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Philosophy always arises from a crisis 0:00 Philosophy in general — all the great advances in the history of philosophy occur against a backdrop of crisis, and philosophy has always been the daughter of crisis. Very quickly, a few illustrations: I recall that the first moment already, the emergence of the founding Socratic question of properly philosophical inquiry — I'll come back to this for those who apply the word philosophy to more or less any form of thought and reflection — let me point out in passing that concepts are a bit like underpants: the more elastic they are, the less useful they are, and concepts shouldn't be too extensive, because if you try to say everything you end up saying nothing. So when a pair of underpants is too stretched out it falls down around your ankles and loses its function. So philosophical reflection is something specific, and it's on this specificity that I'm focusing my remarks.
1:10 So this is a bit disappointing for those who want a fight, who'd like me to pit Descartes against Spinoza, or Foucault against Marx, or whatever — that's not what this is about. On the contrary, it's about what is common to all philosophers insofar as they are properly philosophers. I have a little example here from Hegel that's very amusing. Hegel cites the example of a patient, a sick man to whom the doctor had said, my poor friend, if you want to pull through you must eat fruit — and the man lets himself die because he can't find fruit anywhere, only cherries, bananas, pears, or apples. That's what happens when you can't bring the diversity of the particular back to a concept. So beyond the differences there may be between Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Foucault, and Aristotle, there is still the fact that if they are philosophers, it's because they have something in common — and it's on this common element that I'm focusing throughout this series of talks, such that there are two introductions to philosophy in what I'm doing.
2:20 A small introduction that I intend to finish more or less today, this evening, and more generally our whole series of talks should, in my mind, be an introduction that would end — and this would, in my mind, mean my goal had been achieved — with the necessity of having to philosophize. So it's an introduction to the necessity of having to philosophize. So I recall here this structural — not conjunctural, I'm now talking like journalists — kinship between philosophy and crisis. So I was giving you some examples; let me close this little parenthesis. First of all, the emergence of the Socratic question occurs at the moment when the city is in crisis — this historical and political model, the city in crisis at the moment when the city is handing over power to the empire. While Socrates is asking his questions, there is a threat from Macedon over Greece, and soon Philip of Macedon, then his son Alexander, and then of course Rome, will make obsolete
3:31 as we'd say today, the political model that is the city — a crisis of the city that produces the Socratic emergence. Much later, almost 15, 20 centuries later — 15 centuries later, I'm thinking of when the collapse of medieval values occurs, at the Renaissance, in the 16th century — at the end of the 16th century there is the philosophy of Descartes that arises and that also draws up a balance sheet of the crisis to which the earlier dogmas had led. On his initiative, when the feudal and monarchical world is threatened with ruin, at the end of the 18th century we have the Enlightenment — philosophy. So it's not out of media opportunism that I'm framing my remarks against a backdrop of crisis; it's because that has always been the case with philosophy. There's a very fine text by the young Hegel that I read last time, his first written publication, called
4:41 The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy — you can forget the title — where he says that the need to philosophize, as he puts it, always arises at the moment when oppositions have hardened, as he says, become one-sided, when it seems there can no longer be any reconciliation in the dichotomies between dogmatists and skeptics, empiricists and rationalists, statists and liberals — to multiply the examples a bit — when the oppositions have frozen in this binary way, each in its one-sidedness, it's at that moment that the need to philosophize arises precisely in order to overcome these apparently insurmountable oppositions. So philosophy in general — not just today, always — the daughter of crisis, when it advances — I'm talking about the great stages of philosophical thought, this is a reminder — I had of course
Genus, species: what distinguishes philosophy 5:51 insisted on the founding example, that of Socrates. So I recall, in passing, for those who weren't there, that I am not saying that we had to wait for the 5th or 4th century BC for people to concern themselves with profound and serious things and to have inquiries with a claim to universality. There is Eastern thought well prior to the emergence of philosophy — there is an extremely profound Hindu thought, there is a Chinese thought, an Eastern thought. I even cited the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is Babylonian — you see that goes back almost 3000 years before Jesus Christ. So there are profound thoughts; they are not philosophical. In what way are they not? That's precisely what I'm trying to clarify in my remarks. And this makes me think here of Aristotle — I'm relying on him here for now, because he rendered this great service of applying himself to defining definition, because we notice here that in order to speak of philosophy
7:01 in the strict sense, it must be properly defined — and that was somewhat the subject last time, which I'm continuing today by digging deeper. Nature and origin of philosophy — nature in the sense of essence, definition, what is specific to philosophy. Look carefully — I say specific, I've repeated that word several times now — it's an epithet made from the noun species, and if you look closely, the species occupies a middle term between genus and individual in the classifications of the natural sciences — for example, genus: animal, species: feline, individual: kitty. So how do we situate philosophical specificity within the genus thought? Of course every philosophy is a thought, but not every thought, however profound, is philosophical. It's not a value judgment — I might prefer a thought, I don't know, a religious one — we should prefer a profound religious thought to a superficial philosophy. It's not a matter of value judgment but of specificity, a particular way of posing problems that is proper to philosophy as compared with scientific or religious inquiry — you see I'm taking quite different things, and we need to situate philosophy properly
8:13 among things with which it risks being confused. It's not between things that differ enormously that this problem arises — it's between things that risk being confused and that resemble each other. We won't spend much effort distinguishing a cherry from an elephant, but between an elephant and a mammoth, between an Asian elephant and an African elephant — that's where you need to give the specifics that allow you to tell them apart. There you go. And philosophy is often confused with forms of inquiry that seem to resemble it — if, for example, we privilege the dimension of the search for knowledge, and if we translate philosophia — which literally means the search for, I'm deliberately not translating, sophia — if we translate sophia solely as knowledge, in Greek it means both knowledge and wisdom, but if we reduce sophia to knowledge alone, then philosophy would belong at the CNRS, because the search for knowledge belongs also and especially to scientists — it's even their profession, their very trade. This shows there's a bit of humbug in the recent notion
9:23 of cognitive science — it's wordplay, because science comes from scire in Latin, as anyone who's studied Latin knows — scire means to know — and cognoscere, cognitive, means to know. So that means the sciences of knowledge of knowledge, or the sciences of science — it's a bit of a pun, this business. If we reduce philosophy, for instance, solely to knowledge, we drown it — it is a search for knowledge, but it's not the only one; the physicist working in research is also searching for knowledge. So it must be a specific kind of knowledge that philosophy seeks. If we reduce philosophy to the search for wisdom while setting aside the dimension of knowledge, you don't need to handle volumes — I mean, in any village deep in Africa, you'd go consult a sage to know whether it's the right moment to marry, or to wage a war, or to travel to the capital, simply to travel. So what is proper to philosophy is the linking of these two words, and so I come back to it
What can I know, what must I do: power and duty 10:34 So, look, if this — to abbreviate — is going to be phi for philo, philo-sophia — there, sophie, the French translation of sophia, and sophia — that's where the problems begin, I repeat — means both knowledge and wisdom. So if that's the case, I repeat myself, we would also be at the CNRS. Starting from this dichotomy I'm now going to bring in another philosopher — you see I'm not pitting one against the other, even though on essentials he wasn't saying exactly the same thing at this level. I'm making use here of Kant, who has done us — those of us who work in philosophy, whether as beginners or to build on what we already have — a great service by bringing back the whole program of philosophical inquiry, in a nutshell, in these fundamental questions: what can I know? what must I do? I'm actually going to write them down, because it's by writing them
11:44 that we notice there's a problem. There, I put quotation marks — this isn't me, it's Kant — what can I know? and then, what must I do? I hope this is legible — that's why I'm writing it out, because at the outset, of course, we'll break up the dichotomy — we find it here again — it's not... and as a result we don't notice that there's also a difference at the level of the verbs. Here it's can — look carefully — and here it's must. If there were only this first question, we wouldn't see what would distinguish philosophical inquiry from scientific inquiry. So we sense that the specificity must descend to the floor below. I'm now going to interrogate this verb with you, this verb here, because it's often used right and wrong — myself included — in everyday usage. I'll give you
12:55 two extremely common uses of the word: I must eat to live; I must stop at the red light or the stop sign. It's the same verb, but you see the difference. In the first case, is it really the verb must that should be used? Because I must eat to live — that's like setting it up as a moral imperative for myself. I don't really have much choice — actually, it's the verb can that should be used: I cannot live without eating — that's what should logically be said. By putting must here, I'm being a bit pretentious, as if it depended on me. So the verb must really only makes sense when I have a choice. When it's one in the morning, and we're in France, we're a bit of a rule-bender, it's one in the morning, there's a red light, there's no cop, no one's around, I run it, I'm not bothering anyone, you're not going to report me — and what must I do?
