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Clothes make the revolutionary 1:05 And then we'll have our little debates and even our usual little controversies related to...
1:36 Great, when one wants to be. Yes, great in their ambition, but not in their intensity. There you go. So, well, Bernard Bourgeois, I'll hand the floor over to you right away. Listen, I thank you infinitely, Dominique, for this new invitation. I love speaking in this place, before an attentive and demanding audience, formidable even, and that's why I was very glad to receive another invitation from Dominique Mazuet.
2:14 And so here I am, quite happy before you—I hope not to make you too unhappy—to discuss current events through Hegel. I say and repeat that I am not only a Hegelianizer, and I'm surely not enough of one, one is never Hegelianizing enough because Hegel is a difficult thinker. But I am Hegelian, and current events reinforce my commitment a little more every day to think our time by following Hegel.
2:55 That's why I titled the few remarks I'm going to offer you "Hegel and the Yellow Vests." Actually, it's Dominique who chose the title. Yes, it's a bit of a stretch, it was to draw in the crowd, but I'll justify this title later. All right, very good. No, but "Hegel and the Yellow Vests" suits me perfectly. Mister Crowd-drawer. Clothes don't make the monk.
3:33 That is, the man that in the Church is called the "regular," as distinguished from the "secular." There are secular priests, parish priests, and then there are the regulars, the monks. Clothes don't make the monk, because among these pious men, the monks, the rule must be internal and not external, a matter of dress.
4:11 But clothing does seem to make, beyond any mere reform, and in particular religious reform, the one who negates the rule—that is, the revolutionary. Clothes make the revolutionary. In France, since we must first evoke our country and its history, in France, the revolutionaries were indeed called the sans-culottes.
4:48 And Hegel observed that, unlike what was happening on the other bank of the Rhine, in Germany, the French also, in their capacity to catch fire easily—we were in the era of the Revolution—the French also, as they used to say, had their heads close to the cap.
5:22 Too close to the cap, and, in this case, to the red cap, the Phrygian cap. He says it in French, too. Sorry? He says it in French, Hegel. Yes. "Head close to the cap." That one doesn't find, to this day it seems to me, yellow vests outside our borders. It seems to me there aren't any. Yes, how could there not be any? There aren't any. Well, you see, I'm behind. It's a reference to the French movement, but it's not accurate.
5:52 I'm behind, but that doesn't surprise you. Yes, yes, there are some almost everywhere. I'm always the reactionary, next to you, who are in the midst of action. It's conservative, Palestinian style. But this phenomenon is not at all proof of the limited, even insignificant, scope of this phenomenon, which I judged, until now, to be essentially French.
6:22 and some, especially here, among you at least, not to say among us—I except myself somewhat—will see, rather, in the fact that, for now, it's a French phenomenon, a confirmation of the positive exception, one might even say very positive, which assigns to our fellow citizens the vivid colors, the invigorating colors of blue—let's think of blue under the Revolution, opposed to the white of the Vendéens—the vivid colors of blue, of red, of course, and, today, of yellow.
7:17 And this French exception spares our compatriots, at least, from the attraction of dark-colored shirts, the brown shirts or the black shirts. The camicie nere. Sorry? The camicie nere. Yes. However, if you don't mind, let's leave history aside, because the appearance of the yellow vests marks the most current French present.
A hapax in space and in time 7:55 It's a current fact of the moment. I'm marking the limits. And it's a local fact, therefore a singularized fact, limited in time and space. It's an isolate, for now, but well, my dogmatic remarks have just been limited a bit—it's a spatial isolate.
8:25 I have others for you later. Yes, well, let's wait. It's a spatial and temporal isolate, let's say, at least temporary, apparently. It's a hapax. A hapax, a unique phenomenon, about which one may wonder whether it will inscribe itself in what is called universal history. That is, history not local but general, a history that will be the history of the world itself, universal history, which, as we know, interests and must interest first the philosopher, or one who strives to be one, who strives to grasp, in order to understand a singular phenomenon, a singular political or sociopolitical phenomenon, the whole of the data of the world.
