein's Tractatus LogicoPhilosopbicus, then his Philosophical Investigations. I was quite surprised to observe that this philosopher, who was presented as a logical positivist, spoke of mysticism in the last pages ofhis work. I tried to understand how this was possible. Thus, on April 29, 1959, I gave a paper to the College Philosophique, led by Jean Wahl, on the Tractatus. I know the exact date thanks to the book Emmanuel Levinas by Marie-Anne Lescourret, who gives a lively description of the meetings of the College. They took place in the building that is facing the gate of Saint-Germain-des-Pres. At this time I found a series of articles on Wittgenstein, who was little known in France. I even attempted a translation of the Tractatus, but it never got past the stage of a rough draft. In 1963, at the request of Angele and Hubert de Radkowski, I wrote, in a month, a little book for the collection La recherche de l'Absolu [The search for the absolute], Plotin ou la Simplicite du regard [Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision], which since then has often been reedited. I' was attracted by Plotinus' mysticism, while sensing to what point it was foreign to our modern world.

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In 1968, I struck out in an entirely different direction, most notably by preparing for a conference at Eranos a paper entitled "Influences du neoplatonisme sur la philosophie de la nature" [Influences of Neoplatonism on the philosophy of nature]. This work gave me a better appreciation for the importance of reflection on the notion of nature, and I hope that after thirty years of research in the area I will perhaps manage to publish the results in a book. '

J C.: In many respects, I964 was only a hinge year. You were elected director o/studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, section ofreligious sciences, and you metyour wife. I was not unknown to the fifth section of EPHE. I had followed the courses of Henri-Charles Puech and prepared for a degree under his direction-a translation of Marius Victorinus-and I had also followed the courses of Andre-Jean Festugiere. I had heard him translate and comment on the Life ofProclus by Marinus, and on the Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, by Proclus. One learned a great deal by listening to him. My candidature was upheld primarily by Rene Roques' and Paul Vignaux.? I was elected, I believe without difficulty, to the chair of Patristic Latin, because of my works on Marius Victorinus.

J C.: The same year, at the Hardt Foundation, you met a German who would becomeyour wife. More exactly, I found her again. If I believed in destiny, I would say that our meeting was written in the sky. In effect, I had seen her for the first time at the Congres de Philosophie Medievale in Cologne, and for me it was love at first sight. Afterward we exchanged books, a correspondence, but one letter was lost, and everything came to an end. In September 1964 I went to the Fondation Hardt at Geneve-Vandoeuvres to put the finishing touches, with the German theologian Carl Andresen, on a German translation of Marius Victorinus that was to be published by Artemis Verlag. When r arrived I was told that Mme Ilsetraut Marten was there. I understood then that a new life would begin for me. We were married in 1966 in Berlin.

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When I met her, I absolutely did not know that my wife was writing a doctorate under the direction of Paul Moraux at the Freie Universitat of Berlin on the theme of Seneca and the tradition of spiritual direction in antiquity. It was very close to my own preoccupations, which had been oriented for some time toward the definition of philosophy as spiritual exercise and way of living. My wife has exercised a very important influence on the evolution of my thought. But moreover, lowe to her the fact that I am still alive. I am a regular at Parisian hospitals. Over the course of the past twenty years I have undergone four serious operations. If I did not have my wife next to me day and nighr-

]. C.: Your direction ofstudy in the Fifth section ofthe Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes wascalled the chairofPatristic Latin. Didyou choose this titleyourself? My colleagues wished to keep this direction of study illustrated by Paul Monceaux. Moreover, my studies on Marius Victorinus, my translation of his works, might give the impression that I am above all a Latinist. But a few years later my colleagues authorized me to change the title of the section so that it would read "Theologies and Mysticisms of Hellenistic Greece at the End of Antiquity." After having offered courses on the sermons of Ambrose of Milan and on Augustine's Confessions-a masterpiece of universal literature that I began to translate for the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade (the project was abandoned, but it gave me the opportunity to meet Brice Parain, whom I have always admired)-I was able to give courses on the mystic texts of Plotin us, on Marcus Aurelius, and on ancient logic. This last subject brought me auditors who would become famous. The Hautes Etudes is a remarkable institution. The auditors are free to come and go, and the director of studies is free to choose his subjects of research. The courses must be the fruit of original research. As of 1971 or 1972, I became secretary of the section, first assigned to education, then to administration, which is a rather heavy task. My first cardiac arrest, which was a plunge into arrhythmia, occurred during a difficult argument. 1n short, a work accident, the cardiologist told me. In 1968, at a Sorbonne that was yet to bear the traces of the "events," I finally passed my state doctoral dissertation entitled "Porphyre et

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Victorinus," accompanied by a these complementaire (published in 1972) on the life and work of this enigmatic Christian rhetorician. Maurice de Gandillac, Henri-Irenee Marrou, Joseph Moreau, Pierre Courcelle, and Pierre-Maxime Schuhl were on the committee. At this time I began to be read abroad. It was in 1968 that I was invited to the Eranos Conferences at Ascona," thanks to the intervention of Henry Corbin, my colleague from the Fifth Section, who thought I had' the same enthusiasm for archangels and the imaginary as he did for Jung's archetypes. The context was splendid, and the other invited participants were very kind, but I was not an adept of the reigning orthodoxy. I gave a paper on the influence of Neoplatonism on the philosophy of nature in the West, which generated only moderate enthusiasm. I was invited a second time, in 1974. The scenery of Lac Majeur was just as magnificent. My paper on the figure of Socrates was slightly more warmly received, but I have not been invited back since then. Thanks to Hans Blumenberg, around 1970 I became a corresponding member ofthe Academic des Sciences et le Litterature [Academy ofScience and Literature] of Mayence. I assiduously attended' the sessions, which allowed me to be in sustained contact with my German colleagues.

]. C.: Around I968, then, the title ofyour chair was broad and Marius Victorinus was behind you. He obligedyou to learn philological rigor, and it was also in part because ofhim, ofhis incoherence, that you began to ask yourselfwhat ancient philosophy is. Is this the direction your research took? First of all, in my teaching I developed my research on Plotinus' mystical treatises, and I finally felt the desire, which was fulfilled only later on, to do an annotated translation of Plotinus' treatises. But this time, Plotinus himself: and Marcus Aurelius, to whom I began at this time to devote courses, led me to think in a general way of what I call the phenomenon of ancient philosophy-a phenomenon in the sense of not only a mental phenomenon, but also a social, sociological phenomenon. I tried to ask myself the question, What is a philosopher? What do philosophical schools consist of? This is how I was brought to conceive of philosophy not as pure theory but as a way of life. Around this period I also began to attach considerable importance to the existence of spiritual exercises in antiquity, that is, to the

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practices-some of which are of a physical order, such as nutritional or discursive regimenting, dialogue, and meditation; others of which are intuitive, such as contemplation; but all of which aim to generate a transformation in the subject practicing them. The discourse of the master of philosophy could also itself take the form of a spiritual exercise in that by listening to him or by participating in a dialogue, the disciple could develop spiritually, transform himself internally. This is when I read the book Seelenfuhrung [Direction of the soul] by Paul Rabbow, which presented the different possible forms of these practices among the Epicureans and the Stoics, and which also had the merit of marking the continuity that exists between ancient spirituality and Christian spirituality, but perhaps by limiting itself too exclusively to the rhetorical aspects of spiritual exercises. My wife's books and the exchanges we had together revealed new aspects of the phenomenon that I was trying to understand. In 1977 this ultimately culminated in the opening article of the Annuaire de la Ve section, entitled "Exercices spirituels." This article was obviously supposed to provide a sample of what I was doing in my course. At the same time, however, I gradually developed the sense that what I had proposed in this article, to those who cannot or do not want to live according to a religious life, was the possibility of choosing a purely philosophical mode of life.

J c.: Is it not a remarkable program to propose to the nonreligious the possibility ofchoosing apurelyphilosophical modeoflife? Is this not whatgives meaning, on another level, to a gooddeal ofyour scholarly research? But this article wascalled "Exercices spirituels. "Is there not, after all, something religious in this expression? Do you think that the onlytrue religion isphilosophy or, like Porphyry, that "only the sage is a priest"? We believe that spiritual exercises are of a religious order because there are Christian spiritual exercises. But spiritual exercises appeared in Christianity only and precisely because of Christianity's will, beginning in the second century, to present itself as a philosophy on the model of Greek philosophy, that is, as a mode of life comprising spiritual exercises borrowed from Greek philosophy. In the Greek and Roman religions, which did not involve an inner commitment of the individual but were primarily social phenomena, the notion of spiritual exercises was absent.

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However, many religions, such as Buddhism and Taoism, impose a mode of life on their adepts that includes spiritual exercises. Thus there can be philosophical spiritual exercises and religious spiritual exercises. For example, in the heyday of secularism, Jules Payot, in his book L'Education de la uolonte [The Education ofthe Will], published in 1900, recommended what I call spiritual exercises; thus he discussed spiritual retreat-which is possible, he said, even in the midst of a crowd-as an exercise for the examination of conscience, or the different techniques of self-mastery. More generally speaking, it seems to me that religion and philosophy must be carefully distinguished. I have discussed this question frequently with Fernand Brunner, the late philosopher from Neuchatel, with whom I was good friends. He attempted to bring religion and philosophy closer by giving religion a philosophical tonality, and philosophy a religious tonality. For my part, I think-perhaps falsely-that the word religion should be used to designate a phenomenon that involves images, people, offerings, celebrations, and places that are devoted to God or to gods. This absolutely does not exist in philosophy. One might say, but then what do you do with the religion in spirit and in truth, with religion freed from sociological and ritualistic aspects and reduced to an exercise of the presence of God? I would respond, it is of the order of wisdom or philosophy. This is also why I consider that mystical phenomena, even if it happens that they can be observed in different religions, are not specifically religious. They do not involve the social aspects that I mentioned, and they situate thems~lves-for example, in Plotinus-in a purely philosophical perspective. They can be observed in philosophers who are totally atheist, such as Georges Bataille. From its origins, philosophy developed itself as a critique of religion, with destructive critique-for example, that of Xenophon, who said that men made gods in their own image-or purifying critiquesuch as that of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and finally the Neoplatonists. Critique is purifying in, the sense that philosophy finally tends to transform religion into philosophy. It does this either by developing a theology, albeit a purely rational theology, or by using allegory to think about the different divinities in many different ways, as did the Stoics, for whom Zeus was fire, Hera air, and so on. The Neoplatonists did this as well, identifying the gods of paganism with Platonic entities; and

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the Epicureans, who represented the gods as sages. In a general manner, philosophy has always had the tendency to rationalize religious myths, specifically by giving them philosophical content.

J C.: One could object that in the fourth andfifth centuries there were Neoplatonists who integrated practices of a specifically religious order into theirphilosophy, becausethe mode ofphilosophical life involved rites, the rites oftheurgy, if theurgy is not magic but something that can resemble magic to the extent that material objects are used to obtain a spiritual effect. One must first recognize that the Neoplatonists, in wanting to establish a correspondence between the gods of Paganism and the various entities of their system, killed all the charm and the sacred horror these products of the human imagination may have had. Their purifying critique is almost a destructive critique. However, at times they have also brought superstitious and puerile practices into philosophy. This is absolutely right, and I find this difficult to forgive. This is why I do not particularly appreciate Iamblichus or Proclus. This intrusion of religion into philosophy had always been rather enigmatic to me. I believe that it is an unfortunate attempt to compete with Christianity, which at the time also presented itself as a philosophy of Platonic inclinations, but one associated with purifying rituals. This intrusion of religion was, moreover, tied to the metaphysics of Iamblichus' successors. Like the Christians, they discovered that the soul had really fallen into matter by a sort of original sin, as it were, and thus one can have faith through material rites and the help of divine grace. This cannot be found in Plotinus. j C.: Platonism, traditionally since Plato, is reservedfor the elites. The hoi polloi-literally, "the numerous," the masses-understand nothing. Now, the Neoplatonist Iamblichus instituted three grades oftheurgy, and he reserved one for the level ofordinary men, attached to matter. This is perhaps an attempt to comb as broadly as Christians, who have always said, our message is universal. Yes, thus we encounter the concern of the Pagan philosophers to combat Christianity on its own terrain. The emperor Julian would have

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wanted secular priests to be just as austere as Christian priests and devote themselves to acts of charity. This represents, as it were, the birth of neopaganism, including a theology that reduces the different gods to emanations of a single and unknowable principle, and a purifying or sacramental ritual allowing the polloi to be saved as well. This is the neo-paganism that Gemiste Plerhon and other humanists attempted to resuscitate during the Renaissance. One can also make out a contamination of Paganism and of Christianity in this Neopaganism.

J c.: Do not most "real" religions, the ones that mostpeople practice and not the ones the theologians theorize, have the characteristic that onecan, through prayer (sacrifices, magicalrituals, everything one can imagine), hope that the gods will give a fortunate outcome to those in an otherwise hopeless situation? The god ofthe Bible and the Greek gods let themselves be swayed. Thegods ofthephilosophers do nothing ofthe kind. A famous verse in Homer provoked the indignation ofall the Greek philosophers: "The gods themselves can be swayed. " Yes. One of the aspects of the critical purification of philosophy in effect consists in denouncing the vanity of prayers of request to underscore their absurdity, because the most contradictory invocations are raised toward the gods as men ask at the same time for rain and for good weather, for their victory and the defeat of the adversary. There are nuances to be made about this subject, however. On the one hand, philosophy, Greek or Latin, can very well be directed toward God or the gods without it being a "religious" prayer that seeks to sway God; on the contrary, as Epictetus says, it could be a hymn of praise, one of the tasks of the Stoic philosopher being to sing God's praises, which is, for him, universal reason. This is the spiritual exercise of contemplation. On the other hand, it is worth considering that for the Stoics and the Platonic tradition, religion has a precise place in philosophy. It is situated exactly in the theory of duties. Duties toward the gods, as one can see in Epictetus' Manuel [Manual], indicate both that one accepts, as a philosopher, their will without attempting to sway it, and that, as a citizen practicing religion, one can very well still admit the legitimacy of religious practices, ofsacrifices, of divination, and of other things as elements of the social reality that surrounds one.

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J C.: This critical attitude toward religion, common-with a few exceptions-to ancient philosophers, reappears in the Renaissance, after the eclipse ofthe Middle Ages? During the Middle Ages everything changes, because philosophy is no longer merely religion's servant. As soon as philosophy frees itself from a theology, it becomes a critique, either purifying or destroying, of religion. Philosophers-Spinoza no less than Kant, for example-have always had a tendency to purify the idea of God and detach it from properly religious representations. It seems to me that what has been called natural religion is merely a theistic philosophy. As such, it lacks what is essential in religion: the rites. Now, I recognize that by defining religion in this way, I oppose a rather general use of the word, namely, to speak of God, transcendence, or mystery. I have observed the fact in Thomas Mann, who in a letter remarks, "We live and we die in a mystery, and one can, if one wishes, qualify the consciousness we have of it as religious." Similarly, Einstein spoke of the scientific religiosity and the cosmic religion of his own position, which he expresses by reporting, "I have the strongest emotion in front of the mystery of life," while refusing a God who rewards and punishes.' In his inaugural lecture, Merleau-Ponty said roughly the same thing as Thomas Mann and Einstein, but was careful to specify that this is a philosophical attitude: "Philosophy awakens us to what is problematic in itself in the existence of the world and our own existence, to the point that we are never healed from searching, as Bergson would say, for a solution 'in the master's book.'" 6 This is a philosophical attitude that MerleauPonty refuses to qualify as atheist, because it merely consists of displacing the sacred or defining it in another way.

J C..' YOu neither passed the agregation

[examination for teaching

certification] nor attended the Ecole Normale Superieure, and you did not ensure a career by choosing a fashionable thesis topic either. Andyet, in I982,

you were elected to the College de France. This wasthe initiative ofFoucault, from whomyou are separated by many things. The process began in the fall of 1980. I had just left the hospital after my first heart operation. I received a telephone call from Foucault. Pasquale Pasquino, an auditor of mine from Hautes Etudes who had had

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many discussions with Foucault, had made my article on spiritual exercises known to him. He asked me if I would accept to be presented as a candidate. I was both very surprised and very happy. The election always takes place in two steps. First, the name of the chair is voted on, with full knowledge that the title in fact corresponds to a particular candidate. For this first phase, one must write a notice of "titles and works," and visit all the professors, scientific or literary. I made these visits in the fall of 198'1. It was a very interesting experience. I was very surprised .by the vast literary culture of the scientists and by the interest they had in my research. Finally the day of the vote arrived; it was Sunday, November 29. My presenter was Paul Veyne. In the course of the afternoon, Foucault informed; me by telephone that the assembly had unanimously adopted the title of my chair. In the spring of 1982, the second stage of the ceremony took place: the "nominal" election, which is rarely problematic. A third stage, it too ritualistic, was the inaugural lecture in February 1983, in which I attempted to present the notion of ancient philosophy. Thus I was admitted into this venerable institution, in which the assembly meets around an immense table in the presence of a large painting representing its founding by Francois I. It is a remarkable institution, for the freedom it gives its members to develop their research and to let a vast audience benefit from it. I would reproach only its slightly pretentious slogan: Docet omnia [All things are taught]. For everything is not taught there, obviously, and even individual professors do not teach the entirety of the subject matter implied by their titles, but rather the particular domain in which, in his discipline, he thinks he has advanced science the most. This in itself is a very good thing. For my part, during my nine years of teaching I spoke of themes on which I had worked considerably and that were dear to me: philosophy as a way of life, the attitude of the ancients toward nature, Plotinus' mysticism, Marcus Aurelius' stoicism. So I kept company with very great scholars for about ten years, but I have regretted that I was not able to profit from it. I was able to form friendships only rarely.

J C.: What are the generalimpressions you retainfrom these forty years ofresearch and teaching? What do you think ofthe French universitysystem?

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First of all, I recognize that I was very fortunate to be admitted in succession to institutions in which one can focus on personal research. I began as a researcher at the CNRS [Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique] at a time when researchers in the humanities were allowed to work primarily on their own projects, even if they individually also participated in collective works. (I compiled the cards for Raymond Bayer's Vocabulaire philosophique du latin [Latin philosophical vocabulary].) Now, however, according to a method copied from the normal situation in the exact sciences, researchers are asked to collaborate on a group work. This often draws them away from their fields of interest, and at times even from their areas of competence. At times, considerable personnel are gathered to do a piece of work that a single researcher or small group of researchers could complete much more quickly. It is true, however, that the isolation of researchers, with which I was familia.r;, in the 1950S and 19605, was very difficult. T-hereafter I was admitted to two ideal institutions, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and the College de France, where, as I said before, one can reconcile teaching and research admirably. .I was admitted to the first with no teaching certification, and no doctoral dissertation yet, and to the second while I did not belong to the intellectual noblesse, of which one of the principle titles is to be a former student of the Ecole Normale Superieure, I did not even speak the language of initiates that is indispensable today in the humanities. So I had a great deal of luck. I was admitted to the CNRS on the recommendation of Raymond Bayer alone. At the time, in 1950 or 1951, the professors, the members of the CNRS commissions, were all-powerful. Afterward I was admitted to the EPHE, thanks to the support of my professor Henri-Charles Puech. As I said, if I was admitted to the College de France, it is in large part due to Pasquale Pasquino, who had spoken of me to Michel Foucault. 1 was so unknown that one of Foucault's colleagues, to whom Foucault had recommended my candidature, confused me with my wife: "Ah yes, the one who wrote a book on Seneca!" In recognizing that I have been very fortunate, I already sketch a criticism of the system that regulates elections in national education. I was lucky despite my ignorance of everything that one must generally do to succeed. One must begin early. Already when their children are in high school, parents must think of the best way to have them succeed in the contest of

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the Ecole Normale Superieure or the other major schools [grandes ecoles]. What is the best high school, the best preparatory class? Afterward, one must choose well one's thesis director-the powerful person who will be capable of getting you admitted into the CNRS or into the university. For everything depends on the sponsor. Whether it is a question of career or of publication, one must think of everything, one must adopt an expert tactic. During a meeting of the College International de Philosophie a few years ago, I was practically reproached for publishing my book Exercises spirituels et philosophie antique [Spiritual exercises and ancient philosophy] in a "confidential" way, through Etudes Augustiniennes, a publisher that did not have a large distribution. But I had no relations in the circle of publishers that aim at the general public, and I was very thankful to my friend Georges Folliet for accepting to publish this collection of studies. Things changed when I became a professor at the College de France. Curiously, I was no longer transparent! I certainly was before this. Consider, for example, how the candidate for a chair at the College who had come to see me on a candidacy visit told me that he was happy to make my acquaintance, although two or three years earlier I had participated with him in a colloquium in which there were not very many of us. I had given a presentation in front of him, had lunch facing him several times, and even spoken to him.... But at the time, I was merely director at EPHE, and so not very interesting because ineffectual in the perspective of a great career. I had not especially retained his attention. An election is often a matter of luck, of the fortuitous meeting between different interests and different politics, In the three elections I have spoken about, there is no proof that I was admitted for reasons of personal merit. I would be mistaken to take pride in it. The fact of having been elected to an institution, as prestigious as it may be, in no way proves that the one elected is prestigious. They often speak of elitist systems, of elitocracies, or of meritocracies. But is it really an elite that is chosen? Is the choice always a function of the competence, the intelligence, the moral value of the work? What are the real factors that contributed to the choice? It is ultimately a set of coincidences: the birth, the fortune, the good high school, the ability, the luck (to have fallen on the question that one was prepared to answer, or to have had a powerful sponsor, or to have been

44

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used as a bargaining chip in a negotiation). Are the famous contests that ope.n careers and ensure the recruitment of state personnel often contests of circumstance and of luck?

J C.: You seem not to appreciate contests very much, and the teaching certification in particular. Does this system of contests, notably the famous teaching certification (agregation) , not harm the scientific and human development of the candidates? Does it not too often privilege rhetorical qualities; the ability to treat a subject, even if one is barely familiar with it; the art of speaking in an elegant and obscure manner? Already in 1841, Balzac, in Le Cure de village [The Village Priest], brilliantly put our contest system, which was already in place at the time, on trial. (The success of a young man in a contest, he said, gives no certainty about the value of the grown man he will become.) In 1900, Rene Haussoulier, in his preface to Charles Michel's collection of Greek inscriptions, spoke of the "degrading exams," of the "horizons narrowed by the B.A. or the teaching certification contests," of the French students "who have neither the leisure nor the courage to undertake such tasks."? In 1961-62, in the summary of his courses provided in the Annuaire de la Ve Section of I 'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Father Festugiere in turn declared, "It is saddening that the French students are completely devoid of curiosity, One sinks into the emptiest of routines and watches disappear the essence of the humanities, which is to form minds." Have things really changed in this beginning of the twenty-first century? Whatever the case may be, to get back to the problem I was evoking, it sometimes happens that the candidate's qualities are not the decisive factor in an election. Here i blame not people, who always believe they are doing what is best, but the electoral system, which seems defective to me. In this system, politics too often plays an important role, and by "politics" I mean especially local politics. In the universities, the advantage is given to the candidates who are already there, which can be understood to a certain point. But it often totally eliminates consideration of the merits of the other candidates. Moreover, when professors approach retirement, they often think of their succession and obstruct the elect jon of candidates who, by their competence, could compromise and make useless the future

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election of their proteges. There is also politics involved in connection with the legitimate desire of a given professor to be elected to a particular academy. For this, one must make oneself useful. One sometimes complacently accepts the insistent council of a given academician who would want to have one of his proteges elected and whose voice would be precious. Moreover, under the influence of powerful people, it also happens that a given academy that has the right to give its opinion about the elections of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and the College de France refuses to accept the vote of one of these institutions' assemblies in order to obstruct the ministry of education's nomination of a given candidate-for reasons that appear to be more political or even religious than scientific. It thereby inverses the order of choice: the one who had been in second position is thus placed in first. This rarely happens, but it has been seen. There have been famous examples. Fortunately, the national ministry of education does not always allow itself to be influenced. It is almost a question of a centenary use: the Academic des Sciences Morales et Politiques had tried to obstruct Alfred Leisy's election to the College de France in this manner in 1909. In the case of the College de France, one must recall that this institution is surrounded by serious guarantees to ensure the objectivity of its elections. The candidate must present his titles and works, and a precise teaching project, which all the members of the assembly are supposed to read attentively. Moreover, the candidate must visit each of the professors, who through questioning can take his personal qualities into account. But the assembly is made up of scientists and literary scholars, and one must say that the scientists have difficulty understanding the literary projects, and the literary scholars, the scientists' projects. The difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that the candidates' research, particularly in the literary domain) is so specialized that even their own colleagues have difficulty assessing them in full knowledge of their value. How can this be remedied? Perhaps by obtaining evaluations from outside the assembly-and if possible, outside of France-from specialists in the field in question. In any case, there is a real problem here, one that may be insurmountable. I note the difficulties, but the pros and cons would have to be weighed with consideration to find a solution.

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J C.: Do you haveanything to say about the CNRS? I belonged to the CNRS for about fourteen years. Given the precariousness of the situation of researchers at the time, which was the almost heroic period of the CNRS, I joined a union, the CFDT [Confederation Francaise Democratique du Travail], to be defended, if possible, in case I was laid off. Because the membership of the CFDT was not very large at the time, I was even obliged to take on certain union functions, in the human sciences, while Mademoiselle Yon, a biologist, took care of the exact sciences. It was a matter, for example, when the researchers obtained the right to have delegates in the commissions, of choosing representatives from the CFDT. I myself was elected to the philosophy commission as a union representative. This allowed me to participate in the functioning of the CNRS and to see how things work, In my humble opinion, during this period the way that researchers were recruited was rather defective. It was the principle do ut des [I will scratch your back if you scratch mine] that reigned. A characteristic example: During a session in which I participated, the president of the commission, who had chosen the reporters who were to read their evaluations of the dossiers of a given candidate in session, had given the dossier of his protege to Mr. X and had taken the dossier of Mr. X's protege to report on himself But I discovered after the fact that he had prepared two reports: a favorable one, in case Mr. X upheld his end of the contract, and an unfavorable one, in case Mr. X did not. It turned out that Mr. X upheld the contract. The president's protege was thus admitted, as was, consequently, Mr. X's protege. He was merely a means of reward or of revenge. Moreover, the CFDT union was not very powerful at the CNRS, at least at the time, to the point that to be admitted as a researcher, one had to be supported by the national syndicate of scientific researchers, tied to the FEN [Federation de l'Education Nationale, or Federation of National Education]. Having become director at the EPHE, after 1964 I wanted to present a candidate who was an absolutely remarkable person and who has since proven himself: I did not succeed in getting him admitted. For three years in a row I presented the same candidate, with no result, after which I told him, Have yourself presented by another union; meet with so-andso. He was taken immediately, the following year. Thus the recruitment

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was made not on the basis of the value of the candidates, but according to union politics. In 1968 or 1969, we had been asked for advice concerning the reform of the CNRS. In a letter to the director of the humanities at the time, I wrote that it would be good to choose a system analogous to the one that exists outside France, such as in Germany, in Switzerland, and I believe in Canada as well. In these countries, reports are requested from specialists outside the commission and even often outside the country, whether it is a question of the recruitment ofa researcher, the constitution ofa research laboratory, or a book grant. This preponderance of certain university or union personalities was harmful, I think, in certain sectors, to the harmonious development of the CNRS, at least in the domain of the human sciences. When I was in the philosophy commission, I had the habit of saying that in nature, function creates the organ, but at the CNRS, it is the organ that creates the function. By this I meant that if the powerful professor or a given powerful union felt like presenting a vague research project, it was immediately deemed to be indispensable, without the com~ission asking itself seriously whether the project was really urgent and useful in the general framework of the discipline. Incidentally, I made a committee for the reform of the CNRS laugh one day by appealing to a terribly incoherent metaphor: "the sharks who take the lion's share." I have the excuse of being furious.

j. C.: You were undoubtedly no softer when it came to the matter ofthe functioning ofuniversity libraries. I will leave aside the question of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and focus on university libraries. When we were in the other cities, and when we saw the libraries in Canada, in England, in Germany, and in Switzerland (I did not go to the United States), it became clear that the students have much easier and abundant access to material than in France. In Canada I saw libraries in which there are small offices where the students can work and use computers. In Great Britain and Canada, the students have access to the book stacks. In Germany, at the Frankfurt library, there is access to the book stacks; in Berlin, in an immense room, the students had at hand practically all useful literature, all the basic books, the collections of texts, the historical collections. In a reading room

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at the Sorbonne library, there are a few dictionaries and-now this is an enormous progress-the Collection des Universites de France (bilingual Greek and Latin texts), but it is ultimately insufficient. The greatest concern is that students, who have great difficulty finding a place to sit in overcrowded study rooms, have all the difficulty in the world finding books that haven't been bound, borrowed, or stolen. Several years ago, during the winter, the lights went out in half of the reading room at the Sorbonne library; this lasted several months without the slightest reparations being made. Either the students brought flashlights, or they did not come. At the time I protested to the library administrator, which had no effect-perhaps due to lack of funds! But is this not a case in which emergency funds should have been released? The state of great misery of the provincial libraries must also be discussed. I once criticized the quality of a doctoral dissertation in the presence of HenriIrenee Marrou. He answered me, "Oh, what do you expect? He works in the provinces."

J C.: Before retiring in the fall ofI99I, did you have the opportunity in the course ofyour career to distract yourselfat all, to do anything other than to teach or to write books? I had the good fortune that my parents bought a piano and gave me lessons when I was five years old. I took piano lessons until I entered the Petit Seminaire at the age of ten. Then I played sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven, and waltzes by Chopin. When I got older I would say that one rnust play Mozart in the morning, Beethoven at noon, and Chopin in the evening. Subsequently, I learned to play the organ, which is a wonderful instrument made for the great naves and cathedrals, and it gives the impression of having an entire orchestra at one's disposal. My participation in the liturgical ceremonies consisted in playing the organ. The one responsible for liturgical music at the Grand Serninaire would reproach me for playing pieces that were too sentimental and romantic. He put a book of the works of Bach in my hands, demanding that I play nothing else. I exacted my revenge by executing in such a languorous way a piece that included triplets that he came to find me, furious, saying that I had certainly not played music by Bach. I triumphantly showed him the page of music. It remains that Bach's organ music is something to be admired. In my

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youth, the piano was a passion for me. In the family home, I played several hours a day. After leaving the Church, I continued to playa great deal, but ultimately work and concerns no longer left me the needed leisure. I have often attempted to come back to it. I even began taking lessons again last year. I sometimes listen to music while working, when the effort of reflection. is not too constraining. I heard that Merleau-Ponty did this too. Certain operas fascinate me, for example, the Chevalier a la Rose [The Knight of the Rose], which I have listened to on videocassette every year since the night of Saint-Sylvestre. I adore Wagner, in relation to whom I share Baudelaire's enthusiasm: freed from weight, Baudelaire glided above the world here below by listening to Wagner's music. But there are also Cesar Franck, Gabriel Faure, and the "In Paradisum" of the requiem, and Gustav Mahler. Certain passages of his symphony Resurrection seem to me to express the springing up of existence. I will not enumerate all my readings, but I will mention the authors I have reread throughout my life. There was Montaigne, who enabled me to discover ancient philosophy and who is so inexhaustible that I have yet to explore him entirely. Rilke was my breviary, especially during the years 1945-60. I discovered him in 1944, thanks to Gabriel Marcel's Homo Viator, which contains the very beautiful chapter "Rilke, Witness of the Spiritual." 1 read the Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus in the excellent edition with commentary by d'Angelloz. As I have already said, I wanted to write a dissertation on Rilke and Heidegger, because Heidegger had said that the Elegies expressed in poetic form what he had wanted to say in Being and Time. Jean Wahl was very sad when I gave it up, and furious at Raymond Bayer: "It is not enough that he takes my time (Bayer always ate into at least a quarter of an hour of Wahl's class, which followed his), but now he takes my students!" I do not know whether Heidegger would have approved of the verse from the seventh elegy, "Being is here a splendor," but I would tell it to myself often. I also read Letters to a Young Poet, The Notebooks ofMalte Laurids Brigge, and The Book ofHours, which spoke a great deal about God, but in an entirely different way than in Christianity. It spoke of a God who will come, of a God who we begin to make through our existence, of a God who lives all lives, even the most humble. Through his criticism of industrial and technical civilization, Rilke made me feel

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forcefully the breach between man and the Earth, between man and nature, between man and cosmic unity. Filled with enthusiasm by Rilke, I made Rilkean pilgrimages to Sierre, where I visited the castle of Muzot and where I met Rudolf Kassner, one of Rilke's friends; and to Raron, where I saw Rilke's tomb and all of the scenery of the Valais. In this valley of the Rhone before it Bows into Lake Leman, I always feel the presence of Rilke. I do not regret having seen the scenery of Ouino. During the time I was discovering Rilke, I was also discovering German Romanticism, thanks to Albert Beguin's L:Ame romantique et le reve [The romantic soul and the dream]. This is why for a long time I have had a passion for Novalis, most notably for his Disciples at Sass and his Hymns to the Night; for C.W.F. Schelling as well, and for Georg Lichtenberg, who is not really a romantic but whose aphorisms are at times entertaining and especially very profound, and I still read and reread him. I became interested in Goethe, especially as of 1968; my paper in Ascona on the philosophy of nature pushed me to him. I was seduced by his aesthetic understanding of the science of nature, which ultimately has no great scientific value but already harkens, it seems to me, to the philosophy of perception of Bergson and of Merleau-Ponty. I liked his criticism of human chattering, trivial and smug, which he opposes to the silence and gravity of nature, which expresses itself in eloquent drawings. I have also read and reread Goethe's Elective Affinities, Wilhelm Meister, Faust, and especially Faust II, in which I discovered the Epicurean and Stoic idea of the value of the present instant. It is an inexhaustible work. In the course of reading Goethe and books on Goethe, I realized that he was not the Olympian we usually take him to be. Humanly speaking, he was somewhat disappointing, often lacking courage, somewhat inclined to the bottle, with bizarre ideas, like the one of giving his son a guillotine as a toy. Often. there is no Goethean serenity, but on the contrary, as I hope to show in a forthcoming book, a man divided between terror and amazement. Nietzsche is another author I have read and reread, but not entirely. Ultimately I am far from knowing the heart of his thought. I discovered him first through Ernst Bertram's Nietzsche: Essai de Mythologie [Nietzsche: an essay of mythology], which enchanted me first by its form.

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The book has the originality of regrouping all sorts of significant details about Nietzsche's work around themes-unifying symbols, for example, such as Durer's painting, the knight, death and the devil, or the figure of Socrates, and the scenery, such as Portofino, and Venice. I believe that this method is promising, because it ties the work of the author to the various experiences he has had, to the visions he has seen. Independently of this uncommon form, the book revealed Nietzsche himself to me in the' extraordinary richness of his internal life. Thomas Mann admired this book by Bertram, but it was harshly contested by the Nietzsche specialists, most notably by Charles Andler, because it does not sufficiently attend to Nietzsche's doctrine. But personally, I find that the man Nietzsche is, in all his contradictions, very well revealed in this book. Thanks to Bernard Condorninas, I had the opportunity to have the translation of the book (which had been published in 1932) republished with a new preface, in which I especially speak of Bertram and of the circle around Stefan George to which he belonged. This is a man, it is true, whose life and ideas can be criticized. I read Nietzsche himself the way one reads aphorisms, by delighting myself always in his perspicacity and his lucidity. In an entirely other order of ideas, but I will mention it nonetheless, there is a modern novelist who I adore, David Lodge, because of the truth and the humor of his paintings of the university setting, but also because of the Catholic setting. He is both very entertaining and very profound.