13:55 The difference is that in the second case, must is used in the strict and justified sense — that is, I can run the red light, but I refrain from doing so. A little anecdote: I was once in East Germany, a country that no longer exists, on vacation with my in-laws, in East Germany — so you see, double reason to be disciplined, given the Germany of that time. It was two in the morning, we were coming back from a party, a bit of youthful folly, and we arrive — imagine the traffic in East Germany in 1974 at two in the morning, three kilometers, nothing to the left, nothing to the right, no cars — we were a group of four or five, and we arrive, and there was a man ahead of us, whom we saw from behind, patiently waiting for the light to turn green. You see how much he had internalized the moral law — I mean, talk about — that really is duty. Attention — this is where I'm getting at philosophical specificity, and you're beginning to guess — and this is the point I barely explained last time and that I'd like to go deeper into today — it's the complicity
Philosophy and freedom: postulate and demand 15:05 that exists between the concept of philosophy and that of freedom. Because what use is it to me to ask myself the question what must I do, if the deterministic hypothesis — which may well be true, we haven't settled anything at this level — if I can do nothing about it, if whatever I think, whatever I decide, everything is determined anyway — and that's rather what the cognitive sciences are getting at, for that matter — my genes, my neurons, physico-chemical exchanges that decide what I'm going to do — in that case philosophy is absolutely useless, because let's suppose, hypothetically, that by some miracle I find the answer to the question what must I do, that I find the true value I ought to conform to — since, in any case, I cannot transform my action, since it doesn't depend on me, it's of no use to me to have the answer to that question, if I am absolutely determined. This is what led someone like Kant to say that freedom is a postulate of practical reason — you see, I've translated it into somewhat more technical terms — postulate now means we're obliged to assume, so nothing is settled, it's a supposition, like an axiom in mathematics, I remind you
16:15 I'll come back to this — an axiom like a postulate, what in all demonstrative sciences are called first notions, from which all the others are derived — these notions we absolutely need in order to demonstrate all the others, but which themselves cannot be demonstrated. The postulate, so long as there aren't too many at the outset, because that would be too easy — the mathematician's ideal is to start from the minimum number of undemonstrated notions in order to demonstrate the maximum number of results. And it's interesting — I gave this example last time but I want to repeat it today in order to move on to this complicity between philosophy and freedom — curiously, I go by way of mathematics. If this is necessary to demonstrate that — I had pointed out, this isn't an opinion, it's a historical fact — that the notions of axiom, of first postulation, in the first theoretical mathematical system that has come down to us, that of Euclid — it doesn't matter whether Euclid designates an individual or a group, that's for historians to settle — these notions are called, interestingly, as a term, demands. Ah, that seems like nothing, as a nuance, doesn't it — I seem to be splitting hairs, but no
From the astrologer to Socrates: from monologue to dialogue 17:25 because going from postulate/axiom to demand is going from something to someone, because it's to someone that one makes a demand for something. And I had — this is the diagram — I had drawn this: imagine that this is a ziggurat, one of those towers that Babylonian astrologers climbed to observe the stars — 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 meters — Babel, there you go. And imagine, at the top of this ziggurat, one of these astrologers asking questions, not good evening, not to someone, but to something — for example the sun — wondering, for instance, what is the sun? Is it a god? Is it square? Is it cubic? In short, there — and that's not philosophy yet. And below, at the foot of the ziggurat, there was a little man, a bit paunchier — the imagery presents Socrates as somewhat potbellied and bearded, there you go
18:35 he saw, who asks his question not to the sun but to the questioner — but it's not the same question. The question here is: what, for heaven's sake, do you call — what do you call the sun? And really, within these quotation marks, we should put more quotation marks, because the thing has become a word — once we have a disc, perhaps the sun — we'll see afterward whether it's cylindrical, square, cubic, etc. — for now I'm talking about the sun, so we quickly come to an agreement. But if we apply this to freedom, if I put freedom in place of the sun — what do you call freedom? If it's freedom in the liberal sense — liberal in the sense of liberalism, in the capitalist sense, however you like, because liberalism is never anything but the fig leaf of capitalism; capitalism begins by defending itself: I'm not a capitalist, I'm a liberal — well, that's the freedom of the fox in the henhouse or the wolf in the sheepfold
19:45 however you like — I mean, it's the balance of power. Let me point out in passing that the first ten pages of Rousseau's Social Contract — of whom Kant said that Rousseau was the Newton of morality, this book which marks a break in the history of the human sciences — Rousseau attacks the principle of the law of the strongest for the first ten pages; it's no accident: the strongest is never strong enough to always remain master unless he transforms his strength into right, and obedience into duty — there, how about that, the notion of duty we mentioned earlier. There, this detour all the same, to recall fundamental things. To sum up, let me take an essential book, last time — you see, look at all these differences, it seems like nothing, but here there's a monologue, only one party speaks — that's not the sun that's going to answer him, saying, I'm not a planet, I'm a star — no, no, it doesn't answer him. So: monologue, subject-object relationship, monologue. Here: subject-subject relationship, a dialogue is possible. These are enormous differences.