9:30 And this hapax seems indeed to be one, if I may say so, squared, or to the power of two; it seems to redouble and, in its singularity, in a way, to multiply, to redouble. Indeed, spatially at least, it seems to me, for now, and above all spatially, the yellow vest phenomenon is an urban phenomenon.
10:01 In my Bresse countryside, they still don't know what yellow vests are. It's an urban phenomenon and is therefore spatially limited. As for time, it is limited, or it has itself chosen to be limited; it made its choice to express itself on one day of the week: Saturday.
10:37 Today, that's fine. So, not Sunday—there's an extension, but that's not the essential point—not the day of full rest that is Sunday. Nor a day from Monday to Friday, that is, a fully working day. On that day, there was still a fairly significant demonstration.
11:07 And we're on a Tuesday. Yes, that's the rule. Forgive me. You're the man of nuance and dialectic, so I'll let you indulge in it. So, neither a Sunday nor a working day. Neither genuine action nor real work, which requires concentration.
11:39 But not the Sunday break either, which is relaxation and distraction. The yellow vest phenomenon is an action that limits itself, or that realizes itself, in an action that isn't really one, in an action in which a certain passivity lodges itself, and this action that isn't really one is what's called a demonstration.
12:24 A break, but not a true break, any more than this phenomenon is a total and genuine action. A break that stimulates itself, and there too it limits itself, in its character as a break, a break that limits itself into re-creation—one wants to present, to bring forth something new—into re-creation, or even recreation, at least for certain spectators, making, for some, a positive work of attraction.
13:11 When you're a yellow vest, you go to meet people. You go where they pass, ready to welcome them. We like roundabouts precisely because encounters can happen there. We act, we're in motion, but a generally calm motion, a peaceful march, even if there are a few troublemakers, a peaceful march that is, in a way, a fairly discreet call—the spectacle—a call to the spectator to decide to accompany the marchers and join them at other roundabouts.
A history without heroes; what remains of Marx 14:11 All this, and this isn't a criticism on my part—I'm trying to grasp the phenomenon. I don't claim to grasp it better than anyone else, the sign of it. We are far, with this description, from the grand history, from that grand history which appears to those who value the yellow vests, even, as the history of the well-off, told by their culture or their so-called culture, the experts.
14:57 There are no longer these two major factors that philosophers, or certain philosophers, assigned to great historical events, to events made by certain men. There are no more heroes. Hegel said it: for there to be a great event, there must be what one might, perhaps excessively, call heroes, great men, leaders.
15:36 There isn't even, among the yellow vests, and we saw this when it came to having individuals emerge among them who could speak in the name of all—there isn't even a mere leader anymore, as one used to say pejoratively, facing a popular mass that would, as for initiatives to be taken, be first of all inert.
16:12 but there is, in this history which is no longer history as it used to be described, as one wanted to explain it, the grand history, but there are ordinary men like everyone who draw others of the same kind along with them, who no longer really act and work, all these people, in the difficulty of finding work in which they can truly invest themselves and exercise genuine responsibility.
17:10 And on the other hand, they no longer relax fully either, that is, by also culturally enjoying their rest naturally. Contemporary man is often not, and he complains about it, entirely at his work when he works, any more than he is entirely at his rest when he rests.
17:52 Consequently, the ideal that our old Marx proposed to humanity—the new man after the revolution, who could realize all of man's potentialities—acting fully, working fully, and at the same time enjoying fully, cultivating his garden in the morning, attending to social occupations in the afternoon, cultivating himself in the evening, doing philosophy, developing man in all his aspects.
18:42 This ideal that Marx proposed to men, this ideal, is one that we hardly understand anymore now. Reality and the ideal have changed considerably. What remains of Marx—and this is a question I've been asking myself for a long time—what remains absolutely of Marx is the negative part of his work, the critical part of his work.
