English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
The public is not the truth of the political 0:00 What I want is that you, everywhere, go and make him win, because that's our — when you love your country, you don't hesitate, you go straight to the point, and you call for voting for the Republicans.
1:04 Do you offer him a thanks? That's not how it works, it's not — pass me the salad, I'll send the rhubarb. And the theme will be to bring the security pact to life in order to bring our values to life. Long live, long live, long live, long live, long live, long live!
1:51 The public is the truth of the political.
3:51 The affirmation of the generic or of the urban genre is substituted for the culture of the nation, that is, for concrete reality, which is up to now the place in and from which men can realize their most varied objectives, including the sublation of the nation and the elevation beyond nationalism.
4:24 It is always within the national milieu, which is the milieu that effectively pacifies relations between individuals, it is always, until further notice, within the milieu of this community, which is the national community, that men can realize their values and their objectives, including what for many is internationalism. The human race thus tends to substitute itself for the national community, for the nation or for nations.
5:01 And so dialogue, the consensus that allows a man to enter into relation with any other man whatsoever, is considered to be what allows man to reach the truth. I would like to mention here, among others, as I have already done, Habermas's intervention — he is one of the representatives of this current, who considers that the public, with its indefiniteness, with its indeterminacy, the public is truer than the political, which is a determined communal reality, and up to now, determined by national existence.
5:54 So we are dealing with a development of subjectivism in all its forms. We are dealing with the development of an idealist attitude. The spectacular replaces the objective intervention of the best-armed. We are in what Hegel might have called bad idealism. We are in this era where objectivity is reduced to intersubjectivity.
6:29 But I think that intersubjectivity, if it is not worked upon by negativity, if it remains merely a positive relation — intersubjectivity is the primacy of subjects, of each subject, hence the development of individualism — and that it is not at all what allows one to reach a certain social objectivity, the encounter with a milieu from which all men can draw nourishment, and which is not simply the extremely fragile result of the interrelation of encounters between men, which are thus simply bound to the instant.
7:24 That is why, as much as I think that the existence of the public, of a public, of a public opinion, is an absolutely necessary existence — it is necessary that within the political milieu the affirmation of the public, of a public, can develop, which means that the relation to the political, which is absolutely essential, must be a critical relation, and one of the aspects of this critical dimension of the relation to the political is the existence, within a polity, and thus within national reality, of the public, of the affirmation of the public and of a public opinion.
8:14 Political life cannot simply consist in the existence of public opinion. Political convictions are something else entirely, and that is why national reality is a reality which, I believe, cannot currently be eliminated. Internationalism itself, internationalism as such, still affirmed the subsistence of the nation, and when it wanted to become a supranationalism, it was in fact only an imperialism.
The political, site of all efficacy 9:02 Consequently, I wanted to recall this necessity of the affirmation of the political in relation to the social, and secondly in relation to the societal. A societal life must be possible, association is an absolutely indispensable reality, just as there must be social realities, which do not consist solely in intersubjectivity — there must be social structures, a social structuring.
9:48 So, the societal must indeed be affirmed, the social must be affirmed, but one must not forget that the place in which they can develop and in which they can have true efficacy, that place is the political. It is the political. The political is the place of all efficacy, and it is itself real at present, still in the form of the nation-state.
10:20 That is why I think that it must not be weakened, whatever the will, and one must take care that within the political milieu, a social life and a societal life can develop. So, long live the social, long live the social and long live the societal, but let us not absolutize them. The political reality par excellence is the political, and it exists in the form of the nation-state.
10:56 That is why I said last time, and I repeat, the necessity of repoliticizing the political against all the temptations of those who believe one could make up for its shortcomings by substituting for it mere social reality or mere societal reality. I would also recall that for Marx, it is at the level of the political, and because the political exists, that the social can grasp and assert itself through a set of classes, and the true social struggle is necessarily a struggle carried out at the level of the political.
12:56 I therefore consider as harmful objectives all those who call, for example, for moralizing, for culturalizing politics. Of course, the development of culture, and in particular the development of schooling, are absolute requirements for the formation, not only of man as future citizen, but first of the man he will be, and in a way it must be recalled that each of the constitutive moments of human existence must be respected, each in its place, each must be accomplished according to its own modalities, and through its own objectives.
14:01 Consequently, this necessary repoliticization of the political does not at all mean, on my part, any wish to diminish social life or societal life, but simply to recall that each of the levels and moments of human existence must be fully affirmed in itself, without any reduction. If you will, it is not a matter of falling into a kind of narcissism regarding political life.
Infra-political and supra-political problems 14:39 The slogan "Repoliticize the political" or politics — this slogan is not at all, for me, a narcissistic slogan. Its raison d'être is not that there would be some supreme excellence of political life taken in and for itself. But the extra-political virtue of the political itself, as means or necessary condition of a human existence — this virtue consists precisely in not shutting oneself up theoretically and practically within political life, but in using the political since it is the place and the means of every actualization, whatever it may be, in human existence.
15:32 Whatever man does up to now, he cannot do it, and whatever the nature of his objective, whatever the domain of his objective — whether it be economics, society, civic life, spiritual life, whether it be his infra-political life or his political life — everything man does, he can only do it effectively because the political allows it, favors it, or abstains, self-limits itself so that man can act according to motives that are not properly political, but this can only happen through action or permission.
16:32 It is an action, or self-limitation, and it is perhaps the most difficult action there is, on the part of the political itself. Consequently, it is not on my part a matter of wanting to favor a political narcissism. Politics is not, for me, man's supreme destination. There are objectives that are infinitely more important than properly political objectives.
17:03 but nothing can be done if, one way or another, the political does not consent to it. You see? Whether it favors it positively or lets it happen. But that is perhaps the most difficult thing for it — for the state to know how to self-limit, for the political finally to favor the development, within the milieu it pacifies, of that whose objectives are not its own.
17:41 A social life, a cultural life, a religious life, a non-religious life, a spiritual life, whatever it may be. But is it not always wanting, as a priority, first to perfect the political instrument — which will be an alibi for not using the political and for doing nothing.
18:44 But once we see things a bit more clearly and have achieved an organization that is just in that it allows the effective, and not merely illusory, participation of citizens, once we have more or less organized political life, the political instrument, it must, to a certain extent, forget itself and confront the problems facing humanity.
19:14 And today, the essential problems facing humanity are not problems of essentially political content. They are infra-political and supra-political problems. Well, the problem posed by climatology — is this climate disruption of essentially human origin, even if one might think, as is the case with certain members of academies of science, that global warming is not simply the product of human industrial recklessness.
19:58 We must act as if it were the case so that, at least, if this industrial recklessness does play a part in global warming, at least we remove that factor. For the pessimistic solution — and I think some scientists sincerely believe it, and do not use this belief to justify, if you will, the policy of industrial expansion, or else claim that it would not be responsible — we must therefore, of course, act as though humans were responsible and take all necessary measures; the ecologists are thus entirely right on this point.
20:46 So there is this problem, which is a considerable problem, much has been said about it, humanity is increasingly sensitive to it; there is another problem which is not a directly political problem, concerning the demographic problem — demographic problems are a considerable problem in the world today; there are migration problems, and I think these problems are not being confronted directly at present; these are problems for which I can hardly see the solution, and that is no reason not to seek one, because these phenomena are going to develop.
21:48 I saw in a newspaper today that the effects of these phenomena are sometimes greater, in terms of their importance, their scale, than the effects of conflicts and wars. Consequently, the problem of necessary migrations is a considerable problem, because they are not without cause, of course, and they absolutely affect humanity.
22:27 There are other problems that are of a supra-political order, I don't need to dwell on them, which are considerable problems — the problem of the relations between politics and religion. This is a problem sufficiently current that I need not dwell on it. So politics must not reflect on itself alone.
Freedom gave history a meaning 23:02 Once we have a certain political instrument, we must think of using it to confront problems that are not of a political order. These are problems that history has not encountered, at least not to the degree they have today. History developed with a direction, along a line, as long as it had as its motor and its objective the search for the conditions of the essential value humanity seeks, namely freedom.
23:56 For the conditions of freedom, as I said earlier, we now know them. They form a system. There are demographic, economic, social conditions, political behavior, cultural, religious conditions. And since these conditions are linked according to a certain order, history, when its essential objective was to realize freedom — which is that whereby man feels himself, from the outset, to be free.
24:36 Even if it does not have a consciousness of this freedom and of the content it entails, it seeks this freedom; its conditions are linked. They form a system, and consequently their pursuit is itself ordered. This is what gave history a direction. But the problems that must now be confronted are problems that do not concern this core of history, and that is why history now seems to have no direction any longer.
25:17 There are absolute necessities, and humanity does not possess, even in thought, even in its thinking of itself, does not manage to master them. I see, at present, no philosophy that proposes a framework, a project, enabling us to work at mastering these problems.
25:48 I reread a number of contemporary works, but one finds nothing. There is no current philosophical thought of the era equal to these fundamental requirements. There is none. It is a desert, and that is why I reminded you again earlier that since Hegel, in the end, there has been nothing.
Sartre and Schopenhauer after Hegel 26:20 Nothing has been said. Read, take Sartre, read Sartre. Except Marx. Sorry? Except Marx. That's a brand, yes. Except Marx. Yes, yes, ah well no, of course. There, no but that goes without saying, but it's good to specify it. No but I have always considered, as you know, that what Marx retained from Hegel was not the worst part of Marx. Yes.