20:56 And you see right away that philosophy began because the inquiry bore on what links us to one another. The words I'm currently using — we'll talk about this later in the discussion — it's when the same words no longer designate the same things for the same individuals that there is crisis. Because under the Egypt of the pharaohs, no one had asked the question what must I do — it's not a matter of what you must do, you're the only one — you, you're going to go build the pyramid at the crack of a whip. A certain degree of freedom is required — which was the case in the Athenian city, though let's not idealize it — there were about 20% slaves, about 20% free citizens, all the rest were slaves, even if the Greek slave doesn't quite have the status he would have in Rome, or had before. But still, within this community, for the first time there is a community that has the same rights, within which political decision does not depend solely on the balance of power, birth, and wealth, but on what will be decided by speaking, in parliament — parliament, the agora, a mix, however you like — but it's the one who has convinced the others by speaking
The city, the sophists and reading the Gorgias 22:06 who will hold power — hence the importance of what we call today 'comms' in Greek culture, and hence the deadly conflict between Socrates and those who will put him to death, the Sophists — today we'd say, he's got great comms. The big difference is that the sophist, the crooked lawyer — there are excellent lawyers, but the crooked lawyer, the sophist — doesn't care whether the outcome of his pleading leads to truth; what matters is that his client be acquitted, or that he's convinced the crowd to vote for Themistocles rather than Pericles, or the reverse — it's not the value of truth that counts. And you have a magnificent illustration of this in a dialogue I recommend you read, by Plato, the Gorgias, one of the most dramatic, where the tension is unbearable, to the point that one of the interlocutors, Callicles — the youngest, moreover, of those taking part in the dialogue — is on the verge
23:16 of hitting Socrates: if you weren't so old, Socrates, you'd deserve a whipping for doing philosophy at your age, I quote — it's fine when you're young, because it shows a bit of wit, but when you're mature and you keep asking questions, it's a disgrace — everyone knows how one ought to behave, all that — the little baby fascist, moreover — I'm going to allow myself to read you a passage, because there are philosophies that are extremely fashionable today that pick up all the themes of this little fascist from 2000 years ago, making it seem new, and pinning it on Nietzsche — poor Nietzsche, poor man. But just listen — you're going to see everything they told you in the '70s, through Deleuze and Foucault, about Nietzsche — you're going to see it's in the mouth of Callicles. Let me remind those who don't know that Socrates has just put forward a scandalous thesis, scandalous especially for the young, well-born Callicles: namely, that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it. So of course the other sons
24:26 who are in front of him, Gorgias and Polus, don't agree — Socrates manages to get the better of them fairly easily — well, fairly easily, it takes 40 pages each — until Callicles bursts in. It's often said there's a bit of Plato in it — it's a bit artificial, it's always Socrates who leads the discussion, the others say yes, no, of course — but Callicles, he argues for six pages, there's a real Socrates-punch, and he says this: Socrates, you seem to be giving free rein to your eloquence, like a true demagogic orator, and the reason for this demagoguery is that the same thing has happened to Polus that he reproaches Gorgias for having suffered with you — but now he's fallen into the very same trap as Gorgias, and the precise reproach I make of him is having granted you that committing injustice is uglier than suffering it. Most of the time nature and law contradict each other — yes, nature tells me to eat and the law tells me to serve myself first — most of the time nature and law contradict each other, listen carefully, because nature is the great dominant value of the dominant bourgeoisies of this world — I don't know, of the world we live in
25:37 so it's worth reading: most of the time nature and law contradict each other. It's therefore impossible, if one is afraid, out of false shame, to say what one thinks, not to fall into contradiction. You've discovered this secret, and you use it to argue in bad faith: if one speaks of law — you heard, the law of the city — you ask about nature, and if one speaks of nature, you ask about the law. Law, on the contrary — you're going to see all of Nietzsche parade by — is made by the weak and by the great number — this democracy, as the other one said. So it's in relation to themselves and in view of their own personal interest that they make the law and decide on praise and blame; in order to frighten the strongest, the elite individuals, understood as those most capable of prevailing over them, and to prevent them from prevailing, they claim that all superiority is ugly and unjust, and that injustice essentially consists in wanting to rise above others; whereas for their part, it's enough for them, I imagine, to be at the level of others without being worth more. You hear this all the time on BFM Radio — there you go, that's why the small business owners — that's why the law declares unjust and ugly any attempt to surpass the common level, and that's what is called injustice. But nature itself, in my view, nature proves to us that, in true justice, he who is worth more must prevail over him who is worth less
26:47 the capable over the incapable — it shows us this everywhere, among animals and among men, in cities and families — yes, among animals, men, continuity between nature and man, which we're constantly being lectured about today, you'll have noticed, to explain our behavior, in those nature documentaries — dominant males, territory marking — nature serves as the model for our own behavior. It's interesting — it shows us this everywhere, nature, among animals and men, in cities and families — that it is indeed so: that the mark of the just is the domination of the powerful over the weak — always strength and its acknowledged superiority. By what right, indeed, did Xerxes wage war on Greece, or his father against the Scythians, and how many similar cases one could cite — but all these people act, in my opinion, according to the true nature of right, natural right, and by Zeus, according to the law of nature, although this may be contrary to the one we ourselves establish, we men, and according to which we shape the best and most vigorous among us — the little übermensch, those who take themselves for supermen, often out of inferiority complexes, for that matter — the most vigorous among us, taking them in early childhood, like lion cubs, to enslave them by means of incantation
27:58 and mummery — not bad, the translator's choice for mummery, childishness, sort of — incantation, you see, this whole critique of religion, incantation as a means used by the weakest to enslave the strongest — mustn't do that, or you'll go to hell — to find the whole idea. But should a man arise, an individual gifted enough to shake off, break, and throw off all his chains, I am certain that, trampling underfoot our writings, our spells, our incantations, and our laws contrary to nature, he would rise up, would stand as master before us, he who was our slave — and then the right of nature would shine forth in all its splendor. You see, 2000 years ago already — so again, it's no small thing, when we move from things to words, there we are among men, among speaking and communicating beings; when I say what do you call, I'm addressing someone who can answer me, and we can correct each other mutually. There is the link I wanted to establish, as a kind of mutual implication, how shall I say, logical, between philosophy
A knowledge to answer the question of what I must do 29:08 and freedom — I haven't said that freedom exists, I've said that if it's not possible, philosophy isn't possible either. Well, having reached this point, I come back here to this formulation, what must I do, and we now understand better the articulation between what can I know and what must I do. It's clear that what can I know is a broader question than the properly philosophical, generic inquiry, and we saw earlier that the genus had to be narrowed to the species in order to speak of philosophy proper. And so it's not just any knowledge that I'm searching for in philosophy, but knowledge that helps me answer the question what must I do. For example, if I'm asked exactly how many grains of sand there are in the Sahara — we could perhaps know that, I don't know — it's not a vital question, it doesn't help me answer the question what must I do. It's a matter of answering, in terms of knowledge, the question what must I do — but in terms of knowledge, and not
30:18 here too, this is a crucial distinction I made last time — and not in terms of, and this is opposed to knowledge, in terms of opinion, of doxa, as they said among the Greeks — I don't want to throw a Greek word at you every time, I'm not Heidegger, or worse still, I'm not one of the French Heideggerians. Let me remind you that the whole French philosophical school, from Sartre to Derrida, in the postwar period, lives in the shadow of the most Nazi of philosophers — which is troubling all the same. I say this because there are still people arguing over whether Heidegger was a Nazi — no, he's not just a Nazi, he's the most Nazi of philosophers. There were plenty of minor Nazi philosophers, but him — watch out — he's profound. And let me recall a few of Heidegger's statements — perhaps he's right, I haven't settled anything for now regarding values — but you don't need to argue long to know whether he is one or not, when he says that the greatest event of Western metaphysics is the creation of the Panzer divisions, or when he says we have a duty of Eros toward the Führer — I'll skip the rest. That's not the point here; the point is to sort out, among everything I can know, what can serve me