J C.: But your retirement is also verystudious? In effect, I profit from this freedom to write books that have been waiting to be written for years: translations with commentary of Plotinus, a study on Marcus Aurelius (The Inner Citadel), a translation of book one of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (the sequel will follow soon, I hope). I was also very happy to be able to write the small book What Is Ancient Philosophy? In addition, I am trying to complete a study, begun about thirty years ago, devoted to the theme of the veil of nature. My grandson, who is eight, monopolizes a good deal of my time. Sometimes he asks me to write on the computer the stories he invents, and he dictates them to me as he walks from one end of my office to the other. I am very happy and proud of it.

3l_ _ Philosophical Discourse

Arnold I Davidson: When we approach a text ofancient philosophy, we tend to treat it as though it were a text ofmodern philosophy-either as a systematic theory o/the world, ofman, and so on, or as a sum ofpropositions that can be demonstrated or refuted, as it were, abstractly. According to your perspective, however, it is a mistake oforientation to treat the texts ofancient philosophy in the same way as the texts of modern philosophy. Would you explain thefundamental differences between these two types oftexts, and thus the two types ofreading required?

You are absolutely right. Ancient philosophy texts and modern philosophy texts are extremely different. The first difference is that ancient philosophy texts also have a relation to the oral, to oral style. For example, Plato's dialogues were designed for presentation in public readings, and even the very austere texts ofAristotle's commentators had to be presented to students orally first. Often they come to us thanks to notes that students took during the course. It is also possible that the pre-Socratics' texts were first read in public. Incidentally, this phenomenon was not particular to philosophy; as the linguist Antoine Meillet suggests, all literary works of antiquity have a relation to the oral. This is what explains, notably, "the impression of slowness that they give."· Despite what certain historians may think, I am persuaded that ancient and even medieval civilizations were dominated by the oral. As a result, the philosophical texts of antiquity were always directed at a limited audience. Unlike the modern

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book, which can be read throughout the world, at any moment by anyone, in thousands of copies, ancient texts were addressed to precise people, whether it be the group of students or a particular disciple to whom one wrote. And one always wrote in particular, precise circumstances, whether one put down the courses one gave in writing or wrote to a correspondent who had asked a question. In fact, the vast majority of the philosophical writings of antiquity correspond to a play of questions and answers, because for almost three centuries, from Socrates to the first century B.C., the teaching of philosophy was almost always presented on the questionanswer schema. It was always a matter of responding to a question, a question posed by a student, or rather, posed by the teacher-Socrates, for example-to oblige the student to understand all the implications of his own thought. This culture of the question still subsisted in the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. Teaching, then, was practiced in large part in the form of dialogue. However, after the first century ofour era, something modern, so to speak, was introduced: texts by Plato, Aristotle, Chrysippus, other Stoics, and Epicureans began to be explained and commented on. But as Hans-Georg Gadamer has remarked, their commentaries are also questions posed to the text." Exegesis still largely consisted in responding to a question: Did Plato think that the world was eternal? for example, was a way to treat the question, Is the world eternal? Thus, from the beginning to the end of ancient philosophy, we have almost the same situation: philosophical writings respond to questions. For example, in the Life of Plotinus, Porphyry says that Plorinus composed his writings in response to the questions that were asked in the course. We are thus in the presence of an extremely interesting phenomenon: the thought that is exposed in writing is not developed as the exposition of a complete system of reality. This complete system of reality probably exists in the mind of Plato, ofAristotle, of Epicurus, or of Chrysippus, but it is supposed only in the answers to the questions, or in the type of questions posed. The writing itself does not consist of systematic exposition. Furthermore, as a result of this context of writing, which is almost always narrowly tied to teaching, questions and answers are given as a function of the needs of the audience. The teacher who writes, or whose words are written, knows his disciples; he knows, by previous discussions, what they know, what they do not know;

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he also knows their moral state, the problems that present themselves to them; and he often speaks as a function of this particular situation. One is always faced with a writing that is more or less a writing of circumstance, not an exposition that is absolutely universal in breadth, valid for all times and in all countries, but rather particularized. Everything I have just said contrasts with the structural method, endorsed most notably by Victor Goldschmidt, which tends to minimize the role of the oral character of ancient philosophy.'

A.D.: This means that the oral has its own constraints, which are not exactly the sameas those ofthe modern mind no longer tied to the oral or to teaching for a particular group. Do you think the dialogue is a privileged genre in ancientphilosophy? The dialogue as a philosophical genre hasall but disappeared todayfor us; we especially havesystematic treatises. What doyou think ofthe priority ofdialogue as literary genre tied to a very specific group, to a very specific audience? It is true that in antiquity the dialogue was one of the fundamental forms of teaching. For the sake of simplicity, let us say that it took rather diverse forms. It could take the form of an exercise of argumentation with codified rules that aimed both to form the mind and to prepare the disciple for the oratory games of the city or the tribunal. It could take the form of a free discussion that would at times be reduced by a disciple to a single question, which the teacher would answer with a long exposition but that was always addressed to a well-defined audience. In a certain sense, as Epictetus says about discussion with his teacher Musonius Rufus, everyone had the impression of being addressed by Musonius." At the beginning of the second book of his Definibus, Cicero does indeed describe these different forms of dialogue, but it is the form of dialogue, the question-answer schema that we have already discussed, that matters above all for our purposes. It is very interesting to note that the Latins, when they spoke of a philosophical writing, called it a dialogue, for example, when referring to the works of Cicero or of Seneca, in which we always find questions asked by a real or fictional character. In antiquity, philosophy was thus essentially dialogue, a living relationship between people rather than an abstract relation to ideas. It aimed

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to form rather than to inform, to take up Victor Goldschmidt's excellent phrase, which he used in reference to Plato's dialogues.' But one must add that there were other literary genres in antiquity. We have already evoked, for example, the commentary, about which we have said, among other things, that it consisted in asking questions about a text. But it can also be the systematic exposition' of a geometrical type, on the model of Euclid's Elements. We see it outlined in Epicurus (Letter to Pythocles), and finding its perfect form in Proclus (Elements of Theology and Elements ofPhysics). I think the goal of his rigorous demonstration was less to undertake a theoretical exercise of axiomatization than to allow the disciple to acquire an unshakable certainty in the dogmas of the school that must regulate his life. I think this is clear enough in Epicurus' case, but possibly in the case of Proclus as well. A.D.: In antiquity there were still other philosophical genres that have disappeared today: for example, consolations and correspondence. Now, it seems that at a certain moment, the systematic treatise invaded allphilosophy: consolations and correspondence have become purely private: real dialogues happen only exceptionally. What have we lost with the absence ofthese different literary genres?

Consolations and correspondence are literary genres in which the philosopher exhorts his disciples or his friends in very specific circumstances-an unfortunate event in the case of consolations, various life circumstances in the case of correspondence, such as Epicufus' and Seneca's Letters. These are ultimately other forms of_ dialogue. These literary forms-dialogue, consolations, correspondence-continued to exist in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, and still in the seventeenth century, but precisely in literary form, without the philosophical teaching itself taking a dialogical form. Thus we have the dialogues of Berkeley, Hume, and other philosophers. Descartes' Letters to princess Elisabeth sometimes seem to be letters of spiritual direction, worthy of antiquity. I believe that systematic treatises, written with the intention of proposing a system, belong to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff). The ancient literary genres gradually disappeared. You ask if there has not been a loss from this point of view. We will return to this question later, but there is a partial but very real loss

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of the. conception of philosophy as a mode of life, as a choice of life, as therapy as well. We have lost the personal and communal aspect of philosophy. Moreover, philosophy has progressively entrenched itself on this purely formal path, in the search for novelty in itself at all costs. For the philosopher, it is a question of being as original as possible, if not by creating a new system, at least by producing a discourse that makes itself complicated in order to ·be original. The more or less skillful construction of a conceptual edifice will become an end in itself. Philosophy thus has progressively distanced itself from the concrete life of humans. It should also be remarked that it is possible to understand this evolution in terms of historical and institutional factors. From the narrow perspective of the universities, it is a question of preparing students for study in a scholastic program that will allow them to obtain a civil servant degree and that will open a career for them. As a result, the personal and communal relation necessarily disappears for them, in order to make way for a teaching addressed to everyone, that is to say, to no one. Unfortunately, I think it is extremely difficult in our day to resurrect the dialogical character of ancient philosophy. It seems to me that this dialogical form of teaching is realizable only in communities of the type of the ancient schools, organized to live philosophy communally (sumphilosophein, as they used to say). Perhaps this might be possible in communities that would be of the monastic type? But I believe that in everyday life and in university life, it would be very artificial. However, without returning to a dialogical form of teaching, it does seem as though since the beginning of the nineteenth century we are witnessing a rediscovery of the philosophical and ethical fecundity of dialogue, that is, of the relationship between the I and the You, which is outlined in Schleiermacher and Feuerbach, and developed in Buber and Habermas. A.D.: The close relations between the philosophical signification of a text and its literary genre are noticeable-something that is obvious in your interpretation ofthe Thoughts ofMarcus Aurelius. If one thinks that these Thoughts are a systematic treatise, one immediately realizes all sorts ofincoherence, ofcontradictions; it seems as though there is no structure; but if one does understand the literary genre and the relation between literary genre and philosophical finality of the Meditations ofMarcus Aurelius, one can

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understand the text from another point ofview; one can see a logic in it, but it is not at all the logic ofa modern systematic treatise. Can you explain how a text like Marcus Aurelius' can again show the necessityofputting literary genre and philosophical specificity together in antiquity? Marcus Aurelius' book is an absolutely privileged example to illustrate this problem of literary genres. Different historians have fundamen- . tally understood the Meditations as a function of their own ideal of the philosophical literary genre. Moreover, it is remarkable that the English did such good work on Marcus Aurelius in the seventeenth century-that is, Thomas Gataker and Meric Casaubon (who was not English but lived in England) both recognized the real literary genre of Marcus Aurelius; they used the Greek word hupomnemata, which designates the notes one takes for oneself: Furthermore, they saw that it was a question of exhortations that Marcus Aurelius made to himself: By contrast, during the same century, a Frenchman, Jean-Pierre Joly, had the notion that the apparently disjointed character of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations came from the fact that he had written a systematic treatise that had been destroyed and that someone had tried to put back into order, not unlike what happened with Pascal's Pensees. At the time of Romanticism, it was thought to be a diary [journal intime], like the diary of Henri Frederic Amiel or of Maurice de Guerin-s-Marcus Aurelius, on the eve of the battles on the Danube, expressing his disgust for life, his sadness. There has been a return, recently, to the position of Gataker and Casaubon, notably, in an article by Brunt," in a book by Rutherford'? and in my own work as well. There has thus been a recovery of the idea that Marcus Aurelius was attempting to awaken in .himself the Stoic dogmas that were to govern his life but that had lost some of their persuasive force; thus it was necessary to attempt constantly to persuade himself anew.. His goal was to have the Stoic dogmas at hand in an efficient manner-in particular, the three fundamental precepts of Epictetus: never let anything into the mind that is not objective, always take the good of the human community as the end of one's actions, and make one's desires conform to the rational order of the universe. There is thus an internal logic to Marcus Aurelius' book. Bur in order to awaken these principles in all circumstances, one must adopt the form of the aphorism: the short and striking formula that gives them life again. Appreciation of this dimension

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can enhance an understanding of ancient philosophy more generally. In this connection, I was influenced in' my youth by Cardinal John Henry Newman's Grammar ofAssent, in which he distinguishes notional assent and real assent. Notional assent is the acceptance of a theoretical proposition to which one adheres in an abstract way, such as a mathematical proposition, for example, 2 and 2 make 4. This commits one to nothing; it is purely intellectual. Real assent is something that involves the whole being; one understands that the proposition to which one adheres is going to change one's life. Newman developed this theory from the perspective of Christian anthropology, but I think it can also be applied to the particular case of Marcus Aurelius. What he wants is to have real assent with the dogmas of Stoic propositions, for example, that there is no good or evil other than moral good or evil, or that other human beings are related to one in reason and that one must therefore love them, forgive them. To arrive at this real assent, one must use the imagination as well as reasoning, and an entire psychological discipline.

A.D.: In relation to thisproblem, Ifind it remarkable that Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations can be read in the same framework. It is in no way a systematic treatise; ifit is read as a systematic treatise, as it sometimes is in the United States, one says that it is full of inconsistencies and poorly written-the same criticisms that had been addressed to the writing ofMarcus Aurelius. As Stanley Cavell and others have shown, however, it is a type of dialogue-many small, continually renewed dialogues-because one must repeatedly overcome a temptation, conduct a real therapy, in order to change the life, not only the opinion, ofthe interlocutor, who is also Wittgenstein, who must change himself It is not insignificant, therefore, thatyou were the first in France to have discovered Wittgenstein. In a text from 1959 or I960 ((Jeux de langage et philosophic" [Language Games and Philosophy]), you used, perhaps for the first time, the expression "spiritual exercises" to discuss Wittgenstein, andyou insisted on the fact that in Wittgenstein there is a whole therapy, that there is no systematicity ofthe modern type. This suggests that one can even today recoverthe literary genre and type ofancientphilosophy, so that at every moment in the history a/philosophy one can find an author who tries to renew them. Why do you think that this model-philosophy as a mode of life, as necessity to transform onese/f---::.remains so alive, even ifit is somewhat hidden by the things you have indicated, the university, and so on?

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First I would briefly like to say something parenthetically. You have insisted on the fact that Wittgenstein's readers have found that there are many inconsistencies in the Philosophical Investigations. Concerning the genesis of the notion of philosophy as a choice of life or of the notion of spiritual exercises in my work, it should also be said that I began by reflecting on this problem: how to understand the apparent inconsistencies of certain philosophers. In Munich in the 1960s, I even gave a paper that was' never published called, I believe, "Sysrerne et incoherence en philosophic" [System and incoherence in philosophy]. I have always been struck by the fact that the historians say, "Aristotle is incoherent" and "Saint Augustine writes poorly." And this is what led me to the idea that the philosophical works of antiquity were not written as the exposition of a system but in order to produce an effect of formation. The philosopher wanted to make the minds of his readers or listeners work, in order to improve their disposition. This is a rather important point, I believe. I did not begin with more or less edifying considerations about philosophy as therapy, and so on, as opposed to philosophy as, for example.... No, it was really a strictly literary problem, which is the following: For what reasons do ancient philosophical writings seem incoherent? Why is it so difficult to recognize their rational plane? To answer your question about the possible renewal of the ancient model ofphilosophy, I will restrict myself to the problem ofliterary genres, because it is our present topic. To begin, I believe that the ancient civilization of the oral has definitively disappeared since the invention of the printing press, which itself will eventually be surpassed by the I nterner. I said earlier that I doubted the possibility of reviving the dialogical character of philosophical teaching. But you are right to remark that, from the Renaissance to our day, there have been authors who have tried to renew, in their writings, ancient literary genres. One can think, for example, of Montaigne's Essays, which perfectly recalls the genres of Plutarch's treatises and Descartes' Meditations. These are spiritual exercises that take into consideration the time it will take the reader to be able to change his mentality and transform his way of seeing things: Shafstbury's Exercises, inspired by Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus; Schopenhauer's aphorisms; Nietzsche; or Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

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II} a certain sense, one might say that there have always been two opposed conceptions of philosophy, one puts the emphasis on the pole of discourse, the other, on the pole of choice of life. Already in antiquity, Sophists and philosophers confronted each other. The former sought to shine through the subtleties of dialectic or the magic of words; the latter required their disciples to make a concrete commitment to a certain mode of life. This situation ultimately spread, at times with the preponderance of one tendency or the other. I believe that philosophers will never get beyond the self-satisfaction they experience in the pleasure of speaking. In any event, to remain faithful to the deep-Socratic, one might sayinspiration of philosophy, a new ethic of philosophical discourse would have to be proposed. As a result, philosophy would renounce taking itself as an end in itself or, worse yet, as a means to display the philosopher's elegance, and would instead become a means to overcome oneself and to move onto the plane of universal reason and opening to others.

41Interpretation, Objectivity, and Nonsense

Arnold 1. Davidson: A whole current ofcontemporary thought insists on the fact that it is impossible to give an objective interpretation ofa text, that interpretation always depends on the interpreter's point ofview. This hermeneutic problem can be considered in relation to the following question: Is the author's will, what the author meant, most important for the understanding ofa text, or is it the autonomy ofthe text itselfthat is most important? Consequently, in order to interpret a text, should one attempt to recoverthe author's intention, and can it be done in a more or less objective modality?

This is a question that I have asked myself often since reading Gadamer's theories-which, as you say, show that the subject does indeed interpret texts as a function of its subjectivity-as well as the very interesting Introduction to the Philosophy ofHistory by Raymond Aron, which addresses the difficulty of being objective. These theories have merit that should be recognized: they have legitimately uncovered the illusions that were held about the historian's objectivity as a result of neglecting the influence on historical interpretations of the passions, of rancor, of social situation, and of philosophical options. This is quite true, but it is merely one aspect of the problem. Indeed, I believe that this relativism represents a danger, for it has quickly issued in a position that, in a sense, Foucault himself accepted at a certain time: not only is the exegete incapable of

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really 'knowing what the author meant, but more important, the author himself no longer exists. From here one can generate interpretations in which one can say anything about anything. I am not the only one to consider this to be very dangerous, and numerous examples prove it. Notably, I was struck by Ernst Gombrich's remarks in one of his books on art. He reflects on the sense of the statue of Eros situated at Piccadilly Circus, above a fountain put up between 1886 and 1897 to honor the memory of the seventh Count of Shaftesbury, a great philanthropist.' He enumerates the successive interpretations of the monument that could have been given. At the time, the sculptor, Albert Gilbert, had declared that he wanted to symbolize Christian charity with the figure of Eros. However, explanations of every kind-that we can now list-have been proposed since then. Inspired by this example, Gombrich firmly states the principle that in order to interpret a work of art or a text, one must, before anything else, look for the author's intention. On this point, he cites a very important book by E. D. Hirsch concerning the interpretation of literary works.i Hirsch distinguishes sense and signification in such works. He shows that there is a sense meant by the author, an intention that one must attempt to grasp. But subsequently he recognizes that it is possible to discover different significations that various audiences can give to the work. This can explain the successive interpretations of the status of Eros at Piccadilly Circus. Furthermore, this or that expression, or such and such a symbol, can, by themselves, have various implications. For example, the choice of the figure of Eros can carry, as a result of the collective representations concerning the figure of Eros, certain implications that escape the author's intention. As Andre Gide said in Paludes, "If we know what we meant to say, we do not know if that is all we were saying. One always says more than 'that.'" Hirsch's book is also relevant in another respect. He effectively insists on the fact that the sense of the text meant by the author depends narrowly on the literary genre to which the text belongs. It is clear that this book, which is in fact very nuanced, runs against the current of the present fashion. Is this the reason it has never been translated into French, despite my efforts to have it translated? It leads one to believe that it is not only in Rome that there is a list of prohibited books.

A. D.: Those who criticize the idea that the sense ofthe text can be recovered through the author's intention conceive ofthe author's intention as a

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secret psychological reality that must be uncovered. One might say that you havefound the key to readingMarcus Aurelius' Meditations without introducing a secret or a psychological or biological discovery. In the aphorisms of Marcus Aurelius' book, a triadic structure can be recognized-the distinction of three disciplines or exercises (asceses): the discipline of desires, the discipline of action, and the discipline of judgment. These disciplines consist, respectively, in making one's desires, actions, and judgments conform to reason. The presence of this schema, easily recognizable throughout the book, shows that it responds to an intention of the author. These repetitions do not aim, for example, to inform the readers about a Stoic doctrine. No, the author's intention is clear. For Marcus Aurelius, it is a matter of reactualizing, of awakening, the dogmas that must conduct life. The manuscripts say that Marcus Aurelius' book is "By himself," which corresponds perfectly to the intention of the author. These are not thoughts directed at others, or effusions of the author's sensibility. The author's intention is not a matter of psychological or biographical discovery. His intention is clearly inscribed in the content and form of the work. One must nevertheless recognize that, for the modern interpreter, it is very difficult to grasp the author's intention. It is very easy to fall into anachronism, because we are not aware of many of the historical conditions under which it was written-who it is aimed at, who it copies, perhaps. This is how it can have been thought that in his book Marcus Aurelius was giving us his everyday states of mind, just as Rousseau was confessing in pis Confessions, or Plato was methodically developing in his dialogues. In fact, Augustine's title, Confessiones, means "God's praises," as the opening lines of the work clearly show-praises for what God did for Augustine, but also for humans in general-because Augustine had a tendency to consider the events of his life as symbols of the history of faith. For example, in describing the famous theft of pears committed in his youth, he in fact means to describe Adam's sin in taking the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. The allusions to the biblical texts that appear in his text show it clearly. As for Plato's dialogues, without getting into the quarrel about Plato's oral teaching, there seems to be general agreement with Victor Goldschmidt on the point that Plato wrote them not to inform but to form. Whatever the case may be, as E. D. Hirsch has correctly

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remarked, the first way to recognize the author's intention is to look for the literary genre to which the work belongs. In a general way, in fact, with regard to ancient authors, the rules of discourse are rigorously codified. One must take into account the fact that they were writing in a traditional system that obeyed the requirements proper to each literary genre. One does not write in the same way when one exhorts someone, when one consoles him, when one exposes a doctrine, or when one dialogues. In order to understand exactly the breadth of an affirmation, and all the more so for the general sense of a work, one must carefully distinguish, first, what the author must say-for example, because he is a Platonist or a Stoic, or because he is addressing a particular audience that is more or less formed-then what the author can say-for example, he can exaggerate the presentation of a doctrine in order to strike the mind more effectively, or be unfaithful to the dogmas of the school because he wants to adapt to a certain audience-and finally, what the author means [veux dire, literally, wants to say]' his deep intention-for example, in Marcus Aurelius' case it is self-exhortation; in the case of Augustine's Confessions, it is not so much to confess as to sing the work of God in the world and in humans. It is possible to suppose that the archaic authors or the founders of the schools were also conditioned by a tradition of preexisting literary genres. I think this is in fact the case. In history there is never an absolute beginning. Oriental models influenced the first Greek thinkers. Gerard Naddaf has shown the importance of a triadic structure in the writings of the pre-Socratics-genesis of the gods, genesis of humans, and genesis of the city-inherited from Babylonian cosmogonical myths, the literary genre to which the biblical genesis belongs.I This schema is found in the Timaeus [dialogue], which is also a genesis, a history of generations. These authors thereby attach themselves to a tradition that precedes them. The school founders are tributaries of multiple traditions. Plato, for example, should be situated in the Socratic, Pythagorean, and sophistical traditions. I believe it was Bergson who said that every philosopher thinks in reaction to another thinker, but this situation also conditions; it imposes a determinate problematic, and sometimes restrains the momentum of every philosopher's thought.

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Besides, C1-S you said, if one speaks of the intention of the author, it is not a matter of a more or less secret psychology. This type of psychological interpretation is based on the idea that a work of art is the expression of a unique individuality, a Romantic idea that neglects the constraints that always weigh on an author. With regard to the ancient world, it does not take into account the conception of literary composition at the time. The author's intention is in fact the choice made with regard to the goal of his work, its mode of presentation, its method, the way in which it plays with all the rules that impose themselves. Historical psychology must be handled with much precaution. For example, despite what some have meant to show on the basis of the fact that Fronto, Marcus Aurelius' future rhetoric teacher, wrote to him about his illnesses after Galen had given anatomy lectures to the Roman aristocrats, one must not believe that the second century after Jesus Christ was hypochondriacal. Here again, the true intentions must be determined. The content of the letters shows that Fronto did not intend to describe his malaises complacently, but simply wished to excuse himself for his absences. With respect to the Roman aristocrats, it was a matter not of morbid curiosity but of scientific curiosity. We know that these characters were Aristotelians, and thus impassioned by scientific research. That Lucretius, as a good Epicurean, sought to deliver humans from their anxiety does not mean that he was anxious himself: It is very risky to speak of "the anxiety of Lucretius/" There are also cases in which the author does not mean everything he says and in which all the sentences of a text do not necessarily express his thought. This happens especially in cases where an author uses another author without saying so, as happens quite often, at least it did at the end of antiquity (and sometimes does in our day ... ). For example, the Latin Fathers and the Greek Fathers sometimes wanted to illustrate their sermons with beautiful thoughts borrowed from pagans. Thus they cited Plotinus, but without saying so and often for one, single sentence. One can see the relation between this sentence and the rest of the sermon. Thus they wanted to cite this passage of Plotinus because of one sentence. They cited the context of the sentence, even though the context dealt with something different than the sentence that mattered to them. As a result, many interpreters say that Ambrose and Gregory of Nyssa were Platonists.

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But one cannot saddle the author with the entire doctrine contained in one too-frequently cited passage. Thus there will be sentences in a text that do not correspond to an assertion the author makes. One cannot say, at that moment, that it is the author's intention to affirm this or that doctrine. To arrive at the author's will in a probable manner, one must undertake a tight criticism of the author's text.

A. D.: Then you think it is possible to attain a sort ofobjectivityin the interpretation? All the work of the interpreter must consist in attempting to locate objective facts whenever possible. To take an example from late antiquity, if one reads a text by Ambrose of Milan and finds in it a Greek text by Origen translated word for word, as I happened to find in Ambrose's sermon on the apology of David, one thing is certain: he had contact with the Greek text. Sometimes it is so flagrant that one could find a Greek word missing in Origen's text, thanks to Ambrose's Latin. Here is a domain in which scientific rigor is the goal. The great idea I retained from Paul Henry is precisely that only literal and not doctrinal comparisons are conclusive. That is to say that when one looks for doctrinal relations, which is what most historians do, one can maintain that a given author had been influenced by another author strictly on the basis of vague resemblances or places described by many authors. But this proves nothing at all. On the contrary, when there really is an accumulation of incontestable paraIIels, one can conclude in an objective manner that a relation exists between the authors. This is only one example in a very specific domain, but many others could be listed. Thus the parallels between specific conceptual structures, expressed in a characteristic vocabulary, can also be conclusive. Consider, for example, the triadic structure shared by Epicretus and Marcus Aurelius that I discussed earlier. There again, objective facts can be found. The problem of scientific objectivity is extremely interesting from the point of view of spiritual exercises. Since Aristotle, it has been recognized that science should be disinterested. To study a text or microbes or the stars, one must undo oneself from one's subjectivity. Gadamer and Raymond Aron will say, that is impossible. But I nevertheless think this is an ideal that one must attempt to attain through constant practice.

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Thus the scholars who have the rare courage to recognize that they were mistaken in aparticular case, or who try not to be influenced by their own prejudices, are undertaking a spiritual exercise of self-detachment. Let us say that objectivity is a virtue, and one that is very difficult to practice. One must undo oneself from the partiality of the individual and impassioned self in order to elevate oneself to the universality of the rational self: I have always thought that the exercise of political democracy, as it should' be practiced, should correspond to this attitude as well. Self-detachment is a moral attitude that should be demanded of both the politician and the scholar.

A.D.: Let us proceedto another aspect ofyour thought about the objectivity ofinterpretation. You have written, "Investigations about the past must have an actual, personal, formative, and existential sense." You have always insistedon thispoint, so thefollowing questionpresents itself: How to reconcile the objectivity, albeitprobable, ofthe interpretation with the actual sense ofa philosophical text? I find what you wrote in the preface to Bertram's book on Nietzsche extraordinary: "The writing ofhistory, indeed probably much like all human activity, must be a coincidentia oppositorum by trying to respond to two equallyurgentcontraryrequirements. In ordertoperceive and evaluate historicalreality, there must be, on the one hand, a conscious and total self commitment, and on the other hand, an intended objectivity and impartiality. To my eyes, it is only the ascesis ofscientific rigor, that selfdetachment requiredfor an objective and impartial judgment, that will be able to give us the right to implicate ourselves in history, to give it an existential sense. "5 What remains between these two requirements ofthepossibility ofan "actual" sense ofa text? I did not remember having written that, but I am quite pleased that you refer to it, because it corresponds nicely with what I feel about the problem today. I think that the first of these requirements, not only for a scholar but also for someone who reads an ancient text, is to aim for objectivity and, if possible) for truth. That is to say that there is no point in distorting the meaning of a text in order to adapt it to the requirements of modern life, or to the aspirations of the soul, and so on. The first task is above all objectivity. Wh~never possible, one must attempt to resituate the text under study in its historical perspective. It is extremely important

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not to commit anachronisms in the haste of giving texts meaning. On this score, I would like to evoke briefly one of my constant concerns in the interpretation of texts, precisely to avoid anachronism. This is the effort to resiruate, as much as possible, the works within the concrete conditions in which they were written. On the one hand, there are spiritual conditions, that is, philosophical, rhetorical, or poetic traditions. On the other hand, there are material conditions, namely, scholastic and social milieu, constraints arising from the material support of writing, and historical circumstances. Every work should be resiruared in the praxis from which it emanates. But as Aristotle said about pleasure, there is always added to the effort of objectivity a supplement, a surplus, which is the possibility of finding our spiritual nourishment in it. This time, we are in a certain sense implicated in the interpretation. If one tries to understand a text properly, I believe that afterward one can be brought, almost spontaneously, to discover its human meaning, that is, to situate it in relation to the general problem of humanity, of the human, even if it is not edifying at all. Thus one can basically do as the Stoics did concerning their representations.. First, begin with adequate and objective judgment: this is what was said. Then, eventually, make a judgment of value: this has a given significance for my life. This time, one can speak of a return to subjectivity, a subjectivity that, incidentally, attempts to elevate itself to a universal perspective. In fact, the meaning intended by the ancient author is never actual. It is ancient, and that is all there is to it. But it can take on an actual significance for us to the extent that it can appear to us as, for example, the source of certain actual ideas, or especially because it can inspire an actual attitude in us, an inner act, or a spiritual exercise. On this point, I find what Raymond Ruyer has written interesting: "No one except the specialists are very interested in the preambles of Stoicism, taken from Heraclitus' physics, or in Epicurean morality, or Democritean atomism. But as attitudes, Stoicism and Epicureanism remain very alive."? One must therefore distinguish from the ideology that justified the attitude in the past, the concrete attitude that can be actualized. In order to actualize a message from antiquity, one must draw from it everything that marks its time. One must demythologize it, as Bultmann said about the gospel.

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One must attempt to isolate the inner reasoning, the concrete attitude it implies. In Epicureanism, for example, there is an attitude of welcoming the present that remains valuable without taking into account the theories about the minimum and maximum of pleasure-very technical theories that Epicurus had in any case apparently borrowed from Aristotle. Analogously, the Stoic attitude of concentrating on the present without allowing oneself to be crushed by the past or worried about the future also remains valuable. Furthermore, at times an ancient phrase remains completely free of the mythological and sociological conditionings we discussed. For example, when Marcus Aurelius writes, "Soon you will have forgotten everything, soon everyone will forget you," the aphorism speaks to us directly. It has, one might say, an eternal value. Nietzsche refers to the "good sentence, too hard' for the tooth of time, imperishable in the midst of everything that changes."? The meaning intended by Marcus Aurelius was tied to- the need to exhort himself to think of death. In this sense, it is . historically marked, but it can be reactualized without difficulty. A.D.: IfI understand you correctly, this means that after the quest for objectivity there is a second moment ofevaluation, and to evaluate an ancient text, one must do something to actualize it. One must not deform it, but reemploy it in another context, from the point ofview ofour actual requirements. This implies that what remains important is the core o/significance to be reactualized. This callsto mind our idea that there are universal philosophical attitudes, that is, a universal Platonic type, a universal Epicureanism) and so on, always equal to itselfbut always in a different context, and always to be reactualized.

Obviously, affirming that there are universal attitudes supposes something like the idea of a human nature..Let us say at least that these attitudes are transhistorical and transcultural. When I previously called attention to this question in The Inner Citadel, I said, if I recall, that finally there are really only a few possible attitudes in relation to existence, and without the influence of historical order, the different civilizations are led to have, in this regard, analogous attitudes. This is obvious for the Chinese. In What is Ancient Philosophy? I cited this extraordinary example from Pyrrho, who tried to arrive at perfect indifference by living a life that was perfectly equal to the life of every other human, who took care of his

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sister's pig, and who sold fowl in the market. Then I cited the attitude of the Chinese philosopher Lie Yukou, who did exactly the same thing, taking CC1:re of the pig and the household chores to help his wife. This attitude of indifference-for example, remaining the same regardless of the circumstances; refusing to judge the value of things; refusing to say, this is good, this is bad; accepting everything in life; doing everything like everyone else but without getting attached to anything, by remaining indifferent to everything-that is the skeptical attitude. I do not mean skeptical in the seventeenth-century sense of the word, as signifying the intellectual refusal of certainty, but rather in reference to the contexts of Greece and China, for example, where it is a matter of refusing to pass value judgments on things. This is an attitude that does seem to be universal, that one might, for that matter, discover for oneself: Without needing to read this or that, it can happen by itself: Olivier Lacombe compared Plotinus' mysticism to certain tendencies of Hindu thought. One could say that there is in both cases an effort to overcome all duality. Might one not think that this analogy is based in one of the universal forms of mystical experience? Another example: the Stoic attitude, which consists in consenting to destiny, and also in putting oneself in a universal perspective, can be found in China. The Chinese texts cited by Jacques Gernet are rather conclusive. Emile Brehier, for his part, compared the Stoic attitudes with certain Buddhist attitudes. It is quite feasible also to conceive that Epicureanism, that is, an attitude of release, could be universal. This idea of a universality of spiritual exercises can also be situated in the perspective ofthe effort to remove what is essential in an attitude~in a choice of life-from its mythical and traditional straightjacket.

A.D.: I would like to mention another methodological domain that you outlined in a little text from I968: "Philosophie, exegese et contresens" [Philosophy, exegesis, and nonsense]. You emphasize that there are in the history ofphilosophy cases of nonsense and incomprehension that, you say, "very often provoked an important evolution in the history ofphilosophy, and notably made new notions appear." Obviously, nonsense is not a mode ofobjectivity, but you have signaled the importance ofwhat you call creating nonsense.