26:51 But otherwise you have nothing. Sartre, the Critique of Dialectical Reason, I don't know how many pages, well, but there's nothing. There's nothing. His principle moreover is that praxis — there's nothing except in The Family Idiot. Sorry? There's nothing at all.
27:21 Praxis is a relation borne solely by need. That's a tremendous regression compared to Hegel. It's clear. For Hegel it's desire, and desire does not have as its object the apple you're going to eat, etc. In Sartre, practice, praxis, is purely individual and is borne solely by need. So there is a kind of animalization of man that is extraordinary in a thinker who wanted to radically separate man from the object by positing him as a freedom.
28:03 You see? But that doesn't show up in the works, and with the others I don't find any literature either that would allow present-day man to find his bearings a bit better in the situation that is his. Philosophical thought — yes, since Hegel and Marx it has stalled; there was still one great thinker, Schopenhauer was a thinker, there was an original thought, etc.
28:43 but still it doesn't allow us to — it's even worse than that, and besides it's repugnant, it's so reactionary — yes, of course, of course, when there were the barricades he called the police to say they're there, they're there, there's nothing in Schopenhauer — no, don't tell us Schopenhauer is worth reading — there is, all the same, the affirmation of the will as not being a mere consequence of intelligence, you see, he puts an end, in his own way, to idealism by affirming that man is situated in being, which he first envisages as a nature; he is conditioned by an entire world, on which Schopenhauer develops a theory of his own, but still, it's a critique of subjectivism — you think that's better than Sartre's need?
29:45 it's a regression, I find, on the contrary — well, chronologically of course it comes before, let's say — we're not going to go back to Schopenhauer with this idea that he roots man in the world, in being, whereas Sartre detaches him from it immediately, because in Sartre he says indeed that man is always in situation, but the situation, deep down, is nothing for him since man is always absolutely free, even if he is unaware of it, even if he doesn't want to know it, even if he is unaware of it, he is condemned to be free — there, so in Schopenhauer there is a reinsertion of man into his objective milieu, that's — but it's ultra-reactionary, it's ultra-regressive all the same, I know, and then naming his dog as universal legatee, that's clearly not exactly a mark of absolute humanism — no but I'd say he was anticipating, it's the post-structuralist anti-humanism, yes, he has a form of modernity, well, in retrospect, posthumously — Losurdo, a very fine passage
30:55 pro-Schopenhauer from a Hegelian point of view in his book Critique of Apoliticism, and he pays tribute — Losurdo, our mutual friend — and he pays tribute to the anticolonialist Schopenhauer, completely unrecognized, because that distinguishes him from all the reactionary thinkers of the period — there, because precisely his taste for India led him that far — yes yes, no but that's — it's worth noting that when one writes the history of ideas there is often a ruse of reason — he played a role in the critique of intellectualism, you see, and in France he had considerable influence — sorry to add a nuance to what you just said, Aymeric, you say he's the only one among the reactionary philosophers to attack colonialism, I think on the contrary it's a constant theme, we find it in Baudelaire — Baudelaire, I mean the Baudelaire of Maistre, that is, there is nothing good in the city except the poet, the priest, the soldier — Marine Le Pen wouldn't dare say half of that today — I love Baudelaire — maybe don't say what I didn't say, but well, politics isn't his strongest suit — now this Baudelaire reproaches the American world, which martyred the Redskins, etc., for having reduced Blacks to slavery
32:05 and the Indians, of having — there, I'd just note that there is a valorization of underdevelopment in reactionary thought, especially in the early 19th century — we're not yet at the stage — it's already today's ecology — that we should never have burdened them with progress and all that, that it's the beginning of the end — I say this because in my colonial childhood, I was born in Vietnam, sorry to get personal, but I mean I kept hearing around me, from the most reactionary people, whether French colonial expatriates — I mean, I have — I was in a Quebec that collaborated with the Japanese in Indochina, small fry — I kept hearing around me, we should never have brought them progress, schools, etc., because it's not good for them, it took them away from their primitive purity — well now these are themes of the left, and that's a bit worrying — before — if you've concluded, before handing over to the audience and to objections, which I think we're preparing because they have a few, as you might expect, Dominique and Aymeric — I just wanted to add to your final statement — there is no philosopher
Sartre and Marxism, "unsurpassable philosophy" 33:15 You mentioned Sartre, but I already reminded you last time that Sartre had concluded the Critique of Dialectical Reason with his own failure—he had admitted, he himself acknowledged, that there was no philosopher of our time, since Marxism was still the unsurpassable philosophy of our time. So the Critique of Dialectical Reason was published posthumously in its second volume; he didn't publish it—but I mention this just to recall it, to go along with Bernard Bourgeois in saying that since Marx there's been nothing, and particularly not in the last fifty or sixty years, notably in France—it's even appalling—but the most recent thinker who seriously confronted both Hegel and Marx, with the idea of extending them or proposing something else, a philosophy precisely of our time, notably from a political point of view but more generally from a systemic point of view as they say today—well, Sartre did that, fairly seriously actually, over many pages that you recalled. He was very prolix, sometimes a bit tedious, his conclusion—he ends up admitting that yes, there is a philosophy
34:26 that is for now unsurpassable for our time, that of Marx, simply because this time that Sartre lived through, that we still live through today—we can see just how much there is a currency not only of Hegel but especially of Hegel via Marx—well, it remains Marx nonetheless. This will perhaps be one of the topics of debate, because as you know, we don't at all think that the idea of socialism—despite the fact that I largely agree with the comments you made on Marx's conception of the social in his system of thought—the idea of socialism and the Marxist critique of Hegel has not at all been invalidated by history. But that's the old debate. I'll pass the floor—I'd like to add one word: it's quite curious to see Sartre say he places himself within the Marxist perspective, when the leitmotif, the central motif of the Critique of Dialectical Reason, and already of Being and Nothingness, is that there is nothing else in
35:37 human reality besides the individual—praxis is originally the doing of an individual, which it does not put into immediate relation with the other individual but with the object. You see how someone who affirms that human praxis, in its origin, is carried solely by need and individual need—how can this thinker dare say that he places himself within a Marxist perspective, when what he constantly fires at with red-hot cannonballs is the social, that is, the reality of something that would be the relation between individuals? You understand, it's an absolute individualism.
36:48 That's very apt. I'll pass the floor right away to Aymeric and to Dominique, then to the audience, but one last comment to defend Sartre against that vile filth of Schopenhauer's—you'll remember all the same that Schopenhauer sums up his understanding of Hegel by saying that Hegel writes words and it's up to us to find the meaning. So I'll tell you, that's really the degree of consistent nullity—you see, I so don't want to be accused of being locked inside Hegelianism that I still acknowledge—it's a beautiful prison; if you're locked in, you're comfortable there, we're all comfortable there. So, Dominique, Aymeric—well, Aymeric, no, no, because it would be a shame to even cut off Bernard—hello, he'll respond to the fine words you were saying. I'm also a publisher; I want to pay tribute to the bookshop. There's a great tradition among French bookshops, it's true, which cultivates this critical spirit, and it's true we have fairly few philosophical gatherings, and especially with two speakers—this is the spirit that's here, it's cherished.
Nation and internationalism: an editor's intervention 37:59 Well, what strikes me is that indeed the political climate here means we won't agree on the diagnosis—on the somewhat Tocquevillian vision you put forward of the conflict between freedom and equality. I don't want to dwell on that, but simply, perhaps, we would see this defeat of socialism, from a strictly social point of view, in any case if we analyze the outcome—it also bore fruit, it established a balance of power. If a number of communist regimes hadn't been there, fascism would probably have triumphed—that is, at Stalingrad, for example, where the fate of humanity could have tipped. We didn't have a clash between freedom and equality there; we had the clash between a racist conception that denied humanity and a conception that, on the contrary, defended it. And I know that in your books you say that perhaps it was the Gaullist state that was closest to the Hegelian system—so if you're a Gaullist, it's not a Gaullist who would deny that Stalingrad—fortunately—a certain progressive side won, so I mean an anti-Atlanticist Gaullist, there.