Each scientific revolution precedes a philosophical advance 31:30 for the question what must I do — the dichotomy knowledge/doxa, and philosophy found this before, even before itself, and that's why history matters — through the emergence of mathematics. It's no accident that the Socratic inquiry arises right after the Euclid event appeared — here again, a bit of chronology, if you like: it seems that each time, the great stages of philosophical advance in history immediately follow a major upheaval that has just occurred in the scientific world. The appearance of mathematics — mathematics in the systematic sense, as we speak of it today — in Babylon, again in the East, is where the first fundamental notions used by all mathematics truly appeared, but as empirical recipes, not yet assembled into a system, and above all tied to an immediate practical application. It's no accident, I'm continuing my digression on mathematics, like Euclid — it's no accident if the term geometry, taken literally, means measurement of the earth. The geometer was originally the surveyor, the one who measures, because when the Nile
32:40 after its floods returned to its bed, the fields had to be given back to each person according to the properties he held. People realized that at 45 degrees in the shade, once you'd measured one side, you could spare yourself measuring the other three if the field was square — that's how it began. But that's not pure mathematics, still just surveying. The first time there is a system of pure theory, of research, people also thought of constructing a non-contradictory discourse from first notions, from a few first statements — that's linked to Euclid. So: emergence of mathematics, appearance of philosophy 15 centuries later, emergence of physics, the first theoretical physics, that of Galileo, the scientific revolution as it's called in the history books, reaction: Descartes, birth of modern philosophy — I'm talking like the history-of-philosophy books — Descartes, who inaugurates modern philosophy as opposed to ancient and medieval philosophy — and they're not the same — emergence of the natural sciences
33:51 sorry, of biology, then of the historical sciences, and you have Kant, you have Rousseau, and soon Marx, who will try to establish the foundations of history. So you see, there is always this slight gap between the establishment of a scientific system, of an épistémè as it's called, of a knowledge — episteme in Greek means a knowledge, as opposed, I come back to it, to doxa, to opinion. I haven't said that all opinions should be thrown in the trash — I myself put out 50 opinions a day, just like that, for the sake of the media and whatnot, and there are correct, orthodox opinions — that's correct opinion. But we move from opinion to knowledge when the opinion can be supported, justified, demonstrated — that's what mathematics contributed, and philosophy, at its emergence, benefited from this achievement, that there is such a thing as knowledge, that is, something that is not valid only here and now, for you, him, her, or me, but which is universal: if A equals B, then B equals A
35:01 that's not valid only here, now, yesterday, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. And even peoples said to be primitive, believe me, without writing, and all the more objective for that, know very well that if Kouassi is Kouadio's brother, then Kouadio is Kouassi's brother — that's the universal. I insist on these notions, I apologize, as a pain in the neck, I'm obliged to warn against dominant modes of thought — today's dominant ideas are not the same as in Kant's or Descartes' time, after all. But today there is a war against the universal in cultural relativism, culturalism as it's called — there are those who use the admirable results of Lévi-Strauss to promote culturalism, that's — that's another culture, but it's only valid for us; elsewhere, though, there is still a universal, which mathematics were the first to formulate. So let me get back to my point, I'm making detours so as not to lose my thread, so that this stays concrete — what can I know
The theoretical detour: Plato, Bergson, Descartes 36:14 and not opine, believe, I don't know, it's the same thing — what can I know in terms of the universal, in order to answer the question what must I do? How can I answer the question what must I do in a universally valid way? We're starting to get closer to what is specific to philosophical inquiry, because if it's what must I do without going through knowledge, I repeat that in a village deep in the Amazon rainforest, or Southeast Asia, it doesn't matter, I can very well go ask a sage whether now is the time for me to marry her, or to set off on a journey — and the sage is not necessarily a learned man; the two notions are disjoined — there are learned men who aren't wise at all, there were learned men in Asia — and a sage can be wise, give excellent advice, without knowing how many satellites orbit Jupiter. The two notions are disjoined, fortunately. Well, the philosopher wants to join them together — not dogmatically, but to answer this question by making an immense detour through that one
37:25 you have this image of the detour in Plato's Republic, where it's not a matter of knowledge, it's a matter of building the Republic — it's Plato's great political work, along with the Laws, and it's not the only one; Plato was an immense political thinker — I'm not saying I agree with Plato's politics, I mean that political concern occupies a central place in Plato's thought. I say this because Plato has been turned into someone who deals with mystical things — which is also true, there are a lot of images in Plato — but still, he does say in the Republic that none of our problems will ever be solved until we reach a moment — it's someone speaking, it's in the Republic, it's stated in so many words — if we do not reach a point where either those who govern us devote themselves to philosophy, or those who philosophize gain access to power, then there'll be no end to the troubles of the republic, there you go. So at a certain point in the Republic — to illustrate my notion of the detour — right at the start of the second book, Socrates — sorry, Socrates's interlocutor — says, if I've understood you correctly, Socrates, we need to step away from our problem, immediate politics
38:36 and make a detour, and Socrates answers, yes, an immense detour, my friend, an immense detour. There you have it, that theoretical detour. Now let me warn you, I'm going a bit fast, but as we'll repeat, don't worry, repetition, I hope, will make up for the speed. The danger is that often many philosophers have forgotten the fundamental question and have drowned themselves in purely theoretical problems, either by crossing swords with scientists — many philosophers have wasted time, I'm thinking of Bergson, I have a lot of admiration for Bergson, don't worry, again I'm not telling you who's good and who's bad, I'm not handing out prizes, by what right or title could I — I simply mean, there are excellent things in Bergson, on memory, on music, on duration; on the other hand, he wasted an enormous amount of time arguing over, or challenging, scientific results that had already been superseded 50 years earlier, in his own time. That's the weakness of philosophers when they want to meddle in what isn't their business — and also sometimes the reverse, there are plenty of scientists
39:47 which isn't forbidden, provided each understands what is specific to the other's discourse. So there are many who lost sight of it along the way, even Descartes — Descartes, who is an immense philosopher, that's not the question — who in the Discourse on Method sees clearly that mathematics itself is only interesting insofar as it allows one to answer this question. I'm going to quote the passage — when, in the Discourse on Method, which isn't a marginal work in his output, I'm not going to dig up something obscure, there's a method, when he reviews his course of studies, which greatly disappointed him — he's a man who comes from the Renaissance, Descartes, everything had been stirred up, everything had been called into question in that fabulous century, the 16th century, when some 13 medieval centuries were called into question. When Descartes reviews his course of studies, he says he knows even less after all this course of studies than when he began it — he makes an exception for mathematics: that's the only thing I learned in my course of studies. And here now the quotation: I was especially pleased with mathematics, because of the certainty and the evidence of its reasoning; for now this is the Descartes we know, but I did not yet notice