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In the short, perhaps thirty-year-old text you refer to, I may have been somewhat temerarious in formulating, as it were, general principles to understand the evolution of the history of philosophy. Also, in speaking of cases of nonsense in the history of philosophy; I was thinking especially of ancient philosophy. The deformations that Aristotle inflicted on the thought of the pre-Socratics is, for example, well known. The Neoplatonists were not to be outdone in attempting to artificially systematize disparate and often irreconcilable notions taken from Plato's dialogues, and moreover, associating them with mythical notions taken from Orphic poems or the Chaldean Oracles [Oracles chaldaiques: Ancient, especially Neoplatonic, hermeneutics makes a text say exactly what it wants it to say, and thereby quietly commits a multitude of inconsistencies that take the most varied form. Moreover, it has a very efficient instrument at its service for this, namely, the allegory, which allows one to attribute to texts significations that are all the further from their original meaning. The allegory was dear to the Stoics, the Platonists, and. the Christians. It notably allows the Christians to vindicate the continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament, as .Michel Tardieu has shown. It is true that new concepts were occasioned by false interpretations and nonsense. It seems to me that a good example is the Heraclitean aphorism usually translated "Nature likes to hide itself" [phusis kruptesthai philell. I studied the history of the interpretation of this text in my 1983 courses at College de France, and I hope to publish a book on rhis subject. The original meaning of this aphorism is very difficult to determine. Without repeating the entire discussion, I can say only that it seems to me that this meaning is connected to the antithesis between life and death. Given the meaning of the word phusis at the time, this could be either, "That which gives life tends to give death" or "That which is born tends to die." But with the evolution of the word phusis in the following centuries, the aphorism took on very different meanings in different philosophies. Philo of Alexandria, who cites it at the beginning of our era, gives it the meaning, "Nature likes to hide," which seems to me to contradict the original meaning, especially in view of the fact that for Philo nature is nothing other than the creating God. From this perspective, nature hides itself because it is transcendent. The aphorism takes on yet another meaning for the Neoplatonists. For them, nature corresponds to the lowest part

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of reality, to the sensible world, and to inferior divinities. If nature likes to hide, it is not because of its transcendence but rather because of its weakness and inferiority; and from this perspective, "to hide" signifies to wrap oneself in the veils of the body and of myth. I cannot give the entire history of the theme here, ·but I will say that for Heidegger, Heraclitus' aphorism takes on yet another meaning. He translated it as follows: "To hide belongs to the predilection of Being." Thus he identifies phusis and Being: it is in the very essence of Being to hide itself: What appears is beings, but their very appearing, that through which they appear-that is, Being-refuses to reveal itself: That which makes beings appear hides itself Thus one can see an entire series of new meanings emerge from three enigmatic words, and we are not even sure of-knowing what the author meant by them. In any case, it is possible to speak of creative nonsense, of creators of new sense, because his sense implies concepts that not even Heraclitus could have thought of. This does not mean that nonsense creates truth. What had impressed me in 1968 was this accumulation of moments of incomprehension, of false interpretations, of allegorical fantasies that had survived throughout the history of philosophy, at least of ancient philosophy-for example, the history of the philosophy of ousia, that is, of essence or substance, from Aristotle to the theological quarrels of the Church Fathers and of the Scholastics. What a tower of Babel! It is troubling to think that reason operates with such irrational methods and that philosophical discourse (and theological discourse as well) can have evolved at the whim of exegetical fantasies and nonsense. But this is a topic that cannot be addressed with a few sentences, and I was, as I have already said, temerarious to treat it in such a short text.

A.D.: We spoke first ofobjectivity, then of the searchfor an "original meaning," then of creating nonsense. Perhaps a case of creating nonsense is sometimes tied to a requirement that makes it actual? The actualization of ancient thought has sometimes required cases ofnonsense. Do you think there are two requirements, that ofobjectivity and that of the "actual" meaning, and that sometimes the reactualization happens through a caseofnonsense? To answer you, I would appeal to an example from Husser! that I developed in my inaugural lecture to the College de France. At the end of his

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Cartesian Meditations, Husserl cites, to illustrate his thought, a phrase of Augustine: Noli foras ire, in te redi, in interiore homine habitat ueritas, "Do not look outside, return to yourself: truth lives inside man." Augustine's text is a citation from Saint Paul, but as Augustine presents it, the citation is nonsense in relation to Saint Paul's text. The mistake is not Augustine's but that of the Latin version of the Bible he cites. This version unduly brings together elements that belong to different sentences. In the first sentence, Paul says he hopes that Christ lives (a) in the heart of his disciples. In the second sentence, Paul hopes. that his disciples will be fortified in regard to what concerns inner man (b). The Latin version that Augustine cites presents the following text: "That Christ lives [a] in inner man [b]." This group of words obviously does not correspond to the author's intention, but Augustine recognizes his own doctrine in it. He replaces Christ with Truth, which is obvious for him. He gives a new meaning to the phrase by using it to affirm that Truth is found in the conversion of the self toward itself. Husserl uses this phrase by tying it to another phrase, the one by the oracle at Delphi: "Know yourself,' He writes, "The Delphic oracle 'Know yourself' has taken on a new meaning. First, one must lose the world by epoche (that is, the phenomenological bracketing of the world), in order to recover it thereafter in a universal coming to consciousness of oneself: Noli foras ire, in te redi, interiore homine habitat ueritas" One is in the presence here, first, of an actualization of the Pauline phrase that Augustine reemploys to describe the attitude of inner conversion; then, of an actualization of the Delphic phrase by Husserl, for whom self-knowledge becomes the transcendental ego's coming to consciousness; and finally, of Husserl's actualization of the Augustinian phrase: inner man become transcendental ego. I would say that if we have a good example of reactualization and a remarkable homage given by Husserl to the ancient tradition, prolonged in his eyes by Descartes' Meditations, which he thereby restores to that tradition, there really is no nonsense. This is because, in the case of the Delphic oracle, in the case ofAugustine, and finally in the case of Husserl, the reactualization operated by Husserl is not situated in the conceptual order. It is a matter not of the interpretation of a text but of the retrieving [reprise] of an existential attitude, a deepening of the self-consciousness that undoes itself from the world in order better to find it. It is precisely a matter of the successive reactualizations of a spiritual exercise, of an act

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of spirit. If it is possible to actualize an attitude, then a spiritual exercise, an inner act, a text must, on the contrary, be understood and interpreted within the perspective of its time. Even if it is acts of creating nonsense that allow new concepts to appear unexpectedly, this does not mean that one can actualize a text at the price of nonsense. The requirement of objectivity must never disappear. In other words-and this brings us back to the beginning of the conversation-ancient texts cannot be treated as though they were contemporary texts without the risk of completely deforming their meaning. This is often the error of analytic philosophers, who treat philosophers without any historical distance. It leads one to believe that they would be astonished that Aristotle was not aware of Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica. It seems to me that the primary quality of a historian of philosophy, and undoubtedly of a philosopher, is to have a historical sense.

5lUnitary Experience and Philosophical Life

Arnold I Davidson: You have had a vigorous interest in mysticism for some time nato, and in Plotinus' mysticism in particular. What is the origin of the reasonfor, this interest?

This did not come from the experience of my adolescence that I alluded to. If: in the course of my religious education, I encountered Christian mysticism, I did not make the connection between what I was experiencing and what I was reading in the Christian mystics. When I was still very young I read Pascal, who had used the famous phrase "God sensible to the heart." There was also a "memorial" found sewn into his suit after his death that relates a sort of ecstasy he had experienced in 1654. In any case, I discovered the term mystical experience for the first time in a book by distinguished neo-Thomist Jacques Maritain, Distinguer pour unir ou les degres du savoir [Distinguish to unite, or the degrees of knowledge], which locates it precisely at the peak of knowledge. More importantly, however, in the "spiritual" readings we did at the Grand Seminaire were works by jean de la Croix [John of the Cross]. This mystic codified the steps of the mystical itinerary, distinguishing three paths: the purgative path, the illuminative path, and the unitary path, which, incidentally, were inherited" from Plotinus and Neoplatonism. But he also wrote admirable poems that were very seductive to me. I experienced the desire

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to have analogous experiences. In my eyes, this was the highest point a human life could attain. I naively believed myself capable of reaching it, as every Christian does, for that matter. I was so fascinated by Jean de la Croix that I wanted to abandon the secular clergy to join the religious order of the Carmelites, a contemplative and eremitic order-precisely the one to which Jean de la Croix belonged. The prior of the Carmelites ofAvon, not far from Fontainebleau, where I went on a retreat, helpedme understand that the desire for direct contact with God was a mistake, and that one must absolutely pass through Jesus Christ. One might also ask oneself whether finally the Christian message is compatible with mysticism, because mystical experience, as I was saying, is supposed to afford direct contact with God, whereas in Christianity, Christ is the indispensable mediator. But this is not the occasion to tackle this difficult problem. In any case, I did not have even the slightest mystical experience. In Maritain's book, Plotinus' mysticism was evoked several times in order to show the extent to which it was inferior to Christian mysticism, but Maritain recognized that it had iniluenced Saint Augustine. This is why, in 1945-46, I began to read Plotinus, especially the treatises in which he speaks about his mystical experience. I also discovered a purely philosophical mysticism in this way. I would add that although I worked on Plotinus' mystical texts for a long time, in doing so I approached only a minuscule part of the gigantic domain of universal mysticism.

A. D.: Is thereaphilosophicalpreparationfor mysticalexperience, even if thispreparation does not guarantee the desiredresult, that is, mysticalunion? The question can be asked in another way. In your view, what is the relation betweenspiritual exercises and unitary experience? In Plotinus, there are two paths that prepare one for experience: first there is a cognitive path, on which one studies theology, and notably, negative theology. Plotinus says it is a matter, as it were, of signposts that indicate the path but do not make us take it. Then there is a practical path, which is the real path that concretely leads to experience. For Plotinus, this' practical path consists of purifications, askesis, spiritual exercises, the practice of virtues, and the effort to live according to the Spirit. In this sense, one might say that, for Plotinus, philosophy, both in

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its discourse and in its choice of life, prepares one for mystical experience. I just used the word Spiritdesignedly, as I have in some of my translations of Plotinus. What I mean by the word Spirit is a reality that most translators and commentators of Plotinus call, and with good reason, Intellect. This is the first being that emanates immediately from the supreme reality, the supreme reality being for Plotinus the absolute One. The Intellect, which is divine, contains all the Forms of beings, all the Ideas. If I h~ve often used the word Spirit, a word that has obvious spiritual connotations, it is precisely it) order to be in a better position to understand the expression "live according to the Spirit." For it is perhaps more difficult to understand what it might mean to live according to the Intellect. But as Emile Brehier has convincingly shown, for Plotinus the Intellect represents, above all, a spiritual attitude of self-collection in meditation.' When one says that the human self lives according to the Intellect or the Spirit, or identifies with it, this means it has perfect transparency in its relation to itself: that it overcomes the individual aspect of the self to attain the level of universality and interiority. In effect, the Intellect is, as it were, the place where all beings are interior to one another, each Form being both itself and all the Forms. The self is thus interior to itself: to the others, and to the Spirit. To attain this level of self is, incidentally, already to attain a first degree of mystical experience, for it is a matter of a mode of being and of suprarational thought. The superior degree would be the state of total unity, contact with the One, which is also the Good. A. D.: In other words, there are levels ofmysticism. But there is another problem tied to the type ofmysticism. Given that a mystical experience can be provoked by artificial means-drugs, for example-is there a difference between an experienceprovoked in this manner and the unitary experience of the great mystics?

On this point I can't pretend that I have anything relevant to say. I can only recommend Michel Hulin's book, which gives this problem excellent treatment. His book is called La Mystique sauvage [Savage mysticism]; I have already mentioned it. 2 He means by this term the set of mystical experiences that are tied not to a religion or to a spiritual tradition, in which he includes both the "oceanic sentiment" and experiences obtained through the use of drugs. As for the experiences obtained under

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the influence of drugs, which seem to give an impression that is rather analogous to mystical experience, he shows that these are artificial experiences. This is because they are not based on an effective transformation of the individual in the framework of a moral and ascetic preparation, and they have the result that the individual is prey to an impression of the unreal, of despair, of anxiety; therefore, in the end it is a matter of rather destructive experiences. We have already called attention to the oceanic sentiment-to which Michel Hulin devotes some extremely interesting pages-s-in relation to the experiences I have had, in my youth especially but occasionally since. In general, primarily at first, they presented themselves to me suddenly, spontaneously, with no ascetic or intellectual preparation. Since then, I have often tried to awaken the consciousness of my existence as part of the universe, to recover the intensity of this experience, and sometimes I have succeeded. Whatever the case may be, I think that what I experienced was a piece of good luck for me. It was at the origin of my philosophical vocation and of a greater sensibility to nature, to the universe, and to existence. I have the impression that the oceanic sentiment is quite different from, for example, Christian or Plotinian mystical experience, Obviously one could say that what both experiences share is that the self experiences the sentiment of a presence or a fusion with something else, but it seems to me that there is in mysticism of the Christian or Plorinian type a certain personal relationship, often expressed in terms borrowed from the vocabulary of love. One can guess that there is a tendency in Plotinus to personify when he speaks of the One as a god. A. D.: In effect, the terms used to describe mystical experience and experiences oflove are often the same. What exactly is the relation between the experience oflove and the mystical operation?

It is a fact that all the mystics in all the spiritual traditions describe what they experience in terms borrowed from the experience of love. It is a universal phenomenon-for example, in the Jewish tradition, in which the Song of Songs is both a love poem and a mystical poem. This is also the case for the Muslims, the Hindus, and the Christians, where once again the Song of Songs is taken to express union with God. This is also true in the Platonic tradition, in Plato's Phaedrusand Symposium, in which

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this love is sublimated. What is remarkable in Plotinus is that, unlike in Plato-I noticed this in Treatise 50-not only masculine love but also conjugal love can be a model for mystical experience. In fact, in Plotinus there is not only a comparison between union with God and union in love; there is also the idea that human love is the point of departure for mystical experience, which is the prolonging of human love. For if we love a being, it is because, first and foremost, we love supreme Beauty. It is be~ cause through love supreme Beauty attracts us, and thus Beauty is already a sign of the possibility of a mystical experience. The union of bodies, for that matter, to be two in one, serves as a model for the union between the mystic and the object of his experience. One would have to relate every other problem to this subject. Mystical experience could be, for the mystic, a compensation for ascetic privation of the pleasures of love, and it could even be that mystical experience is accompanied by sexual pleasures, by a sexual repercussion in the body. But I do not have sufficient expertise in the psychology of the mystics to be able to discuss this.

A.D.: You have made an important distinction, recently, between negative theology and mystical experience. Negative theology is a rational method, a philosophical discourse, but mystical experience requires a concrete itinerary o/transformation beyond rational discourse. Asyou wrote in your commentary on Treatise 38, "reason, by theological methods, can raise itselfto the notion ofthe Good, but only life according to the Spirit can lead to the reality ofthe Good. '-S Can you specify the relationship between negative theology and the concrete expression ofmysticism? To begin, let us specify what negative theology means. It is a theology, thus a discourse on God, but one that uses only negations. Thus, to borrow examples from Pseudo-Denys the Areopagite's Mystical Theology, God is not mobile, or immobile, or unity, or deity, or good, or spirit, and so on. The reason for these negations is that God is considered to transcend all the predicates that humans can use to speak of him. This method makes us aware of the fact that the supreme principle is inconceivable, that the Absolute cannot be an object that one can speak about and, as Plotinus says, that in speaking of him we are merely speaking about ourselves. (It is understood that one can speak only of what is relative.)" This theological method was developed in Platonism, especially since the

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first century B.C. (by Philo ofAlexandria), and was taken up by Christians and Gnostics. I think that negative theology and mysticism are too often confused. This is indeed a pervasive confusion, and one might say that it is historically grounded. Pseudo-Denys' book does have the word mystical in its title. But for the Greek tradition, this word signifies "secret." In fact, if we examine its content, it is nothing but a treatise on negative theology. But Plotinus, as you said, very clearly distinguishes negative theology, which is a purely rational and abstract method, from unitary experience. Earlier I said that he compares it to a signpost that indicates the path, but the signpost is not the path. The path is askesis and life by the Spirit. However, negative theology is nevertheless closely related to unitary experience. One might say that the accumulation of negations provokes a void in the soul that predisposes one to the experience. There is a link between unspeakable and mystical in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (but one cannot say that this is a case of negative theology). He writes, "There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into .words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical."5 It seems to me that for Wittgenstein the limit of language-the unsayable-s-which is also the "mystical," is existence itself: the existence of the world. "The mystical is the fact that the world is."

A.D.: You wrote that mystical experience seems universal whereas the description and the interpretation ofthis experience are always tied to a tradition, a set ofdogmas, a universe ofdeterminate thought. How does one combine the universality ofthis experience and the plurality ofthese descriptions?

I think it is in fact a case ofa universal phenomenon. There is an immense mystical literature throughout the world: in the Far East (Taoism, Brahmanism, Buddhism), in Greece (Platonism and Neoplatonism), and in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, under the influence, incidentally, of Neoplatonism. To this one must add the numerous experiences of "savage mysticism" that Michel Hulin discusses. In the descriptions of the mystics, mystical experience appears everywhere with the same fundamental characteristics: it is unspeakable; it brings either delicious anguish or joy and appeasement; in general, it comes and goes suddenly. But there are also differences. First, the mystic's attention may be directed toward spiritual objects-for example, in Plotinus, toward the Spirit and the One, and

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in Jean de la Croix, toward the Trinity-but it may also be directed at the sensible-for example, in Zen Buddhism, as Pierre Ryckmans says, "The Buddha's absolute is discovered in the absolute ofthe banal and immediate real.'" In Wittgenstein, one might think that the mystic's attention is directed at existence ("that the world is"). Moreover, the theoretical or theological explanations of this state differ considerably from one tradition to another. For example, Jean de la Croix and the Christian mystics consider' these states to be the effect of a divine grace that associates the soul with the inner life of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Plotinus, for his part, explains the union of love with the One as follows: There are two aspects or two moments of the divine Spirit or the Divine Intellect-the moment in which it is generated from the One and in which it is not yet "thinking" but only "loving" or in a contact of loving intoxication with its source, and another moment in which it constitutes itself as thinking Spirit. The soul, unified with the divine Spirit, undergoes unitary experience when it coincides with the loving Spirit. In other traditions one would find different explanations. But of what does the experience itself really consist, and how is one to explain it? This is what is most important, and I am completely incapable of saying. I have tried, in my works on Plotinus, to provide the elements of a response. But it is a very slim contribution, for the problem is gigantic.

A.D.: It seems as though philosophical preparations-s-ascetic, moral, intellectual-s-baue become just as important for you as unitary experience. Even ifthis experience is neverproduced, the behaviors thatpreparefor it have value. What is the relation between thepossibility ofa unitary experience and all the necessities ofa philosophical life? Before giving my opinion, I will, after all, say a few words about Plotinus. I believe that, for him, if philosophical life in fact prepares one for an eventual mystical experience, this philosophical life has value in itself: All things considered, Plotinus' mystical experiences were extremely rare. Porphyry tells us that the rest of the time-that is, almost all the time-he tried "to be present to himself and to others,"? which ultimately is an excellent definition of what every philosophical life should be.

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If we now consider the problem in a general manner, we must also say that ecstatic experiences are not an integral part of a philosophical life. If they occur, under one form or another, it is true that they can open perspectives on the mystery of existence for the philosopher, but they cannot be ends, and seeking to provoke them would be useless. A.D.: At the end of the Postface of the most recent edition of Plotin ou la simplicite du regard [Plotinus or the simplicity of vision}, you direct a small criticism at Plotinian mysticism. You write, "Cut away everything, said Plotinus; but in a living contradiction would not one also have to say, Welcome all things?" This criticism is undoubtedly tied to a change in your philosophicalpreferences, for it seemsto me thatyou are now more attracted by Stoicism and the Stoic spiritual exercises than by Neoplatonic mysticism.

In itself: Plotinus' advice to the one who wishes to attain unitary experience-"Cut away everything"-can appear to remain legitimate, in its own particular perspective. It is a matter of overcoming everything particular, determinate, or limited, in a moment that stops at nothing but always goes toward infinity; for in the Platonic tradition, every determination is something negative. Yet by adding "Welcome all things," I wanted to convey that, in the face of this mysticism of cutting away, there was room for a mysticism of welcoming, a mysticism according to which things are not a screen that would hinder us from seeing the light, but a colored reflection that reveals it and in which "we have life," as Faust said about a waterfall in the prologue to Faust II One can recognize the presence of the indescribable in the simplest, humblest, most everyday realities. Allow me, in order to make myself understood, to indulge in a lengthy citation of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's The Lord Chandos Letter: "When I found a half-full watering can the other evening forgotten under a walnut tree by some gardener, with its water darkened by the shade of the tree and covered from one end to the other by an aquatic insect, all this assemblage of insignificant things communicated the presence of infinity to me so strongly that a chill ran through me from the roots of my hair to the base of my heels, to the point that I would like to burst into words that I know, if I found them, would bring these Cherubimsthat I do not believe in down." It is not only a question of inanimate objects. Daily life itself: notably the relations we have with other humans, can be charged with a

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mystical, or at least sacred, value. Already Seneca had said, "The human is for humans a sacred thing." My criticism of Plotinus is thus situated in the general perspective of universal mysticism. I wanted to emphasize that there are numerous types of mystical experience. I would add that my doubts concerning Plotinian mysticism already appeared in 1963, in the conclusion of Plotin ou La simplicite du regard [Plotinus or the simplicity of vision]. There I insisted on the distance that now separates us from Plotinus. Plotinus' mysticism appeared in this context as, to use Bergson's expression, a "call"-a call not to reproduce the Plotinian experience with servility, but simply to welcome the mysterious, the ineffable, and the transcendent in human experience with courage. For I had sensed in writing this book how it would risk, if taken literally, leading the reader into the mirage, the illusion of the "purely spiritual," far from concrete reality. The danger was confirmed for me as soon as I had completed the book. 1 have already elsewhere described how, after having stayed cloistered for a month in order to write this small work, I had, while out to get bread from the baker, a strange impression. But I rnisexpressed myself in my story when I wrote, "I had the impression of finding myself on an unknown planet." In fact, in seeing the ordinary folks all around me in the bakery, I rather had the impression of having lived a month in another world, completely strange to our world, and worse than thistotally unreal and even unlivable. This did not stop me from continuing for years to work on Plotinus, both to study the extraordinary phenomenon that is mystical experience, and to attempt to define the relation that connected this experience and the teaching of Plotinus, as well as out of love for the beauty of certain mystical pages of Plotinus. Yet, from a personal point of view, mystical experience, whether Christian or Platonic, did not hold my interest as it did during my youth, and Neoplatonism seemed to me an untenable position. Notably, I had quickly moved away from the attitude ofJean Trouillard, who both in his books and in his life professed a sort of Neoplatonism. For him, Plotinus was still actual, and he reproached me for having written the sentence at the end of Plotinou fa simplicite du regard on the gap separating us from Plotinus. To return to your question, it is true that, now, in order to understand my idea of philosophy, it seems to me that Stoicism and Epicureanism are more accessible than Plotinus to our contemporaries. Certain Epicurean

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thoughts, certain aphorisms by Marcus Aurelius, and certain pages by Seneca can suggest attitudes that can still be taken up today. On the contrary, it is almost impossible for us to understand what Plotinus meant without clarifying his text with long commentaries; this is, incidentally, why in 1987 I undertook my collection, published at Editions de Cerf and now in Le Livre de Poche, of Plotinus' Les Ecrits [Writings].

A.D.: In mystical experience thereis a transformation ofthe self There is also, and this is an apparentparadox, a rupture with the self How can self transformation also be a rupture with the self? On the one hand, in the description that Plotinus gives of mystical experience, one finds numerous expressions in which he insists on the fact that the self loses itself One might say he is no longer soul, he is not even Spirit anymore, obviously he is no longer body; that is the rupture with the self:8 On the other hand, there is also a whole series of expressions, notably in the ninth Treatise, in which he speaks of effusion, of dilatation, of expansion of the self which give the impression of an intensification of the self.9 This would be the aspect of self-transformation. Finally, I wonder whether these two aspects are not one and the same. At the moment of ecstasy, the selfleaves its limits and dilates itself in infinity. This is both a loss and a gain, the ascension of the self to a higher mode of being. One might say that the highest point the self can attain is the point at which one has the impression of losing oneself in something that totally overcomes one. But it remains that, for Plotinus, .this state is not a break in the train of consciousness, because the soul will remember the ecstasy and will talk about it-in an inexact way, Plotinus emphasizes.

A.D.: In Plotin ou la simplicite du regard [Plotinus or the simplicity ofvision}, you usedthe expression "the true self" [Ie vrai moil. But is it not a transformation ofthe selfratherthan the discovery ofthe "true self"? This question brings me to specify what one might mean by levels of the "self" I would distinguish three levels, plus one. The three levels would be, first, that of sensible consciousness, whereby the self behaves as though it were indistinguishable from the body; then, that of rational consciousness, whereby the self becomes aware of itself as soul and

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as discursive reflection; and finally, the level of spiritual consciousness, in which the self discovers that it has always been, unconsciously, Spirit or Intellect, and thus overcomes rational consciousness to attain a sort of spiritual and intuitive lucidity, without discourse and without reflection. This is the level that Plotinus and especially his disciple Porphyry consider to be the true self. Philosophy consists in elevating oneself from the first ' to the third level. I said three levels, plus one, because mystical experience would represent a completely different level. In the mystical experience of the One, this true self overcomes its state of identification with Spirit and achieves a state of absolute unity and simplicity. He lives, as it were, with Spirit in the state of indetermination and infinity-of drunkenness, Plotinus says, in which the Spirit finds itself at the moment of its birth out of the One. It overcomes itself: therefore, and transforms itself; it dilates itself in infinity. But for a philosopher, this is an exceptional experience. A.D.: You cite, in connection with Plotinus' experience, this verse by Paul Claudel: "Someone within me who is even more myselfthan me."

In Claudel, it is a case not of Plotinian mysticism but of a Christian perspective, that is, the idea that the Creator is fundamentally more ourselves than we are ourselves, because he is the origin of the self: One could say that the same holds in the case of Plotinus' doctrine, because the One is also at the origin of things. But I wonder if I was right to cite Claudel about Plotinus. On this point I can list only the aporias. First, the Christian God is personal, and he can be conceived-as "someone," as a self internal to ourselves. The Plotinian One is not personal. The Spirit can be our true self because it is defined and doubled into subject and object, but the Absolute of the One cannot be our self. This is why I wonder whether, in Plotinian mystical experience, one can speak of an identification between the self and the One. How can the relative coincide with the Absolute? It would be preferable to speak of a sense of an indefinable Presence. It remains that Plotinus does seem to speak of identification explicitly, in the ninth treatise." I understand this passage as the description of an impression of identification. These are the questions I am asking myself:

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A. D.: One might add that in your article "La figure du sage,"you have shown that the problem ofthe true selfis also tied to the problem ofwisdom and not only to the problem ofmysticism; one must always seek the selfabove oneself The true selfis both inside and outside; it is a continual searchfor the bestpart ofoneself which is a selfovercoming as well as the recognition ofthe fact that one part ofourselves is our true self This is the case in Stoicism, in Aristotle, and in Plotinus. It is true that in Aristotle, for example, the Intellect appears as something that overcomes us and that is of a divine order while remaining our true self. That which is the essence of the human is thus something that surpasses it. Plotinus says of the Intellect that it is a part of ourselves to which we elevate ourselves. Marcus Aurelius speaks of the daimon, an inner divinity, that is no other, ultimately, than reason, which is both ourselves and above ourselves. When the philosopher attempts to attain wisdom, he tends toward this state, in which he would be perfectly identical to the true self: which is the ideal self. Generally speaking, I personally tend to conceive of the fundamental philosophical choice as an overcoming of the partial, biased, egocentric, egoist self in order to attain the level of a higher self This self sees all things from a perspective of universality and totality, and becomes aware of itself as part of the cosmos that encompasses, then, the totality of things. I retained the following sentence from Anne Cheng's book Histoire de la pensee chinoise [History of Chinese thought], about the Tao (or Dao): "Every form of spirituality begins by a 'letting go,' a renunciation of the limited and limiting self,"!' This remark makes me think that this idea of a change of levels of self can be found in extremely different philosophies.

Gl_ _ Philosophical Discourse as Spiritual Exercise

Arnold I. Davidson: From a philosophicalpoint ofview, what isa spiritual exercise? Wouldyou give us some examples? As far as I know, the expression "spiritual exercises" has not been used very often in relation to philosophy. In a book published in 1954 entitled Seelenfiihrung: Methodik der Exerzitien in der Antike [The direction of souls: Method of exercises in antiquity], Paul Rabbow, whose work has been an inspiration for all those interested in this aspect of philosophy, used the expression "moral exercise." He showed that Saint Ignatius' famous Spiritual Exercises belong to this tradition. In 1945, Louis Gernet spoke of an "exercise" in reference to the technique of collecting and concentrating the soul.' And in 1964, in his book Myth and Thought in the Greeks, Jean-Pierre Vernant spoke of "spiritual exercises" in relation to Empedocles and techniques of recollection of past lives.? The expression seems rare, but it is not all that unusual. I would define spiritual exercises as voluntary, personal practices meant to bring about a transformation of the individual, a transformation of the sel£ We have seen two examples of these spiritual exercises with Jean-Pierre Vernant and Louis Gernet. Another ancient example is preparations for the difficulties oflife, an exercise thought highly of by the Stoics. To be able to bear the strokes of fate, sickness, poverty, and exile,

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one must prepare oneself in thought for their possibility. One is better able to bear what is expected. This exercise can in fact be found considerably earlier than the Stoics. It had been favored by Anaxagoras and again by Euripides, in his play about Theseus. Besides, Anaxagoras spoke like a Stoic before his time when, upon learning of the death of his son, he declared, "I knew that I had given birth to a mortal being." Another example is formulated by Plato in the Phaedo: "To do philosophy is to exercise dying," that is, to separate oneself from the body, from the order of the senses and the selfish point of view it implies. The Epicureans also appeal to spiritual exercises: the examination of conscience, for example, or the confession of misdeeds, meditation, and the limitation of desires. Despite my attempts to avoid it, some of what I have written about spiritual exercises in general may suggest that spiritual exercises are added to philosophical theory, to philosophical discourse, that they would be practice that merely complements theory and abstract discourse. In fact, all philosophy is an exercise-instructional discourse no less than the inner discourse that orients our actions. Obviously the exercises take place primarily in and through inner discourse-there is even an expression for this, a Greek term often used by Epictetus in his Manuel: epilegein, that is to say, "to add an inner discourse to the situation," for example, by reciting maxims such as "One must not will what does not occur, but one must will that what occurs, occurs as it occurs." These are inner expressions that are used, and they alter the individual's disposition. But there are also spiritual exercises in outer discourse, in the discourse of instruction, and this is very important for me insofar as my main preoccupation has been precisely to show that what was considered to be pure theory, abstraction, was practice in both its mode of exposition and its finality. When Plato writes his dialogues, when Aristotle gives his courses and publishes his course notes, when Epictetus writes his letters or even his very complicated and lengthy treatise on nature {which has unfortunately come to us in tatters, in small pieces found in Herculaneum)-in all these cases, indeed, the philosopher expounds a doctrine. However, he exposes it in a certain way-a way that aims to form more than to inform. Often, as I have said, philosophical discourse presents itself in the form of an answer to a question, in connection with the school's method of instruction. In fact, one does not answer the question right away. If the goal were simply

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to satisfy the desire for knowledge, it would suffice to provide for a given question a given answer. Most of the time in the ancient context, and this is characteristic of Aristotle, the question is not answered immediately. Many detours are taken in order to provide an answer. The same holds in Plato's dialogues or in Plotinus. The demonstration is even rehearsed several times. These detours and repetitions aim first to teach one to how to reason, but also to allow the object of investigation to become, as Aristotle would say, perfectly familiar and connatural, and ultimately to interiorize knowledge perfectly.' The meaning of these exercises is obvious in what we call Socratic discourse, which of course is ultimately also Platonic discourse, in which the questions or the answers aim to provoke a doubt, an emotion-as Plato says, to make a bite mark in the reader. This type of dialogue is an exercise (ascese); one must subject oneself to the laws of discussion, that is, (I) to recognize the other's right to self-expression; (2) to recognize that what is obvious is to be welcomed, which is often difficult when one is wrong; and (3) to recognize the norm, above the interlocutors, of what the Greeks call logos-an objective discourse, or at least one that aims to be objective. This is obviously true of Socratic discourse, but it is also true of so-called theoretical exposition, which aims primarily at bringing the disciple to lead a spiritual life. It is a matter of rising above and moving :beyond inferior reasoning-and especially what is obvious to the senses, knowledge of the senses-to rise toward pure thought and the love of truth. This is why I think that theoretical exposition can be considered a spiritual exercise. It is also true that theoretical exposition cannot be complete if the listener does not make an inner effort at the same time, for as Plotinus, for example, said, it is impossible to understand that the soul is immortal if one does not detach oneself from the passions and the body. A.D.: How did you come to realize the centrality ofspiritual exercises in antiquity? As you have said, it was not at all the result of a quest for spirituality, but rather the consequence ofa methodological problem: how to interpret ancient philosophy texts. Can exercise and system be methodologically opposed?

At first, as I have already said, the problem for me was to explain the (apparent) incoherencies of the philosophers. There was the enigma of

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Plato's dialogues, which are often aporetic and not consistent with each other, I was also surprised to see Paul Moraux, in "his introduction to Aristotle's Treatise on the Heavens, say that Aristotle contradicts himself and that he writes poorly. Moreover, it was extremely difficult to grasp the movement of thought in Plotinus' treatises. Finally, I came to think that these apparent inconsistencies could be explained by the fact that Greek philosophers did not aim, above all, to provide a systematic theory of reality, but to teach their disciples a method with which to orient themselves, both in thought and in life. I would not say that the notion of a system -did not exist in antiquity. The word existed, but it designated an organized totality whose parts depended on each other rather than an edifice of thoughts. The notion of systematic thought existed as well, under the influence of Euclid's geometry and axiomatics. I have already touched on the existence of a philosophical literary genre that can be characterized as systematic that consists in deducing all the possible consequences from fundamental principles and axioms. In fact, this effort at systematization was meant to allow the disciple to have at hand the fundamental dogmas that gujde action and to acquire the .unshakable certainty given by the impression of logical rigor and coherence. This is true of the Stoics, famous for the coherence of their doctrine, but also of Epicurus in his Letters, in which the trace of the model for Euclid's Elements can be recognized. In summary, two things can be remarked. On the one hand, in my efforts of interpretation, I have discovered that when one wishes to interpret a philosophical work of antiquity, one must first of all endeavor to follow the movement, the meanders of the author's thought-in short, the series of dialectical or spiritual exercises that are not necessarily rigorously coherent but that the philosopher has his disciples practice. In Aristotle, for example, it takes the form of repeating an exposition from different points of departure. On the other hand, when the philosopher aims to be systematic, for example, in certain texts of Epicurus or the Stoics, it is often a matter of the practice of a spiritual-as it were, a mnemotechnicexercise that aims for a better assimilation of the dogmas that determine a mode of life, and for the possession of these dogmas in oneself with certainty.

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A.D.: Might one not say that the goal ofa modern system is to give an explanation ofthe world, ofman, and that, contrary to this, the primary goal in an ancient philosophical text is to transform the listener?