39:09 But let me close that parenthesis—we don't come from exactly the same political world, but let's say, to exercise my critical spirit nonetheless, I'm struck—because I haven't stopped reading you these past several weeks, especially since I read these little books, and afterward I reread the earlier works too, Les actes de l'esprit, also La politique de Hegel—and what strikes me is how much one can only agree with you in your current assessment. Let me explain why—especially, I want to read a passage for the audience here, if you'll allow me, because it's the one that opens your Penser l'histoire du présent avec Hegel—the previous book, but I think it should be read as a diptych, because I think it's a bit—I don't know—it's at the start of the book, but perhaps that's what set you off writing: your reaction to the 2015 attacks, the series of attacks in 2015, and the return of a certain national idea. So, for everyone to understand, I'll read the passage quickly—well, I'll do a short excerpt. So: these attacks showed the sudden and massive shift, at the head of the state and among the majority of the people, from the vogue of the social
40:19 revitalized as the societal—that was the state before—to the exalted embrace of a national idea that had for decades been regarded, even denounced, as something past, frozen, or deadly, whose mere assertion was already the reviled nationalism—a revolutionary shift from social differentiation intensified into societal diversity, to political equalization reified into national identity; politically speaking, from a left-wing stance to a right-wing stance; philosophically or metaphysically speaking, from the celebration of the category of interaction leading to participation—that's what you were saying there about the societal—to that of the category of totality taking concrete form in the institution. We have objectively witnessed the passage from one opposite to the other. There, I found that absolutely fascinating, because you showed the passage from quantity to quality happening right before our eyes—so we really saw your vision at work in this present political moment, when you say that the national is precisely the condition for internationalism—it's not that partisans of Jaurès, and I think there are many in the room, could deny that a lot of patriotism sometimes moves one away from internationalism,
41:30 while a lot brings one back to it—so that's it, and when you insist on this pacifying character of the nation, and on the fact that we cannot build a nation, build a community, simply through intersubjectivity, through connectivity—well, let's speak plainly of this ultra-subjective, ultra-liberal, American-style vision—but I just want to tell you how much of an ally I feel today, despite our political disagreements, an ally in the current, present struggle, when I see Emmanuel Macron leaning on Habermas—and that's not even to mention his flirtations with Ricœur, which don't seem to me very substantial—I think Ricœur is even more so—no, no, the Macron link is somewhat anecdotal, whereas Ricœur is really the great void too—we're in the—yes, yes—but it's a void that isn't meaningful, whereas Macron with Habermas seems to me quite, quite connected. There's in Macron a will—I believe he's a historical figure in the Hegelian sense of the term—I believe there's a risk, unfortunately—yes, no, but perhaps in the negative sense, the sense of putting an end to the French nation—perhaps a thousand years of history could come to a stop with—I recall that he's
42:40 a young leader, everyone around him was trained in the United States—there's like a will to destroy precisely what constitutes the substantial and our institutions—it's the island of individuals against the State, there. And, like you, if indeed—there I think Marxists and Hegelians would agree—not to separate the substantial from the subjective, even though there have certainly been deviations in revolutionary thought, a kind of voluntarism that exists, that stamps in any case a rejection of the past—let's make a clean slate—which is the one line in the Internationale that I don't like, precisely because we cannot make a clean slate of the past. But indeed, and especially to insist too—this is the great critique—the general will is not simply made up of two subjectivities; already in Rousseau, the general will is more than the mere common will. And we clearly see this will to destroy what constitutes our national category into this kind of intersubjectivity, for the supposed greater good—I already want to think of the people whose nation has been destroyed
43:50 recently—but simply regarding this passage, which seems to me absolutely symptomatic, and I think there will be debate here, where I disagree precisely, since for me I find it quite telling when you say the shift from a left-wing to a right-wing stance—there is a patriotism of the left, I even wonder if the very idea of the nation wasn't born on the left—the Soviets in their homeland, the Vietnamese, even today the North Koreans, why not—there's a patriotism of the left, even if it's not more so—rather more rooted—the Chinese against the Japanese, well, the Chinese communists anyway, it's still rooted in that reality. And it seems to me—I was still thinking of you today when I saw the funeral of Arnaud Beltrame, this very courageous soldier—I think, another great Hegelian moment, because here's someone who, facing a madman, sacrifices his life—but in sacrificing his humanity—no, he sacrifices his life for a national, patriotic idea, and there I found we truly had a phenomenological moment, where perhaps there will be this reversal toward the affirmation of national character. But I tell myself that this affirmation of national character among the French, which is returning, is a chance
45:00 for internationalism, because it will make—make them understand too, because we need to explain the causes of this terrorism, which is obviously geopolitical—you say "a madman," that's a bit quick—yes, exactly—Islamism was financed by various countries, by imperialism, etc.—so perhaps there's a chance that this return of the national in France, of national feeling, will make people understand that this national feeling should be shared by all peoples—there's a legitimate reciprocity, each people needs to have its own nation, its own institutions, its own rules, and perhaps there we would experience a form of real internationalism, as opposed to what we experienced before, this kind of liberal apathy—that is, a complete destruction of institutions. And there you were quite right to say that it's not everything, but that it is nonetheless the essential, the substantial thing—and this thoroughly liberal destruction which is the culmination of a project that I don't think created freedom but could, under extreme conditions, even lead to fascism. Well, today there's this national sentiment—I don't see it as a right-wing force, I see it as something quite positive. I don't at all want to appropriate this soldier who, from what I understand, was raised in every rule of the military spirit
46:10 of the right in France—that's not my concern—but simply there's a patriotic, national sentiment of self-defense of the French people which is healthy, which is entirely natural. If it pushes them to ask themselves questions about the nation, there are also people on the left—and you, as a Hegelian, necessarily ask yourselves these questions—there are also people on the left who will follow you, and that's why I won't exercise my critical spirit—on the contrary. I'll give you back the floor very quickly, I'll let you respond right away, but I want to specify something, not so much to pile on to what Aymeric said but to add to it, because—to get back to your point about the shift to interaction, to intersubjectivity, this conception in which politics is emptied of all the political today—to take exactly the example from immediate current events that Aymeric cites, the affair of this hero—this man behaved absolutely heroically, it's not a matter of relativizing that at all, etc.—but the production, within politics, of this politics of the intersubjective and of interaction has produced effects
From "Je suis Charlie" to "Tous gendarmes" 47:20 that are thoroughly structural, quite astonishing, in fact quite symptomatic in my view, since, as you know, it produced a hashtag for social media called "we are all gendarmes," and what's interesting is how, in the space of a short time, including the events you mentioned, we went from "Je suis Charlie" to—"Je suis Charlie," "they're all gendarmes" now—the Charlies, that's rather worrying about the approach to politics they have, and where exactly this form leads that you denounce—this grotesque disqualification, in the interaction, the intersubjective and the spectacular, of what is the political—because the result of all that is not at all, in my opinion, what you're suggesting—that would be nice if it were, but it's not that at all—it's the continuation of "Je suis Charlie" transformed into "we are all gendarmes," exactly on a completely analogous structural model. We clearly see it's the development of the same ideological movement—so that was just to add to Aymeric's comment. You know what always surprises me—it had struck me a lot in November
48:30 2015—the immediate shift from one posture to another. The morning of—what was the date, November 13, 2015—when the attacks happened, it was societalism; the next morning, it was nationalism. The fluctuations of public opinion are something—well, astonishing, immortalized by Shakespeare in Julius Caesar—yes, but it's not opinion, I repeat, it's necessary for public opinion to be able to exist, that's absolutely necessary, it's the subjective dimension of democracy—people need to be aware that they can intervene politically, express themselves—first there needs to be one—but public opinion as such has never decided anything; it's political convictions
49:40 political commitments that come into play—but public opinion, if you like, its existence is an absolute requirement, but in itself, by its content, as such it's nothing—public opinion never does anything on its own, you can make it do more or less whatever you want. I'll pass the floor—your second prosecutor of the day, thank you—yes, the first one was quite indulgent with everyone, I was a bit more harsh—yes, especially since I kept a bit in the background last time because it was the exhibition after a series of three presentations, so it was quite normal that—no, no, it's not just to contradict, even at the level of the intervention, but forgive me in advance if I turn out a bit longer, a bit less brief. So you began your talk this evening with the French Revolution—yes—and you
Hegel's letter to Zellmann on the Revolution 50:50 ended it with the appearance of problems you called supra-political or infra-political—yes—and by their content—exactly—and so I'll myself begin my remarks with a reading, very short, it's a tiny paragraph, a reading of a text by Hegel—not to teach you anything you don't know, I know no one who knows the corpus like you do—it's an excerpt from a letter, from the correspondence, much less known than the canonical texts of Hegel on politics and so on. It's a letter to Zellmann—you may know what I mean—dating from January 1807, so we're a few months from the appearance of the Phenomenology. It's not the young Hegel, it's not yet the Berlin Hegel, it's the Hegel who's starting to settle into the system definitively—I say this with all due modesty, I always feel a bit intimidated, you were my research supervisor—I bless your words. Well, and here he speaks of the French Revolution in this letter, and there, in his letters he's not under the constraints of censorship, he's not being published, he's not
52:00 Domenico Losurdo shows the extent, in a book published by Delga incidentally, to which Hegel's obscurity was sometimes—not always, mind you—compounded by dealing with censorship. I'll extend this little anecdotal point a bit—but I do pity the censor appointed by the Ministry of Cults who had to make rulings within the pages of the Logic—does he believe in God, where does that leave us, because after all our children are in his hands. So, here's what Hegel says to his correspondent, to Zellmann, in January 1807: thanks to the bath of its revolution, the French nation has not only been freed from many institutions that the human spirit, having outgrown childhood, had surpassed and which consequently weighed upon it, as upon others, like absurd chains—in Marxist terms, the relations of production had long since become obsolete—but in addition—and this seems to me hyper-Hegelian, what follows—but in addition, the individual has shed the fear of death, thanks to the bath of its revolution
53:11 in the French nation, at that moment, has shed the fear of death and of the—I was going to say—the usual routine, the usual grind of life, to which the change of circumstances has removed all solidity. That's what gives it—the French nation, at that time—the great strength it shows toward others; "die grosse Nation," as the Germans said, weighs upon the narrow-mindedness and apathy of the latter—the latter being the Germans, the Austrians, the English, and the Russians—and the apathy of the latter, who, forced at last to abandon their indolence in favor of reality, will leave the one to enter into the other, and perhaps—this is announcing Marx, I say this myself—like the intimate depth of feeling concentrating itself into outward action, they will surpass their master—as I said, announcing Christ in a certain passage—yes, I do want to recall that in Hegel, the freedom which you're not only right to insist on but which we never insist on enough—this freedom which gives the one and only non-totalitarian meaning one can assign
54:21 to history, when Hegel says: the Orientals, that only one is free; the Greeks, that some are free; the moderns, that all are free—the moderns being the romantics, the Christians, the Germanic peoples, whatever you want to call them—he's reminding us that there is indeed a meaning, and that this meaning is the least totalitarian there could be, because it is freedom—a little reminder in passing against Hannah Arendt and other disciples of the most Nazi of philosophers—so, yes, Orginsky, it's good to insist on freedom, we never insist on it enough, but I recall that in Hegel freedom is inseparable from the awareness of finitude and death, and from the assumption of death, and that's something we no longer hear, including in Hegelian studies, not enough—so allow me to recall it. I know you have a justified wariness of a romantic approach—yes, yes—but here it's not about romanticism—the romantic spends his time fleeing death, that's precisely what Hegel reproaches him for in the Preface to the Phenomenology: it is not that life which shrinks from death in horror and keeps itself pure of destruction, but the life that bears death within itself and maintains itself in it, that is the true life of the spirit—against romantic escapism, the escapism of fleeing death
Revolution and counter-revolution from 1789 to 1989 55:31 that is, the English factory, in the dream—I take the two extremes—in the dream, in escape, and in the nocturnal. That's the point I wanted to insist on first, to say now—and here I'll be a bit more critical regarding certain passages of your talk—on the fact that I don't believe equality was on the agenda throughout the whole historical sequence running from 1789 to 1989. When Rousseau says in Émile, thus a few years before the French Revolution—prophetic as perhaps no one has ever been, with such lucidity—we are approaching the age of crisis and the century of revolutions—one couldn't be more lucid, I mean, because it's not just the storming of the Bastille that proves him right, it's 1830, it's 1848, it's the Paris Commune, it's 1917, it doesn't stop until the date you assigned, until 1989. Well, and I skipped the Cuban Revolution, we could go on—and so on. Well, so 1989, the Schopenhauerian revolution of Schopenhauer, ultra-reaction, the destruction
56:41 of all hope precisely in the social—that's the classic counter-revolutionary thought. So I want to specify that this history, subsequent to Hegel, subsequent to the French Revolution to be precise, is not the history of egalitarianism but the history of a permanent conflict between revolution and counter-revolution. It begins during Hegel's own lifetime and is called the Restoration—that's indeed the name historians give it—it begins with that avatar of NATO avant la lettre called the Holy Alliance; it was a matter of guarding not against the Soviet Union or against today's Russia, but against French ideas—I'm just restoring a history that is so little taught—well, that used to be massively taught, not so long ago, but now you'd almost be called a Bolshevik for teaching it, whereas it was, I don't know, Michelet's teaching—so, a reminder in passing, it's not the history of the egalitarianism of the Guizots. I'm currently running a small seminar where I'm doing a serial reading, until next June—sorry, a bit of self-promotion—of a novella by Gérard de Nerval. We're very far from history, we're in dreams, in fantasy, etc.