40:58 their true use — here we leave the world of knowledge behind: in usage there is 'us' in Latin, which gives 'useful' or 'utensil,' and here we enter the world of ends, of purposes, of goals. I take up the quotation again: I was especially pleased with mathematics because of the certainty and evidence of its reasoning; but I did not yet notice their true use, and thinking that they served only the mechanical arts and to make men's work easier, I was astonished that, their foundations being so solid, nothing more elevated had been built upon them. Even Descartes, an immense mathematician, an immense philosopher — he's not the only one of his time; one could still, in that era, be at the cutting edge of both the philosophy and the science of one's time, as was the case with a Leibniz — Leibniz, to whom we owe infinitesimal calculus, the derivative, which you all learned, I believe in your first year of lycée, what can be known — and even the formula you've all learned, delta y over delta x — that's Newton — that's Newton and Leibniz, it's a little quarrel between Germans and English there, they didn't reach it at exactly the same time — things this important are rarely reducible to a single individual, they both contributed to this admirable result, but the formulation
42:08 that has come down to us is Leibniz's — delta y over delta x, that's Leibniz — a great mind, and he was also a jurist, legal advisor to the princes of Hanover, Leibniz — these are universal minds. I'm not doing nostalgia radio here, saying, ah, the great era, now we're too specialized — no, it's that today's science is so developed that we can no longer have that kind of universality. There's Bachelard, who reflected a great deal on the sciences, a great epistemologist, who said in the 1950s, wrote, that we shouldn't lament too much — it's an enormous loss — the burning of the library of Alexandria; he says if the entire science of an era could be burned down in a single building, it's because it wasn't very developed, because, he says, today a single building couldn't contain the books of chemistry alone. You see, a small clarification at the outset. But anyway, to come back to Descartes, you see, there's this concern to retain everything I can know philosophically, what in knowledge will allow me to answer this question, what must I do. So, you see, I read the two here — there's someone addressing someone, and I would like you to understand that as soon as we talk about doing, I come back to the world of the city and to a collective world, and I come back
Lacan: every speech signifies for someone 43:18 to my initial crisis — when the same words no longer designate the same things for the same individuals, then we're in crisis, and that's very fruitful for the activity of philosophizing. I also insist on the fact that we've moved from monologue here to dialogue. So you might say I seem to be insisting a bit too much on notions from ancient philosophy, blah blah blah — take Lacan, he's not an ancient philosopher. Well, Lacan did reflect quite a bit on language, didn't he — he's fairly well known for that. And perhaps the formula of his that I prefer, where it's a question neither of sex nor of psychoanalysis, for that matter — I quote in passing — he said: before signifying something, every word signifies for someone. Here he rediscovers a dichotomy — before signifying something, every word signifies for someone. The words are precise; the most important word in this sentence of Lacan's, for me, is before. He doesn't say that a word should be indifferent to the thing it's about, that it doesn't matter, and that we should only concern ourselves with the person we're speaking to — no, he says before, meaning that if we speak, it's because there is already someone present. That's why
44:28 it's ill regarded when you hear someone talking to themselves, when you say something that doesn't fit — there you go. And even when someone talks to themselves, they're talking to someone in their head, to a fantasy, to someone imagined, displaced. If you look closely: before signifying something, every word signifies for someone, and he goes so far as to say that even if I find myself in my speech talking just to say nothing, what matters is that the person there listens to me — a soldier on a train, about to be discharged, sweet-talking a girl in a train car, can say absolutely anything, it's not what he says that matters, it's that she doesn't get off at the next station. Before signifying something, every word — I'm paraphrasing Lacan — establishes a relationship between some 'someones.' We've somewhat forgotten this, because our dominant culture, which I'm fighting — you see, if it reversed, I would fight the reverse, don't worry — but there's a naturalism that worries me, in the last 40-50 years, a period of unhappy consciousness as the other one would say, an anti-humanism but a pro-nature stance that worries me, I'm worried
Force according to Callicles, law against nature 45:38 to see kids — I'm not fighting against philosophers here, it's not their fault — who, from seeing so many documentaries about these wicked humans who have ruined the world around us, nature — there's a demonization of man and a divinization of nature that is somewhat terrifying. That's why I read you Callicles earlier — the apology of nature, you see where it leads: the strongest must command the weakest. Let me remind you that Rousseau devotes, I repeat myself, the first ten pages of the Social Contract, and beyond that too, and in other works, not to mention, to criticizing the notion of force with a certain logic — he doesn't moralize, he doesn't say it's wrong, force — no, no, no, that's Callicles talking like that. Rousseau doesn't say that; he says, manage as you like, but if your principle is force, then the next coup d'état is legitimate — the first person stronger than you will be at least as legitimate as you, do as you please. And for that matter, in the Gorgias, at a certain point — it's no accident I'm going back and forth between — what is it — going back and forth between Plato and Rousseau, between 2000 years, between the 5th century before Jesus Christ and the 18th century after.
46:48 There was an agrégation topic about twenty years ago, if I remember correctly, in philosophy—a very beautiful topic entitled City and Decadence in Plato and Rousseau, because both lived through an era when a political model was collapsing. So there's the link, and I come back to this back-and-forth in the Gorgias—it's no accident that Callicles, when the discussion starts, delivers that violent outburst I quoted earlier, which I abbreviated—there's about eight pages of it—where everyone is dumbstruck and he almost threatens to strike Socrates if he weren't so old. You'd think Socrates would say let's stay on serious ground, this is not proper, violence—no. Socrates answers him and says: at last I've found the man I needed, because the two previous ones I got the better of—not easily, well, more easily than you—because they yielded to social decorum, as Socrates puts it; they didn't follow their thought all the way through, they didn't dare; they're like those people who call themselves not capitalist but liberal.
47:59 Whereas you, you're the real thing, the masks have fallen with you, we can talk. He even says, Callicles, you're the touchstone I need to test whether I am gold or copper, for if I'm right with you, I'll be right against everyone. It's a very beautiful passage, full of humor. So the discussion proceeds from Callicles' fundamental statement: value is force. Very good, says Socrates, let's go then—physical force? Well yes, force, force, the strongest—how can you—well, you see, says Socrates, but then the city you were condemning earlier, the collectivity, the collective, democracy, the society that persecutes the individual—I remind you there's a deep complicity between anarchism and capitalism, an objective complicity, I'm not saying—I'll come back to it, there's a great anarchist tradition, and there's another one that's formidable—that society, the city, will always be physically stronger than an isolated individual. So the city is right, Callicles. Damn, he says—not like that—no, but you too, I didn't mean to speak only
49:09 of physical force, but it's the cleverest, the most cunning who should win out—there, the one who is strongest through his intelligence. You see, we find this again now, these discussions—there are the losers and the winners, you've heard this, it's not two thousand years old. So what he's told is: you accuse me of always saying the same thing, Callicles, but you never say the same thing—a moment ago you told me it was physical force, now you tell me it's the force of intelligence. You see how a dialogue progresses—it was in indistinction, this notion of force; now look more closely—and I linger on this, I linger on it because in the naturalism that's invading us, in nature it's certain that force matters: the lion devours the innocent lamb and the eagle swoops on its prey, well yes—and I'm not criticizing nature, nature is neither good nor bad. When one has seen in the African savanna a pack of wild dogs, lycaons or spotted hyenas, formidably organized animals, as social animals often are, like us, with a developed brain—when one has seen lycaons, which look a bit like small hyenas, somewhat spotted, try to tear out
50:19 the fetus that's coming out while the female is running through the savanna—you see, that looks monstrous, a child—we'll spare the children this, too much to say, even though there are plenty of documentaries showing it nowadays, saying, well yes, eat or be eaten. You've heard that, it's spreading—well yes, that's the law, nature, we are all—that speaks to me anyway, it's true in the savanna, I'm not saying anything bad about the wild dog, poor old thing, he too has his young to feed waiting in the den. It's even a species where, from birth, the one who comes out first devours his little brother. You see, it's a world, the world of force—but I'm not putting it on trial, nature knows neither good nor evil. Nature is there, that verb, power—I can, I cannot, period; there's no duty. Whereas for us: I'm hungry, I feel like eating, the meal is late, and when it arrives I feel like pouncing on it, but no, I must say, after you, please—well brought up—I'm engaging in what Hegel calls a struggle