I think I have already mentioned it but recall Victor Goldschmidt's formula about Plato's dialogues, which is absolutely extraordinary, He said, "These dialogues aim not to inform but to form." I think that in fact this is valid for all ancient philosophy. Naturally, philosophical discourse also provides information about being, matter, heavenly phenomena, and the elements. However, it is also meant to form the spirit, to teach it to recognize problems and methods of reasoning, and to allow one to orient oneselfin thought and in life. I believe that Werner Jaeger had an excellent intuition when he titled his book Paideia, which signifies "formation"-a book in which he gives an exposition of the entire universe of archaic and classical thought. For the Greeks, what counts is the formation of the body and the spirit. When Epictetus designates the philosopher who has made progress, he often says that he is pepaideumenos, that he is "formed." This is perhaps the main contrast with a certain modern philosophy, this attitude in relation to formation. A .. D.: This means that if one tears the philosophers'formulas from their context ofenunciation to see in them the expression oftheoretical propositions that are absolutely valid, one risks twisting their signification, deforming the meaning?

Personally, I always prefer to study a philosopher by analyzing his or her works rather than looking to put together a system by extracting theoretical propositions from his or her works, separated from their context. The works are alive; they are an act, a movement that carries the author and the reader. Systematic studies are like herbariums full of dead leaves. Within the framework of a particular work-for example, Epicurus' Letter to Herodotus-it is perfectly acceptable to take the assertions about nature proposed by Epicurus as absolutely valid theoretical propositions. Epicurus himself meant to present them as theoretical propositions when he wrote the letter. But one must also not forget their context, that is, the therapeutic role he explicitly ascribes to them at the end of the Letter. these propositions must ensure the peace of the disciple's soul, to deliver

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him from the fear of the gods. Presumably these theoretical propositions were made in a way that aimed to produce their .liberating effect most effectively. One must always be prudent when it comes to deciding about the theoretical content of a philosophical text. Throughout antiquity, the Platonists argued about whether in the Timaeus Plato had really wanted to teach that the world was created in time by a maker who would have reasoned in order to make it the best possible. This is nevertheless what he explicitly says. But the Neoplatonists believed that for Plato the world of the senses was eternal, that it emanated from the intelligible world without intervention from a will or an act of reasoning. For them, Plato's assertions must be situated in the perspective of the mythic discourse that Plato set out to develop in the Timaeus. In general, the meaning of an assertion must be interpreted as a function of the literary genre chosen by the author, and of the context in which this assertion is inscribed. We have discussed this in a previous conversation.

A. D.: When we hear the expression "spiritual exercises, " we almost spontaneously think ofChristian religion and spirituality; but you maintain that this interpretation ofthe expression is too limited, because spiritual exercises need not be tied to religion, either historically orphilosophically. What do you mean by the word spiritual? The expression "spiritual exercises" has been vigorously disputed, even by my dear colleague and friend Sandra Laugier at a meeting of the College Philosophique devoted to my work. As I said the first time I wrote about the subject, it is not currently in favor (de bon ton). Yet a certain number of philosophers have quite easily accepted it-thus my colleague Luc Brisson, or Michel Onfray, who professes a hedonistic materialism. Why did I choose it, and why can I say that it was not because of its possible religious connotations? I chose it for the following reasons. I had been quite struck by the title of a collection that appeared shortly after the war: La Poesie comme exercice spirituel [Poetry as a spiritual exercise]. Unfortunately I lost this book, but the title had shed light for me on the notion of poetry. Later, in Elisabeth Brisson's book, I read that Beethoven referred to the exercises of musical composition that he required of his students and that were meant to attain a form of wisdom-one that

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might be called aesthetic-as spiritual exercises." Moreover, Paul Rabbow, whom I mentioned earlier, has shown that Saint Ignatius' famous Spiritual Exercises were inherited from ancient thought through the intermediation of the monks, who employed the expression "spiritual exercises" to refer to their own practice. The guiding thread of Paul Rabbow's book, at least in my eyes, was to show that ultimately the expression "spiritual exercises" was not religious because it had a philosophical origin. This is the second reason I employed the words. Thirdly, I nevertheless attempted to avoid the words, and I tried everything that one could say instead. "Moral exercises" was not good because they were not only exercises of a moral order; "ethical exercises" did not work either; and "intellectual exercises" did not cover everything that is represented by the notion of spiritual exercises. One could speak, if need be, of practices. Raymond Ruyer had employed the expression montages, but this gives the impression of something arrificial.' I don't like the expression "self-practices" [pratiques de SOl] that Foucault brought into style, and the expression "self-writing" [ecriture de SOt] even less. It is not "self" [SOt] that one practices any more than it is "self" [sotl that one writes. One practices exercises to transform the self [Le mOl] and one writes sentences to influence the self [Le mOl]. It is worth noting, parenthetically, that this is yet another example of the impropriety of contemporary philosophical jargon. Thus I have resigned myselfto employ the expression "spiritual exercises," and all things considered, this is quite standard; the notion has been employed frequently and" for a long time to designate the voluntary practices I have discussed. Finally, the expression "spiritual exercises" does not fool anyone; people-philosophers, historians-have used it without thinking of either 'religion or Saint Ignatius. I made up my mind when I found a fragment of his journal in Georges Friedmann's La Puissance et La sagesse [Power and wisdom] in which he says, "Every day, a spiritual exercise," and the examples of practices he provides could very well be those of the Stoics. He was in no way thinking of practices of a religious order. Moreover, as I have already said, JeanPierre Vernant has used the words in relation to ancient practices, which included exercises such as respiratory techniques. Even if these techniques are corporeal, they nonetheless have spiritual value, because they provoke a psychic effect. Ultimately, I do not think the expression is problematic.

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Nevertheless, it is not in itself enough to express my conception of ancient philosophy, which is a spiritual exercise because it is a mode of life, a form of life, a choice of life.

A.D.: Spiritual exercises are usually situated in the ethicalpart ofphilosopby, whereas the logical and physical parts remain theoretical. But you haveshown that in reality the border between the theoretical and thepractical passes inside each part or discipline ofphilosophy. It is an element ofcapital importance for your interpretation to establish that logic, physics, and ethics are bothpracticaland theoretical. I think that what you have just said is very important. The thing seemed clear to me about the Stoics, but I came to the realization that it was a general phenomenon in all antiquity. The Stoics thus distinguished philosophical discourse, and philosophy itself: By this they meant that when one teaches philosophy-philosophical discourse being divided into three parts: logic, physics, and ethics-one explains the theory oflogic, the theory of physics, and the theory of morality to the students. At the same time, they would say that this philosophical discourse was not philosophy. Philosophy was the effective, concrete, lived exercise; the practice of logic, of ethics, and of physics. Real logic is not the pure theory of logic but lived logic, the act of thinking in a correct way, of exercising one's thinking in a correct way in everyday life. There is thus a lived logic, which the Stoics would say consists in criticizing representations, that is, the images that come from the outside world~to not rush to say that a given thing that happens is evil or good, but to reflect, to criticize representation. This is obviously also true of ethics. Genuine ethics is not ethical theory but ethics lived in life with other people. The same holds for physics. Real physics is not the theory of physics but lived physics, that is, a certain attitude toward the cosmos. This lived physics consists, first of all, in seeing things such as they are-not from an anthropological and egoistical point of view, but from the perspective of the cosmos and nature. This attitude appears clearly in what might be called Marcus Aurelius' physical definitions-definitions that consider the object of the definition to be part of nature, for example, the earth and human things are an infinitesimal point in the immensity; the imperial crimson, the blood of a seashell; death, a phenomenon of nature.

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This lived physics also consists in becoming aware of the fact that we are a part of the Whole and must accept the necessary unfolding of this Whole with which we identify, because we are one of its parts. It consists, finally, in contemplating the universe, in its splendor, by recognizing the beauty of the most humble things. For that matter, this aspect of lived physics can be found in all the schools. In an article I wrote called "Physique et poesie dans le Timeetie Platon" [Physics and poetry in Plato's Timaeus], I tried to show that Plato's Timaeus is indeed basically a spiritual exercise in which the philosopher tries to put himself back in the perspective of the Whole. This is even true in the tradition of Platonists with, as it were, skeptical tendencies. Cicero says, for example, that even if one cannot know much about nature, applying oneself to the knowledge of nature, that is, contemplating nature, is something that provokes a very great pleasure. And here, basically, Cicero is merely Aristotle's heir in the very beautiful passage of the book On the Parts ofAnimals, where he too explains that the study of natural phenomena, even the ones that can seem the most repugnant, provokes a great pleasure. I believe that this holds until the end of antiquity. Think also of Ptolemy's famous poem that says, when I contemplate the stars, I am no longer a mere mortal.f To broaden the historical horizon somewhat, I think that this practice of physics as a spiritual exercise has in fact always existed in the history of philosophy. Goethe is a perfect example of this, for all his naturalist studies are always tied to a certain existential experience. It is a physics, but one that has spiritual value. One also finds this conception of physics, despite certain extravagances, in German Romanticism. A.D.: The idea ofa cosmic consciousness, which is for us a rather disconcerting idea, belongs to the perspective of a spiritual exercise ofphysics. One can thus endeavor to attain cosmic consciousness. Do you think this is an exercise that one can practice today?

In his book entitled Malicorne, Hubert Reeves speaks of the shock that observers experience in discovering Saturn through a telescope for the first time." This emotion and this experience depend not on the developments of contemporary physics, but on the experience of perception, on the contact of one part of the universe with another part of the universe.

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In fact, there are two ways to apprehend the world. There is the scientific way, which uses measuring instruments, exploration, and mathematical calculations. But there is also the naive use of perception. This duality can be more fully understood by thinking of Husserl's remark, taken up by Merleau-Ponty: ,theoretical physics admits and proves that the Earth moves, but from the point of view of perception, the Earth is immobile. Now, perception is the foundation of the life we live. It is from the perspective of perception that the spiritual exercise you refer to can be seen, and it is probably better not to call it "spiritual exercise of physics," because in our day the word physics has only one, very precise meaning. It is preferable, rather, to call it the realization of the presence of the world and of our belonging to the world. Here the experience of the philosopher coincides with the experience of the poet and the painter. As Bergson has convincingly shown, this exercise effectively consists in overcoming the utilitarian perception we have of the world, in order to attain a disinterested perception of the world-not as a means of satisfying our interests, but simply as the world, which emerges before our eyes as though we were seeing it for the first time. As Merleau-Ponty says, "Real philosophy is to learn to see the world again." Thus it appears as a transformation of perception. On this point I would also cite an article by Carlo Ginzburg that alludes to a spiritual exercise that is sometimes practiced by writers (Ginzburg speaks of Tolstoy), and that consists of perceiving things as strange." As an example of such a mode of vision, he specifically cites Marcus Aurelius and his physical definitions, of which I have spoken. To perceive things as strange is to transform one's way of looking so that one has the impression of seeing them for the first time, by freeing oneself from habit and banality. For that matter, it is a question not of a purely aesthetic contemplation, but of an exercise meant to bring us beyond, once again, our biased and partial point of view, to bring us to see things and our personal existence in a cosmic and universal perspective, to situate us in the immense event of the universe, but also, one might say, in the unfathomable mystery of existence. This is what I call cosmic consciousness. I add, moreover, that the developments of contemporary physics and astronomy, through the vertiginous perspectives that they open, can lead

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even the scholar to overcome the limits of pure scientific reasoning and to realize both the enigmatic and the grandiose character of the universe. This was the case with Einstein, and there are certainly many other cases of this kind. I am not sufficiently acquainted with the current scientific literature to be able to cite them all.

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Philosophy as Life and as Quest for Wisdom

Arnold I Davidson: In antiquity, six schools ofphilosophy stood outPlatonism, Stoicism, Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism-each with its own characteristic spiritual exercises. But these schools can also be diffirentiated by their choice ofa veryparticular way oflife. This choice ofa way oflife, ofan existential attitude, represents, as it were, the specificity ofeach school. What is a philosophical way oflife, and what is the relationship that exists between thephilosophical choice ofa way oflife and everyday life? The philosophical way of life is quite simply the philosopher's behavior in everyday life. For example, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, a Roman Stoic of the Republican period who was governor of the province of Asia, made it a point of honor to pay for his stay in Asia out of his own pocket, thereby effectively obliging those around him to do the same and to put an end to the excesses of the Roman tax collectors. The Stoics from the Scaevola family were also the only ones to apply to themselves the laws decreed against luxury. Thus, in everyday life they had an austerity, a moral rigor that the others lacked. Obviously here I'm talking especially about a moral attitude, but one that could be extended to other domains. In fact, each school has a characteristic behavior. Incidentally, there is a need here for a study that has never, to my knowledge, been exhaustively conducted around the question of how the comic actors, and thus ordinary folks,

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saw the different schools of philosophy. The Platonists were considered proud, having-Epictetus discusses it as well-"a haughty brow." As for the Epicureans, they had the reputation of not eating anything. Unlike the current picture of Epicureanism, they were considered to be people who lived a very simple life. The Stoics were regarded as excessively austere people. The only ones who were not remarked on were the Skeptics) because they were conformists. This is the external aspect, seen by the' comic authors. How philosophy could have been a way of life can be readily understood if one thinks of the Cynics, who developed no doctrines and taught nothing but were content to live according to a certain style. I will refrain from telling the story of Diogenes' tub and merely submit that these were people who refused the conventions of everyday life, the habitual mentality of ordinary people. They were content with very little, begged, were full of shamelessness, and masturbated in public. Their way of life was a return to noncivilized nature. Without going to this extreme, all of the schools were distinguished especially by their choice of a way of life. In Plato's time, the philosophical attitude of the Platonists was characterized by a triple aspect. There was first the concern to exercise a political influence, but directed toward the norms of the Platonic ideal. There was also, second, the Socratic tradition, that is, the will to discuss, to present teaching according to the method of questions and answers; and intellectualism, for what was essential in Platonism was the movement toward separation of the soul and thebody, the detachment of the body, and even a tendency to exceed reasoning. With the Neoplatonists, finally, there was, third, the idea that life should be a life of thought, a life of the mind. In the Aristotelian tradition, one might say that the way of life-and this is also characteristic-is finally the life of the scholar, a life devoted to studies, not only of the natural sciences but of mathematics, astronomy, history, and geography as well. Perhaps we will return to the matter later on, but this is a mode of life that, to use the Aristotelian term, can be called theoretics, the mode of life in which one "contemplates" things. This also involves participation in divine thought, with the Prime Mover of the universe, as well as contemplation of the stars. Here one finds the notion of physics as a spiritual exercise. The Aristotelian recognition of the purely disinterested character of the sciences is also interesting. The

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theoretic is study that is not undertaken for a particular interest, for material objectives. As for the Epicureans, to whom I alluded earlier, their way of life consisted primarily in a certain kind of asceticism of desires meant to maintain the most perfect tranquility of spirit. The elimination of desires was a condition of happiness. It is well known that they distinguished between- natural desires and necessities (drinking, eating, sleeping), natural and non-necessary desires (sexual desire), and desires that are neither natural nor necessary (desires for glory and for wealth). Normally one had to content oneself with the absolutely necessary desires. At least in principle, this excluded political action, but there were exceptions. They withdrew from matters of-the city as much as possible. In general, we have an idea of Epicurean life primarily through Epicurus' correspondence, as well as through the poems of the Epicurean Philodemus, who discusses very sober meals between friends-for friendship plays a considerable role in Epicureanism. Finally, the Epicureans sought to enjoy the simple joy of existing. As for the Skeptics, they were, rather, conformists, as I have said. This is because the only rule of conduct they admitted was obedience to the rules and customs of the city. But they refused to judge; by suspending their judgment about things they found a tranquility of soul. Basically-and you alluded to this-in antiquity the philosopher is always regarded somewhat like Socrates himself; he is not "in his place," he is atopos. He cannot be put in a particular place, in a special class. He is unclassifiable. For quite different reasons there is a rupture of all these schools with the everyday, even among the skeptics, who approach everyday life with a total inner indifference. But at the same time, philosophy governs everyday life and sometimes even gives detailed prescriptions. Thus the Stoics were reputed to have textbooks that might be called casuist textbooks-to use the seventeenth-century term-and that detailed proper conduct in all the situations of life. Alexander of Aphrodisias, Aristotle's commentator, mocks the Stoics' asking themselves whether one has the right to cross one's legs during philosophy class, or whether one has the right to take the biggest portion of the meal when eating with one's father! In an article about Roman Stoicism, about the Gracchi brothers but also about Cicero's treatise On Duty, my wife has shown that the Stoics

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displayed two opposing attitudes during this casuist period. For example, one would ask oneself the following question: if one sells a house, does one have the right to hide the house's faults or must one disclose them? There were rather heretical Stoics who would say yes, one can hide the faults; but the orthodox Stoics would say no, one does not have the right to do that. There is also the case of the grain dealer whose boat full of wheat arrives in a port during a famine. Will he say that there are other loads coming behind him, which would have the consequence of a plunge in prices? All sorts of possible behaviors in everyday life were foreseen, but as you can see, the problem was always to determine the attitude that conformed to the philosophical ideal. Nothing is more opposed to the cult of profit, which progressively destroys humanity, than this Stoic morality that requires of everyone absolute loyalty, transparence, and disinterestedness. One can also say that shared tendencies take shape in the different philosophical schools through these different forms of life. These tendencies would essentially include the refusal to attribute differences in value to things that merely express the individual's partial point of view; disinterestedness and indifference lead to peace of the soul. This problem of everyday life was rather complex for ancient philosophers. I recently studied Epictetus' Handbook and realized that, both in his Handbook and in the Discourses, Epictetus often seems to recommend contrary attitudes. The students he has at Nicopolis are young people who are generally wealthy and who will undertake a political career. While he has them in his school, however, he tries to have them practice the strictest of philosophies. So he tells them, one must not run after girls, one must moderate one's diet, and so on-all kinds of pieces of advice that are rigorist, as it were. And I compared this to the religious novices who are locked up in the convent, who are formed for religious life but thereafter are sent outside, into the world. Epictetus' students, they too, will leave, and Epictetus foresees what they will do when they go home. TQ.llS he gives them pieces of advice about the way to participate in banquets, to attend shows, and even to lead their political life. It is the problem of the philosopher who should, theoretically speaking, separate himself from the world, but in fact must enter it and lead the everyday life of others. Socrates has always remained the model in this domain. I have in mind a fine text by Plutarch that in fact says that Socrates was a philosopher not

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because he taught from a pulpit but because he chatted with his friends and joked with them; he also would go to the agora, and after all this he had an exemplary death. Thus Socrates' real philosophy is the practice of everyday life.'

A.D.: There would be both a rupture between everyday life and philosophicallife, and a great influence ofphilosophical life on everyday life. Exactly. Moreover, philosophy even had a certain influence on the evolution of political life. To take a concrete case as an example, most legal historians recognize that law evolved under Stoicism, notably in the manner of treating slaves, but also in the domain of the meaning of penal responsibility, which supposes a conscious will.

A.D.: In your opinion, isit always necessary to choose between schools, to make an exclusive choice ofa school, ofafundamental attitude?Can one mix the Stoic attitude with the Epicurean attitude, as did, for example, Goethe, Rousseau, or Thoreau? In the Metaphysics ofMorals (theory of ethical method), Kant declares that the exercise of virtue must be practiced with Stoic energy and Epicurean joie de vivre. This conjunction of Stoicism and Epicureanism can be found in Rousseau's Reveries ofa Solitary Walker, in which there is both the pleasure of existing and the awareness of being part of nature. Goethe describes beings who, by their innate tendencies, are half Stoic and half Epicurean." And one can also make out an attitude of this kind in Thoreau's Walden. In a posthumous fragment, Nietzsche says that one must not be scared of adopting a Stoic attitude after having benefited from an Epicurean recipe." Ultimately, an attitude like this one is what is called eclecticism. This word is often rather poorly viewed by philosophers. In general, from Kant to Nietzsche, we have spoken of Stoicism and Epicureanism. But there are many other models. This attitude of eclecticism is potentially of great importance in the contemporary world, in which the schools no longer exist and in which one feels reticent to let oneself be influenced by any kind of school. This was in a sense already Cicero's position, connected to the tendency of

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Platonism that can be qualified as probabilist." He said, we are free, we are independent; no obligation imposes itself on us; we live from one day to the next, deciding on the basis of the circumstances and the particular case, choosing what seems to be the best solution each time, whether it be inspired by Epicureanism, or Stoicism, or Platonism, or any other model of life. One might raise the objection to everything I have just said about eclecticism that if one begins by choosing to be free and not to give one's allegiance to a school, then one may as well find one's own solution, without choosing a model. But precisely the significance of everything that we are saying about Stoicism and Epicureanism, for example, is that these are experiences that have been lived for centuries and that have also been disputed, criticized, and corrected. In this perspective, Nietzsche spoke of the ancient moral schools as experimental laboratories, from which we can, as it were, use the results. As Michelet put it, "Antiquity contains ideas in a state of concentration, in the state of elixir."5 Very recently, three great specialists of ancient anthropology have convincingly shown that the experience of political life in antiquity could inspire our modern democracies. Why would this not also be the case when it comes to the experience of ethics and of philosophical life?

A. D.: A fundamental but difficult question: canthe choice ofwayoflife bejustified? Cicero and the probabilist Platonists would have answered that rational reflection allows us to discover what one must in all likelihood choose in any given circumstance. Cicero himself practices this method in his letter to Atticusof March 49, in which he details the questions he asks himself about what conduct he should practice at the time of the political crisis generated by the confrontation between Caesar and Pompey: Should one combat tyranny at the risk of ruining the city? Would it not be better to negotiate? Does one have the right to remove oneself from political affairs in a circumstance like this one? Must one support the tyrant's adversaries when they have themselves accumulated errorsi"

A.D.: It is indeed difficult to justify the exclusive choice ofa single attitude; but if we are brought to act like a Stoic in a particular case and in

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another as an Epicurean, it is somewhat easier tojustify the attitude, because it is always tied to a particularcontext. I -entirely agree, but I would like to specify a point. In What Is Ancient Philosophy? I wanted to show that philosophers who have founded schools have meant, in doing so, to propose modes of life. It seems to me this means that, in the formation of the thought of Plato, or Aristotle, or Epicurus, the main factor is the representation of a certain mode of Iife-sfor Plato, of a politician enlightened by the Ideas; for Aristotle, of a scholar contemplating nature; for Epicurus, of a sage enjoying peace of mind. This representation can be motivated by a reaction to the other choices of life and is thus tied to a unified theoretical reflection. But it seems that it is never a purely theoretical reflection that determines choice of life. With respect to this choice, Sextus Empiricus, as a good Skeptic, gives a caricatured portrait of the philosophical choices and ironically says, the choice of Stoicism is motivated by the passion of pride (the Jansenists will say the same thing): the choice of Epicureanism, by the passion of pleasure of the senses (volptej.7 But there is truth to this remark, to the extent that there can be personal motivations that explain a given choice of life. Theoretical reflection goes in a certain direction as a result of a fundamental orientation of inner life, and this tendency of inner life defines itself and takes shape as a result of theoretical reflection. In my youth I illustrated this to myself by the way a bicycle's movement provides for its lighting. In the night one needs a light that illuminates and allows one to guide oneself (this is theoretical reflection), but in order to have light, the generator had to turn by the movement of the wheel. The movement of the wheel is the choice of life. Then one could move forward, but one had to begin by moving for a very short time in the dark. In other words, theoretical reflection already supposes a certain choice of life, but this choice of life can progress and define itself only as a result of theoretical reflection.

A. D.: You haveoften spoken ot citingprimarily Plato, philosophy asan exercise in dying. What can this idea meanfor us today? Let us specify first the meaning this formula had in antiquity. One must obviously begin with Plato, because he literally said that philosophy is an exercise in dying. But he said it in a paradoxical way. He did

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not mean that one must exercise at being dead, for example, like Charles Quint putting himself in his coffin. Rather, he wanted to say, one must detach the soul from the body. This was not a matter of an exercise in dying, but an exercise of spiritual or intellectual life, of the life of thought. It was a matter of finding a mode of knowledge other than sensible knowledge. It is also worth pointing out that one had to pass from the empirical and lower self destined to die, to the transcendental sel£ In the Pbaedo, Socrates clearly distinguishes the self who will soon become a cadaver after having drunk the hemlock and the self who dialogues and acts spiritually. It is not at all a matter of preparing for death; but because Plato was always ironic, he appealed to the representation that nonphilosophers had of philosophers-as folks who are all pale and look like the dying. What he meant is simply that one had to detach oneself from sensible life. This might have an incidental effect on health, but death was not the goal. In fact, the Stoics too made much of the exercise of dying, within the perspective of an exercise that we have already discussed: the preparations for the difficulties of life, the praemeditatio malorum. The Stoics would always say, one must think that death is imminent, but it was less to prepare for death than it was to discover the seriousness of life. Marcus Aurelius, for example, as a Stoic, said, one must undertake every action as though it were one's last; or again, one must spend every day as though it were one's last. It is a matter ofbecoming aware that the moment one is still living has infinite value. Because death may interrupt it, it is a matter of living in an extremely intense manner as long as death has not arrived. Epicureans also discussed death. According to Seneca, Epicurus said, "think of death"; but this was in no way to prepare oneself for death, but on the contrary, exactly as for the Stoics, to remain aware of the value of the present instant. It is Horace's carpe diem: harvest today without thinking of tomorrow. Moreover, the thought of death, from an Epicurean perspective, aims to allow us to understand thoroughly the absence between death and the living being that we are: "death is nothing for us," the Epicureans would say; it has no relation to us. There is no passing from being to nothingness. What is, is, and there is nothing more to be said. Death is not an event of life, Wittgenstein would say." For the Epicureans there was also the idea, shared with the Stoics, that one must live every day as though one had completed one's life, and thus with the satisfaction of saying in

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the evening, "1 have lived." There are two aspects in this: first, from this perspective, the day has been lived in all its intensity, but at the same time, when tomorrow comes, one will consider each day as an expected piece of good fortune. At base, one will say, one already has everything in a single instant of existence. It is always a matter of becoming aware of the value of existence. Finally, Plato, no less than the Stoics and the Epicureans, had always considered the exercise of death as an experience oflife. In a famous phrase from his Ethics, Spinoza says, "The free man does not think of death; his wisdom is not meditation on death, but meditation on life."9 He is obviously criticizing the Platonic phrase, but perhaps also the Christians, the memento mori of the Christians. Thus, although Spinoza criticized the exercise in dying, he may in fact have been fundamentally mistaken, for meditation, thought, and the exercise in dying are ultimately exercises in living.

A.D.: Can onesaythe same thing ofHeidegger? I think it is the same thing, to the extent that the anticipation of death for Heidegger is a condition of authentic existence. Consciousness of finitude must bring humans to take on existence such as it is. But for Heidegger, one does not aim to eliminate the anxiety of death, as in antiquity!" I believe that this is a characteristic of the modern worldperhaps I will treat the problem in a subsequent book-an aspect that, to my mind, appears first in Goethe, Schelling, and Nietzsche. The idea is that the consciousness of existing is tied to an anxiety, but that the value of life comes precisely from, as Goethe said, the chill (frisson) before the Ungeheure-the terrible, the prodigious, the monstrous, if it can be translated in this way.'! This is something that is found in all of modern thought, in Rilke too. I believe that this nuance of anxiety does not exist at all either in Spinoza, in Epicurus, in the Stoics, or in Plato.

A. D.: Sometimes one hears that spiritual exercises are egoistical. But for you, is it certain that thephilosophical life is not a form ofegoism? One must, as always, see the complexity of things. It is sure that there is a permanent danger of egoism in the efforts one makes to perfect

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oneself: especially from the ancient perspective, where one seeks to attain ataraxie, that is, peace of mind. Often one undoes oneself from political activity, and there is an appearance of egoism in the declarations that immediately shocked me in Epicretus' Handbook, where Epicterus says, Think that your child is mortal and you will not be troubled by his death. I also realized that in the case of Epictetus, it was not a sort of spiritual egocentrism but rather an attitude that was quite analogous to the Christian who submits himself to the will of God. Finally, this can be understood when one knows that he had considerably emphasized family affections. It must be admitted that this is a complicated problem, even for the Christians. To care for oneself can seem egocentric. It remains that when one reads the texts of Seneca, of Epictetus, of Marcus Aurelius, I mean the Stoics, or when one studies the way life worked out in the Epicurean school, one realizes that spiritual practice, which-as I just said-aims to establish peace in the soul, is not egoistical. This is the case for several reasons. First, spiritual exercises are oriented away from egoism in that egoism is first and foremost provoked by the appeal of pleasures or by concern for the body. Philosophers have always, in Plato no less than in the Stoics (let us leave the Epicureans aside for the moment), made an effort to undo themselves from the partial self [mot] and to elevate themselves to the level of the superior self: In fact, we have already discussed this in relation to dialogue as a spiritual exercise; it consists precisely in the recognition of the rights of the other in discussion, especially in the recognition of a superior norm to which the self must elevate itself in order simply to dialogue-a superior norm that is reason. It is fundamentally simple: from the moment one attempts to subject oneself to reason, one is almost necessarily obliged to renounce egoism. This then is the first argument. The second argument, which I have already discussed in relation to Socrates, is that one must recognize that ancient philosophers had a very strong concern for others. Indeed, Socrates presents himself as the one who received the mission to take care of others, to have them make the decision of having concern for themselves. Here we come back to the first reason: the care of the self is not at all a concern for well-being, in the modern sense of the term. Rather..the care of the self consists in becoming conscious of what one really is, that is, finally, of our identity with

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reason, and even, with the Stoics, with reason considered as God. Thus philosophers have always had concern for others. With Plato it is very clear in his Letter VII, as well as in his political intentions; with the first Stoics as well, and it is more explicit still in Seneca, in Epictetus, and in Marcus Aurelius. I have discussed the three disciplines of Epictetus that can be found in Marcus Aurelius: the discipline of desire, the discipline of action, and the discipline of judgment. Now, the discipline of action contains a very important element, which is the concern for the common good. For Marcus Aurelius, in fact, this becomes very valuable, because, as emperor, he exhorts himself to have concern for the common good. Moreover-and here we return to Epicureanism-one can say that philosophers in antiquity aimed to perpetuate themselves [se repandre]. They have a missionary aspect, one might say, even if it is not on a very large scale; and the Epicureans, who for that matter seem to turn back on themselves, have a great sense of friendship, which- for them is a pleasure: they desire friendship because it is a pure pleasure. And they especially have the desire to perpetuate their doctrine. A magnificent and extraordinary example is Diogenes of Oenonanda, lie had had immense inscriptions from Epicurean texts engraved on the walls of the city, aiming to convert his fellow citizens to the Epicurean doctrine. A number of these inscriprions were found in Turkey.

A.D.: In other words, in antiquity one could not take care ofothers if onedid not take care ofoneselfDoyou think this isa necessary relation? There are many ways to take care ofothers. Thereis a philosophical and a nonpbilosophical mode. It seems to me that thephilosophical way oftaking care ofothers always requires a selfconcern, which is also a selftransformation. I believe that your phrase should be reversed, at least insofar as it concerns the Stoics. Not, one cannot take care of others if one does not take care of oneself but on the contrary, as Seneca says, ((Live for others if you want to live for yoursel£"12 For, Seneca adds, one cannot be happy if one considers only oneself. It is true that one could think that in order to take care of others one must first transform oneself: but this self-transformation consists precisely in being attentive to others. Finally, undoubtedly in a somewhat exaggerated formulation, I would say that there is no real concern for others if there is no self-forgetting. Certainly, in any case, if

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there is no forgetting of one's personal interest, as Socrates maintains in The Apology ofSocrates, "Ask yourself if it is humanly possible to neglect, as I have, all one's personal interests [ ... ] for so many years and this to be able to take care only of yoU."l3 Perhaps you will say, to forget one's personal interests is precisely to have concern for oneself: that is, in fact, to have concern for the superior self (moi) beyond all egoism. This is true, all the more so, as Marcus Aurelius says clearly, that the reason on which love of others is based, at least for the Stoics, is the consciousness of being members of the same body, such that each member, by putting itself in the service of the body, puts itself in its own service." One finds one's joy by doing good to others, because, by doing good to others, one does good to oneself: But here again there is a danger of which Marcus Aurelius was well aware: If one is conscious of and happy about doing good, one risks looking at oneself doing good and not having a perfectly pure intention in doing the good." For him, one must belong to those who do good, as it were, unconsciously.l" This recalls the word of the gospel: "When you give alms, may your left hand not know what your right hand is doing." Goodness supposes total disinterestedness; it must be, as it were, spontaneous and unreflective, without the least calculation, without the least self-complacency. Goodness must be an instinct: one must do good as the bee makes its honey and seeks nothing else. But to my knowledge, no ancient philosopher attained this summit of the purity of intention as did Marcus Aurelius.

A.D.: Can we not say that the search for justice is also a spiritual exercise? One cannot brutally divide spiritual exercises that concern only the self and those that concern only others. When one aims for justice, it is also an exercise ofself I think you are right for what concerns most ancient philosophies.