57:47 I do it on purpose, because in it Nerval takes as his starting point the fact that a law has just been passed under Guizot, a law forbidding authors from writing serialized novels—you talk of freedom and equality, but either you write fiction or you write history, you don't do what Dumas, what Nerval did, these kinds of things where you never know if you're in history or in fiction. I mean, the few freedoms that had appeared under the greatest government France has ever known, in my view—if I add to it that of the Liberation, sorry, of the Convention—the greatest government, that is, the Convention's, lasted a very short time—there's Thermidor, after Thermidor there's my compatriot Bonaparte—we can't say that equality was the priority of these—even though he did move the ball forward in states that were a bit backward, when with a stroke of his pen he put an end to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation—and afterward there's the Restoration in France, I mean—and then there's the repression of the Commune, and to this day the trauma that the Commune provoked in the French working class—I mean, so we cannot say that the concern for equality
58:58 was there—where I fully agree with you is that objectively, from a Marxian point of view—I say Marxian, I don't like signs over Marxism, I mean I want to say from a retro-objective point of view—it's true that the progress in daily life due to the industrial revolution objectively brings a leveling, a tendential leveling, but also new inequalities—on which texts you know better than anyone, Hegel already insisted from the very birth of manufacturing, saying that it created miseries, as early as the Philosophy of Spirit of Jena. There, I'll limit my remarks for now to that text, but it seems to me crucial—thanks to the bath of its revolution the French nation rid itself not only of old privileges but of the fear of death. So, thank you—now your plea? Oh well, no, I mean that the French Revolution seems to me to have been a pivotal event because after it, rationalists or humanists
Napoleon, Robespierre and the Terror 1:00:08 no longer questioned that freedom was an absolute value. It was denied by a certain number of people who wanted the return of the old regime, of course—Schopenhauer, for example—no, but a small parenthesis—I think you mentioned Napoleon—I still think he was the continuator of the French Revolution, insofar as, especially for the Germans, he fixed its fundamental gains, which show up nonetheless in the Napoleonic Code, in the civil code, in the grandes écoles. And well, if Napoleon was essentially a war leader, it's because Europe did not want the French Revolution to be able to be consolidated—150% agreed. Well, Napoleon was forced into war, and he was
1:01:19 forced into war because the rest of the powers—all the European powers—wanted, through him, to strike down the French Revolution, particularly William Pitt, and there was the Restoration, but even so it didn't roll back all the gains of the Empire, and had there been no Empire, the Restoration might have been much closer than it was, and firstly, to the old regime. Therefore I fully—well, I grant absolution to Napoleon, in whom I see the man who nonetheless fixed, as we said, the essential gains of civil liberty—and, as a war maker, being Corsican, I couldn't not say it—well, I'm saying it—and if he made war, it's because he was forced into it, as the one who fixed and inherited the French Revolution. I don't think that deep down he loved war,
1:02:29 but it was imposed on him—he was a very great war leader, he was an intelligent man, well, he showed it—but they wanted to settle scores with him by settling scores with what he had, in essence, fixed in place, because even the Restoration was not a return to the old regime. But for the rest—so you see, I think freedom was never again put into question as an essential value of man—that hasn't been the case for equality, which was not recognized as freedom was, and even people who were humanists—well, all humanists affirmed that freedom was an absolute value, but not all affirmed that equality was an absolute value—like, for example, the Panzer, the Panzer metaphysics of Panzer divisions, with that fine
1:03:39 and wars—we forgot to talk about that, we'll talk about it maybe later, but you wanted to add something—I was just thinking of a tiny nuance, which is the fact that what you say, which is very true, about the assessment of Napoleon, is perfectly true for what he affirmed in the memoirs of Saint Helena—that's what he said, it's perhaps what he thought too, no doubt, but let's say it's in the evening of his life; but in those very fine memoirs he speaks very positively of Robespierre—it's also a way of making up with the Jacobins, who—Carnot moreover helped him at the time of Waterloo—there was a kind of reconciliation after he had rather thrashed them, to put it mildly—so it's the period when, in any case, politically, strategically, or maybe he genuinely thought it, was he sincere—he has a positive judgment of Robespierre, recalling his links with Robespierre the younger at Toulon, etc., and he still credits Robespierre with having saved the fatherland, saved the state—and that's why, well, despite everything, as you say, I have a fierce will to forge an alliance with these right-wing Hegelians because I sense there's a real
1:04:49 National Council of Resistance, I was going to say philosophical, that is being put in place, perhaps—I'll stop you there, I believe Hegel is a right-wing Hegelian, that's it—are you saying that Bonapartist Hegelianism is a common thread—but precisely what strikes me is that Napoleon was able to praise Robespierre perhaps more than Hegel did, because he criticizes the Terror in the Phenomenology, and it's true that when I see you put, somewhat on the same level—relying, of course, on Hegel's texts—the terrorism of the Orient, which was Islam, well, Islamist fanaticism, and the Terror of the French Revolution, and insisting on those themes, I think that what is fundamentally different, and changes everything completely, is that with Robespierre there is nonetheless a defense of the substantial, of the state, of the fatherland in danger—which you don't have in the Islamic State—and as you said, I believe you, it's indeed an absolute oxymoron, because by definition there is no state there, it's a refusal of—there you go—and I wonder whether, listening again to these famous texts on the French Revolution
1:05:59 of Hegel's, whether Hegel didn't lack charity toward Robespierre, unlike Napoleon—precisely unlike great practitioners, perhaps of the French too—is it perhaps time to revise the judgment somewhat, especially since, in fact, as we know, Robespierre's repression was also motivated by the desire to avoid, precisely, upheavals of the type of the September Massacres, where indeed the mob, in the most objectionable sense of the term, was ready to do anything—the death toll in Paris, well, I don't mean the Vendée, of course, where it's a war, is inferior over several months to the repression of the Paris Commune in a single week—so it must also be put in perspective relative to the image that Napoleon himself had—relativized by himself, because I think that the deaths of the Terror over a few weeks compared to the Commune—but I think that the deaths on Napoleonic battlefields were far greater than that repression of the Terror, but that's why it marked people's minds so much, simply because it touched aristocrats, people who could talk about it—as Bernard Bourgeois says, these are wars often imposed, because I mean England never
1:07:09 tolerated—it's a well-known fact among historians—that France remain enlarged, well, that any power whatsoever, especially France, remain enlarged on the continent—knowing that when I praise Robespierre, when one places oneself within a political tradition, whatever it may be, it's for the best of it, that is, it's not to bring up the flaws indeed, but what I mean is that there are sincere republicans for whom Robespierre is a beacon, a beacon in the spirit of republican France—in defense of Robespierre—and Hegel, from Thermidor on—Thermidor for him is the beginning of the saturation—from Thermidor on, in any case—Napoleon, in 1807, really the critique is unique—so I'd like to hear Bernard Bourgeois on, philologically, the relationship between Robespierre and Hegel—were there developments, the relationship with the Jacobins, was Hegel a Jacobin, then?