51:30 for recognition. I believe I'm an animal—no, I'm a human being, I'll show you—I'll serve you first. But the other doesn't want to look like a beast either, so, no, no, please, after you, it can go on forever, you know, it's like at a door: come in now, please, after you—we collide in the end, we bump into each other. So there, Callicles isn't wrong—it's the one point where he's right to say that human law is always the reverse of what nature prescribes. We've never seen a law say it's forbidden to leave your hand on a lit gas burner—no need, nature will act fast. That's why Durkheim, founder of sociology, said that a common feature of all laws, in all societies, is that they are coercive—that is, they operate against what would have been spontaneous at the natural level. Coercive from the most terrible sense, penal repression, but also through laughter: someone says something not in good odor within the group they're in, there's a little laugh, a mockery, through which worldly coercion is exercised, as Giscard would say, upon him. So I've lingered a lot
The concept of nature is a human creation 52:40 on this notion of force because it's invading us again, because we're once more overrun by these jungles and these vines—I'm speaking of a metaphorical forest, once again—I've never put nature or the animal on trial; the animal does what it can, it survives if it manages to survive, that's not bad; it doesn't have the privilege, as we do, of existing, of stepping out of its naturalness. In fact, I'll push the paradox a bit far—it's a thesis I'm offering for your reflection—that nature is something man created. That doesn't work for us, it's God, or else it's atoms, whatever—but naturalist theory says nature was created by nature, while a supernaturalist theory says it's God—no, I'm not an idiot, I haven't gone mad, I'll say—but I'm saying that when we rightly distinguish natural flowers from artificial flowers, it wouldn't occur to anyone to specify these are natural flowers if artificial flowers didn't exist—it could be flowers, it could be a bust, since now
53:50 they make artificial breasts—no one asks whether it's specified but it's natural—that's implied, that we had to step outside of nature in order to be able to speak of nature at all. That's why I ask you not to confuse nature with matter. Ah, but that's an ugly word, nature—it's good because I imagine all sorts of somewhat mystical things, you know, because here too there's a providentialism coming back that frightens me. You touch the frogs and everything collapses, every species is indispensable, man destroys things without realizing that each species means—what does that mean? For years that's been called providence, that is, that nature was made in an orderly way such that man absolutely must not interfere, because as soon as man moves, he messes everything up. This is a very anti-humanist thought, this dominant thinking—it's no accident, it's a world event, with the most dominant Anglo-Saxon and Puritan influences, by the way, though that's not what it says. So, I push the paradox that far—isn't it true that the concept of nature was created by man? I haven't said that man created the stars and planets, far from it, but he's the one who created this concept of nature, and that's why I'll come back to it in the interviews that follow
55:00 all philosophical viewpoints can be traced back—there are ten thousand of them, but they can be reduced to three fundamental categories. There's the naturalist viewpoint: when we explain someone's neurosis by their genes or by physico-chemical facts—which isn't what I want to say, I'm not affirming, I'm just noting—that's a naturalist view. I remind you that in 'nature'—let me write it here so it stands out—there, it seems tiny, but there's this: the root is 'naître,' birth, the natal—you'll soon see what the Italians call natale, Christmas, the birth—yes, it's by nature that I have eyes of a certain color, that I have all sorts of determinations that are inborn, as we say, which are inside me from birth—innate—that's not negligible, far from it. But there's what explains everything by what's innate, by what's natural, by physico-chemical determinism, for instance surgical. There's
56:12 the antithesis now: what explains everything by the supernatural, by God, by a religious principle that dominates nature. So: the naturalist viewpoint, the theological viewpoint, and I offer you a synthesis: the anthropological viewpoint. It's not nature that makes man, it's not God that makes man, it's man who makes man—ah, that's a bit less lazy. We won't rely, in the third case, on something already given, be it nature, God, or creation—creation is nature plus a supernature, let's talk. I'd like, from here, to give the floor to the audience, because since I've been questioning fundamental concepts, I don't want things to get muddled, and if they start to get muddled, I'm sure it'll clear up through the questions you'll ask me. I'd really like you to ask me—so I give the floor to the room. You spoke about force, the law which is more relative to survival—if we replace the word 'force' with 'survival,' do we get the same development of reflection, if we don't say 'by force'—the same, in part? Of course, very interesting.
Survival and the superfluous: what makes man 57:22 Your question, very interesting, and one that brings us back a bit to the topicality of what I wanted to raise—so it comes at a good time. If, as some say, in the end behind all our actions there is what's vital—surviving—we don't understand why someone throws themselves into flames to save their son, or a letter their mother left them when dying—I mean, everyone has something dear that goes beyond life. If there were only survival, one wonders why Cro-Magnon man bothered to make cave paintings. One can eat and survive without making paintings—I'm saying this because there are those who speak of this abominable notion of 'minimum vital,' which is somewhat linked to your question—minimum vital, which afterward became the Smig and now is called the Smic. Cro-Magnon man had long since surpassed the minimum vital—it's not vital to paint, to dance around the fire, I don't know—there's going to be their music, their ritual—no use burying the dead in order to survive, I mean. Now, anthropologists, when they hesitate, when they find remains of australopithecines, I don't know, jawbones
58:32 to decide whether we're dealing with a human or an animal—as soon as we find remains of burial, then we're sure we're dealing with humans. Well, well—that means the mark of what is properly anthropological is precisely things that are not vital. Interesting, when there's only life—and I'm very glad of your question because we want—not through biology, which I respect, perhaps I myself would no longer be alive, and some among us here, if medicine, relying on biology, had not made progress—that's not the issue, I'm attacking biologism, which is not at all the same thing—what makes use of the biological model to apply it to fields that have nothing to do with biology's own field. Which makes me think of a formula of Heraclitus—Heraclitus the Obscure, though he didn't speak in formulas like that, but I find Heraclitus generally very clear—we'll talk about him because he was at the origin of dialectical thought, which is no small thing—and Heraclitus says, in a fragment rarely quoted but that I love very much: the bow's name is life [bios] and its work is death. The bow's name is bios, life, the bow—like this, since he's a dialectician, he likes the notion of the bow, because in a bow there are two opposing forces at work
59:42 and the energy of the arrow comes from the fact that there are these two opposites—the string I pull back and the bow. But the bow's name is bios, all our energy, and its effect is death. So I'm not sidestepping your other questions, quite the opposite—of course, I'm not criticizing someone who struggles for survival, far from it, I find it appalling that in the 21st century some are still forced to struggle for their survival, when after millennia, almost millions—when we see, we've pushed back the date of man's appearance on earth, it's not just a few million years, I mean—and then chipped, cut flints, then polished, then bronze, then iron—it's interesting to note that it's from what Marx will later call the productive forces that anthropologists, absolutely not Marxist by the way, all agreed to divide the great periods: bronze age, iron age—not chipped stone, polished stone, etc.
1:00:46 And I'm saying that the distinction between necessary and superfluous doesn't hold for man—man begins precisely with the superfluous, not by suppressing the necessary—I said it earlier, I can't live without eating, we agree on that—but if I spend my whole time in the 21st century losing my life earning it, something is wrong. There were millions of years for nothing, I'm being made to start over from zero and condemned again to the law of the jungle—an urban jungle can hide another. It's obviously the urban jungle, the social jungle, that I'm criticizing here, not the African jungle. I don't know if I've answered your question—yes, go ahead. You said earlier that in times of crisis words don't have the same meaning for different individuals—could you clarify that?