A. D.: You have recently emphasizedthe distinction between philosophical discourse and philosophy itself Unlike what, let us say, philosophy professors may think, philosophy cannot be reduced to philosophical discourse. Yet discourse remains an integralpart ofphilosophy. There are philosophical discourses and concepts, and the exercises, the nonconceptualpractices ofphi-

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losophy. What is the role ofphilosophical discourse and ofthepractices (the not purelyconceptualpractices) in your own conception ofphilosophy? As I said, I borrowed this distinction from the Stoics, but it can be found implicitly throughout the history of philosophy, because the opposition between words, on the one hand, and practices, on the other, has always been alive. It has always been emphasized that the real philosopher is not the one who speaks but the one who acts. As you have just made clear, it is a complex distinction. Once again, when the Stoics said that philosophical discourse was not philosophy, they did not mean that the discourse was not philosophical, for when the students were taught the three parts of philosophy-logic, physics, and ethics-one was in fact doing philosophy; it was indispensable for being able to practice philosophy. Moreover, when it was said that philosophy was not philosophical discourse, it did not mean that there was no discourse in this philosophical life, for the good reason that it would take at least one inner discourse for it to act on itself. Basically, one can speak of philosophy as an ellipsis that has two poles-a pole of discourse and a pole of action, outer but also inner-for philosophy, in opposition to philosophical discourse, is also an effort to put oneself into certain inner dispositions. In antiquity, these two poles appear clearly in two different social phenomena: philosophical discourse corresponds to the teaching dispensed in the school, and philosophical life corresponds to the community of institutional life that reunites master and disciple and implies a certain genre of life-a spiritual direction, examinations of conscience, exercises of meditation-and it also corresponds to the right way to live as a citizen in one's city. On the one hand, as I have said, philosophy as life is inspired by a discourse of philosophical teaching; for example, one sees Marcus Aurelius write his Pensees in order to revive in himself philosophical discourse that always ends up being abstract. That is, by habit, distraction, and the concerns of life, philosophical discourse quickly becomes purely theoretical and no longer has the force necessary to motivate the individual to live her or his philosophy. One must therefore give life and effectiveness to discourse. On the other hand, pedagogical discourse in antiquity is rarely purely theoretical; it too often takes the form of an exercise. There is the perfect example of Socratic dialogue, but there is also, even in teaching that is not a dialogue, a rhetorical effort to influence the

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minds of the disciples. The two poles of philosophy are indispensable, but it is important to distinguish them. In fact, they have always been distinguished. Already Plato says in Letter VII that he has come to Syracuse to prove to himself that he is not merely full of hot air: "Out of fear of passing to myself for nothing but a fine talker, incapable of resolutely undertaking an action.":" In all antiquity, such as in Plutarch, philosophers who are merely Sophists and who, when they get off their chair, neither know how to live nor how to teach their disciples to live are mocked. I cannot give the history of this rich tradition, from Petrarch and Montaigne to Kant, who opposed the philosophers who were satisfied with the academic conception of philosophy, those who are thus only what he calls "artists of reason" because they are interested only in pure speculation; to those who are capable of being attentive to what interests everyone, that is, finally, to practice. These latter ones Kant calls the "philosophers of the world," and he forcefully maintained the connection between philosophical discourse and philosophical life when he said, today one considers the one who lives in conformity with what he teaches fanatical iexalte). In the same spirit, Thoreau will say, "We have philosophy professors, but no philosophers." As for Schopenhauer, he wrote a pamphlet called AgainstAcademicPhilosophy. To get backto the twentieth century, and to give a single example, I have never forgotten my amazement ·upon reading in Charles Peguy the phrase "La philosophie ne va pas en classe de pbilosophie" [Philosophy is not suited to the classroom]. The influence of Bergson on Peguy must be recognized here. You asked me about the role that philosophical discourse and philosophical practices have in my own conception of philosophy. It is true-but I will not make value judgments on this subject-that many of my contemporaries consider philosophy to be a discourse, more exactly a discourse on discourse, and that is that. Personally, I have a different conception. To make myself understood, I will once again take a detour by way of antiquity. We have seen that throughout antiquity there were men who were considered to be philosophers because they lived as philosophers-for example, Dion of Syracuse, Plato's friend; Cato the Younger; and Quintus Mucius Scaevola, the Augur. The remarkable Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques [Dictionary of ancient philosophers], so efficiently edited by Richard Goulet, is exemplary on this subject. We meet in it

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many characters who are neither scholars nor philosophy professorspolitical men, such as King Antigonus Gonatas, and women famous for their philosophical life. Sometimes, without being inventors of philosophical doctrines, they composed philosophical works that did not have the pretension of proposing new theories but that exposed the doctrines of their chosen philosophical school in order to formulate in this manner, for others and for themselves, the principles ofconduct. This was the case, for example, with Cicero, Brutus, Seneca, Arrian, and Marcus Aurelius. By recognizing, as I am proposing, two poles of philosophy, there would be place once again in our contemporary world for philosophers in the etymological sense of the word, that is, seekers of wisdom who certainly would not renew philosophical discourse but would search not for happiness-it seems that that is no longer in style-but for a life that is more conscious, more rational, more open to others and the immensity of the world. Now, it is obvious that those who have the vocation for it, the professors and the writers who talk about philosophy, have the duty to continue to renew and transform the discourse of philosophy, and I believe that this is a passionate and infinite task. But it is desirable that they be conscious that discourse and life are inseparable. Personally, while trying to accomplish my historian's and exegete's tasks, I especially attempt to lead a philosophical life, that is, very simply, as I have just said, conscious, coherent, and rational. It must be said that the results are not always of a very high level. And during my sojourns in hospitals, for example, I have not always maintained the serenity of mind in which I would have liked to hold myself: But regardless, I attempt to put myself in certain inner attitudes such as concentration on the present instant, wonder in the presence of the world, looking at things from above-"to take flight every day," as Georges Friedmann said-becoming conscious of the mystery of existence. I must admit that as I get older, but it is certainly a default of age, I increasingly prefer experience to discourse. I even dare admit that I am very fond of the phrase, one that is paradoxical, enigmatic, but weighty with meaning, of a Chinese critic cited by Simon Leys, "Everything that can be said is stripped of importance."18 A. D.: Thus a priority ofpractice, and if theoretical discourse is torn away from its practical context, the significance of the discourse cannot be understood.

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Here we return to a principle of interpretation that we have already discussed. One cannot understand a text if one does not examine the intention of the author, that is, the effect it aims to produce; this is precisely the practical context. To take an example that has already often been evoked, one cannot understand Marcus Aurelius' book if one does not understand that he wants to exhort himself by telling himself Stoic dogmas in a striking form. He does not want to give a theoretical exposition of the Stoic doctrine. It is neither a journal nor a theoretical textbook. A.D.: Even if you do not want to pass judgment, at the end ofyour high school examination in the Monde de I' education [World ofeducation} (March I992), you asked the question, "What is finally most useful to man as man? Is it discoursing on language or on nonbeing? Is it not rather to learn to live a human life?" One can say that this is an implicitjudgment ofvalue. And then, how does one explain the recession of the practice ofspiritual exercises after antiquity?

First I will turn to the question of the citation of my high school examination. In speaking of being "useful to man as man," I thought of what Kant said about "worldly" or "cosmic" philosophy, of which we have already spoken-philosophy that takes the perspective of wisdom into consideration. It is philosophy that asks the questions that, Kant says, "interest everybody," for example, What must I do? What can I hope for? "Every interest," says Kant, "is ultimately practical, and even the interest of speculative reason is only conditioned, is only completed in practical use."" For me it is clear that there is a primacy of practical reason, explicit in Kant, implicit in the ancient idea of philosophy. I turn now to your question concerning the receding and the forgetting of this conception of philosophy. I believe that Christianity played a very large role in this recession. Right at the end of antiquity, in the face of pagan philosophers, revealed Christian theology replaced philosophy and absorbed both ancient philosophy and ancient philosophical life. The concepts studied throughout antiquity, and notably by Aristotelian and Neoplatonist commentators from the end of antiquity, were used to resolve theological and philosophical problems posed by Christian dogmas-for example, the notion of essence and of hypostasis for the Trinity, the notion of nature for the Incarnation, the notion of substance for

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transubstantiation. And besides, it was Christian theology that became ascetic and mystic, recuperating and Christianizing the spiritual exercises and certain themes from philosophy. In the Middle Ages, this situation was inherited, because it was entirely Christian. It inherited, on the one hand, Christianized spiritual exercises, which entered into monastic practice and in part into lay practices, that is, the examination of conscience, the meditation on death, the imaginative exercises to think of hell, and so on. On the other hand, it inherited a philosophy that had been put in the service of theology. For Scholastics in the universities of the Middle Ages, the supreme science was theology, a Christian theology that used philosophical concepts as instruments. In the faculties of arts, a philosophy was taught that consisted, according to the ancient tradition, in commenting especially on Aristotle by following the models of late antiquity. Basically, the Middle Ages inherited both from Christian theology at the end of antiquity and from the activity of Aristotle's late commentators. Now, on one hand, Scholastics continued at least until the end of the eighteenth century, and on the other hand, from the time that philosophy attained its autonomy, it found itself: at least until the eighteenth century, and even later, in an officially Christian civilization in which the mode of life was Christian. Philosophy could not propose another mode of life than the one that was tied to Christian theology. Therefore it remained a primarily theoretical discipline.

A.D.: But havethere not been exceptions? Has the idea ofphilosophy as a way oflife notfinally always remained alive in the history ofphilosophy? You are right to evoke exceptions, because they are very important. I have just presented a very simplified schema of the evolution that it is now necessary to rectify. In effect, a very interesting phenomenon happened already in the Middle Ages, in the thirteenth century, which began in the faculties of arts, where Aristotle was commented on and where philosophy was taught for itsel£ Here a certain number of philosophers-Siger de Brabant, Boece de Dacie, and Aubry de Reims-found in Aristotle the idea that philosophy could bring happiness through contemplation, and thus that philosophy, independent of theology, could be a mode of life. This proves that Aristotelian philosophy is in no way a purely theoretical

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philosophy. They in effect found in Aristotle the idea that contemplation and the work of the mind bring happiness to the human being (this is the end of the Nicomachean Ethics). These philosophers were very poorly considered because they suggested that man could find his happinessobviously they said it was merely an inferior happiness-in contemplation. This corresponds to the distinction I observe between tbeoretique and tbeorique (theoretical), where the former means contemplative. On this subject, one can read Imbach's Dante: philosophie et les laics [Dante, philosophers, and laymen], which effectively displays the whole scope of this secularization of philosophy. 20 With the Renaissance, Seneca, Epictetus, and later Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero and Epicureanism, it began to become apparent that philosophy itself could be a way of life. One finds traces of this movement in Italy, in Petrarch for example, in Erasmus, and obviously in Montaigne. Augustine undoubtedly influenced Descartes to the extent that one finds remembrances of spiritual exercises of ancient philosophy in the dialogues written in Augustine's youth at Cassiaciacum. I have tried to show that Descartes practices and has his reader practice philosophical meditation, notably in the Meditations. In the eighteenth century there appeared the notion ofwhat is called popular philosophy, a philosophy that could be practiced by ordinary people and that was a way oflife. The word philosophy then took on a very special sense. This popular philosophy influenced the notion of "cosmic" philosophy in Kant, the word cosmic signifying worldly (mondaine) philosophy. But in fact, significantly for Kant, he opposes this practiced philosophy to the purely theoretical philosophy of the "artists of reason." I cannot offer the entire history of this tradition, but finally you are right: one can observe the continuity of the two traditions since the Middle Ages-one that privileges philosophical discourse, the other that integrates the perspective of mode of life, of the lived exercise, into philosophy.

A.D.: With respect to the first tendency, you once wrote rather strikingly that the tendency to be satisfied with discourse is nearlyconnatural with philosophy itself What did you mean? This tendency was denounced throughout antiquity. Earlier I evoked Plato. He said he got into politics only so it could not be said of him that he contented himself with words. Plaronists, Stoics, and Epicureans

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attacked the philosophers who were satisfied with appealing discourses and subtle syllogistic reasoning. It is not merely a question of sophistical vanity, of vainglory, of the pleasure of speaking. In fact, all philosophers, even those who orient their discourse in function of philosophical life, risk telling themselves that everything is resolved simply because they have said something and said it well. Yet everything remains to be done. The passage from discourse to life is a truly perilous leap that it is difficult to decide to make. I will allow myself to cite Kant, again, here: "When are you finally going to begin to live virtuously, said Plato to an old man who was telling him that he was attending lessons on virtue, you must fil1ally think of passing into action, and not always speculate. But today we consider one who lives in conformity with what he teaches to be fanatic."21 This notable remark lets us see that in Kant's time there was already a conflict between the partisans of pure speculation and those who, like Kant, wanted to connect philosophy and life. I previously encountered this problem at the time of existentialism. I felt there was a contradiction: in existentialism between the idea of a philosophy involved in life, almost confounded with life, and the discourse that said that philosophy should be committed but which was content merely to say so. One spoke about it extensively, and one was content to have spoken about it, like at the opera, where people sing, "Let us walk, let us walk" or "let us flee, let us flee," and do not move.

A.D.: This was also a criticism formulated by [ankeleuitch, who said that therearepeople who think that beingcommitted meansknowing how to conjugate the verb to commit. . .. Absolutely. I believe it is precisely a connatural vice, this danger, that lies in wait for all philosophers and that consists in being satisfied with a well-composed discourse because it is easier to speak than to do. A. D.: YOu have evokedthefigure ofthe sage in antiquity as a norm, as a transcendent ideal. Can you describe thefigure ofthe sage for us? And does thefigure remain current? There is a considerable literature in antiquity on the theme of the description of the sage. There are numerous treatises, entitled Of the

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Steadfastness ofthe Sage or That the Sage Is Free, and so on. In fact, these are descriptions of the perfect philosopher, such as he should be. This is why I said that the figure of the sage was in antiquity a norm, a transcendent ideal. Plato, in the Symposium, explicitly said that only God was wise, and that man could only be philosopher, that is, "friend of wisdom," "in search ofwisdom." And by emphasizing the extreme rarity of the sage, the Stoics too make of wisdom a transcendent ideal. When Lucretius praises Epicurus in his first poem on nature, in reality he describes the philosophical ideal. What, then, are the qualities Lucretius admires in him? The first is his love of men. When he taught his doctrine, he wanted to save human beings, who were in the grip of the terror of superstition and the torments of the passions. A second characteristic of his wisdom is the audacity of his cosmic vision. As Lucretius says, Epicurus mentally overcame the enflamed barriers that limit the universe, such that he has traversed the immensity of the Whole. A third trait, finally: he is free, without fear, with an inner peace analogous to that of the gods, of whom one can say, precisely according to his doctrine, that no troubles agitate the peace of their soul. These three basic traits are common to the figure of the sage as it is described by the other schools, with the exception of the Skeptics. First, as Bernard Groethuysen has effectively shown, cosmic consciousness "constantly has the Whole in mind."22 There is also the awareness of a role to fill in the guidance of other men, todeliver them from their ignorance, their terrors, and their passions, by helping them.to discover this cosmos he has unveiled. Finally, there is the inexpugnable and untamable freedom of the inner citadel-freedom that procures an absolute peace. In the end, these are the characteristics of an ideal philosopher. Throughout the Western tradition, one finds the figure of the ancient sage, for example, in the traits of the free man in Spinoza or in the form of the Idea of the philosopher, of whom Kant speaks when he says (incidentally thereby anticipating Kierkegaard), "A philosopher corresponding to this model does not exist any more than a true Christian really exists. Both are norms."23 You ask if this figure, still alive in Kant's day, is still actual? Despite the snickering that my naivete has provoked in some, I would say yes, on condition of first remembering that the figure of the sage is merely a model, an ideal, that orients and inspires the way of life, and that to

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conceive of this figure one must keep in mind new historical conditions, I believe that there is nothing more ridiculous than to declare someone a sage, or a saint, for that matter. I will be a little ferocious here. I recently remembered that Cardinal Danielou had wished to canonize de Gaulle. The fact that he can have had such an idea is for me inconceivable. In the same order of ideas, the recent canonization of Pius IX seemed unbelievable. And as for John XXIII, I have a brief anecdote to tell. When I was at Saine-Severin parish, he was nuncio in Paris and had come to inspect the parish because the priest had introduced certain liturgical innovations. He was to breakfast at the presbytery. The priest was obviously crazed; it was difficult to receive the nuncio. So he came up with the idea of having someone serve the meal-a layman who lived in the presbytery and who rather surprisingly was a British officer who often leant his services to the parish. This officer kindly accepted. The moment to serve the wine arrived, but as he had never learned table service, the officer served the nuncio to the right-unless it was to the left, I don't know, myself ignorant of how it must be done. And the future John XXIII became angry, saying that this was not how to serve wine. He was furious. For me, the nuncio was definitively classified. To get angry for such a small thing! He might at least have had the tact to say nothing and not to remark heavily on this small error. It is in these small details that personalities are revealed. This removes nothing from the merit of the one who, as John XXIII, wanted to make the Vatican II council. And yet, although recently beatified, in my eyes this man is not a saint. After this somewhat amusing parenthesis, let us return to the figure of the sage. In fact, on reflection, it could be that the word sage has aged poorly. It evokes a sort of slightly egoistical inertia, which is the very opposite of what was paradoxical and active to the ancient sopbos, of which Ulysses, the crafty one, the adventurer, was sometimes the incarnation. Let us give up the word but look for what might be the content of the thing. The idea of inner peace and freedom would still seem actual. Moreover, cosmic conscience, of which Groethuysen spoke, seems to me a capital element, but we have already addressed this theme. It is especially the concern for others that would need to be intensified. Georges Friedmann has said that «the modern sage (ifhe existed) today would not turn away from the cesspool of men."24 It is impossible for the philosopher to forget the

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generalized misery in the world, the suffering of all kinds that oppresses men) and for him not to suffer in the feeling of powerlessness to reform anything. Schopenhauer evoked the scandal of childhood labor, where at the age ofIive years old children were shut up in mills for ten hours a day. But there would be many other things to say about the scandalous suffering that children, women, and men live every day, such as the tragedy of the Afghan women or the Palestinian children, doomed for despair. How is it possible to keep inner peace when one feels revolt grumbling inside? I nevertheless believe that without inner peace, no action can ultimately be effective. How can the irreconcilable be reconciled? It will no longer be indifference that will give peace to the soul, as it was for the ancient philosophers, but the concern to act well without being misled by hatred or pity, and this will oblige one to conquer the peace of the soul.

A.D.: In other words, for you thepracticeofphilosophy and the questfor philosophical wisdom never end; one must always exercise it, because wisdom requires more: it requires that one alwaysgo beyond, that one continue to renewphilosophicalpractices and life indefinitely. [ankeleuitch entitled his book ofinterviews Somewhere in the Incomplete. This is a citation from Rilke. Andfor you too we are, let us say, somewhere in the unfinished-or to usea similar expression, the great French composer Jean Barraque, unfortunately little known today, put the words ofHermann Broch into music: "the endless incomplete. " I believe that for you philosophy, or the philosopher, is always in an incomplete state. But is the incompleteness ofphilosophy perhaps something positive? I agree entirely. It is in fact an interesting problem, the problem of the end of philosophy. I believe I spoke about it in the past in relation to Wittgenstein, because in the Tractatus he wanted to put an end to philosophy in order to leave room for a wisdom that he defined as "an accurate vision of the world." We can say parenthetically that this is an example of "modern" wisdom, which Wittgenstein attempted to live by giving up philosophical writing for several years and living the everyday life of men. And then he came back to philosophical discourse, which in effect proves that it is not easy to complete the philosophical quest. Wittgenstein's experience is interesting because it shows that it is difficult-perhaps even impossible-to consider what it would be to attain a state of definitive

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wisdom. In fact, what Wittgenstein considered to be a state ofwisdom was a philosophical life, full of imperfections and of efforts, and accompanied by sketches of philosophical discourses, which is what brought him to return to philosophical writing with the Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein's experience thus shows that philosophy moves in an asymptote, in the direction of the idea of wisdom, but it is not easy to be done with philosophy. The effort in the direction of wisdom, that is, the effort to realize a philosophical life, is always incomplete. For example, one can think that meditation as a spiritual exercise is something admirable, but one must, after all, account for what happens in reality. Our inner discourse is always interrupted, chaotic, dispersed. How does one put one's thoughts in order? It is possible, in effect, that certain men arrive at a great mastery ofinner language. These people are closer to the idea of wisdom. There will surely be moments in which the philosopher manages to reunify himself: to take stock of himself and of the world. But to arrive at these states, one must lead a perpetual combat that ultimately can precisely not be perpetual. The Stoics, who require of man an attention at all moments, speak of an ideal sage rather than the concrete man. The poor Marcus Aurelius is obliged to write pages and pages in order to be able to find the inner disposition that he should normally have. One might say that it is the transcendent ideal of wisdom that explains this incompleteness of philosophy.

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Arnold I. Davidson: Inyour essay CCEloge deSocrate"[InpraiseofSocrates], the interpretations ofthefigure ofSocrates by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche play a prominent role. What relation doyou see between the Socrates ofantiquity and the constantrevelation ofthisfigure in the history ofphilosophy? There is truly something extraordinary in the pervasiveness of the figure of Socrates. I have a great deal of admiration for Merleau-Ponty's inaugural lecture at College de France; I read and reread it even now. In it he maintains that all philosophers, or almost all philosophers (I would exclude Epicurus), "have accepted as their patron a man who did not write, who did not teach, [ . . . ] spoke to those whom he met in the street and who had difficulties with opinion and powers." It brings me even more pleasure to cite this passage because, in the context, Merleau-Ponty makes explicit the problem we are entertaining in these interviews: "Philosophy put into books no longer appeals to people. What is unusual and almost insupportable in it is hidden in the proper life of philosophical systems." Now, this praise of Socrates from the middle of the twentieth century echoes a text written by Plutarch nineteen centuries earlier. It is a text that I have already evoked. It says that if Socrates was a philosopher, it was in walking with his friends, in eating with them, in discussing with them, in going like them to war, and finally in drinking the hemlock, and not by teaching from the height of a podium. Thus he showed that everyday life makes it possible to do philosophy. Through the centuries, then, and in

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antiquity especially, and notably for the Stoics and the Cynics, Socrates has always been the model of the philosopher, and more precisely the model of the philosopher for whom life and death are the main teaching. In fact, despite what Merleau-Ponty says about it, not all philosophers have recognized Socrates as their patron. Descartes and Spinoza barely mention him, for example. Those who have associated themselves with him are primarily existentialist thinkers, such as Merleau-Ponty himself: Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. In fact, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche have two apparently different visions, although perhaps they can ultimately be reconciled. What Nietzsche liked in Socrates, after having attacked him for so long, is finally this gaiety, this wisdom full of impishness that he maintains Jesus is missing.' Nietzsche's Socrates is the Socrates ofXenophon's Memorabilia rather than Plato's Socrates, as well as the dancing Socrates of Xenophon's Symposium. And Nietzsche adds that one must use Montaigne and Horace as guides to understanding Socrates. It is true that the figure of Socrates appears as a perfect ideal of life throughout Montaigne's Essays. 2 Socrates' greatness was to be able to play with children, and to consider that his time was thus well spent. Montaigne admires Socrates' capacity to adapt to all the circumstances of life, to war and to peace, to abundance and to shortage, to ecstasy and to play. He likes the simplicity of his life and his language, his sense of the limits of the human condition, his confidence in the resources of simple nature, which gives humble and simple folks the courage to live and to die without need for all the philosophers' discourses. Socrates lives a human life fully and simply. As we have seen, this Socrates in love with life is apparently Nietzsche's Socrates, But unlike Montaigne, Nietzsche thinks that the simplicity of Socrates, the banality of his proposals, his irony, are a way to communicate indirectly so as to avoid saying what he was thinking clearly. And what he was hiding was perhaps a terrible secret. For there is this statement made by Socrates at the end of the Phaedo, at the moment of his death: "We owe a cock to Aesclepius," This suggests that Socrates wants to make a sacrifice of recognition to the god of medicine for having cured him of life. Could it thus be that life, existence, is an illness? Might this not be Socrates' secret? Would Socrates have lied throughout his life? For Nietzsche, Socrates would have been greater had he not said anything, had he kept his secret. In- fact, I think that Nietzsche generated a contradiction. The meaning

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of Socrates' statement is not that life in itself is an illness, but that the life of the body is an illness and that the only true life is the life of the soul. Plato wanted to put a Platonic doctrine into Socrates' mouth, but I do not believe that Socrates himself could have uttered this statement, at least in this sense. Perhaps he said it ironically, as Jankelevitch suggested in his book L'Ironie [Irony]. The problem posed by this "we owe a cock to Aesclepius" is famous and difficult, moreover, and several possible solutions have been suggested." Whatever the case may be, Nietzsche's doubt concerning Socrates especially reveals his own doubt on the subject of the meaning of life. Nietzsche's impish Socrates has thus finally become tragic. As for Kierkegaard's Socrates, he is tragic from the outset. He represents the seriousness of the existential responsibility of the Individual, of the Existing, who is the Individual and the Existing precisely because he is strange, unclassifiable, divided, and torn by his inner incompleteness, deprived of the one he loves. Just as Kierkegaard is Christian only by his awareness that he is not Christian, Socrates is wise only by his awareness that he is not wise. It is in this respect that he is a philosopher, deprived of wisdom, but in love with wisdom. Kierkegaard also has beautiful pages about Socratic method. Socrates wants to be a mere midwife; he has no pretensions to being a master. He has no pretensions on the soul of his disciple, no more than on that of his master. Montaigne had also praised Socrates' refusal to vindicate the authority of a master. Through these few examples one can begin to see the variety of the forms in which the figure of Socrates appears in the writings of philosophers. It is ultimately a mythical and not a historical Socrates who has had a great influence on the history of philosophy.:

A.D.: When you oppose the mythical Socrates to the historical Socrates, there are at least two ways to think about the first: a purely fictional Socrates, and a Socrates who is not historical but rooted in history and who neverthelessfunctions as an ideal; there is history as fiction and history as an ideal. Therefore, mythicalfor you means not only fictional, but also ideal. Plato is the first philosopher who began to project his own philosophical conceptions onto the figure of Socrates. He is at the origin of the mythical Socrates. And almost all of the philosophers who have discussed Socrates have discussed the figure of Socrates such as it is drawn by Plato,

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or at times by Xenophon, but this latter one too is probably rather mythical. Plato idealized Socrates, but to put him into relation with his own Platonic perspectives, and also perhaps because he wanted to valorize all the philosophical signification of the figure of Socrates. Things here are rather complex. On the one hand, philosophers have followed the example of Plato and projected all their preoccupations onto Socrates. From this point of view, Socrates can take part in the history of rather different faces. But on the other hand, there is also a certain consistency to one's idea of what is essential in Socrates' message. In a preceding conversation we have spoken of the possibility of actualizing this or that aspect of ancient philosophy. The example of Socrates is interesting because it is not the doctrine that one attempts to actualize, because it is very difficult to know what it might have been, beyond the enigmatic affirmation of nonknowledge. Rather, what one is attempting to actualize, what becomes a philosophical ideal, is his life and his death entirely devoted to others, devoted to making them understand themselves, to making them better. I would readily believe that it was Montaigne who best understood the essence of Socrates. Finally, I think that those whom I called existentialist thinkers were right to recognize the exemplary philosopher in Socrates insofar as, by living a simple ordinary life, he transfigured it by the awareness he had of the infinite value of every instant of this ordinary life.

A. D.: I know that Montaigne, amongyour favorite philosophers, has always impressed you a greatdeal. When and why? I first encountered Montaigne at the age of fourteen or fifteen, by chance. Excerpts from Montaigne translated into modern French were found in the library that was at our disposal at the Petit Seminaire. I was fascinated. I no longer know why exactly-perhaps because Montaigne, who spoke of himself and of men in detail, allowed me to discover strange human nature. All of antiquity was there, as were the realities of his time, including both American Indians and local peasants. Human nature appeared so complex that it authorized all attitudes: skepticism and faith, Stoic rigor and Epicurean ease. In Montaigne I learned the importance of simplicity, the ridicule of pedantry. I was extremely struck by the essay called "To do philosophy is to learn to die." Perhaps I did not understand it properly at the time, but it proved to be one of the texts that led me

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to represent philosophy as something other than a theoretical discourse. Now, in class we studied Montaigne's theories on education, which are extremely interesting in the respect they manifest for the personality of the child, and always also in the criticism of abstract teaching that privileges information at the expense of formation. Montaigne, it is known, opposed well-made heads to full heads. I have read and reread the Essais [Essays] several times in my life, always with undiminished pleasure.' I have been delighted, encountering all kinds of savory anecdotes. More recently, a text that I used for an epigraph at the beginning of the book What Is Ancient Philosophy? impressed me a great deal; it is a text that I find absolutely extraordinary. Montaigne imagines someone who says they have done nothing with their day, and Montaigne responds, "What, you have done nothing, but have you not lived! Is that not the most illustrious of your preoccupationsl'" Nietzsche echoes him in this respect, in his claim that human institutions aim to forbid human beings to sense their lives." One finds in this passage from Montaigne the recognition of the infinite value oflife itself: of existence; this reverses all of the habitual values and especially the pervasive idea that what counts above all is to do something, whereas for Montaigne what is most important is to be. I realized at -the same time that there was also the heritage of ancient thought in Montaigne. He fundamentally understood the meaning of ancient philosophy very well,

A.D.: I know you continue to think that Henri Bergson is an interesting and current philosopher, someone who is in no way outdated. You have already mentioned the Bergsonian idea ofa transformation ofour habitual

perception. Are there otheraspects ofBergson that remain alivefor you? Bergson, for me, was first my baccalaureat paper of 1939, in which I was given the subject from a text by Bergson: "Philosophy is not the construction of a system but the resolution, once taken [that is, taken once and for all], to look naively in oneself and around oneself." First, the phrase "philosophy is not the construction of a system" eliminated all theoretical and abstract construction from the outset. Moreover, the second part of the sentence signified that philosophy is above all a choice and not a discourse. It was a decision, an attitude, a comportment, a way of seeing the world. "To look naively in oneself and around oneself': the

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word naively-rerninds us that although Bergson. defines philosophy as a transformation of perception, he chooses the example of the painter who, in order to look naively, that is, attempts to return, I would almost say, to the brute perception of reality, to get rid of all habits of seeing things. Thus the phrase "to look naively" means to undo oneself from the artificial, from the habitual, the conventional, and to return basically to what might be called an elementary perception, removed from all prejudice. One can say that this effort, which is analogous to the one of the painter, is a spiritual exercise. In Bergson, this new perception consists in a vision of reality as becoming, evolving, as the manifestation of an unpredictable novelty-a world not already made, but making itself. It is true that many of Bergson's claims now appear to be outdated, be it concerning evolution itself: or be it the function of the brain. But I think that what is essential in Bergsonism is not in these details, which science can discard. For me the essential of Bergsonism will always be the idea of philosophy as transformation of perception. In the religious teaching I received, which ought to have been purely Thomist, Bergson had' a place, at least in psychology. Bergson's work had inaugurated a psychology of introspection, which aligned itself with the spiritual life that we were being made to discover. But Bergson was also the affirmation of a creative evolution, which seemed difficultly compatible with the Christian idea of creation. Soon Father Teilhard de Chardin would propose an evolutionist version of Christianity, to which I enthusiastically adhered. Later, around 1968 and for a certain time after, I became interested in the philosophy of nature, and it was the natural philosopher Bergson whom I rediscovered, thanks to jankelevitch's Bergson and to the works of Merleau-Ponty. I rediscovered the importance of the notion of organism, the conception of nature as creation, as movement that comes from the inside (note that this is the ancient sense of phusis). Nature gave itself no more trouble making an eye than I have raising my hand. In a presentation at the Rencontres Eranos [Eranos conference], I tried to show how these conceptions were finally from Plotinus.

A.D.: Vladimir [ankeleuitch is both the successor ofBergson 5 thought and an utterlysingular philosopher. ]ankelevitchhas considerably emphasized thefact that moral life must always be renewed, like an exercise ofselfthat is

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never completed; and as opposed to most contemporary philosophers, for him the role oflove in moral life is absolutely central.

I am not familiar with all of jankelevitch's body of work. As I said, in the context of IJ:lY research on Plotinus, I was highly influenced by jankelevitch's book on Bergson. It makes striking allusions to the relations between Plotinus and Bergson, but he allowed me to understand the influence that Neoplatonism had on the philosophy of nature. I also enjoyed his book L'Ironie [Irony], which testifies to an extraordinary force of analysis of human psychology. I think that you are alluding to what jankelevitch says in the second volume of Traite des Vertus [Treatise on virtues]. You are right to say that jankelevitch differs from contemporary philosophers in that he gives a central place to love in moral life. In this respect, he is again the faithful disciple of Bergson. The subtleness with which he reflects on problems that have long been discussed in theology and morals, on the possibility of pure love and of the relation between egoism and love, is truly astonishing. But he saw the mysterious element in love particularly well: How can lovers be egoistical and interested when their love transcends them, when it is pure and disinterested?

A.D.: You have written that in Plato's Symposium the appearance of the theme oflove introduces an element ofirrationality, that is, an element that is in no way ofthe order ofthe intellect, but that implies other domains of psychic life, the will, and even passion. The transformation ofthe individual can take place through love. What does this element ofirrationality in Plato

imply? When I spoke of irrationality, I wanted to convey that Plato's philosophy was much more complex than it is considered to be when Platonic philosophy is presented as a magnificent rational edifice. One might think that, in the perspective of the Symposium, love serves only to provide a foundation for the community of souls that makes dialogue and philosophical reflection possible. However, as the end of Diotirna's speech shows, love is an integral part of this properly philosophical procedure in that the ascension toward Beauty begins with the love of a beautiful body, even if it continues with the love of more spiritual beauties. The love of a

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beautiful body is already, potentially, the love of eternal Beauty. The love of a beautiful body can be understood as the attraction of eternal Beauty. The engine of the philosophical procedure is thus desire, and it implies a nondiscursive element. The dimension of love gives philosophy the character of a lived, live experience of a presence. This is true of Plato, but it is also true of all philosophy.

A.D.: When did you begin to readHeidegger? It was in 1946. At that time I was fortunate enough to encounter, under conditions I have now forgotten, Alphonse de Waelhens' book on Heidegger's philosophy. This was lucky, because at that time Heidegger was not easily accessible. Only short texts had been translated into French. Now, the year I did my bachelor's degree, there were courses on Heidegger offered by Jean Wahl. Unfortunately, for a reason I have forgotten, I could not attend them. Perhaps precisely to fill this lack, I read the book by de Waelhens, which has the advantage of being clear; I attempted at the same time to translate Heidegger, not Sein und Zeit [Being and Time], but the work on Plato. I must say that I was rather disappointed, because I had the impression that it was uselessly complicated, and also because the reasoning was sometimes overly simplistic, at least for Plato. It remains that de Waelhens' book allowed me to understand what I consider the essential of Heidegger-at least what is very important in what Heidegger brought me, especially the distinction between the everyday, or as Heidegger says, the "they" (Ie "on'), and authentic existence. Heidegger, on the one hand, admirably describes what we call the everyday, which Bergson had basically also described by showing that, in everyday life, our decisions and our reactions are not very conscious, but this does not really come from ourselves and is not of our personalities. Rather, it is a question of stereotypical reactions that everyone can have; there is a kind of depersonalization in everyday life. And Bergson precisely opposed this attitude to the conscious attitude of one who looks naively in oneself and around oneself in a way that completely transforms one's perception of the world. In Heidegger this becomes the opposition between the everyday, the banal, and a state in which one is conscious of existence, and precisely, as we have discussed, conscious of being doomed to death (this is what he called being-toward-death), thus conscious of one's finitude. At this moment,

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existence takes on an entirely different aspect, which moreover generates anxiety-perhaps because of death, but also because of the enigma represented by the fact of existing. I sincerely believe that Heidegger's analyses still hold, and they have influenced me considerably. I should specify that this opposition between the everyday and the authentic in no way signifies that one must always live in the authentic. Humans live normally and, one might say, necessarily in the everyday, but it is sometimes possible to get a glimpse of existence in an entirely other perspective. And this is already considerable.

A.D.: You have written an article that shows the Neoplatonic roots of Heidegger's famous idea of the ontological difference between being and beings. You refer to the distinction between being and beings found in a fragment of a commentary on Plato's Parmenides that I attribute to Porphyry, a Neoplatonic disciple of Plotinus. It is an opposition between the infinitive of the verb to be, that is, the action of being, and a reality that is defined, the "being"-"what is," which is an inferior reality because it merely participates in the action of being. What is extraordinary in this theory is the idea of an activity of being, taken in itself pure of all substantiality. This opposition between infinitive being (esse) and the "what is" (quodest) is found in Boethius in his short treatise called De hebdomadibus [On the Hebdornads], a treatise often commented on during the Middle Ages. It is possible that Heidegger, who had ~ good scholastic education, encountered the opposition in this context. But it is also possible that he arrived at it on his own. In any case, there is a considerable difference between the hierarchical opposition between being and beings found in the commentary on the Parmenides and the ontological difference in Heidegger. I would hesitate to speak of the Neoplatonic roots of this difference.

A.D.: I haveoften been struckby thefact that Heidegger's writingisin a certain respect the opposite a/your style ofphilosophical writing. It seems to me that simplicity, lucidity representfor you almosta moralobligation.