19:26 The world we live in—it was indeed Marx who described it. His description, his critique of capitalism, still seems to me entirely valid in its essentials. But the positive part—and here I'm repeating myself, and Dominique doesn't entirely agree with me—the positive part, celebrating the proletarian revolution, seems to me to have been refuted by history, under whatever forms communism has attempted to realize itself.
20:14 May I allow myself just a small interjection? No, but you'll have all the time to fight me later. But go ahead. No, it will be very brief. It's just to justify the title. Because at first, I didn't think we would develop the yellow vests topic so much, but it was to explain that, and this is very brief as I promised, this old and recurring controversy at every one of Bernard Bourgeois's talks here consists of telling us what he just said, namely that the negation of Hegel, or of Hegel's system, or in any case of his philosophy of history, by Marx—that is, that history, among other things, is not finished, and above all that the negation by the social, but you'll probably come back to that, including with Dominique Pagani, was attested by history which had invalidated the Marxist critique—well, the yellow vests are precisely the return of the social.
21:11 It's not a matter of debating everything you're saying, but rather of anticipating what you discuss in your book and what you'll no doubt talk about now. There, my little interruption is over. Just a remark in passing, to come back to it: I'm not sure the societal can, by itself, give rise to the social. But that's exactly what the yellow vests are. Yes. It's the return of the social against the societal.
21:41 Yes, yes. One only has to see what triggers the first demonstrations, etc. Well, anyway, I'm getting ahead, forgive me, I'm not interrupting you. If you like, the negation, it seems to me, is a self-negation of the societal. But that's exactly what you discuss in your book. There you go, but the self-negation of the societal always affirms itself in the very negation it makes of itself. Since it's a self-negation.
Liberty, equality, fraternity: the order of the motto 22:12 The self-negation means that the one who speaks still affirms himself in what he says. And that's the whole problem of knowing whether the negation of the negative produces the positive. Freedom seems to me to be grasped now, well, in our era, by our contemporaries, in all these demands, and because these conditions form a system, we know what a free existence is.
22:54 We know how to articulate the different aspects of freedom, the different levels of freedom. There are some that are more fundamental than others, and consequently, history—it took time, it took centuries. It doesn't have the meaning of the concept. Yes. History, well, through all it has had of the positive and all it has had of the negative, in history, humanity has ended up discovering, I believe, what a free existence is and what it requires.
23:32 I believe we know it now. That's already important—realizing it is the thing that must be undertaken, and there, obviously, the difficulties are immense, because the interest, for freedom to be realized everywhere, this interest is not a universal interest.
24:03 Equality. Well, equality, for me, doesn't exist, because man being so complex, the factors that determine him being so multiple and varied, one wonders whether two men can truly be considered perfectly equal.
24:35 You'll tell me there's no equality of fact, we simply want equality of right. But what does that mean? Equality seems to me impossible to realize absolutely, and that's why I'm rather severe toward regimes which, in order to realize equality—which they never achieved—nonetheless compromised, in the name of egalitarianism, the realization of freedom and that of fraternity.
25:20 As for fraternity, that's very fine. But you know, the French revolutionaries were intelligent people. In the motto, they did not follow alphabetical order. They followed, I believe, the real order, the order of value. First liberty, then equality, because inequality must be limited as much as possible, at the risk of compromising the true realization of liberty for all.
26:06 And fraternity, I would say, is a luxury—not in the sense that we can do without it, but fraternity is essentially subjective. Now, I believe the subjective is conditioned objectively, and that liberty and equality both carry a basal objective content.
26:40 So, fraternity is very fine, but its subjective character does not allow us—because of its subjective character—to consider that it can be realized as primary. It's all very well, I myself am more fraternal than any of you, but you see, one cannot found a civilization on fraternity.