When the same words no longer say the same things 1:01:49 Yes, of course. Precisely, I said: when the same words no longer mean the same things for the same individuals—there isn't the same word. I gave a small example earlier about the difference between the Pharaoh's slave and the Athenian Greek doing philosophy on the agora. When you have no choice, the question 'what must I do' doesn't even arise—it's prescribed by the group's law. I don't know, at that point—but the question only arises once words begin to be polysemous, if you will—a word can have several possible meanings, and once there starts to be doubt about the universal meaning of the word—because earlier I praised the universal in order to react against contemporary relativism, I'm not criticizing relativism in itself, it's a necessary stage for leaving dogmatism, I'll come back to that, and we'll see there are always two irreducible enemies—I haven't forgotten your question, but this frames it—two opposite, extreme enemies for thousands of years in the world of thought and discourse: the dogmatist
1:02:59 and the other, opposite extreme: the skeptic. To the question 'what can I know,' the dogmatist answers everything; to the question 'what can I know,' the skeptic answers nothing. Neither—sorry, neither of the two, philosophers, because what matters for the philosopher, the search, is spared in both cases: I know everything, so why would I need to ask questions—and I can know nothing, so I have even less reason to search. So beware of dogmatists and skeptics, two dead ends of philosophy, which are, by contrast, very common in the world of opinion. No, but let me take the word 'democracy' to answer your question—we can define it, but that didn't stop what's-his-name being called Cardinal Spellman—you've forgotten that one—he's the one who blessed American marines as they left for Vietnam to send napalm on Vietnamese kids in order to defend democracy against totalitarianism. But on the other side you also had countries that might be called people's democracies—same word, answering your question—you see it doesn't have the same content, it's not the same meaning, it's an opposite meaning.
1:04:09 So we, you and I, ordinary citizens, are forced all of a sudden to say to ourselves: remember, democracy—I'm quite willing to be a democrat, defend me—because either you send me to bomb Vietnam, or you send me to the Gulag, but in either case I'm not sure—I don't want to be in that kind of democracy. So that's why I insist: it's when the same words no longer say the same things for the same individuals—and in a way, that's for the best, because when there's consensus and unanimism, that's actually quite serious, isn't it? Lynching, that abominable thing, always happens in an absolutely unanimist group—you see, lynching, whether physical, alas, or merely mediatic, always occurs in a group that is homogeneous. So I'm saying that philosophy begins when there's doubt about what connects us to one another—words, language, speech. There are two great modes of exchange between men: speech and money—it's troubling, we're in crisis, it's not me who invented this parallel, Mallarmé, I'm quoting a decadent poet
1:05:19 apparently very far from political and economic problems, as far as can be—withdrawn in the ivory tower of poets, far from—how does he put it—from the litter where the happy cattle of humans lie, very elitist, even though he wrote the most beautiful poem on class I've ever read, I recommend it, not the topic today, a poem called 'Conflit,' a prose piece drawn from a text with variations on a subject. Mallarmé—I think this goes toward answering your question—this parallel arises when he says speech has no relation—in a text where he wants to express the poetic revolution taking place from Baudelaire onward—a literary problem at the start, this revolution which means one must no longer describe but suggest, no longer show but make evocative allusions—well, things very familiar to those who know literary history. At a given moment he says: speech has no relation to things except commercially
1:06:30 though it would suffice to place silently in another's hand a coin. It's not me making the parallel—the two great modes of exchange between humans, money and speech. You'll say money is ethnocentric, there are peoples who don't know money—here in sub-Saharan Africa there was trade using cowries, as they're called, the little porcelain shells—you see, we always find equivalents, it can be pebbles, seeds—sometimes it's done with seeds of certain fruits that are hard and virtually incorruptible. But there you have the two great modes of exchange: a sonorous mode and a silent mode—money, which doesn't resonate, which has no smell, as is well known. And in times of crisis, both are called into question—it's a troubling parallel—the two modes of exchange, what constitutes a community of values—I'm not dragging in values when I speak of money, and when I ask myself the question 'what must I do,' I'm asking the question of value—what's worth doing. I like this very much
Judgment of value and judgment of existence 1:07:40 your question. If I give as an essay topic to kids—forgive me, I'm old, kids, I mean seniors—the classic topic that often comes up: has the modern development of the sciences and technology made philosophy useless—no, but the question deserves to be asked. The students who haven't yet quite understood—I don't mean bad students versus good students, but those who haven't yet quite understood—who are going to lose points, are the ones who are going to waste time reflecting on science, philosophy, these deep matters—they'll go look up in the dictionary the definition of science, of philosophy, or, a bit more conscientiously, they'll refer to their course notes or to their own experience trying to formulate it, which is even better. The good student is the one who sees that the problem isn't in these big, important, profound words, it's in the word 'useless.' How can I decide what is useful and useless if I don't specify what scale of values, what end I'm pursuing? If I take as a question 'is rain useful,' one would say
1:08:50 it's a disaster for the beachgoer and a godsend for the farmer in a drought. You see clearly that these words—these words expressing value judgments—I'll come back to this, distinct from objective scientific judgments called judgments of existence—these value judgments, I'm not saying we shouldn't make them, I mean they're loaded with scams if we don't specify what end, in the sense of goal, of course—the finality, the end that gives them meaning. So if I call you consumerist bastards wallowing in consumption, I go back to war against the dominant ideology—they want to convince us that you, me, etc. consume too much—I think we think about it and I find that I don't consume much and I belong—and I'm not that religious—to a poor country, I'd love to consume more, but never mind, I'm not here to talk about myself—from what point can we speak of overconsumption or overproduction? By the way, you know, the crisis of the 1930s was characterized by overproduction—coffee was thrown
1:10:00 into locomotives, milk was poured into gutters to try to raise prices—too much was being produced. There's even a historian of the time who speaks of that absurd spectacle of starving crowds in front of overflowing granaries—overproduction. And today we're told we're beginning to be threatened by deflation, stocks are piling up, too much is being produced. From what point do you decide that I am consuming too much? That's quite an extraordinary intrusion into my private life, that I consume too much music, that I don't look at prices when I go into a shop, I take the most expensive—from what point, from what day, from what December 31st at midnight did I go from scarcity to overconsumption? I'd love to know. There is a value judgment, but I'm going to specify it now so it becomes a judgment of existence. For that I'm making a detour—I'm answering your question at length because it's fundamental. I'll now specify, for those with the good will to take notes, who want clear things on paper, independent of all my digressions, the fundamental distinction between judgment of existence and judgment of value, which is necessary
1:11:12 to understand—that's our purpose here together—the specificity of the philosophical field. An example: I'll start with an example of a judgment of existence—this stadium measures 600 meters, 400 meters, I'll say, because the athletics track is 400 meters—judgment of existence, we don't argue long about that, or if we do argue, we measure and then everyone agrees, after the measurement. This stadium is well built—judgment of value: good, bad, beautiful, ugly, judgment of value. Now, I'm not saying this stadium is well built is a silly judgment and a scam; I'm saying it has no meaning at all if we don't specify for what purpose this stadium was built—if it was made for soccer or for ice hockey, those aren't the same requirements, you see. And often we're handed a value judgment without the end being specified. So I return to my overproduction—now that we're beginning to understand the distinctions between judgments of existence and judgments of value, there we're doing philosophy, you see, we're questioning the words. I come back to my overproduction story—from what point do we decide that I am overproducing? I'm now going to move from the value judgment, where there's a scam, to the judgment of existence
1:12:22 the entrepreneur decides—and this is entirely coherent from his point of view—that he is overproducing from the moment he can no longer sell at the margin he expected. Ah, now that becomes precise. That doesn't mean, when milk was being poured into gutters, my example of coffee in the locomotives, that everyone had too much milk—a million children were dying for lack of milk at the time—but there was too much relative to the margin I wanted to make. That's hard to admit. So we say we are in overproduction—we who? You, me?