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Ah, it is very kind ofyou to say so! But perhaps what I have had to express is not as deep as what Heidegger expressed. It is true that Heidegger's style really poses a problem, first for the German language itself: which he did indeed torture. It is also a problem because his emulators tortured different languages in order to imitate him, and this might have created a trend that will perhaps come to an end-a very obscure way of writing philosophy that has the result of discouraging many readers. Sometimes one also has the impression that it is a game for the philosopher, who, as they used to say, always has a natural inclination to listen to himself talk and to watch himselfwrite. In fact, the problem is less the technical refinement of language, for in antiquity the Stoics were reputed for this kind of technical refinement, as were the Scholastics. This technical refinement often corresponds to the fact that one must render a nuance that is difficult to express. One is obliged to invent a word, or to redirect a word away from its usual meaning. In these contexts, there are technical words, but one knows exactly to what they correspond. In post-Heideggerian philosophy, however, metaphor, which is too often poorly defined, plays an abusive role.

A. D.: French existentialism made a great impression on you. What existentialist themes were most importantfor you? First there was a problem, which appears, for example, in a discussion that took place at the Societe de Philosophie, about a presentation by Jean Wahl: "Subjectivite et transcendence." A number of participants discussed the possibility of distinguishing between an existential philosopher and a philosopher ofexistence. An existential philosopher would in the end be a philosopher who through his existence is a philosopher, whose philosophy is in large part confounded with his existence, while a philosopher of existence is a philosopher who holds discourses on existence. I would accept this position gladly. I have always had the impression that existentialists did in fact conceive of philosophy as a decision, a choice of life, but they often held themselves strictly at the level of discourse on existence. It is a general problem, but it is probably insoluble. One is constantly brought back to this realization; the philosopher always has a tendency to be content with his own discourse. Beyond this, in 1946, when I was studying in Paris, existentialism for me was especially Gabriel Marcel,

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because he was a Christian existentialist. In fact, I learned many things from him (less when I heard him lecture than when I read his books): to begin with, the very rich distinction between to be and to have, according to which being relates to the person whereas having relates to everything that is not the person but that the person is at risk of losing. There is also the distinction between mystery and problem, which is very interesting. Problems are questions that can be answered and definitively resolved, and mysteries, as Gabriel Marcel said, encroach on their own given so that one is stuck inside. There is a mystery of the body, because one is one's own body. And then there was also obviously Sartre. I read L'Etre et le neant [Being and Nothingness], and especially Nausea, which was interesting in that one can see that there was indeed an experience here, a sort of ecstasy even, with existence as an object. But with respect to this nausea, I have always thought that it was a sentiment proper to Sartre's psychology. One might just as well speak ofwonder rather than nausea in the face of existence. There was one person especially who I insufficiently heard at College de France, and it was Merleau-Ponty, who was in part the inheritor of Bergson. His philosophy was centered on perception; he used phrases such as "philosophy consists of learning to see the world again," and he had developed an interesting reflection on modern art, all ofwhich influenced me a great deal.

A.D.: But the idea of the absurdity of life, which is fundamental for Camus, Sartre, even the Russian existentialists-it is my impression that you have never spoken about it. This is precisely what repulsed me about existentialism, especially in 1946 when I was strongly influenced by Christianity. In fact, the notion

seems rather strange to me; it is abstract, for that matter, because it is the result of reasoning. From the moment that God is dead there is no longer any justification of existence; therefore existence is absurd. Personally, I do not experience it as absurd. I prefer Merleau-Ponty's position in the preface to the Phenomenology ofPerception: "The world and reason do not pose a problem; one might say that they are mysterious, but this mystery defines them. It could not be a question of dissipating it by some solution; it is prior to solutions. Real philosophy is to learn to see the world again."

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Astonishment, wonder when faced with an inexplicable outpouring, indeed-but why nausea? . A. D.: An entire metaphysics offreedom can be found in Sartre, for example, and in others. But when one reads your texts, it is obvious that the practices offreedom at the center ofyour thought have never pushedyou to develop a metaphysics. Is there a fundamental difference between an existential metaphysics and existentialpractices?

By the term metaphysics I suppose you mean a philosophical theory. It is true that I have never had the pretension of proposing an existentialist metaphysics. On the contrary, I have very modestly attempted to propose a theory of existential practices. As you say, it is obvious that existential practices suppose freedom. In my humble opinion, it is extremely difficult to advance a theory or a metaphysics of freedom. The human sciences, no less than the exact sciences, raise doubts about the freedom of our actions, and I do not believe that a theory or a metaphysics of freedom would change this at all. One must follow Diogenes the Cynic, who, without saying anything, simply proved the existence of movement by walking. I have maintained the stance of my high-school oral exam; when the examiner asked me, «What is the definition of the will?" I answered, "The will is not defined, it is experienced." One might also think with Kant that freedom is one of the postulates of practical reason.

A.D.: How didyou discover Wittgenstein? I do not remember very clearly. I suppose that I was a researcher at CNRS, since 1960 or so, and because we had to examine articles for the Bulletin Analytique du CNRS, I must have read an article on Wittgenstein that alluded to the fact that the Tractatus mentions mysticism. This is what interested me, and at first I found an Italian translation with commentary; this is how I came into contact with the work of Wittgenstein. Thereafter I attempted to translate it myself: but I have never had the time to make my translation of the Tractatus publishable (it is, incidentally, a very difficult text to translate), but I did give some presentations and I wrote some articles on it.

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A.D.: You have spoken of the Tractatus at Jean Wahl's College Philosophique, and you have told me that everybody was a little surprised, because Wittgenstein was all but unknown. Yes, but Jean Wahl certainly knew him as early as 1946. I gave my presentation in 1959-60, and there still was no French translation. The same year there was also a presentation on Wittgenstein by Shalom at the College Philosophique, as well as an article by this same Shalom, and it seems to me that there was not much beyond this. I believe that Father Stanislas Breton had briefly invoked him in one of his works. I also remember saying that, in line with good French tradition, no editor considered having the Tractatus translated, because it had not been forty years since its publication.

A. D.: Was it especially the mythical aspect at the end ofthe Tractatus that attractedyou? Absolutely. For me it was a paradox, an extraordinary enigma, that someone who presented himself: or rather who was presented, as a logical positivist could speak of mysticism. I tried to explain this passage of logic to mysticism, especially in the articles I wrote at the time. It seems to me now that the end of the Tractatus cannot be totally explained by the logical argumentation that precedes it. Many of the aphorisms can in effect be found in the Notebooks that preceded the Tractatus, and they correspond to Wittgenstein's personal reflections, thereby betraying his spiritual anxiety. Often, I have had the opportunity to note, they correspond to themes of ancient philosophy, concerning, for example, life in the present. Indeed, it seems as though what Wittgenstein calls mysticism has a relation to the world, that the mystical is the existence of the world. He adds, "The sentiment of the world as a limited whole is mysticism" after having written this enigmatic sentence: "The vision of the world sub specie aeterni is the vision of the world as a limited whole."6 In short, it is a question of an affective experience of the world, seen, as it were, from above. It is the wonder in front of the fact that the world exists, this wonder before the existence of the world, that Wittgenstein called his exemplary experience. Here again, as in Plato, it is thus in lived experience that philosophy finds its completion.

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A.D.: YOu told me one day that you continue to prefer the Wittgenstein ofthe Tractatus to the Wittgenstein ofthe Philosophical Investigations, but you have also written a text on the Investigations: "[euxde langage etphilosophie" [Language gamesandphilosophy], in whichyou usethe idea oflanguage gamesas a frame for the historyofphilosophy. First, one must try to understand what a language game is. For Wittgenstein, it is basically the activity, the situation, that gives meaning to what one says. It is the concrete context in which a sentence is uttered. In this article, thinking of Sartre, I had given the example of the formula "God is dead." On the one hand, I said, in antiquity there were processions in which one said, if not perhaps "God is dead," then at least "the Great Pan is dead," and obviously it was simply a religious allusion to myth; it was a language game that was attached to a rite, to a religious ceremony. On the other hand, there is the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre landing at the Geneva or some other airport and, in response to the bevy of journalists surrounding him and asking whether he had a statement to make, saying, "God is dead." At that moment, it was a language game in two respects: first, because it was an allusion to Nietzsche; second, because _it was also a way of playing a bit of comedy, of giving the impression of being the profound, even prophetic, philosopher. Here one had the opposition of two language games. Obviously there are many other language games; for example, to say "I am hurting." Philosophers have a tendency to represent language as an activity of naming or designating objects, of translating thoughts; but for Wittgenstein, when I say, "I am hurting" at the moment of my suffering, I am not expressing my suffering, which is incommunicable; I am rather playing a language game. I am calling for help or for commiseration in a certain social context. It is an idea that had guided all my works. When one is in the presence of a text, or an utterance, it is not sufficient to take this text or this utterance in the absolute, as though it had not been uttered by someone in particular under particular circumstances, on a particular day, during a particular period and in a determinate context. This is a weakness of religious fundamentalists, and is in fact shared by many historians of philosophy or by philosophers who conduct themselves as fundamentalists. They approach a text as though it was the word of the gospel, as though God had pronounced it, and cannot be restituted in space and time. On the contrary, the historical and

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psychological perspective is very important in the history of philosophy, because it is always a question of re-placing the claims of philosophers into the social, historical, traditional, and psychological context in which they were written. And one must take into account the fact that a philosophical phrase does not necessarily express a group of concepts but can have only, for example, a mythical value, as happens sometimes in Plato. If I recall; correctly, it was also in relation to language games that I had the idea that philosophy is also a spiritual exercise because, ultimately, spiritual e:x:ercises are frequently language games. It is a matter of telling oneself a phrase to provoke an effect, whether in others or in oneself thus under certain circumstances and with a certain goal. Moreover, in the same context, Wittgenstein also used the expression "form of life." This also inspired me to understand philosophy as a form of life or way of life. The article you referred to, written under the influence of Wittgenstein, was a first attempt at reflecting on the role of language in our life. One might say that at that time and for a certain period, I was hypnotized by the problem of language, by the idea that we are, as it were, prisoners of language; that all our life was as though spoken. But I gradually told myself that one must not allow oneself to be locked into such a position, but quite simply accept the everyday experience that gives us the sentiment that our language aims at something, that it is intentional.

A.D.: When did youfirst meetMichel Foucault? The first time was on the telephone. I think he was the first to ask me if I would submit my candidature to College de France; it was the autumn of 1980. I did not meet him in person until I visited College de France as a candidate. It was an easy visit, because he was one of my supporters. Then he came to the reception I had organized for the day of my inaugural lecture. I also undoubtedly met him in the professor assemblies, and I ate with him once or twice. I did not have much contact with him, because he died prematurely shortly thereafter.

A.D.: But did you discuss ancientphilosophy with him? Not very much. During a meal he asked me about the meaning of the expression vindicare sibi in the first of Seneca's Letters to Lucilius. We especially discussed that.

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A.D.: Can you sum up your philosophical divergences with Foucault~ and especiallyyour criticism ofhis ideas on the culture ofthe self on the aesthetics ofexistence? It should first of all be said that our methods were very different. Foucault was certainly, at the same time as being a philosopher, a historian ofsocial facts and of ideas; but he did not practice philology, that is, all the problems tied to the tradition of ancient texts: the deciphering of manuscripts, the problem of critical editions, of the choice of textual variations. By editing and translating Marius Victorinus, Ambrose of Milan, the fragments of the commentary of the Parmenides, Marcus Aurelius, and some of Plotinus' treatises, I acquired a certain experience that allowed me to approach ancient texts from another perspective than he did. In particular, I have always attached myself to the attentive study of the movement of the author's thought. Foucault did not attribute much importance to the exactitude of translations, often using old, unreliable translations. My first divergence concerns the notion of pleasure. For Foucault, the ethics of the Greco-Roman world is an ethics of pleasure that one takes in oneself: This could be true for the Epicureans, who Foucault ultimately speaks of rather little. But the Stoics would have rejected this idea of an ethics of pleasure. They were careful to distinguish pleasure and joy: as opposed to pleasure, joy was found in the self (Ie moi), specifically in the best part of the self (moi). Seneca finds joy not in Seneca but in Seneca identified with universal reason. One elevates oneself from the level of the self to another, transcendent level. Moreover, in his descriptions of what he calls the practices of the self: Foucault does not sufficiently valorize the process of becoming aware of belonging to the cosmic Whole, a process that also corresponds to an overcoming of oneself Finally, I do not think that the ethical model adapted to modern man can be an aesthetics of existence. I am worried that this may ultimately be no more than a new form of dandyism. A.D.: YOu often speak ofthe necessity to elevate oneselfto a universal perspective, but this should not be confused with Kant's idea ofthe universal law, which always prescribes the same actions for every reasonable being. How do you explain this notion ofa universalperspective?

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This universal perspective would correspond rather well to what I have called "the look from above" (Ie regard den haut). For example, in the Republic, Plato praises the natural philosopher by saying that the one who is naturally a philosopher contemplates the totality of reality; he does not fear death, thus he puts himself at a level, at a height, from which he can see all of the universe, all of humanity. He sees things not at his individual level but at a universal level. With the Stoics there is an analogous movement, first because, very clearly with Epicretus and Marcus Aurelius, one sees the point of Nature with a capital N, of universal Nature, which is universal reason. One situates events in the perspective of what they bring to the universe, of the collaboration that we give to the balance and harmony of the universe. This is what I also called the "physical definition of objects"; objects that attract us or scare us must be seen, not according to our personal point of view, but once again in a universal perspective, in a totally objective manner. This is also true for Plotinus, for whom the soul must elevate itself from its individual level to the level of the universal soul or even of the divine Intellect, in whom the entire ideal system of the universe is found. For me, what counts is above all the effort to pass from one perspective to another. I have always rather liked the saying of a Chinese philosopher who holds that we are like vinegar flies trapped in a vat; one must get out of this confinement to breathe fresh air in the world. Our conduct is not automatically dictated by a sort of abstract universalism, but what is important in each case is to liberate ourselves from our blinders, if you will, which limit our vision to our interest alone. It is a matter of putting oneself in the place of others and trying to align our action with humanity-with the humanity of other humans and then abstract humanity, as well as with the world. This orientation aims less to determine what we can bring to the cosmos than to situate events in this broad perspective. It is a very traditional and capital theme that can be summarized as follows: the earth itself is only a point; we are something microscopic in the immensity. Is this attitude that consists of situating our vision in a universal perspective different than the universal law Kant speaks of when he says, for example, "Act in such a way that the law that guides you can be a universallaw of nature"? I would tend to think that this is fundamentally not

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very different. In Kant's formulation, one precisely situates oneself in the universal perspective of nature. One thus passes from a self that sees only its own interest to a self open to other humans and to the universe. Such a maxim does not fix a precise behavior, but invites one to act so that one can take into account all the consequences of one's action for everything that is other. It is a law that ope gives to oneself

A.D.: It is especially the effort ofself 0 vercoming that counts for you; does this not mean that there exists a world oftranscendent, absolute values, always established, which directs each action? Here we are in the presence of an immense and very complex problem, which it is perhaps not reasonable to treat in a few words. I will attempt to do so nonetheless. First of all, i would say this: even ifone admits an order of transcendent and' absolute values, it does not mean that this order directs every action, because most of the time in life, when it is a matter of choosing an action, we have not necessarily to opt for or against a value, but to invent what is often a very difficult solution to a conflict of duties, and thus of values. The typical example is the debate between Benjamin Constant and Kant: is it possible to be outside of humanity? In every action we do not have to apply a fixed rule once and for all, but we have to make our personal decision as a function of the value that appears to be most important in the present case. There remains the problem of the existence of a transcendent, absolute, eternal world of values. Two questions present themselves: on one hand, the existence of the world of values; on the other, its permanence. I do not wish to let myselfbe pulled into a metaphysical, abstract, and theoretical argument on the philosophy of values. Personally, I would speak not of a world of values but of a transcendent value that aims at the good of man. This absolute value is the one Socrates aims for when, without considering his personal interest, he refuses to escape from his prison and instead chooses to obey the laws of the city. 1n principle, nothing obliges him to take these laws of the city into consideration. But he obliges himself by occupying a point of view that surpasses his personal interest. Nor is it a question of conforming to laws blindly, but on the contrary, of showing that one can freely give oneself the obligation to obey laws. I still remain with Kant: morality creates itself in the unexpected and, in a sense, heroic

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leap that brings us from a limited perspective to a universal perspective. "Act only on the maxim that can at the same time be willed as a universal maxim." Absolute value situates itself at the level of an elevation of self: of the self capable of putting itself in the place of others, of purifying its intention, that is, of acting in a disinterested manner, out of love or out of duty. This is the absolute value that then manifests itself in the multiple' values that man formulates little by little throughout the ages but that are implicitly contained in the adhesion to this absolute value. It was discovered only very slowly that slavery was a crime against the respect of the human person, and I wonder whether in our day we have really become conscious of it when we consider the exploitation of man by man in our well-meaning civilizations. Before we were able to discover it fully, the respect of the human person was not less "valid." It was a value, but one that had not been brought entirely into awareness yet was still taken into consideration by certain philosophers, such as Seneca, who wrote, for example, that man is a sacred thing for man. Christianity, for example, did not put an end to slavery and had not forbidden it at the moment of the slave trade. Whatever the case may be, it seems to me that seeing things in a universal perspective necessarily leads to recognizing certain permanent values: respect for the human person, respect for life, respect for the gift of language, to mention only a few. There can obviously be an evolution in the intensity of the awareness that one can have of these values. For example, we are more sensitive now in our respect for life and nature, because of the recent catastrophes that have occurred.

A. D.: If one was interested in philosophy as a way oflife and askedyou where to begin in order to deepen one's comprehension ofthis idea, what text wouldyou recommend? If it is a text of ancient philosophy, it is very difficult to recommend one that would be easily understandable without a commentary. I think that Epicurus' Letter to Menoeceus would perhaps be the simplest text. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations or Epictetus' Handbook would also help one to understand this conception of philosophy, but these texts nevertheless need commentary. As for modern philosophy, I am very fond of Merleau-

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Ponty's inaugural lecture at College de France entitled Eloge de la philosophie [In praise of philosophy], which gives one a glimpse ofa conception of philosophy as a way of life. I also appreciated Louis Lavelle's book L'Erreur de Narcisse [The Error ofNarcissus], because each of the short meditations that form this work is an invitation to practice a spiritual exercise, which gradually leads the reader to "this present in which the summit of our conscience is found" and to becoming aware of "pure presence."

A.D.: To see philosophy asa way oflife and not onlya coherent system of concepts andpropositions has many consequences for the relationship between philosophy and the otherliteraryandartisticdisciplines. A novel, a poem, even apainting or music, can represent a way oflife and sometimes provokea transformation in our way ofliving. In this light,philosophy asa discipline does not insulate itself but opens itselfto all the descriptions ofour ways ofliving. Does this imply that we must rethink the borders ofphilosophy? I would say that art can be a powerful auxiliary to philosophy, but it can never be life itself: the decision, the existential choice. The idea of a suppression of the limits between literature and philosophy was very much in style at the time of existentialism, but I believe it was already present in English or German Romanticism. Jean Wahl, for example, speaking of the relationship between poetry and metaphysics, defined romanticism as the rebirth of amazement; it makes familiar things strange, he said, and strange things familiar? He also added that art, for Bergson, was the power to lift the veil that habit weaves between us and things. Here one finds the theme of the article we discussed by Carlo Ginzburg: to make things strange. This is why in a general way we can say that art, poetry, literature, painting, or even music can be a spiritual exercise. The best example is Proust's In Search ofLost Time, because his search for lost time is an itinerary of consciousness, which, thanks to the exercises of memory, discovers the sentiment of its spiritual permanence. This is very Bergsonian. Without being, let us say, itinerants of the soul, many novels pose philosophical problems, for example, Sartre's novels, especially La nausee [Nausea], or Albert Camus' La Peste [The Plague]. The novel is often a description of an existential experience that the reader can redo herself: at least in thought. I am thinking, for example, of some ofTolstoy's works-

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among others, The Death ofIvan Ilych, which is a reflection on death-or some of Dostoyevsky's novels-for example, The Brothers Karamazov. There are, in addition, the dramatic pieces, also in style at the time of existentialism. I would emphasize the importance of Jean-Paul Sartre's drama, and of his screenplay for the film Lesjeux sontfaits [The chips are down], All his plays have a real, dramatic value and a philosophical value that is more striking than a treatise. One can also speak of poetry. I am thinking above all of that Far East form of poetry, the haiku, which seems insignificant. An apparently banal moment of existence is described in it-a butterfly who poses himself on a flower, for example-but it has a philosophical depth because it suggests everything it does not- say-that is, all the splendor of the world. In Western literature there is also an entire tradition of philosophical poetry, especially among the British, I believe. First there were the British Platonists, and then the British Romantics-Shelley and Wordsworth-often cited, among many others, by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, for their representation of nature. Jean Wahl went to the trouble of translating The Poems ofFelicity, by Thomas Traherne, a poet of wonder who spoke, for example, of his co-presence with things. In the world closer to us there are two great philosophical poets, Rilke and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Concerning Rilke, as I said earlier, I had envisaged a study of the relations between his poetry and Heidegger's philosophy. It would have maintained that Rilke's poetry is fundamentally an expression of the philosophy of Heidegger. In any case, there is a meditation on death, on existence, on objects, on the limits of language as well. For example, in Sonnets to Orpheus he speaks of fruit, which are at first only words; then, when one eats fruit, the word disappears but the inexpressible sensation arises, which gives a presentiment of the whole universe." In Hugo von Hofmannsthal, one can think of the "Ballade des dusseren Lebens" [Ballad of the outer life] and the famous letter to Lord Chandos, which is quite unique in the history of literature. Here one finds precisely the presence of things felt in such an intense manner that one can no longer speak of them, and this is more or less what I was saying about the fruit. But one must always take stock of the limits of literature. It is finally discourse, at times even, in a certain sense, a system, because of the

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requirements of literary composition. It is thus very close to philosophical discourse. If it can at times be a spiritual exercise, most of the time it can only be an expression of experience, which means that it is not experience itself it is not philosophical life, it is not the manifestation of an existential decision. Moreover, it risks lacking true sincerity. One can have the tendency to cheat for formal or personal reasons. At the time of existentialism, the literary critic Claude-Edmonde Magny had written Les Sandales d'Empedocle: Essai sur la limite de la literature [Empedocles' sandals: Essays on the limits of literature], which I have often read and reread," It shows that literature, like Empedocles' sandals left at the foot of Mount Etna, could only bear witness to a step in the spiritual development of man, an aid for inner progress. But the book finally had to be thrown away, which Gide recommended to the readers of his Nourritures terrestres [Fruits ofthe Earth], or Wittgenstein at the end of his Tractatus.

A.D.: You have also cited Cezanne and Paul Klee as examplesofpainting connectedto spiritual exercises. Yes. I had forgotten these artists. In Klee it is perhaps somewhat abstract. In any case, he thinks that the artist can rediscover the way that nature acts. In Cezanne, allusions to a sort of experience of the world are sometimes expressed in his painting. I do not think it was an accident, moreover, that Bergson took the example of painting to indicate the character of the change that results from his philosophy, because ultimately painting requires a movement of stripping away habits and prejudices, and a natural will to grasp things in a, one might say, "natural" way of really remaining at the level of naked reality. I have also recently discovered, thanks to my colleague Jacques Gernet, all the philosophical significance of Chinese painting, notably in Shi Tao, who shows how painting is communication with nature, in a movement that espouses the creative method of the latter.'? One must also mention music, at least the music of certain musicians, such as Beethoven. I have already alluded to the work of Elisabeth Brisson, Le Sacre du musicien: La reference a l'Antiquite chez Beethoven [The reference to antiquity in Beethoven], which shows how Beethoven considered his art to be a mission-that of favoring humanity's accession

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to the universe of joy, to assent of the world, and to the harmony of the universe. I I

A.D.: In your opinion, what is the relationship between the history of philosophy andphilosophy itself?At the end ofyourpreface to the Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques [Dictionary ofphilosophers], you spoke ofthe philosopher who must always remainaliveashistorian ofphilosophy. How doyou understandthis relationship? I would begin, before answering you, by developing a few reflections on the history of philosophy. I would say first of all that one always speaks of the history of philosophy in the singular, but in fact one rarely writes the history of philosophy itself: I think, but I may perhaps be mistaken, that Hegel was the only philosopher to do the history of the becoming of 'philosophy, and the movement he describes confounds itself with his own philosophy. Perhaps one must also add August Comte. Concretely, historians of philosophy study philosophies and philosophical works. Personally, I tend to study philosophical works rather than philosophies, because I have doubts about the possibility of reconstructing with exactitude bodies of philosophical doctrine or systems. We can study only the structure of works and their finality, what the philosopher meant to say in a given determinate work. To take the example of a modern philosopher, such as Bergson, it is impossible to discover an absolutely perfect coherence among his different writings. When I say that the philosopher must always remain alive in the historian, I mean especially that, in each work of a philosopher, one must attempt to relive the author's philosophical reasoning as a whole, both the movement of thought and, if possible, all the intentions of the author. The study of this reasoning makes possible the recognition of the two poles of philosophical activity: discourse and choice of life. This may seem to be a paradoxical situation, but the main problem that poses itself to the philosopher is ultimately to know what it is to do philosophy. It is a constantly renewed question that the philosopher can ask in the reading of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Spinoza, or Kant. The history of philosophy then procures him a vast field of experiences in which to orient his thought and his life.

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A.D.: Recently you have begun to be interested in the philosophy ofother cultures, especially Chinese philosophy) and this isperhaps tied to the idea that there is something like universal philosophical attitudes-attitudes that can befound even in a culture such as Chinese culture and that also represent, in another context, what can also befound in Western antiquity. I have been reticent for a long time with regard to comparativism (for example, on the subject of the relationship between Plotinus and the Orient). Now I have changed my mind somewhat, by observing undeniable analogies between Chinese thought and Greek philosophy. I have spoken about the attitude of indifference toward things, a sort of Stoic attitude; one could also add the notion of instant illumination. I explain to myself these analogies, not in terms of historical relations but in the fact that analogous spiritual attitudes can be found in different cultures. At times I have also found phrases in Chinese thought that seemed more enlightening than anything that can be found in Greek thought-for example, to describe the unconscious situation in which we live, the image of the frog at the bottom of the pit, or of the vinegar fly at the bottom of the vat, "ignoring the universe in its grandiose wholeness,' as TchouangTseu says.'? But I cannot speak as a specialist of Chinese thought.

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Jeannie earlier: There are booksfrom which one emerges as a different person than one was when one opened them. I think this is the casefor three of your books: Spiritual Exercises and Ancient Philosophy [Exercicesspirituels et philosophic antique], What Is Ancient Philosophy? and especiallyThe Inner Citadel. I have taken weeks to reread them and have seen my way ofseeing things change subtly, on tiny points, it is true-a critical viewpoint on my judgments, or a more vigorous awareness ofthe present instant. There are really~ it seems to me, books that oblige one to take into consideration the famous statement by Socrates: an unexamined life is not worth living. I will nevertheless play the devils advocate-a naive and somewhat ignorant devil-by telling you that in reading your books ofancient philosophy, one is extremely seduced, indeed, even changed, but there are things that people today, ordinary people, must tell themselves: no, I cannot, I do not accept this.

First of all, I salute the devil's advocate. I heard that he is no longer a part of the canonization process. Perhaps this explains why certain contestable characters have been canonized. But having said this, to lighten things up somewhat, I would like to begin by making another remark. You say people today, ordinary people, must say no, I cannot, I do not accept this. But who, exactly, are these people today, these ordinary people? At any given time there is no single collective mentality. Collective mentalities belong to different social groups. For example, there are social groups and milieus that are resolutely racist. They say no, I cannot, I do

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not accept-s-such as the time around 1950 when a furious woman hurled insults at me because I had dared to say that blacks were just as respectable as whites. Before saying I cannot, I do not accept, I must ask myself in the name of what I cannot or do not accept. Is it because my social group imposes this way of seeing things? Or is it rather because, having thought about it thoroughly, my philosophical commitments do not allow me to think in this way? Is it because religion forbids it? Or it is because science has shown it to be impossible? Is it because it is in fashion at the moment? Is it because my favorite newspaper or the television said the opposite? Finally, in the name of what can one say that I cannot, I do not, accept, that everyone today, ordinary people do not accept it? These questions are nevertheless entirely worthwhile. If I have not spoken about them in my books, it is because I already had enough to do in presenting the themes of ancient philosophy. Perhaps you think that I am not inclined to talk about it now. It is true that I do not like to get very involved in this discussion. Not that it bothers me to answer your questions. As my studies for a certificate in metalworking-that I so brilliantly passed!-show, one always manages to find a way out when it comes to discussing, and this is precisely what does not please me. For it is one of the problems with the literary genre of the interview: it is the problem of the seriousness, of the validity of the discussion, when it is improvised and leaves little time for reflection. In the interviews that some of my eminent colleagues have given, I have noticed that in speech they let themselves be pulled into approximations, even caricatured presentations, when it was a question precisely of the reception of ancient philosophy by our contemporaries. I would not like to fall into the same trap. How many massive and inaccurate assertions have been thrust forward in this manner with tranquil assurance? Notably, historians have been at the edge of the decisive turning point, of the radial innovation that characterizes the modern period, since the Renaissance. The number of types of blindness and ignorance that have been attributed to the Greeks on this occasion ~s rather amazing. They would have been ignorant of linear time, progress, the idea of an infinite world, or they were not aware of the opposition between high and low; they would never have dared climb a mountain! I would thus prefer to be able to respond to your questions in the context of a reflective and documented book, for we are in the presence of

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extremely complex problems, related both to the collective mentalities of the ancients and to the collective mentalities of our contemporaries. But let us discuss nonetheless.

J c.: Throughout these interviews, and in different works, you give the impression that you believe ancient philosophy has something to teach modern man, to have meaningfor him, and to help him guide his conduct. But why this detour? Would it not be better to try to invent solutions to problems that pose themselves to us in this, the beginning ofthe twenty-first century, and that are all new? I would answer first by saying that I am not the only one to take this detour. To begin with the example of a modern thinker, the attitude is already in Nietzsche when he writes, "The Greeks make it easier for modern man to communicate many difficult things and give us matter for reflection."} One might object that Nietzsche was thinking of the epoch of Greek tragedy, or of Heraclitus rather than Epicrerus or Plotinus, but it remains, as I have already said in these interviews, that he considered the schools of Greek philosophy to be an experimental laboratory from which we can still benefit. It must also be said that it is a fact that the twentieth century has operated, in the most varied of forms, a vast return to the Greeks, from Heidegger to Foucault. Why this detour? I would say that, for my part, it is a matter of what Kierkegaard called the method of indirect communication. If one says directly, do this or do that, one dictates a conduct with a tone of false certainty. But thanks to the description of the. spiritual exercises lived by another, one can give a glimpse of and suggest a spiritual attitude; one allows a call to be heard that the reader has the freedom to accept or to refuse. It is up to the reader to decide. One is free to believe or not to believe, to act or not to act. If I judge on the basis of the numerous letters I have received, written by very different people, from France, Germany, and the United States, telling me that my books have helped them spirituallysomeone even wrote to me, "You have changed my life"-I think that the method is good, and I have always been able to respond to these people, with reason, that it is not me but the ancient philosophers who brought them this help;

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It is true that one often says our task is to invent solutions for problems that pose themselves to us today. But while waiting for the creative genius we would need to appear, in this beginning of the twenty-first century, everyone must do what they are capable of: and for my part, I try to be, like Michelet, "the link of time," to ensure that "this vital chain that from the dead past appears to make the sap circulate toward the future,'?

J C.: In short, you are suggesting that your books are not only works of erudition but also, in an indirect way, "protreptics," as the ancients would say.3 Because I am going to raise criticisms againstphilosophy as a way oflife, I will begin with a captatio benevolentiae by citingyour dear Goethe. Faust says, "Two souls cohabitate in me, and onewantsto undo itselffrom the other. The onegrabs holdofthe worldwith everyoneofits organs, the otherwantsto flee the darkness. " This is totally Christian, as wellas totally Platonic. I would like you to specify something about whichyou have said little in your books. One ofthefirst ancient principles that markedyou in your youth is "tophilosophize is to learn to die. "In the Greeks, especially the Platonists-actually, it is Parmenides who began by saying that what is good is what does not change-one finds this strong opposition between this world and the other world, the body and the soul, the sensible and the intelligible. All Platonism is impregnated by the will to be elsewhere; there is Tbeaetetus'famous "from the here-below toward the there-after to escape as quickly as possible;" and in the Phaedo, everything is about separating oneselffrom the body. I think we would no longer quite accept this. Saturated by twenty centuries of "my kingdom is not ofthis world,"wefeel like saying, my life is here because it is not elsewhere, and the body is not the source ofall evil. Do you not slightly modify the meaning of "to escape the world, to detach oneselffrom the body" in Plato bypulling them a little toward Stoicism, by giving them a meaning that is acceptable today? But after all, why not? Here you allude to my interpretation of the Platonic formula: to philosophize is an exercise in dying. I said in Exercices spirituels etphilosophie antique [Spiritual exercises and ancient philosophy} that this formula of the Phaedo could be interpreted as a change in the way things were looked at. For a vision dominated by the needs of the body and the individual and egoistical passions is substituted a representation of the world governed by the universality of thought and reason. One thinks here of

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the passage from the Republic in which the philosopher appears as the one who will contemplate the totality of time and being.' And in the Pbaedo, the problem is clearly situated at the level of knowledge-knowledge of the senses can mislead the reasoning of the soul." One can obviously question the value of this refusal of knowledge of the senses, but what interests us here is the mode of life and the meaning of the spiritual exercise of death, which it seems to me, in Plato and in all the philosophical schools, consists in a change in the vision of things, a passage from the individual and the passionate to the rational and universal perspective. The exercise of death is in fact an exercise of life. I completely agree with you to the extent that for our contemporaries this devalorizing of the sensible in favor of the intelligible is difficult to accept. I suggested this at the end of my little book on Plotinus, but I think it was already difficult for Plato's contemporaries to accept. As Plato says in the Pbaedo, his contemporaries laughed at the philosophers of Plato's school, whom they called moribund, precisely because these philosophers criticized the body and the sensible world. To return to the devalorizing of the sensible, one certainly has the right to prefer, as I do, philosophers who give a central role to perception, such as Bergson or Merleau-Ponty,

J C.: This interpretation ofthefamous PLatonic maxim "tophilosophize is an exercise in dying" wouLd thusfit very weLL with Stoicism, andyou could, for that matter, arguefor it with a number ofStoic texts. Now it seems to me that this way ofconceiving the "exercise in death" or "flee the body" is entirely acceptable for us. In your Exercices spirituels [Spiritual exercises), to exercise at dying is in no way to torture one's body; it is "to exercise at being dead to one's individuality, to ones passions, to see things from the perspective of universaLity and objectivity. ''1 this is, after aLL, rather different than what one beLieves when one reads Plato superficially. It can be accepted today to the extent that, with the Greek, especially the Stoicphilosophers, it is accepted that one must aLways see things from the universal point of view. The refusal of the body wouLd then be a refusalofthe minuscule objectthat one is with one's body, and a return to the universal, to the One? Perhaps it is not even a refusal, but the process of becoming aware that one is merely a minuscule object and that there are things that are

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much more important, values that are, as it were, absolute. But this does not imply repulsion with respect to the flesh.