1:07:50 of the Terror, more than of Robespierre, I would say, Hegel—that's what I mean—he criticizes the Terror in the Phenomenology more than the person of Robespierre—was Hegel a Jacobin? I have trouble, sorry, he doesn't put it that way—was Hegel a Jacobin—in light of all these objections, or at least comments, that have just been made—listen, Hegel always—he always tried to totalize, that is, to reconcile—the negative is indispensable, negativity is a fundamental dimension of humanity, God loves Mephistopheles well—but negation must turn back against itself, therefore limit itself, and thus develop into an organized situation, whereas what he essentially reproached the Terror for was that it made impossible the establishment of a
1:09:00 negation—there you go, the Terror—the negative could not relate back to itself in a positive way, so to speak, by reconciling the situation with the gains that the negative had made possible to obtain. The negation is indispensable—the French Revolution, well, it could not not happen, the old structure was worm-eaten and it had to come out one day—but the negative must turn back against itself, that is, strive to give a positive aspect to the revolution, to the change it brought about and which it was right to bring about. Yes, so, to Saint-Jacques's question, I'll allow myself just to add this: one might think that the young Hegel had sympathies, whereas the old one is more reactionary—like Tintin's old Hegel—making his trip
1:10:10 to Paris, finally getting out of Germany at over 60 years old, invited by Victor Cousin, spends the night near the windmill of Valmy in his carriage, and writes a letter saying: here are the decrees of my youth—the revolution amounts to a magnificent horror—still, he never disavowed his judgment, in retrospect, the revolution, taking everything into account. I wanted, before passing the floor to those who want to take it and ask questions, to come back to part of your opening remarks about today's topic, that is, the depoliticization of politics in the sense that it has completely disqualified itself—and to return to the classic and typical example that you evoked in broad strokes, which are the so-called ecological questions, both on the demographic and, I would say, geographical aspects in the old and classical sense, climatology and so on—because what strikes me, and here I'll bring the question back to Marx
The Malthusianism of ecological questions 1:11:20 to Marx's critique—is that these themes are ultra-reactionary in the way that politics today treats them in a societal manner, under the forms we've just mentioned, that is, the problems of migrants, climate change—and in reality all that masks the ultra-reactionary, because Malthusian, character of the way these very old problems are handled—something that allowed Marx to mock, starting with Malthus and a few others—though at least Malthus, and Marx acknowledged this, posed the problem seriously, scientifically, that is, he related resources and demography to draw the conclusions that Marx amply mocked—Darwin around the same time, in other terms, in the same way. So I'd like to bring up this ultra-reactionary, ultra-regressive, Malthusian aspect of this societal manner of examining these questions, which politics—I think we all agree—must take charge of today, but in a political form, precisely, not in this Malthusian form, which I recall—I'll conclude on this—
1:12:31 my question and my comment: Malthus was the example Marx used to talk about vulgar economists, those who presented, in extraordinary forms, things of an appalling banality, totally ordinary, and in reality completely idiotic—but very current, yet things that have regained a currency, like Schopenhauer—yes—well, Malthus is current, and so there Marx's critique, which made a mockery of all that, is more relevant than ever, itself too—that's what I wanted—I don't know if you have a comment to make on that—you're restating what you said earlier and that I fully approve—since the Hegel-Marx debate we haven't said anything positive—no, we're even regressing, we've gone back to Schopenhauer, to Malthus, I don't know how far back we're going like this—Tocqueville and company—and that's politics today all the same,
Marx absolutizes the negative 1:13:42 which is precisely why I remain Hegelian—yes, to stay at the vanguard—I remain at the vanguard. Well, perhaps comments, questions—no, everyone—you see, it's not for lack of—people are a bit fascinated, mesmerized, someone has to get going—if, all the same, here we go, at long last—well, thanks to the speakers, perhaps to relaunch the debate a bit—Hegel-Marx—there's an idea of Marx's that's often quoted, and I believe it's in the '44 Manuscripts, the idea of the total man—so this man who can go fishing in the morning, catch his fish, be a painter in the afternoon—well, perhaps it's a bit idealistic, and in your book I found—sorry, you take up and reformulate the category of civil society—wait, I'm very moved, may I read the passage—yes, of course
1:14:52 so this question of civil society—civil society, which was a term of Hegel's—yes, exactly, yes exactly—which is the locus of the understanding, the power of abstraction, of separation, of differentiation of an originally continuing identity that links what has henceforth also become opposed, isolated, instituting by the same token, simultaneously, both singularity—abstract difference—and universality—no less abstract identity. I'll keep going—not, yes—and so here we have, it seems to me, two absolutely irreconcilable ideas—yes, so first question: is there really an irreconcilability between the '44 Marx and the Hegel of civil society, given that your presentation has convinced me nonetheless—yes—in this perspective of perpetual differentiation and perpetual specialization of subjects in civil society, if I followed correctly
1:16:02 under what conditions can the subject be satisfied with this state of affairs—yes—precise question for Marx: it happens that history has proven Hegel right, if I interpret in a certain way what happened in 1989—it proved Hegel right and not Marx. Marx took up, if you like, much more than is usually said, as an intellectual weapon, well, the Hegelian legacy—much more than Althusser wanted to say—yes, he's much more Hegelian in his approach than people want to admit—
1:17:12 putting it back on its feet—that's what Marx wanted to say by that, that he was giving it a different content—but he says it clearly, moreover, in the process—he says it's indeed he who saw the movement, planted in the process—the problem is knowing whether one can separate the Hegelian method and the Hegelian content, you see—can they be separated, what comes first fundamentally, what is the primary affirmation, manifestation of humanity's vitality, what comes first for Hegel—what comes first is the positive, and negation comes in as the second moment of the process
1:18:22 constitutive of history, before, in a third moment, it negates itself. But the negation of the negative by itself is not enough to constitute a positing of the positive; consequently, being, for Hegel, is not identical to the negation of non-being, and when Hegel begins the Logic, that is, the presentation of being in its essential meanings or its essential categories in their development, he does indeed say that there is an identity of being and non-being, but this identity is carried by being and not by non-being. It seems to me that Marx tends to make the negative what is primary, and
1:19:34 by wanting, through the simple play of the negative, to obtain a positive—now it turns out that history has shown that the negation of the negation is not enough to install and establish a positive, you see, this is the fundamental difference I see between them. There's a passage where Marx evokes this—I'll give you back the floor—in a fairly explicit way, in On the Jewish Question, when he speaks of emancipation, and I can't quote it from memory, I won't waste time, I'll add it to the—if you haven't read it, in On the Jewish Question there's the whole passage where he evokes Rousseau, moreover; he says Rousseau excellently described the emancipation of political man—yes, initially he also evokes civil society as designated by Hegel and the French socialists, etc.—and there's an extremely clear passage
1:20:44 where he makes the differentiation—well, he makes a distinction, he makes a critique in passing, by anticipation, of the rights-of-man ideology. He says: what is this people who, on top of taking this giant step in history, come and talk to us about rights of man that are not those of the citizen? He says, what is this thing? He says, well, we're in a bourgeois revolution—that's going to be his conclusion, obviously—and he says, hence the contradiction, and how would I put it—yes, wait, let me finish—yes, hence—this will be very brief—and where he concludes with: they had freedom, I don't know what, they didn't have emancipation, they had religious liberty, they didn't have emancipation from religion, etc.