Liberal then solidary society, nation-state and secularism 27:11 So as not to put the cart before the horse. But present sociopolitical reality, as history has shown its truth up to now, or as it has been verified, consists in a society—and here I repeat what I have always said, and which is, moreover, purely and strictly Hegelian.
27:50 Society, what we call civil society—Hegel took up Ferguson's distinction between the political and the social, or societal. The state and society, which were generally conflated before, I'm thinking in particular of Rousseau. So society, civil society, is in its truth, it seems to me, a liberal society, affirming both the individual and the universal at once, individualism and cosmopolitanism.
28:35 it must also be a society of solidarity, and the imperative of solidarity is one that manifestly implies within it the imperative of equality. A liberal society and a society of solidarity—but it seems to me that history has shown that society had to be liberal first and solidary afterward, and not solidary first and liberal afterward.
29:19 History seems to me to have shown this in the history of all the regimes that believed one could, by absolutizing solidarity, reinject freedom into it. I believe that is not possible. A liberal society, then a solidary one—two demands as necessary as each other, but in such a way that the first conditions the second more than the second conditions the first.
29:59 to affirm them equally, but in the order I have said. A liberal and solidary society, made possible by what alone, in human existence, is power, is the site of power—the site through which everything can come about, even outside it and against it, namely the site that is the nation-state.
30:42 Concerned with the concrete rights of individuals, the nation-state—I insist on the national reality of the state. I am not a nationalist, absolutely not, for I hold that the nation is not the absolute value, far from it. But I think the nation is the real, concrete site holding power, insofar as the nation is the city, where men, even adversaries socially and politically, where men, because of their history and despite their divergence, have considered that they could live forming a community—and this depends on the history of each human group—forming the place
31:52 in which they can, while being adversaries on many fundamental points, cohabit and realize their fundamental aspirations, which implies in particular secularism. If you like, the nation is the positive reality of secularism, and secularism is a negative expression of the nation.
32:23 Within the nation, it is necessary—this is what secularism is—to set aside any particular affiliation where necessary, so that people of different opinion, conviction, religion, etc., of different aspirations can nonetheless cohabit. So, a liberal then solidary society, cultivated by a nation-state concerned with the recognized rights of individuals.
32:57 The first right is the right that allows an individual to affirm himself by affirming all individuals, hence individualism and universalism, and nation-states acting in collaboration with all others—hence absolute condemnation of nationalism, since everything done within a community can only be done where power has its place, and power is always that of the state.
33:32 Marx himself acknowledged this, since he showed clearly that even a class can only be fully itself by having a political character. So my anti-nationalism is absolute. The essential values are not national values, but the nation-state is the place where, because that is where effective power exists, everything can be done thanks to the acceptance if not the help, etc.
The institutional before the participatory 34:15 but the acceptance, then, of this secular nation-state. This model, I said—and Dominique knows well that I keep repeating this model—is the Hegelian model; you read Hegel, it's all there. It is the Hegelian model: liberty first and always, fraternity in the end and as much as possible, and equalization to be pursued as much as one can without egalitarianism, if only because it is a measure of prudence for civic peace and social peace, preventing excessive inequalities—and an inequality is not merely a reality but also an idea, or the content of a judgment, and believing there is too much inequality is a reality
35:26 that must be taken into account. So liberty, fraternity, equality within a framework institutionally fixed—that is the nation constituted as a state, fixed as institutional and animated, but only animated, and not replaced or replaceable by what is called today the participatory, or participation. Participation, yes, that is the intersubjective, that is interaction, it's very good—neighbors' gatherings, the neighbors' festival, I like that a lot, of course, long live participation—but not to replace the institution, which is moreover what the participationists demand, the institution of participation, so