J c.:

But is there really not repulsion with respect to the body and the pleasures it allows? Does Epictetus himselfnot speak ofthe body as a cadaver?

This repulsion exists neither in the Cynics, who after all practice a rigorous ascetic, nor in the Aristotelians, who are content to modify their passions, nor in the Ancient Stoics, who would have wanted the sage to be absolutely without passion, nor in the Epicureans, who gave themselves over to an ascetics of the desires. One might believe that this repulsion appears in the late Stoics, such as Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius. But in these two philosophers one must also relate the part of the formula that aims to shock as a means to correct a distortion of the spirit. It is a question, I think, of simply reminding man that he is mortal, Moreover, simultaneously, in practical life, in their way of life, these Stoics-Marcus Aurelius, for example-did not hesitate to allow themselves pleasures. After having mourned his wife, Faustine, Marcus Aurelius took another woman without marrying her. Apparently he admitted the legitimacy of pleasure. Things begin to change with Neoplatonism in the third century of our era. Plotinus was ashamed of having a body, his biographer tells us. One must say that, for him, the fact of having a body signified that he was a soul who had not been able to remain in the spiritual world and was guilty, in a certain sense, of a fault. And Porphyry cannot admit the Christian idea of the incarnation of God, because, having become man, God was stained by blood, bile, and worse yet. But obviously there is a contrast here between God's spirituality and the materiality of the body. Let us also add that if Marcus Aurelius repeats Epictetus' formula, "the body is a cadaver," he does not deprive himself of admiring "the maturity and the flowering of the aged woman or man, and the likeable charm of little children."B

]. C.: This opposition between, on the one hand, a refusal ofthe body and the sensible, material world and, on the other hand, the admiration, at least,for this sensible world is often found in the same thinkers and in the same places. In Plato there are texts that say the world is as beautiful as possible. One finds these ideas in Christianity: my kingdom is not ofthis world, but the

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skyand the earthsingtheglory ofGod the creator. Father Festugiere effectively shows this contradiction in relation to hermeticism; he even said, hermeticism is not a religion, for it is impossible for a religion to rest onprinciples as completely opposed as the world isgood, theflesh is acceptable, and the world is evil, theflesh must be banished absolutely. Goethe's darkness made me think ofGnosticism, which isa sortofpassage at the limit to the attitude that refuses this world and this body, this world created by an evil god, this body that belongs to the darkness. How doyou react to this contradiction? It does not surprise me that there are rather contradictory positions in the ancient philosophers. For precisely, these are not systems. They develop their reasoning by beginning with successively different problematics, Whe.n one situates oneself within the problematic of the world, at this moment, one has the atmosphere of the Timaeus; the sensible world is beautiful, even though in the Timaeus there is the whole development of the shock of the soul meeting matter, completely disoriented, and needing to be reeducated. But it is nevertheless quite coherent. When one situates oneself within the problematic of individual ethics, one has the Phaedo; the body appears as a danger to knowledge and virtue. In the Stoics, at least the late Stoics, there is also this contradiction, as we have just seen. Furthermore, it is not useless to recall that Greek civilization was not the enemy of the body; it was the civilization of the Olympic games, of gymnastics, of thermae [bathhouses]. Everyone took particular care of their bodies. If for certain philosophers the body was a source of passions, it did not stop them from going to the bathhouses and taking physical exercise there.

J c.: When we superficial readers of Plato read in his dialogues the contemptfor the body, the refusal ofthe body, are we not influenced by what the Christians did with it, despite the doctrine ofthe resurrection ofthe body? After all, it was not Plato whoflagellated himselfand lived on a post. What doyou think? Was it not the Christians whopulled this to the sideofextreme macerations? All the Platonists did wasabstain from eatingmeat. It seems to me, but it will have to be verified, that the evangelical message itself in no way contains this sort of macerations. Moreover, the Pharisees said of Christ, he eats and drinks with everyone. But two things

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happened: on the one hand, the Christians, wanting Christianity to seem like a philosophy, adopted Platonic philosophy in general, tainted at times by Stoicism, because it was practically the only philosophy that was still very powerful in the first centuries of our era. Thus they accepted the Platonists' refusal of the body, and this oriented Christianity in the direction of an intellectualist metaphysics that was in no way implied in the gospel. On the other hand, the meditation on the suffering and death of Christ added itself to this. Christians believed themselves to be obliged to suffer what Christ had suffered at a moment in his life. It is Pascal's famous formula: Christ will be in agony until the end of the world; one must not sleep during this time. The difference between Christian spiritual exercises and philosophical spiritual exercises is precisely that in the former the person Christ is introduced, the imitation of Christ. Thus the imitation of the passion of Christ suffering is introduced, which leads to Hagellations and other mortifications. But one must also consider the following nuance: the ascetic champions, such as the monks of the desert, cultivated the exercise especially to arrive, like the philosophers, at total indifference and the total absence of passions, as well as to perfect tranquility of the soul. Finally, I think it was Neoplatonism and not Christianity that provoked greater contempt for the body in the interpretation of Plato.

J C.:

You have written a superb book on Marcus Aurelius, calledThe Inner Citadel. This is a very beautiful title, borrowed in fact from Marcus Aurelius himself a title that alludes to a constant in Greek philosophy, regardless ofthe other theories ofthe philosophers: one must build a citadel around oneself one must not allow oneselfto be troubled by anything. The Stoic position, as well as the Platonic position, is simple and extremely coherent: for the sage there is no other ill than to commit a moral offense, which depends on one's choice. All the rest, which does not depend on one's choice-sickness, poverty, death-is not an evil and should not trouble the serenity ofthe soul; thus, as Spinoza will say, happiness is not the consequenceofvirtue, but virtue itself There are admirable texts, for example, when Socrates says, "They can put me to death, they cannot bother me"; and history, not only ancient history, regurgitates examples oflived Stoicism. But at the same time-not in what you say but in what the Stoics say-there are things that make one'shair stand on end. For example, when Epictetus says-and this is in sum a passageto the universal, an overcoming ofindividuality-your slave breaks a vase, you are

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furious; your more objective neighbor tells you, vases get broken, it happens? To this point we say yes~ Epictetus and the neighbor are right that vases getting broken is in the order ofthings. But Epictetus pursues his example: your child dies, you suffer, you have a troubled soul; this is not good becauseyour brother, for hispart, tells himse/fi children, they die. Worse, Epictetus says, you can show compassion to a friend, but do not yourselfsuffer from compassion. At this point we absolutely refuse the idea that we could accept these things without difficulty. The price to pay for becoming invulnerable, which would be to not love people, is too high. First, recall a principle that I believe I posed rather clearly: to consider that philosophy is a mode of life, as the Greek philosophers thought, does not mean that one must accept all the attitudes and especially all the assertions of ancient philosophers with servility. Nietzsche was right when he said that these attitudes are experiences as experiments. As such, there can be both success and failure in them. They can show what it would be good to do, but also what it would be good to avoid. Having said this, in my commentary on Epictetus' Handbook I myself have pointed out what might be shocking for us in the formulas that Epictetus employs. But as I have said in this commentary, the Handbook is a summary for students, and in Epictetus' Conversations one finds his thought completely developed. He says, Socrates sincerely loved children, but he also accepted the order of the world, the will of the gods. First of all, the Stoic is not a miraculously insensible being. If the Stoic is struck with the death of his child or someone else who is close to him, he will first feel a shock and will be deeply troubled. Epicrerus and the other Stoics say it repeatedly. These are involuntary movements. But afterward the Stoic will have to take hold of himself not only in the goal of not suffering or of not being troubled. Seneca also said that there would be no merit in valiantly supporting what one cannot feel." No, if he takes hold of himself: it is because he believes that one must say yes to the world in all its reality, even if it is atrocious. This yes to the world is admired in Nietzsche; why would it not be admired in the Stoics? This does not signify that, to be invulnerable, one must not love people. The goal of Stoicism, let us say it again, is not to avoid suffering. Moreover, in the eyes of the Stoics, pity and compassion are irrational passions. But one must understand that when they speak of passions

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they are thinking not of a vague sentiment but of a profound upheaval of the intelligence, of insanity (deraison). This insanity is situated not in the involuntary affective shock undergone in the face of an event, but in the false judgment that one passes on the event. For the Stoics, the passions are false judgments. When they speak of pity as a passion, they are thus thinking of people for whom passion makes them lose their head and who become incapable of acting, of saving those who suffer, such as the surgeon who out of pity would not dare operate on the sick man for fear of hurting him. However, the Stoic admits a pity, which in a certain sense is not a passion. Marcus Aurelius says that one must undergo a sort of pity for those who do evil, because they do not know what they are doing." In this case, this "sort of pity" is not a passion that would disrupt the soul, but an absence of anger; better yet, he says it himself: it is an indulgence, a softness, a patience, a kindness, much more efficient than passion-pity. These virtues imply respect of the other, whereas passion-pity implies contempt for the other. One thinks that he is not capable of supporting a suffering or a difficulty. When Epictetus says that one must show compassion to a friend without undergoing it himself: he means that one must not allow oneself to be pulled into passion-pity, which disrupts the soul and obscures reason. Thus, what Epictetus means is that one must not lose one's head with the one who is suffering, but really help him to surmount his suffering. In our day, when a catastrophe happens, we send psychologists to help the victims absorb the shock. These psychologists do not take themselves to be obliged to cry, to wring their arms, to scream like victims. They attempt to help without letting themselves be pulled into panic or despair. I think this is the perspective from which one must understand the Stoic critique of passion-pity. Moreover, the moderns have also questioned the value of the sentiment of pity. Georges Friedmann, inviting himself to practice spiritual exercises, writes, "Cast aside pity and hatred." Let us add that Marcus Aurelius cried-first, at the death of his preceptor. His entourage entreated him to restrain the visible marks of his affection. Then his adoptive father, the emperor Antonin, spoke these beautiful words: "Let-him be human. Neither philosophy nor imperial power suppress sentiments." But the emperor Julian reproached him later for having cried for his wife, Faustine, more than was reasonable, despite

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her misdemeanors. He also cried while listening to the speech of the rhetorician Aelius Aristide, sent to the emperor after the Smyrne earthquake to ask for his help in rebuilding the city. Here again the critics of our contemporaries resemble the critics of the contemporaries of the Stoics of antiquity, as Seneca witnesses: "I know that the Stoic school has a poor reputation among the ignorant, because they believe it to be insensible to excess't-s-to which Seneca answers, "No school has more love for humans and is more attentive to the good of all."12

J C.:

The Stoic attitude that we could certainly accept, and that we would even judge honorable, would consist in saying (1 am slightly skewing Marcus Aurelius), it is not a joy to losea child, but it is a joy to support the loss with courage.'? This is one way to interpret Stoicism. And is it not ultimately a quarrel over words? If one speaks ofphysical pain (Epicurus and Epictetus have, in this domain, given the example ofualiance), is there not the story of a philosopher who cries, Torment me, pain; you will riot make me admit that you are an evil. This is in effect the ambiguity ofStoicism: even if it hurts, it is not an evil. Everything is in the judgment.

One might think that it is a quarrel over words, which could be summarized as follows: What people call an evil is not an evil for the Stoics, for example, poverty, sickness, death. The only evil is moral evil. This is what is essential not only in Stoicism but for Socrates as well, who according to Plato had said, "For the good man, there is not evil possible, whether it be living or dead," given that the only evil is moral evil. The Stoic experience of life, the Stoic choice of life, would thus consist (1) in considering what one must desire absolutely as good and what one must reject absolutely as evil, and (2) in deciding that the moral good, the good will is the only thing that deserves to be desired absolutely, and that the evil will is the only thing that deserves to be rejected absolutely. On this point, Kant's theory of the good will is indeed the inheritor of Stoicism. The Stoic will has to confront death, if necessary, rather than renounce the supreme value of virtue and of the good will. It is a heroic decision, by Socrates and the Stoics, that runs against received ideas. The supreme value is the good intention, the good will. The death of Socrates can be understood in this perspective. Thereafter, the Stoics refused to call

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illness, death, or natural catastrophes pains; for them these things were neither good nor bad but indifferent, the consequences of the necessary course of events in the universe, which had to be accepted if they could not be remedied, and that became goods or evils according to our attitude toward them. But one can obviously admit other less heroic and more relaxed modes of philosophical life, such as Epicureanism.

]. C.: Can one not say that our desires themselves have changed? Wealth, power, and honors appear constantly in the Stoics and the Epicureans on lists ofthings not to desire. Now, today, there are certainly people who desire all this, but most ofour desires are much more modest. In the registers ofthe pilgrimage churches one reads, "Saint Virgin, do not let my parents get divorced. Let Patrick find a job. Let my little girl get well." An Epicurean may well say, these are natural desires that are not necessary, and his point of view is true, but this does not change the fact that we moderns consider them to be absolutely legitimate desires. I do not think that the fundamental desires of humans can change. The ruling or rich class seeks wealth, power, and honors, in antiquity just as in our day. All the misfortune of our actual civilization is in effect the exasperation of the desire for profit, in all the classes of society, for that matter, but especially in the ruling class. Common morals can have simpler desires: work, happiness at home, health. The invocations of the gods in antiquity were the same ones that are now made to the Virgin Mary. One asked the same things to soothsayers as we ask ofour horoscopes. It is not a question of the epoch. But when Epicurus distinguished natural and necessary desires, natural desires that are not necessary, and desires that are neither natural nor necessary, he did not want to enumerate alliegitimate desires and explain how they could be satisfied; he wanted to define a style of life, taking conclusions from his intuition, according to which the pleasure corresponds to the suppression of a suffering caused by the desire. There is an analogy with Buddhism, very much in fashion these days. To be happy one must thus maximally diminish the causes of suffering, that is, the desires. In this manner he wanted to heal the suffering of humans. He thus recommended renouncing desires that are very difficult to satisfy in order to attempt to be content with the desires that can more easily be

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satisfied-that is, finally and simply, the desire to eat, to drink, and to clothe oneself: Under an apparently down-to-earth aspect, there is something extraordinary in Epicureanism: the recognition of the fact that there is only one true pleasure, the pleasure of existing, and that to experience it one merely has to satisfy the desires that are natural and necessary for the existence of the body. The Epicurean experience is extremely instructive; ' it invites us, like Stoicism, to a total reversal of values.

J C.: Evidently the question of divine providence was not something capital, because the Epicureans did not believe in it at all, and Aristotle, for his part, thought that it did not descend lower than the moon. Nevertheless, it was very important for the Platonists, for the Stoics, and ofcoursefor the Christians, even if each schoolconceived ofthis providence differently. Philosophical providence and Christian providence are extremely different. The notion of providence appears in the Timaeus, when Plato says that the world is born of the reflective decision (pronoia) of the god." But this idea of a sort of divine reasoning is part of the myth of a fabricator god and merely signifies that there is a divine intelligence at the origin of the universe, Similarly, in the Stoics, one must represent providence not as a divine will interested in all the particular cases, but as an original impulse that instigates the movement of the universe and the links between cause and effect that constitute destiny. Plotinus, resisting the Gnostics, energetically refuses the notion that the world was created by reason and will. Finally, philosophical providence corresponds to a rational necessity, which is of the order of the world. On the Gontrary, the Hebrew God, taken up by Christianity, is a person who conducts the history of the world and of individuals according to his unpredictable will.

J C.: Can an order ofthe world be admitted today? I believe it is extremely difficult to answer that question, for science constantly evolves, and with it the philosophical opinions of scholars. For example, Einstein went into raptures over the laws of nature, supposing a transcending intellect, against an order of the world, corresponding to the order of thought. On this subject one might say, what is incomprehensible is that the world is comprehensible. Others reduce everything to chance,

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or to chance and necessity. For our purposes, as you yourself realized, the question of providence and of the order of the world is of rather little importance. Epicurus did not believe in it, and moreover the Stoic necessity is not ultimately very far from certain modern conceptions.

J C.: In effect, many ofour contemporaries have given

up believing in a god who would watch over everyone ofthe hairs on our head and who would decide at every moment what would happen on Earth and in heaven, and this allows us to avoid questioning ourselvesabout the immediate responsibility ofa just and good god, in earthquakes and in the massacre of innocent people. However, instructed by our scholars about the evolution ofthe Earth and ofhumans, we want to admit that there are natural regularities, such as earthquakes and even the death ofchildren, or recurrences in the behavior of humans. are thus very close to believing in a rational order as the ancients did-rational in that one can isolate regularities in it ("laws"), but not rational in that it would be programmed by a reason that is always just and good. This is where we differfrom the ancient, Stoic, and Platonicphilosophers, who said, before Leibniz, everything isfor the best in the best ofall possible worlds, or what happened is better, because it happened. Because it is a question of these "anthropological regularities," when they are criminal-injustices, massacres, provoked famines, the great misery ofa billion humans-we cannot joyfully collaborate in "the work ofthe Whole," to its cgoodand just government, " as the Stoics request. On the contrary, it seems that our first duty is to combat these regularities.

we

Here we encounter an example of the difficulty involved in discussing such a complex problem within the framework of a simple conversation. Let us leave aside the vast philosophical problem that would have to be treated independently: Do anthropological regularities, that is, war, misery, and the perversity of humans, belong to the order of the world? Let us speak only of what the Stoics could have thought of it. I could not explain the complex problem of the relations between human freedom and destiny in a few words. Let us repeat it again: the Stoics considered that the locus of evil was the will of humans. Thus, for them, what you call anthropological regularities do not belong to the order of the world, and thus, when they speak of collaborating in the world of the Whole, it signifies being able to recognize themselves as a part of the universe; that

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through one's existence one contributes one's part to the general movement of the universe. It is not that one should consent to everything that is a moral evil, such as injustice and the exploitation of humans by humans, but that one should combat it. Parenthetically, Marcus Aurelius runs into the problem, just as the Christians did later, without managing to resolve it, of the "necessary" evil of war. He does not hesitate to call a brigand, thus to call himself a brigand, the one who captures a Sarmatian (the people with whom he is at war)." Whatever the case may be, one must act in the service of the human community, one must oppose all the bad actions of humans. But if the action against evil fails, the Stoic is in this case obliged to recognize reality such as it is-let us say the massacre that was perpetrated. Then he must try to face this new situation in order to orient his action in another way. If he is absolutely reduced to powerlessness, he does not revolt uselessly against destiny, but believes that universal Nature and Reason, which here seem to suffer a failure, are capable of turning what obstructs their path to their favor.16 To believe this is to believe in the final triumph of reason in the world. Some of our contemporaries believed or still believe in this power of reason; others do not. It was undoubtedly the same in the time of Marcus Aurelius. I believe that you are wrong to identify Epictetus' formula, "Will that which happens as it happens,"? with formulas of the type, if it happened, it is that it was for the best. This is because, for the Stoics, what happens is neither good nor bad. It is something indifferent. It depends on the human will to give it its value, good or bad, according to the use that is made of it. Good and evil exist only in thought and in the will of humans, not in things. But with Epictetus' formula, once again one finds the cherne of consenting to the universe, under the hypothesis that we cannot change what works as an obstacle to the order of the world. You said that a modern could not joyfully consent, but Nietzsche said, "Not only to support the ineluctable . . . , but to love it."IB An attitude of this sort was therefore admitted by one of the masters of contemporary thought. Moreover, Bergson, who, if he is no longer in fashion, nevertheless influenced recent philosophy, wrote in La Pensee et le Mouvant [Thought and the moving], "To the great work of creation taking place under our eyes [for Bergson it is a creative evolution], we would feel ourselves participating, creators of

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ourselves." One is not very far from a "joyful collaboration in the work of the Whole."19

J c.:

With respect to this "inner citadel" that makes the sage invulnerable, is there not something that considerably distinguishes us from the ancients, namely, that we have completely lost the envy ofthe gods?Is there not an entire current in antiquity that is, in all kinds ofways, a sort ofrefusal ofthe human condition? I am speaking not ofthe mythological gods but ofthe god ofthe philosophers, who is totally shelteredfrom passions, who does not move, who is never angry, who does not suffer. You cite a good number oftexts that suggestthis, andfirst ofall the famous text from the Theaeretus, "Escaping is to make onese/fsimilar to God, as much as it is possible"; or Seneca, ~s God, [the sage] says: 'Everything is mine. s s» want no more ofthis. accept the human condition.

we

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This envy of the gods corresponds to the ideal of the sage. I have always been struck by Michelet's text that says, antiquity ends up finding its own god, the sage. It is true that, for many modern humans, this ideal of identification no longer makes sense; but it is easy to remove this, in a certain sense, mythological character from the ideal of wisdom. And I would precisely like to end this conversation with a few general considerations. It is obvious that modern humans do not have to accept all the metaphysical presuppositions or the mythological representations of Stoicism, or of Epicureanism, or of Cynicism. What I think is that essentially one should apply to philosophers the treatment that Bultmann wanted to apply to Christianity, that is, the demythologization, or the "dernythization" (demythisation) , the separation between, on the one hand, the essential core and, on the other, the gangue constituted by the collective representations of the day. Raymond Ruyer, in his book with the somewhat misleading title La Gnose de Princeton [The gnosis of Princeton], speaks of what I call spiritual exercises-he calls them "montages"-and says that Epicurean, Stoic montages are still valid, but what is no longer valid is the "ideological fog" that accompanied them. I believe that this remark is quite right. Ultimately what is interesting in the mode of spiritual exercises is that they can be practiced independently of the discourse that justifies or councils them. For example, the spiritual exercise of concentration on the present exists in the Epicureans and the

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Stoics, with slight differences, but for entirely different reasons. Thus I think that this spiritual exercise of concentration on the present moment has a value in itself: independently of the theories; I have practiced this exercise rather often, but this does not imply that I believe, as the Stoics did, in the eternal return, a doctrine that can be connected to this exercise. Moreover, at the beginning of this interview you spoke of people today who say, I cannot accept this. But I believe we have begun to see that, if they do say this, it is not because they are our contemporaries, for ordinary people in antiquity said exactly the same thing about Socrates or about Plato or the Stoics. Their criticism, their rejection, is concerned not especially with the theories but with the ethical and spiritual attitudes. But why do they say, I cannot accept this? Are they echoing modern prejudices that often have nothing modern in them? In every historical period there have been and there will be opposition between the customs and the conventions of everyday life and the mode of life of the philosophers, who scandalize nonphilosophers, or make them laugh.

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Jeannie earlier: Among the inner attitudes and the spiritual exercises of ancient philosophy, which ones do you prefer, and perhaps practice?

I would say that the theme that struck me the most is the meditation on death, because of my reading at the time of my youth, and thereafter because of my various surgeries (I have been anesthetized ten times or so). Not that 1 am obsessed by the thought of death. I have always been amazed, however, that the thought of death helps one to live better, to live as though one were living one's last day, one's last hour. An attitude such as this one requires a total conversion of attention. To no longer project oneself into the future, but to consider one's action in itself and for itself: to no longer consider the world to be the simple frame of our action, but to look at it in itself and for itself-this attitude has both an existential and an ethical value. It allows one to become aware of the infinite value of the present moment, of the infinite value of today's moments, as well as the infinite value of tomorrow's moments, welcomed with gratitude as an unexpected chance. But it also allows one to become conscious of the seriousness of every moment of life, to do what one does habitually, not by habit but as though one were doing it for the first time, by discovering everything this action implies for it to be well done. Somewhere in Peguy there is a passage where he describes something Saint Aloysius Gonzaga

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(who was often cited to us for that matter, and he surprised me a great deal) said as a child. When asked what he would do ifhe were told that he was going to die in an hour, he answered, I would continue to play ball. Thus he recognized that one can give, as it were, absolute value to every instant of life, as banal and humble as it may be. What matters is not what one does but how one does it. The thought of death was thus leading me to the exercise of concentration on the present recommended by both the Epicureans and the Stoics.

J C.: But how can this concentration on the present be reconciled with the imperatives of the action, which always require a finality and thus an orientation toward the future? Indeed, it should be specified that this concentration on the present implies a double liberation: from the weight of the past and from the fear of the future. This does not mean that life becomes in a sense instantaneous, without the present being related to what has been and what will be. But more precisely, this concentration on the present is a concentration on what we can really do; we can no longer change the past, nor can we act on what is not yet. The present is the only moment in which we can act. Consequently, concentration on the present is a requirement of action. The present here is not a mathematical and infinitesimal moment; it is, for example, the duration in which the action is exercised, the duration of the sentence one utters, of the movement that one executes, or of the melody one hears.

J C.: You like to cite the verses from Goethe's Faust II, to which you have devoted an article: "So the spirit looks neither forward nor backward. The present alone is our happiness." How can one say that the present alone is our happiness? I am quite pleased that you ask me this, for two reasons. First, because this allusion to Goethe suggests that spiritual exercises have a history that should be written. I have always liked this maxim by Vauvenargues: "A rather new and rather original book would be the one that would make one love old truths."! These old truths are the ones that reappear in every period of history, in ours as well, both because they have been lived

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so strongly in the past that they continue to mark our unconscious, and because they are always reborn gradually as the generations reexperience life. These fundamental spiritual attitudes are in fact the themes of meditations that have dominated the history ofWestern thought. The theme of the present is an example of this. I am also pleased that I have the opportunity to speak about this article, because I noticed that some of its details call for specification. However, the general thesis is still valid. Goethe made repeated and abundant use of the Epicurean and Stoic idea that one finds happiness only in the present moment. For him, the characteristic feature of ancient life and art was to know how to live in the present, to know, as he said, "the health of the moment." I will cite only the small poem entitled "The Rule of Life." It is explicit and responds in part to your question. "Do you want to live a life without disturbance? Do not let the past worry you, get angry as little as possible, rejoice of the present, rejoice without ceasing, hate no one, and abandon the future to God." Happiness is in the present moment, for the simple reason that we live only the present, on the one hand, and on the other, that the past and the future are always the source of suffering. The past chagrins us, either simply because it is past and escapes us, or because it gives us the impression of imperfection; the future worries us because it is uncertain and unknown. But every present moment offers us the possibility of happiness. If we put ourselves in a Stoic perspective, it gives us the opportunity to attend to our duties, to live according to reason; if we put ourselves in an Epicurean perspective, it affords the pleasure of existing at every instant, as Rousseau describes so well in the fifth promenade of the

Reveries ofa Solitary Walker. What needs to be specified in the article is the interpretation of Faust II's verse: "So the spirit looks neither forward nor backward. The present alone is our happiness." Apparently these verses express exactly the same idea as the poem "The Rule of Life." And it is true that Faust, on contact with Helen, adopts an ancient language when he recommends this concentration on the instant. But a number of things must nevertheless be specified. The art of life taught in the poem "The Rule of Life" conforms entirely to the art of living in ancient philosophy, that is, that every moment, anyone at all, offers a possibility of happiness. In the case of the meeting between Faust and Helen, however, it is the case not of

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any moment at all but of an exceptional moment, a beautiful instant, wonderful instant, in the strong sense of the word. For in this instant, in a magical way, a man of the Middle Ages, Faust, meets a woman from archaic antiquity, Helen. This is why, when Faust says to Helen, do not look toward either the past or the future, hold yourself in the present, he is alluding to the situation of the two lovers. Helen, in effect, cannot help being afraid because of the absence of ties between her past and her meeting with Faust, and she is worried about the possibility of a future for such an, as it were, artificial connection. What Faust wants to say, finally, is, "Do not think, do not reflect about the past or the future; take advantage of the present occasion; love!" Moreover, in the perspective of the tragedy of Faust, one might also ask whether this beautiful instant does not correspond to the "Instant" in question at the beginning of the work, when Faust says, as he concludes his pact with the devil, "If I say to the Instant, 'Stop, you are so beautiful,' then you will be able to enchain me." Here again, it is not a question of any instant at all, but a particularly fortunate instant, a sort of summit of existence, and the meeting with Helen is precisely this beautiful instant of which Faust speaks. It is why one can also ask oneself why Mephistopheles, hearing Faust say to Helen, "The present alone is our happiness," does not take advantage of it to avail himself of Faust, in conformity with the pact. Perhaps it is because Faust does not repeat what he said word for word and, especially, does not command the instant to stop, for he wants to live in the future with Helen. In any case, in the tragedy, except in the short scene with Helen and in the final scene, Faust does not know how to enjoy the present, whatever it may be. He is devoured by insatiable desires, by the appeal of the future. In the eyes of Goethe he is a modern man, but did the philosophers of antiquity not reproach their contemporaries for being too devoured by insatiable desires? Goethe has an idyllic representation of ancient man when he affirms that the ancients know how to live in the present. He should have said that only certain philosophers tried to do it. In any case, the exercise of concentration on the present does not consist of knowing how to enjoy, when the opportunity presents itself: a fortuitous instant-one of those instants that Sartre speaks of in Nauseabut it consists in knowing how to recognize the infinite value of every mo-

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mente In fact, it is very difficult, but it is good to regain consciousness of this wealth of the present instant as much as possible.

J C.:

What do you mean by this wealth of the present instant or

moment? This wealth is the one we give it, thanks to a transformation of our relationship to time. Ordinarily our life is always incomplete, in the strongest sense of the term, because we project all our hopes, all our aspirations, all our attention into the future, telling ourselves that we will be happy when we will have attained this or that goal. We are scared as long as the goal is not attained, but if we attain it, already it no longer interests us and we continue to run after something else. We do pot live, we hope to live, we are waiting to live. Stoics and Epicureans invite us, then, to effect a total conversion of our relation to time, to live in the only moment we live in, that is, the presel)t; to live not in the future but, on the contrary, as though there were no future, as though we only had this day, only this moment, to live; to live it then as well as possible, as though-as we were saying earlier-it were the last day, the last moment of our life, in our relationship to ourselves and to those around us. It is not a question here of a false tragedy, which would be ridiculous, but of a way to discover everything that can be possessed in the instant. First of all, we can realize an action well done, done for itself: with attention and consciousness. We can tell ourselves, I apply myself at concentrating on my action of this moment; I do it as well as possible. We can also tell ourselves, I am here, alive, and this is enough; that is, we can become conscious of the value of existence-or one can repeat Montaigne's inexhaustible sentence on this subject, saying to the one who has the impression of having done nothing, "What? Have you not lived? It is not only the most fundamental, but the most illustrious of your occupations."2 We can even add, Here I am, in an immense and wonderful world. It is the presel).t instant, Marcus-Aurelius said, that puts us into contact with the whole cosmos." At every instant I can think of the indescribable cosmic event to which I belong. But this brings us to another theme we will have to address: that ofwonder in front of the world. For the moment, suffice it to say briefly that to live in the present is to live as though we were seeing the world for the first and for

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the last time. Every present moment can thus be a moment of happiness, whether it is the pleasure of existing or the joy of doing things well. It is quite clear that we cannot always live in this disposition, because one must make a difficult effort to liberate oneself from fascination with the future and from daily routine.

J C.: In your books, do you not also discuss what you call the lookfrom above? It is another exercise that seems very important and that I have tried to practice. The look from above, directed at the earth from a mountaintop, an airplane, or a spaceship, must obviously be distinguished from the imagined, thought look from above, but that obviously supposes the experience of the look directed from an elevated point. It happens that this, one might say, physiological look from above was discussed extensively in Greek civilization. Hans Blumenberg has maintained that it took until April 26, 1336, and the climbing of Mount Ventoux by Petrarch for man finally to have the courage to look at the world from above, such a look having until then been reserved for the gods. This is a nice example of the sort of blindness that affects researchers when they have a preconceived idea. According to Blumenberg, following Jacob Burckhardt in this respect, ancient man would never have climbed mountains out of pleasure or curiosity, only to build temples. In fact, the existence of a look from above is indeed attested to by the Greeks and the Romans. There are lookouts in Homer who see danger from afar. I cannot enumerate all the looks from above that appear in ancient poetry, from Aristophanes' Clouds to Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautika. And the climbs, of Etna, for example, are thoroughly attested. Similarly, one also finds representations of the landscape seen from above in Greco-Roman art. It is interesting that the experience of an overarching vision of things has allowed one to imagine a mental vision that encompasses the Earth and the world. Allusion is made to it throughout antiquity. This exercise consists in imaginatively going over the immensity of space, and the accompanying movement of the stars, but also looking at the Earth from above, and observing the behavior of humans. It is described frequently, for example, in Plato, Epicurus, Lucretius, Philo ofAlexandria, Ovid, Marcus Aurelius, and Lucian.

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These efforts of the imagination and of the intellect are destined to place one within the vastness of the universe so that one can become aware of who one is. First of all, awareness of one's weakness-this allows one to sense how the human things that seem to be of capital importance are, envisaged from this perspective, ridiculously small. The ancient authors, such as Lucian, thus allude to the wars that, seen from above, seem to be battles of ants, and to borders, which seem pointless. It is also a matter of letting the human being become aware ofthe greatness ofhumans, because their minds are capable of covering the whole universe. This exercise leads to an expansion ofawareness, to a sort of flight of the soul into the infinite, which Lucretius describes in reference to Epicurus. It especially has the effect ofallowing an individual to see things in a universal perspective and to remove oneself from one's egoistical point ofview. This is why this look from above leads to impartiality. Such must be the point of view of the historian, which Lucian was already saying in The True History.

J C.: It

is a theme that has very often been exploited by the moderns, and in the Orient as well, even when the intention is satirical (one thinks of Voltaire). However, most often the message is not forgotten. This theme, like the theme of the present, has been abundantly developed in all of Western literature, most notably in Pascal, Voltaire, and Andre Chenier, but especially in Goethe (for example, in the poem "Genius Gliding Above the Terrestrial Sphere") and in Baudelaire's admirable poem entitled "Elevation," which begins with these verses: ''Above the ponds, above the valleys, /The mountains, the woods, the clouds, the sea, I Beyond the sun, beyond the ethers, I Beyond the confines of the starry spheres, / My spirit, you move with agility ... ". Goethe, fascinated by the look from above, was very enthusiastic about the first hot air balloon flights (in 1783), by which humans tore themselves away from their terrestrial weight. Our generation has achieved flight in space. And those who lived this experience underwent a terrible shock and reported ideas and sentiments analogous to what was felt by those who had lived it merely as a spiritual exercise. They felt like stars among stars, and they felt the vanity of borders and of all the barriers, physical and moral, that separate humans. You see that we encounter a tradition of immense wealth, one that I hope to be able to describe in a subsequent book.

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The spiritual exercise of the look from above, stripped of all outdated cosmology and of all mythology, is thus still valid today. It consists simply of occupying what has been called "the point of view of Sirius," to borrow the title of an editorial written for years in Le Monde by Hubert Beuve-Mery. To put oneself in the point of view of Sirius is to aim for the objectivity, the impartiality, of the historian and the scholar, but it is also to undo oneself from oneself in order to open oneself to a universal perspective. This exercise aims to allow one to become aware of one's place in the universe, thus to detach oneself from one's egoistical point of view, and to lead one to become aware of one's belonging, not only to the Whole of the universe, but also to the Whole of the human community; to leave a unilateral view of things, to put oneself in the place of others.