1:12:54 that's what I somewhat reproach contemporary ideology for—you see, when we talk about consumerism and all that, the guilty ones are us, it's you, it's me—it's extraordinary, this dilution of guilt away from those who govern us, thank you, relative to what we are subjected to. All right, I won't dwell too long, I've stayed a long time on your question, you see how important it is, the moment one takes a bit of distance from the words of the tribe. I quote Mallarmé again, the poet—after him was the one who gives, I quote, a purer meaning to the words of the tribe. And you see, I praised mathematicians earlier, without whom there would have been no philosophy, and now I go to the other extreme and take the poet, and I think the three—the mathematician, the poet, and the philosopher—form a beautiful triangle, at the center of which is the question of language. What I mean by that is that in the end this critique of Callicles by Socrates, and by you, is perhaps more a matter of a value judgment and not—is that what I understood correctly from the start, because afterward it was more like affirmations than questions—that's true, no? No but it's not
The state and the state apparatus 1:14:04 I love passion, Hegel—nothing great was ever done without passion—that's not the point, but simply I think, I don't know if you noticed—you may not have been there, but never mind—when I quoted the Gorgias, I did recall the notion of force, and Socrates had shown Callicles how vague it was—we never know whether it's physical force or force of mind, whether it's force, the cleverer—the cleverest have gone through school, hence through society, hence there's no more pure force—the individual owes a great deal to the state in history, well, to society, to the collectivity. A small clarification here—I'll come back to your question right away—when I speak of the state, I don't confuse it with what we rightly criticize when we rise up against the state, whether from an anarchist point of view—I told you I'd come back to that—I introduced a crucial distinction that it seems to me current power tends to blur, and has for a long time, but never as much as today, between state and state apparatus. I'll give an example, and I think we'll stay clear between us because it's too important, in what he calls
1:15:15 the Holzwege, the paths that lead nowhere—that is, always to Auschwitz. When you go walking in autumn—we're past autumn now, sorry, I'm behind, I'll get there, excuse me, time passes slowly, we're already in winter, soon we plunge into the cold darkness—when you go walking in autumn in the forest looking for mushrooms, I love that, because where we're from, we lived in tropical countries where there's no autumn, there's a frustration—and you see a sign you know well: private forest, mushroom picking forbidden, Tintin—that means it's you who's deprived of my mushrooms, 'private' here means you're going to be deprived of them, right? In short, that limits my freedom, we've come to make a big fuss about private property in order to pick mushrooms, my French or Corsican side, a bit stingy, don't repeat that. Whereas when I see marked 'domanial forest' in Enville, who's the owner of the domain? Is it him, is it you, is it her? It's the state—the state also has that meaning. There are two meanings of 'state': there's the state apparatus
1:16:26 which puts parking tickets on my windshield, which levies unfair taxes on me, which taxes the poor and gives gifts to the rich—which doesn't stop the rich from saying they're overtaxed. So there's that state, in the negative sense, and then there's the state apparatus—you'll tell me this isn't a sophist's distinction—it is, no, no, no, quite the opposite—coming back to the most immediate quality of our era, we live—we live in the most monstrous state apparatus ever seen—I insist, we live in this same world—the cameras, the surveillance, the wiretaps, the NSA, etc. I mean, there's the apparatus—the riots of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine that Victor Hugo speaks of would be unthinkable today—the police nowadays are equipped, there's the equivalent of a division's worth of military equipment in the uniform of a single policeman practically now, I don't know—fine, that's the state apparatus, but in service of what?
1:17:19 oh, surprise—this absence of the state that is the private sphere. There's the distinction, a great secret I'm confiding to you—not a sorcerer's secret, sorcerers' secrets are poor—when truth is hidden, when it's not communicated to everyone, it means it's poor, meaning there won't be enough for everyone, whereas if we share it, real truth can be shared infinitely, as Spinoza admirably says—there are goods that increase through sharing. When we listen to music together, when we rejoice in peace together, I don't know, there are goods that increase through sharing. Whereas, this paradox I introduced—do we spit on the state? No, we must spit on the state apparatus, which is far more formidable, especially when it's not serving the state in the second sense. You see how I'm still answering your question—I analyzed, I questioned the notion of state; at the outset we have representations—the state, I immediately picture a cop, or tax collectors, an impersonal game—I was wrong, that's a representation, not a concept, I hadn't risen to knowledge, I stayed in the image, I hadn't yet learned to conceive. So let's make an effort, let's rise from vision
1:18:29 because when we look—look carefully at the floor, it doesn't move—for millennia we believed the earth was motionless—it's not with the eye that this was done, science required a great deal of equations, it's not with the eye that Galileo or Copernicus began to introduce the reverse vision—conceive, know, before going to see. Well, once again, I questioned the notion of state precisely, and I notice it's not just that there are two different meanings between the state as apparatus and the state as general will, general interest, common good, shared value—I haven't made a simple distinction, I haven't said A is different from B, I've said A is the opposite—that's even more serious, it's not a simple difference, it's an opposition. So now I come back to your question—okay, you say Callicles makes a judgment of existence precisely—implying, as it were, that he'd be a scientist—he says, well, listen, maybe it's not beautiful, maybe it's not moral what I'm saying, but still, force wins out. Yes, in nature
Callicles, Rousseau and the Code of Hammurabi 1:19:39 but with Socrates they're talking about the city, and that's where he completely falls apart, because he's going to be the first, Callicles, to sacrifice his animal, birth-given interests in order to conform to the worldly values of the city—the bling-bling values, representation, etc.—and he might even kill himself out of love in front of a pretty young woman, or a pretty young man, for that matter, in Athens at the time. So I mean, it's not at all certain that he's making a judgment of existence—that's the main thing I'll answer to what you're saying, and that's why we must pair Callicles with Rousseau, because Rousseau, I said this earlier, I don't know if you'd arrived yet—when I say Rousseau doesn't say it's wicked, it's wrong to exercise the law of the strongest—he doesn't say that, he says it has never happened. Rousseau—it's always collective values to which we submit while pretending we're defending nature and—but I told myself, in the last instance, force decides, even if it wears the face of science, of expertise, of democratic and collective deliberation—it decides for a moment, and that's what makes
1:20:49 Rousseau say: the strongest is never strong enough to always be the master, unless he converts his force into right and obedience into duty. And that's why we must pay tribute to the Code of Hammurabi, the first written law we've found, on the Babylonian stele—the Code of Hammurabi is a stele, I no longer remember whether it's at the British Museum or the Louvre—no, it's at the Louvre I believe, thank you, I had a doubt for a moment—the Code of Hammurabi, the first written laws—it seems barbaric to us: the thief must have his hand cut off, etc., that could still be in force—yet there's progress in the fact that it's no longer the arbitrary decision of whoever decides according to their whim what the law is; there's something written for everyone, valid for all, even going back through time to the most tyrannical eras—there's what makes Spinoza say, somewhat to counter Hobbes who had said homo homini lupus, man is a wolf to man—that's a bit the thesis underlying what you're defending, you play devil's advocate very well, but here all devils are welcome—when the devil shows himself, he weakens—no, no, no, it's not you, I'm thinking of Callicles, I wouldn't dare
1:22:00 there's a long way to go before reaching the devil—no but when the devil shows himself, that's when he starts to weaken, it's as if he's hidden behind a mask—it's the mask of democracy.