1:21:33 where he draws the distinction precisely between liberty and emancipation—it's a passage that seems key to me, since we're right in the middle of politics, which is our subject—and where he says: political man's emancipation, political emancipation—he says it, well, I'll put that on the video so we can gauge it—and it seems to me an extremely clear answer to Marx's critique of Hegel, where Marx claims to be Hegel's successor, takes it head-on. It's a typically dialectical critique, that is, he's going to negate it to try to make something positive out of it—his negation must lead, from our point of view, as you know it's the heart of our disagreement, this negation has not been invalidated by history, its positive is still in development today—but well, we won't go back over the touchy subjects—the mole keeps digging—there, the mole keeps digging—but well, so if you have that passage in mind, it corresponds exactly to that. I'll let you answer—I just find, if you like, that Marx absolutizes the negative, I think
1:22:45 the negative, by turning against itself, can create something positive. For Hegel, the negation of the negation cannot by itself create something positive—it's Marx, it seems to me, who absolutized what in Hegel was a subordinate moment, you see, that's all—he absolutized the dialectical moment, whereas for Hegel the dialectical, in its first moment—the second stage, negation—and in its second moment—the dialectical turning against itself, the negation of the negation—for Hegel the negative is carried by the positive, for Marx it's the opposite. But can the negative emerge from the negative? I tend to interpret the failure of communism as the failure of Marx's inversion of the Hegelian core
Positive or negative nature; materialism and naturalism 1:23:56 there, Hegel's protest—it's not a protest, it's a comment—because I think it's perhaps a tension running through Marxism itself. But what's rather odd is that Adorno-style negative dialectics is a tendency of Western Marxism, whereas so-called Oriental Marxism—not Oriental, rather Soviet—was characterized instead by an insistence on the dialectics of nature, on a kind of diamat ontology, so from that point of view a substantial one, and there was real insistence on the already-there, on things that Hegelians like—that is, one could cite all that Marx who speaks of the realm of freedom which blossoms only upon the realm of necessity, who takes a giant step compared to the utopians by taking an interest in capital, by showing the contradictions, by writing about capital and not about communism—that is, you have a current that is as objectivist as possible within Marxism, but it turns out precisely that where it had the most institutional character, that is, in what indeed suffered a serious defeat, but not a complete defeat, since you have the countries that
1:25:06 well, we've already talked about the fact that not all socialist countries fell, especially those with a substantial and national character. But what I mean is that I have more the impression, when you speak of the absolutization of the negative, as someone like Adorno—or else, on the contrary, you had people within Western Marxism—you also have the negation of the dialectics of nature and this ultra-subjectivist dialectic with Kojève, Sartre, and we fall right back into—I was going to say, that is, in fact I think that when we read you, with our Marxist baggage, because calling it Hegelian would be a big word—and there we learn enormously by reading you—but with our Marxist baggage we want to agree simply on the Hegelian methodology, then we apply it to our own history, in the history of communism, making choices in relation to—and there we find our mental markers again, which are the difference between Leninism and leftism—but we find them slightly inverted, as in a mirror. That's perhaps where there's a misunderstanding—Marx considers as positive what
1:26:17 for Hegel is negative—nature, for example: for Marx it's positive, but for Hegel it's negative, because nature is from the outset dispersion, reciprocal exteriority, space and time, whereas the positive is what is identical to itself and what develops first as meaning—it's the content of logic. Consequently, for Hegel what Marx considers positive is negative—isn't that because he's a materialist, and that's what you reproach him for, what Hegel would reproach him for? Yes, that's it. There, if Hegel had known Darwin—perhaps, and dedicated something to him the way Marx dedicated Capital to Darwin—perhaps the idea of a dialectics of nature would have been more prominent in Hegel. And so what a Hegelian can reproach Marx for is believing that with the negative one can arrive at the positive
1:27:27 through the turning of the negative against itself—knowing that starting from necessity—necessity is identity affirming itself through difference, a necessary relation is the identity of what is different—and positing that necessity, in its development, can ultimately, by negating itself, lead to freedom—freedom is necessity understood. For a Hegelian, that's what condemns the enterprise: if the positive is not first, it cannot be last; if freedom is not first, it cannot be last—that is, wanting concrete freedom is good, it's necessary—freedom is only as liberation, so that it can
1:28:37 have a true content, and so that the one who is free assumes his freedom freely, not by receiving his freedom, which would make it disappear, but by giving it to himself, by liberating himself. That brings me to ask a question that comes—for Hegel that's not possible, one must settle into the positive—the negative of course intervenes, it negates itself, but if there weren't first being, if we were immediately in non-being, we could never arrive at a definitive being. You see, Hegel reads the equality, the identity of being and non-being, as carried by being, and Marx as carried by non-being or the negative—I'll pass the floor to you right away, Dominique, but this reminds me of a question that was asked by one of the young people who are here, a bit intimidated perhaps, in connection with the first lecture, but directly related to what was just said—yes—on the dialectic of freedom—yes—in the concepts
1:29:47 in relation to development, which is liberation—yes, same thing with totality—yes—and totalization—could you shed some light, try to popularize it a bit, because it's—and how does that relate precisely to our debate right now?—yes. So, I'll give it back to you on totality and totalization—I'd like, since we spoke of it, and the relation to the state too, and to politics, so we spoke of it earlier through Sartre—Sartre affirms in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, as already in Being and Nothingness, but in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, that what is is totalization, but it never achieves a totality, and he's right, because one cannot arrive at totality if totalization is first. And Sartre himself affirms that what is first is not totality, it's the individual—it's an absolute individualism
1:30:57 absolute individualism, Sartrism, which is why I say to them, I wonder how he thought totality—one must understand that here we're opposing the individual to the social, all the same—yes, but Sartre doesn't recognize any social—that's what I want to clarify—he doesn't recognize the social, and I wonder actually, fundamentally, whether in Marx the word 'social' has a positive meaning—that's something you already said last time, that's why I added the text you drew on, so people can judge for themselves—I said it, it's neither positive nor negative in Marx, since he's a materialist—that's what you reproach him for, moreover, and what Hegel probably would have reproached him for—yes, well, on that point I cut Dominique off, who's speaking—yes, so the relation between totality, individual, social, and totalization, related to the state and to politics, could you give me a synthesis of the divergent views, in your opinion, of Marx and especially Hegel on this approach
1:32:09 let's say epistemological—yes, you want time to think and to yield the floor—no, but your friend wanted to speak—yes, I don't want—if you want to answer, no problem—you wanted to say—I don't have the floor—no, because I have the impression that for the past few minutes there's been a confusion between materialism and naturalism. First, that Marx makes more of nature than Hegel does—the texts prove you right, I mean that's essential still—though it's much more valid in the young, Feuerbachian Marx, not yet Marxian, than afterward, because already in Feuerbach's texts there's the insistence on Tätigkeit, on the activity of the human mind, so much so that he says explicitly that we owe it to German idealism to have posited it—that is nonetheless a return to Hegel unacknowledged, of course, because the positivist, so-called, where does that leave—but the rest is, we agree, I won't insist—and then there you're right, that Marx says phrases that take into account a positive ecology, as we'd say today, until further notice
1:33:19 we haven't managed to fish fish out of waters where there weren't any—agreed. Only I come back precisely, since you mentioned it, to the very beginning of the Logic—I'm giving the order here—before speaking of totalization and totality, and thirdly I'll give a plan of my remarks—the texts, I didn't want to be too long earlier, I started with a text on the beginning of your talk on the French Revolution, echoing what you said, by reading Hegel's letter, and I'd like to end with a text by the very old Hegel on the English Reform Bill—you know that very well—which wasn't so old actually, because he was 60—yes, close to that—it's in the texts, I believe it's in the texts published before his death—yes, that's it, good, I believe, and I always speak under your correction—so, in the Logic, it's true that being is posited first and nothingness afterward, quite simply—yes—and that there would be no negation of being by nothingness if there weren't being first—of course. Well, in the same framework, I'd say that there is nature first—but as long as there is nature
1:34:29 first, I mean natural being, I mean there's still no humanity—even Rousseau, who is nonetheless quite harsh on human societies often, and who could be judged from afar, by those who don't know these texts well, as a naturalist—even Rousseau says that in the state of nature man is a stupid and limited animal, and that he only becomes an intelligent being and a man in the civil state—see chapter 8 of book 1 of the Social Contract. So the negation of nature in Hegel is entirely logical, it doesn't contradict materialism—I don't want to settle whether Hegel believes in God or not, I'm not the censor appointed by the Prussian ministry of religious affairs to settle the question—but all the same, I mean, nature—I've lived a fair amount in developing countries where nature is much more present than here, where a few centuries of technology have pushed it back, especially in contemporary history—nature is terrifying, it is the first negation, one mustn't forget—it is positive as creation, as ontological instance
1:35:40 one must begin with it, there would be no humanity without nature, and at every moment we continue, until the end of our lives, to be animals on certain points—like having to eat to live, for example, that we don't owe to culture. But if there had been only that, the anthropological field wouldn't even have begun—it begins as soon as the natural retreats and is negated by human activity, in the form it had when man found it. So I mean, man's first negation—illness, finitude, predators—that's still nature, so man's negation with regard to nature is already the negation of a negation, which affirms the anthropological order and the historical field—that's a reminder I'm making. Second, totalization, totality—I recall that the anti-totalitarian critique, to go very quickly, even though it's a shame for French philosophy that it was an American who devoted the most exhaustive book against this field—the anti-totalitarian mindset, I believe that was the title—one mustn't forget
Totalization unfolds in time 1:36:52 that the pejorative notion of totalitarianism was created by the disciple of the most Nazi of philosophers—that's quite a paradox that isn't recalled often enough today—Hannah Arendt, disciple of Heidegger, I specify that for those who don't get the allusion, there might be some among those watching the video. Well, still, I recall it in passing, because I mean it's a providential notion for the power ruling us: there are two villains, communism and Nazism, and since I'm neither of the two, I'm good—it's quite an extraordinary racket, which doesn't stop me from causing 3 million deaths in Korea, 3 million deaths in Vietnam, and the list goes on—so this fury of destruction, as Hegel says, I recall also, because one can't have an idyllic vision of the liberal world either. And so totalization, I come back to the properly philosophical field, and Hegel is very attentive to this—it can only unfold in time, it's not a spatial totality, the Hegelian totality