36:36 the participatory, yes, but the institutional first. That is why I relativize, I readily criticize a whole current trend in our culture marked by this demand for participation set against the institution. That means I see no lasting effective existence of democracy outside of representativity—moreover it is indeed representativity that can enable the judgment of citizens, since at least there they have an object to criticize, and consequently a critical life can develop
37:46 which would not exist, or only in absolute disorder, in a direct democracy, I think. But our era is the era of immediacy; technical progress, communication, computing have meant that all men are informed—well, are supposedly informed, information is made available to them—but there is a great distance between information and knowledge, and from this point of view school is more important than the computer. There is a great distance between information and knowledge, and it's not because one believes oneself informed that one can express an opinion immediately and make a decision oneself
38:56 without there being a work of formation that is constantly renewed, that must last a whole lifetime, and whose inauguration is marked by school. So an institutional framework animated by the participatory but not liable to be replaced by it—there, it seems to me, is an objective both just and prudent, prudent and just, that can be proposed to the people of our time. Within such a framework, a community, I believe, is equipped to resolve
Repoliticizing politics for non-political problems 40:06 or to better resolve, as much as it can, the most current problems of our time, which—I have said this, I insisted on it in my book—are problems that are not of a political order, that is, first of all constitutional. I do not currently believe in a politics that would claim to be the suitable, effective, objective politics, that would simply propose structural reforms, organizational reforms. I believe that the representative democracy from which we benefit—that this democracy is a good instrument, even if it can be improved on certain points, made available to citizens much more broadly, for example the organization
41:17 of a referendum—there are many points to improve, but I think that on the whole the participatory democracy from which we benefit is a representative regime. Yes, I know, we love immediacy, everyone wants to express themselves, but truth is never pure and simple immediacy, it is immediacy mediated by culture, by the development of critical spirit, etc. Consequently, a prudent and just objective is the maintenance, development, improvement, etc., of the democracy in which we live—but so that this democracy can bring all its energy to bear on solving the most serious problems currently facing humanity, and which are not problems of a political order and especially not of political structuring
42:27 or political organization. I won't enumerate these problems, but well, we all think about them—all the problems posed by the awakening of nature, by the awakening of certain continents amid the inequality of living conditions within certain continents and between continents, these phenomena which are at the root of all population movements that humanity does not seem to me able to resolve, and regarding which it seems to me that humanity does not deploy enough interest and energy to put itself in a position to better resolve them or confront them—without this being done, too narrowly and too negatively, through politics. If you like, I think we must give political life back all its vigor, and there is much to improve, because politics
43:39 the political is the site of power, and it is only here that an action, whatever its content, whatever its objective, in whatever domain it bears upon, that any action can come into existence, develop, and, as far as possible, succeed. The political is thus the place where everything that can be done is conditioned, which conditions everything that humanity can undertake, deploy, to realize its ideal. So yes, repoliticize politics in order to address problems whose most important, most immediate ones are not problems of a political order—which is a way of saying that the political, which is power, which is the site of power, must know how
44:50 to recognize that it is the mediator of an action that humanity can exercise toward itself, upon itself, and which overflows greatly, through all the domains in which it must be deployed, overflows greatly the political itself. The political is not everything, but nothing can happen positively or negatively in human existence except outside it, through it, or with its consent. That's what I wanted to repeat and keep harping on, and I'll stop, because I've abused your patience enough. I'll pass the floor to Dominique, who has no doubt taken many notes, but I hope that during the debate we will address the content of our book, because all this—it's not that you're repeating yourself, it's fascinating, but it was already in our previous talks—well, there's a lot that's new in the latest book, but we'll talk about it, I'm less optimistic than you, we'll come back to it later. I pass the floor to Dominique, to the other Dominique