]. c.: Andyet, do you not think that there is a contradiction between the point ofview ofSirius, which should necessarily move us away from humans, and the concern for community, which places us among humans? I once read a text on an invitation card that was attributed without reference to Einstein-a text that expresses so well what I have just tried to say that I feel obliged to cite it: "A human being is only a part, limited in time and space, of the Whole that we call the 'universe.' However, he considers his person, his thought, his sentiments as a separate entity. This is a sort of optical illusion that locks us into a kind of prison, since we can only see in it our own aspirations and since we give our affection only to the people who are closest to us. It is our duty to leave these narrow limits and to open our hearts to all living beings and to all of nature in its magnificence. No one is capable of attaining this goal, but our efforts to arrive there continue to free us and to bring inner security." This is precisely the sentiment from above that allows humans to escape their limits, that puts humanity back in the Whole, and that at the same time allows us to become aware that we are a part of the Whole, leads us to open our hearts to all living beings. Everything is Stoic in this text, even the idea of the inaccessible character ofwisdom. Is it really from Einstein? Michael Chase and I have looked for years in the published works of Einstein. It is impossible to find it. Perhaps it is hidden in a letter? It effectively corresponds rather well to the ideas of the great scientist, who wrote, for example, that in order to know the authentic value of a human, one must ask to what

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degree and to what end he has freed himself from himself." In any case, in the text I cited, one sees the intimate connection between, on the one hand, the passage from a partial vision to a universal vision, and on the other hand, an awareness of the duty to put oneself in the service of the human community.

J C.: Is this concern for the human community found in all the ancient philosophical schools, or is it properly Stoic? One already finds it in Plato's attempts at political reform in Syracuse. Afterward, there is progress with Epicurus, who in the life of his school made no distinction between free men and slaves. Finally, the idea of humankind seems to appear only in the Stoics, to the extent that they extend the concept of the city to the community of reasonable beings. What is the human? asks Epictetus, and he answers, a part of the city, that is, of the great city, the city of the gods and of humans, as well as a part of the lesser city, which is merely the image of the universal city.' The most decisive Stoic text is from Seneca. The eminent dignity of every human is recognized, and the idea of human rights is implied in Letter to Lucilius. Seneca criticizes the circus acts in which naked and unarmed men are put to death as a chastisement for their crimes, and in this connection he uses the expression "the human, a sacred thing for the human."6 It is worth noting that he uses it in reference to people who were considered to be criminals. It is the human as human that is a sacred thing for the human. For the human of antiquity, the word sacred is charged with religious value. Epictetus, for his part, speaks of slaves as "sons of God." Thus the Stoics had a sharp sense of what one could call the social vocation of humans, the service of the human community, and thus of the political duty of the philosopher. In his eyes, however, the philosopher must not exercise political activities in a state in- which one would have to renounce one's moral principals in order to exercise them. The Stoics require a close relation between morality and politics.

J C.: Has ancient history conserved any traces ofpolitical action by Stoicism and the Stoics?

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Throughout the history of ancient Stoicism, one can observe the testimonies of political action they exercised. In the third century before our era, the king of Sparta, Cleomenes, was inspired in his reforms by the Stoic Sphairos. These reforms insured the absolute equality of all citizens by opposing all division into social classes, and proposing the equality of men and women, the division of the land, and the repayment of debts. In the second century before our era, the famous agrarian reforms of the' Gracchi brothers are pursued in a Stoic milieu, that of the Scaevola family, and also under the influence of the Stoic Blossius. They are inspired by the compassion for misery, remarkably expressed in a passage ofa discourse by Tiberius Gracchus. After the failure ofTiberius Gracchus, the philosopher Blossius fled to Asia, to Aristonicus, who was fighting the Romans for the kingdom of Pergamon and had the political program of liberating the slaves and establishing the equality of citizens. Provincial governors, such as Quintus Mucius Scaevola, also applied humanitarian principles of Stoicism as their way of administrating the provinces." But I am giving a history lesson, so I will pass very quickly and regretfully over the Stoic opposition to the empire in the first century after Jesus Christ.

]. C.: But in the following century, a Stoic will become emperor; it will be your dear Marcus Aurelius. Can one perceive traces of Stoicism in his administration? One thing is certain: he did not envisage sensational reforms like King Cleomenes or like the Gracchi. But in his book he praises those, Stoics or otherwise, who fought and died for a state in which the laws would be equal for everyone, where everyone would have freedom of speech and where the freedom of the subjects would be respected. One clearly sees where his sympathies lie. Consider a few details of his administration that bear witness to his concerns. I speak of "details" because Marcus Aurelius seemed to be persuaded that the first duty of the emperor was precisely to be concerned with details, for example, protecting citizens from the abuses of the functionaries of the state or from judicial mistakes. The ancient historians and jurists praise him for the scrupulous care he put into upholding justice, by prolonging the length of judicial sessions, by always worrying about wrongfully condemning someone, by attempting to preserve the rights of

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the defense as much as possible. The legislation of Marcus Aurelius attests to his concern to facilitate the liberation of the slaves, even when fiscal considerations opposed it, on the basis of the principle that the cause of freedom must take precedence over all pecuniary considerations. In order not to charge the provinces taxes that were too high, in order to finance the campaigns to Germania, he auctioned objects of value belonging to the imperial family. He had learned of the mortal falls of child tightrope walkers and demanded that in the future mats and nets be made available to avoid such accidents. At this point in history it is a rare example of attention given to humble citizens. Few emperors would have been interested in what they would consider to be an insignificant detail.

c.:

J I think we can agree that this concernfor the human community is, among the spiritual attitudes adopted by the Stoics, the one that retains the most value for us. Yes, the notes in Marcus Aurelius' book are precious. There is an extraordinary lucidity in the advice the emperor gives himself to make out all the dangers that threaten the person of action. One must take care to respect others, to remain perfectly impartial, to be totally disinterested, to do good without being aware of it, to avoid egotistically attaching oneself to one's action, to accept the advice of others. All these remarks are valuable today. In a more general way, this concern for the human community is an essential dimension of thought and of philosophical life. Socrates, in Plato's Apology, insists a great deal on the fact that he neglects all his personal interests to occupy himself only with others. Obviously one can say that he only takes care of souls. But there were others in antiquity, philosophers who were statesmen, such as Tiberius Gracchus or Quintus Mucius Scaevola, who concerned themselves with the well-being ofpeople and especially of the poor. From this perspective, one can reconsider all contemporary action that aims to ease misery, suffering, and sickness, and all political action inspired by ethical motives, such as defined by Vaclav Havel when he writes, "The only politics, the only one worthy of this name, and moreover the only one I consent to practice, is politics in the service of the neighbor,

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in the service of the community," in order to take them as philosophical actions, in the strongest and most noble sense of the word."

J C.: One last theme returns frequently in your work, the theme ofwonder in the face ofthe splendor ofexistence and ofthe universe. Is this once again an attitude ofthe ancient philosophers that you consider to be still alive? You now give me the opportunity to return to an idea that 1 alluded to earlier: to live in the present moment is to live as though one were seeing the world both for the last and for the first time. To work at seeing the world as though one were seeing it for the first time is to get rid of the conventional and routine vision we have of things, to discover a brute, naive vision of reality, to take note of the splendor of the world, which habitually escapes us. This is what Lucretius is attempting to do when he suggests that if the spectacle of the world appeared briskly and unexpectedly to our eyes, the human imagination would be incapable ofconceiving something more wonderful. And when Seneca speaks of the stupefaction that strikes him when he looks at the world, he says that it often happens that he looks at it as though he were looking at it for the first time." We find this stupefaction, this wonder in the face of the unbelievable existence of the world, in an entire part of Western literature. From the seventeenth century there are the admirable Poems ofFelicity by Thomas Traherne, which Jean Wahl went to the trouble of translating, most notably the poem entitled "Wonder": "Rare splendors [ ... ] Mine eyes did everywhere behold. Great wonders cloth'd with glory did appear." At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was, once again, Goethe, for example, in the song of Lynceus in Faust II: "I see in all things an eternal livery." And more recently there was, among others, Rilke ("To be herebelow is a splendor") and Wittgenstein, who said that his experience par excellence was the wonder before the existence of the world. 1 am therefore not the only one to be filled with wonder before the existence of the world. But I have a scruple: this livery of which Lynceus speaks, is it not a sumptuous veil that hides horror, the horror of the battle for life, of these animals, but also of these humans who savagely tear each other apart? The Stoics tell us that one must see nature as it is in and of itself: independently of our anthropomorphic representations. There is something true in this rigor. Certain nature films in which one sees

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the wildcats devour their prey suppose that ultimately this horror is a splendor. And already Aristotle was amazed by the fact that terrifying or monstrous things in nature repel us, although we admire them in works of art. A true connoisseur of nature must also love its repugnant aspects. In all the works of nature, he said, there is something wonderful. But for the billions of humans who suffer and are in misery, existence in the world really cannot appear as something wonderful. These things are beautiful to see, Schopenhauer said, but to be one of them is an entirely different story. Philosophical life consists in the. courage to assume consciously the fact of precisely being one of them. Certain humans, sometimes very simple and "ordinary" ones, as Montaigne remarked, have the courage for and thus gain access to the philosophical life. Even when they suffer and find themselves in a desperate situation, they sometimes manage to consider existence as something splendid. After a paper I gave in Montreal, someone in the audience told' me that I should read Rosa Luxemburg's letters from prison, because one could find in them something analogous to what I had said. I read these letters from the time of her captivity in 1917-18 (she would be assassinated in 1919), and I found a hymn to the beauty of the world on almost every page. She admired the sky, the clouds, the flowers, the birds, and wrote, "Before such a sky, how could one be mean or petty?" And there is also that hero Solzhenitsyn, in the First Circle, who describes his sentiments as a prisoner, lying in bed and focusing on the dilapidated ceiling: "The pure joy of existing makes me tremble." In the final analysis, the world is perhaps splendid, it is often atrocious, but it is especially enigmatic. Admiration can become astonishment, stupefaction, even terror. Lucretius, speaking about the vision of nature that Epicurus revealed to him, cries out: "At this spectacle, a sort of divine pleasure and a quiver of terror seize me." These are indeed the two components of our relation to the world, both divine pleasure and terror. But this text is, to my knowledge, the only one in antiquity that alludes to this dimension of our experience. Perhaps one should add Seneca's stupefaction, of which we have just spoken. This sacred quiver that humans feel, according to Goethe's Faust, before the enigmatic character of reality is "the best part of humanity," because it is an intensification of the awareness that we have of the world. The moderns, that is, Schelling, Goethe,

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175

Nietzsche, von Hofmannsthal, Rilke (in his first Elegy, "For the beautiful is nothing other than the beginning of the terrible") and also MerleauPonty, have expressed better, and perhaps felt better, than the Ancients what is strange and mysterious in the existence of the world. One does not produce this sacred quiver, but on the rare occasions that it takes hold of one, one must not attempt to remove oneself from it, because one must have the courage to confront the inexpressible mystery of existence.

Postface

The moment has now come for me to tell my friends of my deep gratitude. It is directed first to my dear colleagues, Arnold I. Davidson and Jeannie Carlier, who obliged me to develop my reflection and to express my thought about very important problems. Helene Monsacre leant us all her efficient help for the carrying out of these interviews. I wish to thank her wholeheartedly for her prodigious encouragement and advice. I also was given advice, very precious advice, from colleagues who are very dear to me: Sandra Laugier, jean-Francois Balaude, and Alain Segonds. In rereading the definitive version of this work, they gave me very useful remarks. This book was thus born in an atmosphere of cordiality and friendship. At this point I will follow Arrien, the editor of Epictetus' Handbook. He ended his book with quotations from several authors whom he thought captured what he had attempted to say. In turn, I will propose a short, chronologically ordered anthology of texts that I was unable to cite or to cite entirely in these interviews, about the sentiment of existence or the cosmic and "oceanic" sentiment. To comment on them would be to make them fade. They speak for themselves, and I propose them as a way to continue to communicate indirectly with my readers.

T chouang Tseu I knew of the Tao only what a fruit fly caught in a vat could know of it. If the master had not lifted my cover, I would always have been ignorant of the universe in its grandiose wholeness.'

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Seneca For my part, I have the habit of spending a lot of time contemplating wisdom: I look at it with the same stupefaction with which, at other moments, I look at the world-this world that I have many times looked at as though I were seeing it for the first time."

Pascal I do not know who put me into the world, what the world is, or what I am myself . .. I see these frightening spaces of the universe around me and I find myself attached to a corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am in this place rather than another, or why the little time that is given to me to ··live is assigned to me at this point rather than another in all the eternity that preceded me and in all the eternity that will follow me. I only see infinities of all parts that close in on me like an atom and like a shadow that does not last longer than an instant that will not return. All I know is that I will die soon, but I do not know what this death is itself this death that I will not be able to avoid."

Rousseau The sentiment of existence stripped of all other affection is by itself a precious sentiment of contentment and peace, which would alone suffice to make this existence dear and gentle to the one who knows how to keep at a distance all the sensual and' earthly impressions that relentlessly distract and trouble this gentleness in the here-below. He loses himself with a delicious inebriation in the immensity of this beautiful system" with which he feels identified. Then all particular objects escape him; he feels nothing but the whole."

Kant Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence, the more often and more steadily one reflects on them:

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the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not need to search for them and merely conjecture them as though they were veiled in obscurity or in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence.f

Goethe Sacred dread, that is the best part of humans. As much as the world makes them pay for what they feel, it is in shock that they feel prodigious reality profoundly.?

Blake To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour."

Thoreau Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way? I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little stardust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched."

Nietzsche Let us suppose that we say yes to a single moment; we would thus have said yes not only to ourselves but to all existence. For nothing is isolated, either in ourselves, or in things. And if happiness makes our souls vibrate and resonate even once, all the eternities will have been necessary

180

Postface

to create the conditions of this single event, and all eternity has been approved, saved, justified, affirmed in this unique instant in which we have said yes.'?

Thompson All things by immortal power, Near or far, Hiddenly To each other linked are, That thou canst not stir a flower Without troubling of a star. II

Hugo von Hofmannsthal Most people do not live in life, but in a simulacrum, in a sort of algebra in which nothing exists and in which everything only signifies. I would like to profoundly experience the being of all things."

Rilke We must accept our existence to the greatest extent possible; everything, the unprecedented also, needs to be accepted. That is basically the only case of courage required of us: to be courageous in the face of the strangest, the most whimsical and unexplainable thing that we could encounter. . .. The fear of the unexplainable impoverished not only the existence of the individual, but also caused the relationship of one person to another to be limited. It is as though fear has caused something to be lifted out of the riverbed of limitless possibilities to a fallow stretch of shore where nothing happens."

Wi ttgenstein [ ... ] I think that the best way to describe my experience par excellence is to say that when I have this experience, I am amazed by the existence of the world. . . . And I would describe the experience of being

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amazed by the existence of the world by saying: it is the experience of seeing the world as a miracle."

Cezanne The immensity, the torrent of the world, in a little inch of matter."

Laborit The experience of the sea is too global, too mystical, to be reduced to an interindividual relation. . . . There is an essential difference between an interindividual relation situated in a cultural space and what one feels when one is alone at sea on a beautiful starry night, filled with wonder by the splendor and the immensity of the cosmos, feeling entirely engulfed in this global space, without being able to do anything other than participate in it, and words will never manage to describe this. . . . At sea I am not myself: I am the Cosmos."

Notes

CHAPTER 1 I. Reiner Schtirmann was of German origin but spoke French admirably well. In 1971 I was a part of his doctoral dissertation committee for Maitre Eckhart ou La joie errante [Meister Eckhart or errant joy]. Henri Birault, the great Heidegger scholar, harshly criticized Schiirrnann's interpretation of Heidegger, whose doctoral dissertation-Le principe d'anarchie [The principle of anarchy] (Paris: Le Seuil, 1982), defended around 198o-precisely proposed to draw the consequences of Heidegger's thought: the impossibility of unifying the real around a central principle. Thereafter, Schtirmann became a brilliant professor in the United States and wrote a remarkable autobiographical narrative, Les origines [Origins] (Paris: Fayard, 1978). 2. Michel Hulin, La Mystique Sauvage [Savage mysticism] (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993), 56-57. 3. Seneca, Lettres aLucilius [Letters to Lucilius]' Letter 66, 6. 4. Lucretius, De rerum natura [On the nature of things], Book III, line 29. 5. See Michel Hulin, Ope cit., 27. 6. Rene Poirier (19°0-1995), a member of the Institut (1956), was elected professor at the Sorbonne in 1937, assigned to a mission in Brazil from 1939-45, and returned to the Sorbonne after 1945. He authored two important texts: Remarques sur La probabilite des inductions [Remarks on the probability of inductions] (1931) and Essai sur quelques caracteres des notions d'espace et de temps [Essay on certain characteristics of the notions of space and time] (1932). In a general manner, these works refer to epistemology. Poirier attempted to define an "intellectual anthropology." His was a mind of a such prodigious agility that, during these courses, he also presented a number of logical theories of which I understood nothing other than that they were subtle psychological analyses of, for example, jealousy or belief 7. Author of Histoire de la morale en France [History of morals in France] (1930-31), L'ldee de bien [The idea of good] (1908), and La Science desfaits moraux [Science and moral facts] (1925), Albert Bayet championed secular morality, hesi-

184

Notes

taring between the science of morals (the science of moral facts) and the morals of science (that is, morality founded on science). 8. Rene Le Senne (1888-1954), professor at the Sorbonne, was author ot: among other works, Traitede moralegenerale [Treatise on general morals] (1942), Traitede caracterologie [Treatise on characterology] (1946), and Obstacle et valeur [Obstacle and value] (s.d.). His thought belongs to the spiritualist and idealist traditions. From his teaching I especially retained the idea of "conflict of duties." 9. Georges Davy was a sociologist of the Durkheim school. In his book La Foi [uree [The sworn faith] (1922), in order to explain the formation of the contractual relation, Davy attached great importance to the Indian custom of potlatch, a gift constituting a challenge to give an equivalent gift. The word would amuse the students. 10. Raymond Bayer was married to Emile Brehier's daughter, who took care of her husband's students with great solicitude; I was one of them when he was paralyzed after suffering a stroke in the United States. He was notably the author of two important works: Traite d'esthetique [Aesthetics treatise] and Esthetique de fa grace [Aesthetics of grace]. II. Jean Wahl (1888-1974) was professor at the Sorbonne from 1936; as a result of persecutions against Jews, he took exile in the United States in 1942. He reclaimed his position at the Sorbonne in 1945, directed the Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, and founded the College Philosophique. Of his works one can cite, among others, Le Role de l'idee d'instant dans la philosophiede Descartes [The role of the instant in Descartes' philosophy], La Philosophic pluraliste d'Angleterre et d'Amerique [Pluralist philosophy in England and America], Etude sur le Parrnenide de Platon [Study on Plato's Permenides], Le Malheur de fa conscience dans fa philosophiede Hegel [The misfortune of conscience in Hegel's philosophy], Etudes kierkegaardiennes [Kierkegaardian studies], and Traitede metapbysique [Metaphysical treatise]. He contributed to introducing the French to Anglo-Saxon philosophyand Heidegger's thought. 12. Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948), born in Kiev, attempted after the revolution of 1917, to which he was not hostile, to preserve "spiritual culture." Vice president of the Society of Writers, in 1920 he became a professor at the University of Moscow, but he was thrown out in 1922. After spending some time in Germany, where he wrote Un nouveau Moyen Age (A new Middle Ages], he settled in Clamart, France, in 1924 where he wrote his most important books: Essai d'autobiograpbie spirituelle [An essay in spiritual autobiography] (1938) and his translation ofJacob Boehme's Mysterium magnum. Both mystical and revolutionary, his work is a plea for freedom and for the spirit. 13. Paul Henry, of Belgian nationality, professor of theology at the Institut Catholique, and author with Hans-Rudolph Schwyzer of a remarkable edition of Plotinus' Ennead, taught a very enlightened theology. He showed sympathy

Notes

185

for the work ofTeilhard de Chardin. In his Plotin et l'Occident [Plotinus and the West] (1934), he revealed the influence of Plotinus on the Latin world. 14. Henri-Charles Puech (1902-86) was director of studies at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Section des Sciences Religieuses), tutelary of the chair of history of religions at the College de France (1952-72), specialist of Gnosticism and Manichaeism, and editor and translator of several Gnostic texts discovered at NagHammadi. 15. Pierre Courcelle (1912-80) was director of studies at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Section des Sciences historiques et philologiques), tutelary of the chair of Litterature latine [Latin literature] at College de France (1952-80), and author of very important texts, including, among others, Les Lettres grecques en Occident, de Macrobe a Cassiodore [The Western Greek letters, from Macrobius to Cassiodorus] (1948); Recherches sur les Confessions de saint Augustin [Studies on Saint Augustine's Confessions] (1968); and Les confessions de saint Augustin dans La tradition litteraire [Saint Augustine's Confessions in the literary tradition] (1963). He considered himself to be a student of Paul Henry and of his method of literal citations in the identification of literary influences. 16. R. Cadiou, professor at the Institut Catholique and author of interesting works on Origen, directed my thesis for the Institut Catholique with great solicitude. I say that he is mysterious because I asked myself what his position was with regard to the Church, When I informed him by letter that I was leaving the ecclesiastical order, he said, "It would be very difficult to give you my opinion. Because the orientation of my sentiment is no different, I would like to be dispensed of providing an explanation. The concordaire status of the clergy has never filled me with admiration and I have approvingly observed a similarity in the points ofview of Western churches and Oriental churches, in particular in the doctrine of the venerated Cardinal Suhard." 17. After teaching at the Aurillac high school and at several other provincial seminaries, Pierre-Maxime Schuhl (1902-84) was drafted in 1939.Taken prisoner, he was detained in several German camps. He was named professor at the Sorbonne after the war. He wrote, among other works, Essai sur La formation de fa pensee grecque [Essay on the formation of Greek thought] (1934), Machinisme et philosophie [Mechanization and philosophy] (1938), and Le merueilleux, la pensee et taction [The supernatural, thought and action] (1952). He also practiced the art of painting. 18. Mugnier, Journal de l'abbe Mugnier Oournal of Abbot Mugnier], 1985, 8. 37 19. Francois Leprieur, Quand Rome condamne: Dominicains et pretres ouvrier [When Rome condemns: Dominicans and priest-workers] (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1989). See also Yves Congar, Journal d'un theologien, 1946-1956 [A theologian's journal, 1946-1956] (Paris: Editions du Cerf 2001).

186

Notes

CHAPTER 2 I. Rene Roques was canon of the diocese of Albi and titular in the Fifth Section, "Doctrines and Methods of the High Middle Ages," of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. I met him in 1945-46, my year of study in Paris, at the Maison de la rue Cassette. 2. In 1934, Paul Vignaux (19°4-87) became Etienne Gilson's successor as titular in the fifth section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, of the direction d'etudes entitled Histoire des theologies medievales [History of medieval theologies], and he was section president from 1962 to 1972. He was particularly interested in the nominalist philosophers from the end of the Middle Ages. A Christian union militant, he played an important role in the creation of the Confederation Fran<;aise Democratique du Travail [French Democratic Confederation of Labour] (CFDT). As a member of the CFDT in the 1960s, I had the opportunity to collaborate with him. 3. The Eranos conferences, which continue to take place, were instituted by Carl G. Jung at an enchanting site: the Swiss shore of Lac Majeur at Ascona. The first meeting took place in 1933, under the title "Yoga and Meditation in the East and the West." The following, among others (the list is very long), were invited to these meetings: H. Corbin,]. Danielou, G. Holton, K. Kerenyi, L. Massignon, ~-J. de Menasce, P Pelliot, H.-Ch. Puech, K. Raine, S. Sambursky, G. Scholem, E. Schrodinger, and so on. The person who most impressed me at the time of my 1968 visit was the biologist A. Portmann. 4. Thomas Mann, Lettres [Letters], vol. III, 1948-55 (Paris, 1973), 424. 5. Albert Einstein, Commentje vois le monde [The World as I See It] (Paris: Flammarion, 1979), 10, 17-19. 6. Maurice Merleau-Ponry, Eloge de fa philosophie [In praise of philosophy] (Paris: Gallimard, 1953), 53, 54-55· 7. Rene Haussoulier, Preface, in Charles Michel, Paris, 1900.

CHAPTER

3

Antoine Meillet, Bullentinde fa societe de linguistique de Paris, 32 (1931), 23. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode [Truth and method], 345. 3. Victor Goldschmidt, "Reflexions sur la methode structurale en histoire de la philosophie" [Reflections on the structural method in the history of philosophy], in Metaphysique: Histoire de la philosophie [Metaphysics: history of philosophy] (Neuchatel: Recueil d'etudes offert a Fernand Brunner, 1981), 230-31. 4. Epictetus, Entretiens [Discourses], III, 23, 29. 5. Victor Goldschmidt, Les Dialogues de Platen [Plato's dialogues] (Paris, 1947), 3· I.

2.

Notes

187

6. Peter A. Brunt, "Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations," Journal of Roman

Studies, 64 (1974), 1-20. 7. R. B. Rutherford, The Meditations ofMarcusAurelius (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1989). CHAPTER

4

I. Ernst H. Gombrich, Symbolic Images: Study in the Art ofRenaissance (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1978). 2. E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). 3. Gerard Naddaf L'Origine et l'euolution du conceptgrec de phusis [Origin and evolution of the Greek concept of phusis] (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellon Press, 1992 ) . 4. J. B. Logre, L'Anxietede Lucrece [The anxiety of Lucretius] (Paris, 1946). 5. R Hader, Preface. In E. Bertram, Nietzsche: Essai de mythologie [Nietzsche: essay in mythology] (Paris, 1990 ) , 34. 6. Raymond Ruyer, La Gnose de Princeton [The Princeton gnosis] (Paris, 1974),220. 7. Friedrich Nietzsche, Humain trop humain [Human, too human], vol. 2, in Fragments posthumes [Posthumous fragments], sec. 168, III, 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 74·

CHAPTER

5

I. Emile Brehier, La philosophie de Plotin [Plato's philosophy] (Paris: Vrin, 1982), 97-9 8. 2. MichelHulin, La mystiquesauvage [Savage mysticism] (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993), 27. 3. Plotinus, Traite 38 [Treatise 38J, translation and commentary by Pierre Hadot (Paris: Le Cerf, 1988), 349. 4. Plotinus, Traite 9 [Treatise 9], translation and commentary by Pierre Hadot (Paris: Le Cerf 1994), 82. 5. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden (Dover: 1998), 6.522. 6. Shi Tao, LesPropos sur la peinture du moine Citrouille-amere [On the painting of the Monk of Bitter Melon] (Paris, 1984), 45. 7. Porphyry, Life ofPlotinus, 8, 19. 8. VI, 8,34 9· VI, 9· 10. VI, 9, 10, 21.

188

Notes

II. Anne Cheng, Histoire de fa pensee chinoise [History of Chinese thought] (Paris, 1997), 198. CHAPTE~

6

1. Louis Gernet, Anthropologie de fa Grece antique [Anthropology of Ancient Greece] (Paris, 1968; znd ed., 1992), 252. 2. Jean-Pierre Vernant, Mythe et pensee chez les Grecs [Myth and thought according to the Greeks], vol. I (Paris: 1965), 94. 3. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 1147a22. 4. Elisabeth Brisson, Le Sacre du musicien: La reftrence a l'Antiquite chez Beethoven [The musician is sacred: The reference to antiquity in Beethoven] (Paris: CNRS, 2000), 261. 5. Raymond Ruyer, La Gnose de Princeton [The Princeton gnosis] (Paris, 1974), 216. 6. "I know that I am born mortal and only live a day, but when I follow the wise circular revolutions of the stars, I no longer tread the earth with my feet, but, with Zeus, I am full of the nourishing ambrosia of the gods" (Ptolemy, Anthologie palatine [Palatine anthology], IX, 577). 7. Hubert Reeves, Malicorne (Paris: Le Seuil, 1990), 183. 8. Carlo Ginzburg, "Making Things Strange," Representations 56 (Fall 1996), 8-28.

CHAPTER

7

Plutarch, Si La politique estl'affaire des vieilLards [If politics is old men's business], 26, 796d. 2. Goethe, Gesprdcbe [Conversations], IV (Leipzig, Germany: F. von Biedermann, 1910), 469. 3. Friedrich- Nietzsche, Oeuvres completes [Complete works], V. (Paris: Gallimard, ,1982), 530. 4. Cicero, Tusculanes, V. II, 33; Lucullus, 3, 7-8. 5. Michelet, Journal, I, 393. 6. Cicero, Letters to Atticus, IX, 4. 7. Sextus Empiricus, Contre les professeurs [Against the professors], XI, 178-80. 8. Tractatus, 6.4311. 9. Spinoza, Ethics, I~ 67. 10. C£ Pierre Hadot, "Plotin et Heidegger," Critique, 145 (1959), 550. II. Faust II, verse 6272. 12. Seneca, Letters, 48, 3. 13. Apology ofSocrates, 32b, 3Ib. I.

Notes

189

14. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VII, 13. 15. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, V, 6,3. 16. See the text by Marcus Aurelius (V, 6, 3) cited in Hadot, La citadelle interieure [The inner citadel] (Paris: Fayard, 1992), 217. 17. Plato, Letter VIL 328 c. 18. Simon Leys, La Foret en feu [The forest on fire] (Paris: Hermann, 1983),

r

39· 19. Kant, Critique de faRaisonPure [The critique of pure reason], trans. E. Gibelin and E. Gilson (Paris: Vrin, 1971), 136. 20. Ruedi Imbach, Dante: Philosophie et les laics [Dante: philosophy and laymen] (Paris: Le Cerf/Editions universitaires de Fribourg, 1996). 21. Immanuel Kant, Vorlesungen iiber die philosophische Enzyclopiidie [Lectures on the philosophical Encyclopedia], in Kanis gesammelte Schriften, XXIX (Berlin: Akademie, 1980), 12. 22. Bernard Groethuysen, Anthropologie philosophique [Philosophical anthropology] (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), 80. 23. Kant, Vorlesungen iiber die philosophische Enzyclopiidie [Lectures on the philosophical Encyclopedia], 8. 24. Georges Friedmann, La Puissance et fa Sagesse [Power and wisdom] (Paris: Gallimard, 1952 ) , 360. CHAPTER

8

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, "Le voyageur et sonombre," Humain trophumain [Human too human] (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), sec. 86. 2. For example, Essais [Essays], vol. III, chap. 13 (Paris: Gallimard, 1992),

1090.

3. The interpretation offered by Georges Dumezil in Le Moyne noir en grisdedans vtzrennes [The black monk in gray within Varennes] (Paris: Gallimard, 1984) was kindly pointed out to me by M. Michel Auphon; it would be a matter of the healing of Crito; he would have been cured of the error he committed by supporting the partisans in Socrates' escape. 4. Montaigne, Essais [Essays], III, 13, 1088. 5. Friedrich Nietzsche, Considerations intempestiues, Scbopenhauer comme educateur [Untimely meditations, Schopenhauer as educator] (Paris, 19 66), 79. 6. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.44-6.45. 7. Jean Wahl, Existence humaine et transcendance [Human existence and transendence] (Neuchatel: Editions de la Baconniere, 1944), 80. 8. Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, I, 13.

190

Notes

9. Claude-Edmonde Magny, LesSandales d'Empedocle: Essai sur fa limite de La literature [Empedocles' sandals: essay on the limit of literature] (Neuchatel: Editions de la Baconniere, 1945). 10. See Shi Tao, Lespropos sur fa peinture du moine Citrouille Amere [Painting method of the Monk of Bitter Melon], trans. and commentary Pierre Ryckmans (Paris: Hermann, 1984). II. Brisson, Le Sacre du musicien [The right of the musician]. 12. Tchouang-Tseu, "La Crue d'Automne" and "Tien Tseu Fang," in Philosophes taoistes [Taoist philosophers] (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), 202, 244. CHAPTER

9

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, II, sec. 218. 2. Michelet, Sept. 2, 1850, Journal, II, 125. 3. Protreptikos: discourse that aims to "turn toward" the practice of philosophy. 4. Plato, Theaetetus, 76 a-b. 5. Plato, Republic, 486 a. 6. Plato, Phaedo, 65 e, for example. 7. Pierre Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique [Spiritual exercises and ancient philosophy] (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1981; jrd ed. 1993), 38. 8. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, III, 2. 9. Epictetus, Manuel, 26. 10. Seneca, On the Constancy ofthe Sage, X 4. II. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, II 13, 3. 12. Seneca, a/CLemency, II, 3, 2. 13. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, I~ 49, 6; cited in Hadot, Citadelle, 52, which in fact says "not only is it not a misfortune.... " 14. Plato, Timaeus, 30C I. 15. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, X, ro, I. 16. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VIII, 35. 17. Epicrerus, Handbook, 8. 18. Friedrich Nietzsche, Oeuvres Completes [Complete works], vol. VIII (Paris: I.

Gallimard, 1945), 275· 19. Henri Bergson, La Pensee et le Mouvant [Thought and the moving] (Paris: Seuil, 1934), 116. CHAPTER

10

I. Marquis de Vauvenargues, Rejlexions et maximes [Reflections and maxims], sec. 400. 2. Montaigne, Essais [Essays], III, 13 (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), 1088.

Notes

191

3. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 25.

4. Albert Einstein, Comment je vois le monde [The World as I See It] (Paris: .Flammarion, 1979), II. 5. Epictetus, II, 5, 26. 6. Seneca, Letter to Lucilius, 95, 33. 7. 1. Hadot, "Tradition stoicienne ... ," cited in Chap. 7, n. I. 8. Vaclav Havel, Meditations dete [Meditations on summer] (Paris: Editions, Aube, 1992) , 137. 9. Lucrese, De fa nature des choses [On the nature of things], II, 1023; Seneca, Letter to Lucilius, 64, 6. POSTFACE I. Tchouang-Tseu, L'oeuvre complete [The complete work), XXI, Tien Tseu Fang, in Philosophes taotstes [Taoist philosophers] (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliotheque

de la Pleiade), 244. 2. Seneca, Letter to Lucilius, 64, 6. 3. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, sec. 194 of Brunschvicg ed. (Paris, 1971), 418. Pascal expresses the sentiments of one who wishes to remain in doubt, but there is a remarkable description of the enigma of existence here. 4. In the sense of "totality,' 5. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, LesReveries du promeneur solitaire [Reveries of a solitary walker], yth and 7th reveries. 6. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. M. J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 5, 16I. 7. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, FaustII, verse 6272. 8. William Blake, AuguresofInnocence. 9. Henry David Thoreau, Walden. 10. Friedrich Nietzsche, Fragments posthumes [Posthumous fragments], 188687, 7 [38J, XII (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 298. II. Francis Thompson, "The Mistress of Vision." 12. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Lettre a Edgar Karg [Letter to Edgar King], June 18, 1895; cited by J .-Cl. Schneider and A. Kahn in Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Lettrede Lord Chandos et autrestexts [Letter to Lord Chandos and other texts], 1992,223. 13. Rainer Maria Rilke, Lettersto a iOungPoet, August 12, 1904. 14. Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Conference sur l' ethique" [Lecture on ethics], in Lecons et conversations [Lectures and conversations] (Paris, 2000), 148, 153. 15. J. Gasquet, Cezanne (Paris, 1988), 154. 16. Henri Laborit, biologist, in Le Monde Dimanche, April 24, 1983.