1:38:02 Hegelian totality—that's where Althusser goes completely wrong, when he compares it to the Leibnizian totality, for example. The relation of thought and extension is characteristic of all philosophy from Plato to Kant, exclusive—the relation of thought and extension concerns Spinoza, concerns Leibniz, concerns Descartes. By contrast, starting from Rousseau, who awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber, in the political field it's the relation to history and to temporality that prevails. When Rousseau says that if there are slaves by nature, if there are servile natures, it's because there were, at the origin, slaves against nature, he reintroduces history, and that makes Kant say that Rousseau is nonetheless the Newton of morality. So I recall, all the same, that in Hegel a house is not the right example of a totality that would have as its parts the windows, the roof, the living room, the entrance, etc.—no, because the organic—a plant, ourselves, a fortiori animals, and a fortiori man—I mean, you see, a plant, a plum tree, when it's 1m15 tall, it's still far
1:39:12 from having expressed its totality—it takes time to unfold its totality, that's the property of organic totalities. So there, for totalization—just an aside that was raised by Aymeric during the first session—how do you see the relation with Aristotle's entelechy? Very, very, very good question—Aristotle's entelechy, and Aymeric is quite right to say that it's no doubt the thinker Marx makes the most of, along with Hegel, in this logic of totality. I believe Bernard Bourgeois had confided to us, or confided to me, last time, that Aristotle is perhaps the greatest effort of thought—what Hegel says somewhere, the greatest effort of intelligibility, to be precise, in the history of thought. The crack starts from the moment when, for Aristotle, entelechy is already in act in nature—entelechy is already totalization, it's the actualization of potency, quite simply, in Aristotle—it's very complex—yes, but precisely, what's the relation with totalization, and therefore totality, is precisely that nature by itself—and I don't think Bernard Bourgeois would contradict me on this—there's nothing more Hegelian
1:40:22 than to say that nature does not exhaust the notion of totalization of nature, and of the unfinished, moreover—Aristotle, when he says that art sometimes imitates nature, sometimes completes it, that nature by itself is incapable of completing itself, isn't very far from thinking that the human order brings something that nature cannot bring, all the same. So I'm answering your question there, in doing so. So I recall that totalization is at work at all times, until freedom—and that's where I'm going to quote, excuse me, my second text—until freedom is extended not to a few but to the totality of society, and I'm going to say, well, and not only in potency, as the modern world would have it, but in act, and we're still far from that, I'm going to say, well, I'll take this text, sorry, which is in the Philosophy of Right, isn't it—there, the conceptions of the innocence of the state of nature, I'm thinking of our environmentalists, I have the greatest respect
1:41:32 for a certain form of ecology—I don't lie down under exhaust pipes, breathing in their fumes with delight—the conceptions of the innocence of the state of nature, of the simplicity of morals of primitive peoples, I'm thinking here of those who want degrowth, happy sobriety and other well-known charlatans—and on the other hand, antithesis, sensuality, the bling bling, for whom needs, their satisfaction, the pleasures and comforts of particular life are absolute ends. So apparently it's the total antithesis—the one who lives to the full what society and the modern world bring him without any scruple, and the one who wants to return to patriarchal societies—both have one and the same corollary. So Hegel sends them both packing together: the belief in the external character of culture, as if culture—the spirit, in Hegelian terms, the state, which is its historical incarnation—came falling from the sky, was something coming from outside. It's considered in the first case, among environmentalists, as corrupting, in the second, as a mere means—one opinion as much as the other
1:42:42 denotes a misunderstanding of the nature of spirit and of the ends of reason—there I'll skip a passage, and I say the end, and I read this: the rational end—and in my opinion here Hegel settles the problems we're discussing, it seems to me, I take this liberty—the rational end is therefore neither this simplicity of natural morals nor the pleasures obtained through civilization in the development of particularity—there, for today's civil society, it is on the contrary to subject to a work of clearing, but closer to Marx, all the same, the simplicity of nature, that is, the passive self-deprivation and the lack of culture of knowledge and of the will, or again immediacy, the individuality where spirit is shipwrecked, and to give, first, to this natural exteriority the external rationality of which it is capable, the form of the universal, conformity to the understanding. It seems to me he sends them both packing—so yes, is that—is that—so is it always the same—is it in phase—does it confirm—do you have any reservations
1:43:52 regarding this interpretation? Yes, go ahead—he concludes as a synthesis on production, but not productivism—on rational production, that is, one that presupposes a plan, planning, the most forgotten thing there is. When I was the age of these young people, there was still a planning commission—yes, and not so long ago actually—no, it would be considered archaic now. So the critique, through other paths but still with the same source, the same origin, the critique of politics, in order to depoliticize it from the way it politicized itself negatively, let's say—is it then the societal, the interaction, the forgetting of the objective for lack of materialism—does the way Dominique invokes some rather edifying passages of Hegel agree with your own critique, also Hegelian?—No, but you recalled Hegelian themes that are important
Identity and difference in Hegel, Marx and Sartre 1:45:02 and you're quite right. So, coming back to this trio, Hegel, Marx and Sartre—Sartre essentially affirms that what is, is difference, and it's primary, it's an absolute individualist, because for him one will never arrive, starting from the affirmation of these differences, these individuals initially posited, at seeing appear, even through their greatest efforts, a genuine community of men—I'll cut in just to say it's important to understand that behind the critique of this side of Sartre there's the critique of his successors, whether Foucault, Deleuze and company—I'm speaking under your correction, but I think
1:46:12 that we agree, for Sartre it's an absolute individualism, praxis is from the outset individual and it can never change status and become or transmute into a social practice that would be something new compared to individual praxes—there's no possible qualitative change, it's an atomism or an absolute individualism, and that reflects back on the conception of freedom—the social, for Sartre, doesn't exist, it has no meaning. So difference which can never lead to a totality through a real identification of difference—Sartre, it's the affirmation of difference as first and
1:47:22 last, and I believe indeed that what is first can only also be last, and what is last must necessarily remain what is first. For Marx, the starting point is also difference—I refer to that text from the German Ideology: individuals have always started from themselves and always start from themselves—but Marx had written his thesis on atomism, and you know it, I've already said, always the man of his thesis—he remained atomist, but Epicurean atomist and not Democritean, because if there are atoms, there is also immediately the swerve
1:48:33 the clinamen, the swerve, the deviation—inclination, it's the inclination toward the other—yes—toward the other atom—yes—the individuals always start, they have always started from themselves, but insofar as they are essentially a desire, a will to affirm themselves in relation to one another—so it's Empedocles who's right, it's Eros that's primary—there, individuals have always started from themselves, but Marx, unlike Sartre, doesn't fix them to themselves, since to be an individual is to be in relation—and first in positive relation, becoming negative because of the scarcity of the natural environment, etc.
1:49:31 well, because for him nature is also something negative, as it is for Hegel, otherwise he wouldn't insist on production—that's what Dominique just evoked. For Hegel it's alienated idea, it's the primacy of difference, and even though there's an identification, because every process is an identification, a progressive identification of natural formations—first there is pure exteriority, then there's thinghood, difference begins to gather to constitute things, and then afterward there's the animal organism, an interiority, an identification far, far superior, and then when we arrive at man, identification is absolutely crowned. So you see, Marx, if you like, affirms like Sartre that difference is primary, but it has identification as its content, whereas for Sartre difference is first and last
1:50:41 in Marx, difference is primary, but it's a difference with the clinamen, with inclination, and consequently not only can it but it must be last, since the term of human history, its absolute humanization, will reside in association, which is the negation of the absolutely solid totality—you see, the association of workers. For Marx, the notion of the social is totality as totalization, the social as socialization—there, the notion of the social for Marx has a negative meaning—what's true is association, you see, not the oppression of men by a society they form, or which is imposed on them by a certain number of them, by regimes, etc.—well, that's negative
1:51:51 association, the inclined atom, is first and last—humanity's accomplished life consists in the association of workers. For Hegel, that's not it at all—there you go. For Hegel what is primary is identity differentiating itself, so it becomes totality, since totality is a differentiated identity—but what is primary is identity, differentiation is the work of identity but is not its principle. Consequently what is primary will also be last—Hegelianism envisages totalization only as the actualization of a totality that is first massive, therefore imperfect, primary
1:53:01 and which leads to an ultimate and true totality, because in it differentiation means that each difference is in itself the totality, so consequently there is an absolute accomplishment. The difference between Hegel and Marx is—and Sartre—for Hegel, unlike the other two, what is primary is identity, difference is the product of a differentiation which is the actualization of identity—Hegel is anything but an atomist. For Marx and for Sartre, what is primary is difference, but in Marx difference identifies itself, whereas for Sartre difference remains difference forever. The problem is to know whether, when one starts from difference, one can arrive at anything other than difference. If what is primary is last, Hegelianism
Sartre, the police-like unity and infinite spirit 1:54:12 can affirm totality, but Marx can only affirm totalization—that's how I would classify Hegel and Marx ontologically, totality and totalization. I believe there are two objections, we'll start with Aymeric's—you'd cast us in the role of prosecutor, obviously these terms, but we'd rather want to be the defense counsel—but on the matter of Sartre, who really didn't need us, but still, it's true that even Heidegger insisted on Sartre's native Cartesianism, which he really saw, and that's not wrong, since Sartre always explained that he discovered Marxism very late, for generational reasons, and then all the spiritualism of the university of his time, and it was a kind of struggle with the angel perpetually, and I think one has to take it from that angle too—but it's true there's always this kind of atomistic starting point, you're right to point it out—but what's interesting in the Critique of Dialectical Reason is that he tries to resolve aporias he had already set himself, notably what's the cause
1:55:23 in my opinion it's one of the theses on why he didn't publish the second volume of the Critique of Dialectical Reason, because it's a failure from that point of view—he had it in 1960, and it appeared posthumously. He had set himself, in The Communists and Peace, which I believe dates from 1952, in the middle of the Cold War, the claim that the working class exists only through the party, through the Communist Party—and God knows he had disagreements with the Communist Party at the time—but he realizes, he says to himself, that doesn't mean people don't exist in themselves, individually, but they have no political meaning, no effective existence, except because they have a party. And after that, these positions lead him toward the Maoist ultra-leftism that became his, and he's going to try to resolve, in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, and that's where he returns to the theory of practical ensembles, and to resolve this question of how there can be an emergence, including a critical one, in relation to a certain number of apparatuses that he himself finds sclerotic, as if he were dissatisfied. And when you read the posthumous second volume of the Critique of Dialectical Reason, you still have that—the working class can only express itself through the party—it's as if he were caught up
1:56:33 by a kind of caricature of Stalinism, which wouldn't have been—but a Stalinism, that is, depersonalizing—I can't help, sorry, interrupting you, but I'm finished—yes, yes, there. But then, this question you might raise—even in Sartre it's not so clear—afterward, I didn't want to confront you—well, yes, precisely, with a text written some fifty years ago, and which I was thinking of, for everyone, especially the young people, Hegel's Political Thought, in relation to which Bernard Bourgeois added infinite mediations throughout his entire body of work, up to now, and especially to think the present moment—I don't think—so I'd like to have your opinion on this foundational text for you, which has been translated into many languages, into Russian, Chinese, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, French—it's true that at least for a student it's fantastic. So I see what you're ending on—really the conclusion, because for me it's striking, as they vulgarly say, and it poses a problem for me
1:57:43 the opposition between substance and subjectivity—we always talk about that here, that is, we'll all agree on precisely this will not to be better than one's time, to want to go beyond one's time, etc., which animates Hegelianism—so the opposition between substance and subjectivity, that the obstinate subjectivity of finite contemporary minds neither wants nor can resolve—the obstinate subjectivity of finite minds cannot resolve it, it will be resolved, Hegel is certain, by the infinite spirit working in history. So one could say, 50 years later, you might say, thinking about it now, that the infinite spirit is in the process of resolving what those finite minds could not resolve—but of course, we are, it will be shown, I think, in the discussions, we belong to the Marxisant or Marxist-sympathizing camp, who are the most, let's say, likely to admit this side of the already-there, the weight of the past, the weight of institutions, to take into account these ramifications, these mediations—we agree. But for me, where I get completely stuck
1:58:53 is that for me there are only finite minds that must think it—I don't know what the infinite spirit is, for me it's something that—there it's absolute spirit, there you go—but from that point of view, I call that idealism in the least defensible sense—even Marx, that's what he denounced, that delight, that's what he denounces in Marx, where he says I'm going to put the dialectic back on its feet, with the mystical—the mystical side of Hegel, he's a bit high, to bring it back down to earth. Just so Bernard Bourgeois understands what I meant—fine, we hate methodological individualism, this empty atomism that doesn't create a nation, doesn't create a community, etc.—but nevertheless I agree that this subjectivity shouldn't be cut off from substance, but still, these are nevertheless minds, it's men who make history, men of flesh and blood, and this notion of infinite spirit that would be right, that's beyond me, I can't manage it. I'll allow myself, I'll cut you off for three seconds just for the anecdote, to relax a bit our philosophical tension—we're not tense, it's the good kind of tension
2:00:05 it's what makes great interpreters in music—it was Goussard who had gone to see Sartre as part of, to take part in his thesis jury, and it's Goussard who told me that Sartre spent his time telling him: don't go thinking I'm a Stalinist—he happened to be more Stalinist than Marx—that made him laugh out loud. Goussard, he spent his time telling me, don't go thinking I'm a Stalinist, the libertarian—which Bernard Bourgeois showed very well, that the individual is rendered for him—that's strange, there, I was—but Sartre considered that no human totality, no gathering of individuals or of men into a unity that would be a genuine totality, was ever possible for him. One could never pass from real, strictly individual praxis to a truly collective praxis having a genuinely new content—for him it's a passage
2:01:15 not even the fused group—unity, if it exists, can therefore only be a unity imposed on a group by certain members of that group, that is, since there's no possible political unity, a unity in politics is only possible as a coerced, police-imposed unity—there, that's Sartre. It's not possible that there be a going beyond individual praxis, and that's moreover what the Critique of Dialectical Reason shows—one cannot arrive at a genuine collective unity of any kind—it's—it's oppression by the social—yes, that's it, or it's Discipline and Punish. If there's no possible spontaneous historical unity, that means there's only police-imposed unity, and that's what Merleau-Ponty denounced as Sartre's
2:02:26 ultra-Bolshevism—if unity is not immanent, it's imposed—it didn't take much for our good Maurice, sorry—it didn't take much for our good Maurice—I have great respect for Merleau-Ponty—yes, yes—whereas for Hegel there can be, there must even be, a totalization of minds that come into deep agreement—that exists at different levels, and totalization is more or less accomplished—it exists already somewhat at the level of the family, it then exists in certain social formations, the class for example, there's a unity within the class that's a kind of totality, it exists at the level of the nation, and it can also exist at an even more spiritual level, you see, a concrete reality
2:03:36 psychologically lived by humanity or by the human race, such as it expresses itself in the finale of Beethoven's Ninth—there you have it, for Hegel, because identity is primary, the process of being consists in self-differentiation, self-determination, that is, the freedom of what is such that it is not a static identity but an identity that externalizes itself, that expresses itself—the process of being is a process of differentiation of self, of self-differentiation, of self-determination, that is, of liberation. And for Marx it's a process of identification of difference—the difference which is substantial, if I may say so, but which has as its content the identification of itself, that is, the realization
2:04:46 among men who have always started from the same, but started for what purpose—to reconcile with one another. And in Sartre there's difference, but it never identifies with itself. The most optimistic, then, is Hegel, Marx comes next—that depends on the point of view—yes—and the most pessimistic is obviously Sartre, since there nothing, nothing is possible. But then, precisely, I'd like to come back—there's a formula of Hegel's that captured it strikingly, what you have him say about nature, that it's a differentiating sense par excellence, dispersing—it's when he says—it's a phrase we don't quote often enough—death is the immediate being-there of nature—yes, yes, that's quite—one has to dare—yes, but nature is from the outset negative, it's something negative, death is the being-there become—but there is nature, so one must get out of it. That said, on the other hand, when you insist on the fact that in Hegel what is primary is identity—yes, you're right—in the logical chronology, I think we understand each other
Origin and result; conclusion 2:05:57 Yes, well, it's already there in the first moments of the Idea — we saw this earlier too, being is posited before nothingness. Yes, yes, but let me say — this isn't news to you, I'll just be stating what you know better than me or anyone — I was going to say that Hegel's work is teeming with texts, from the Phenomenology right up to the end, up to his death in Berlin, texts where he says: the origin, who cares — excuse me, he doesn't talk like that, I mean what matters is the result. Yes, of course, the origin is poor, of course, the starting identity is nothing, it's empty, it's poor — it's in the measure that it differentiates itself that it becomes contradictory. If being is only being, then it is immediately non-being — that's its Christian side: unless the grain dies, it bears no fruit. The grain must rot in the earth, germinate, rot, and then — it's being, being that comes first, and therefore it is only being if it is not merely being, because if it is only being, it is not. So, allow me to say this in order to tip my hat to people who have been horribly persecuted in the contemporary world — it's not my school, but still, I have enormous respect for them, it's those
2:07:07 in Latin America whom we call the partisans of liberation theology, because it's actually very close to what we find in Hegel — it's not in the origin that we must seek God, but as a result: God exists at the end, to the extent, and only to the extent, that we bring him about within ourselves by liberating ourselves. But isn't he also first, what is first and last? No, no — being, being leads to everything, the origin leads to everything, on condition of leaving it. Yes, yes, well, it seems to me that human history begins by leaving that origin. But for Sartre, what is first, in the end, is not being, it's non-being, it's nothingness, it's the individual shut up within himself — I think it's important, again, to recall this position of Sartre's. Yes, because of Sartre's genealogy — God knows they're very different from him in all sorts of ways — the genealogy, in every sense of the term, including the chronological one, since one can trace back, one can link through this route — you may find this a bit forced, but you'll understand why I say it, I mention it
2:08:17 running from Heidegger to Foucault and company, because we're in that same position. So Sartre's critique — that's what I wanted to say on this precise point — bears a little on everything that's fashionable in philosophy today, and that brings us back to our subject. And besides, if there are no more questions, I'm going to have you conclude, I'll suggest you conclude. So, yes, the way — we are, as you know, but we're not going to reconcile now, and that will perhaps be the subject of other passionate debates — on the question of whether it's the end of the social, the societal isn't better, but we have to go back to the Hegelian end of history, which gives us the keys to freedom. So on that we're not going to, we're always going to remain, let's say, in disagreement, but we can agree on the negative observation, which leads us to invite everyone, especially the younger generations, to repoliticize the political and depoliticize politics, that is to say
2:09:27 to disqualify it as politics, in the turn it is taking today, because it is based precisely on this primacy of non-being, this refusal of the possibility of the concrete universal, which Marx and Hegel share — this possibility which, in Marx, goes by the name of the classless society, and in Hegel, will be the flourishing of absolute spirit. But the result is the same — only the result counts, as we just said — and above all the movement that brings about our reflections, our political actions, our mobilizations, the way we are going to live through the era now opening. So I don't know whether you agree with that, and you may even contradict me, but anyway, I invite you to conclude with this final remark. No, but I had begun by saying that in this bookshop it was spirit that reigned — what you've just said confirms me in my judgment, and so I will end by saluting the director and the host
2:10:37 of this bookshop — it's good that spirit reigns here today in some way. Thank you — that wasn't quite the compliment you were expecting, but thank you. More quickly — compliments, but your conclusion, the conclusion, that wasn't necessarily... in any case, thank you.