The old mole and La Diane française 46:05 the same one, since I am the other—one must not assume the problem solved; it's a matter of establishing whether there's anything new, precisely. So I'll begin with the yellow vests—I'll begin there too, but with somewhat different references that you know well, which is why I'll allow myself to use them; two at random, several come to mind, but I mean one from Shakespeare, one from the Gospels. From Shakespeare, it's the passage Marx likes to quote: well grubbed, old mole—yes, we thought the mole was forever in the underground tunnels, in the galleries, we no longer heard from the people of France—yes, agreed—and there's a very beautiful text there, I should get very serious, it is very serious, the mole—well, with Marx's irony, but all irony aside, there is a magnificent text by Aragon, which—that's one of the most beautiful prose poems, surely—La Diane française, you know that text he wrote, it's only two poems
47:15 that he wrote in hiding, during the Resistance, a good part of it at Dieulefit, "or my son in all simplicity," and there's a refrain that keeps coming back, where he says: we told you so, that you were a people, you know—implying, under Pétain: we told you so, that it was over, the revolution, equality, you had become petty, you had become merchants, you had become selfish, we told you so, that's really where we had arrived before the yellow vests. I wouldn't want the yellow vests to give us a screen memory, as they say in psychoanalysis—that is, an event so significant it hides from us, makes us forget what came just before, a bit like '68 makes us forget that in '67, for the first time, legislative elections put the executive in the minority, and that there had never been so many hours of strikes as in '67 in French history, because we're made to believe, around the world, that France was dozing at the time, weren't we? So what do I want to recall? I want to recall that the mole seemed forever asleep, the French had become
Testimony of a Yellow Vest 48:25 Germano-Americans, they had been reconciled with the market. The Socialist Party worked toward that, without hiding it—Mitterrand said we must reconcile the French with the market—yes, but no, I'm not making things up, I'm not interpreting, I'm quoting. So people thought that this France no longer expressed itself, and I'll sum up this France I'm talking about with a very unpretentious, ordinary name, a hero of the yellow vests named Bachir, as ordinary as it gets—yes, he's a young man being interviewed, he was in the demonstrations, and he's asked: don't you have some fascists among you? Yes, maybe—he says, among us there are fascists, there are leftists, there are Arabs, there are Blacks, there are women, we don't care. Well, for me that was liberating, it had been almost half a century that I'd been waiting for that. You were there last week, you're still there today—me, I'm there on weekends because I was working during the week; afterward, if I have free time, it's complicated, I'm married, I have a little girl. Why did you choose to join the yellow vest movement?
49:34 it's not a question of yellow vests, in fact it's the hospitals that are falling apart, it's the nurses, the doctors, the firefighters, the emergency services, it's everyone, the retirees, it's everyone—today he was going to march for Maggie, the policewoman who committed suicide, people are killing themselves all the time in the police right now, they're against us and I believe—actually I don't understand, in fact. So, it's not a question of yellow vests, I'm a yellow vest because that's the movement that does this, but it's the people, that's the people, the whole people, all citizens—a fascist will march next to a Black person, a Muslim will march next to a Jew, a Christian—it's not a question of yellow vests, of race there, it's the whole people who are fed up, that's it, at some point you have to stop, we're living under a dictatorship, truly it's a dictatorship, we've just managed to, you could say, relive a little, is that surprising, does that surprise you? Since I've been here, in fact, we've been gassed, it already started last week, and last week there wasn't even a fire, nothing at all, we already got gassed, we already got beaten a bit, me, I'm fine, I managed not to take any hits, but since I arrived—I arrived at 2pm—since 2pm, what time is it now?
50:40 8pm, 9pm, there it is, 8pm, 9pm, that's the daily routine, in fact they gave me some saline solution earlier to calm things down. If you had something to say to Emmanuel Macron, what would it be tonight? It's simply, in fact, a lack of respect not to speak to us, truly, that's it. Emmanuel Macron, before November 17th, declared we'll see what happens, he declared, and afterward he said let him come find me. Now we're here, we can't come find you, you've barricaded everything, just come talk to us, we're here. So that's it, from his own mouth, I'm not crazy, I heard it with my own ears, my ears are unblocked, I'm in good health, and he said let him come find me. So there we are, we're waiting for him to discuss, we're waiting for him to speak, all I know is that we're living under a dictatorship. A dictatorship?
51:30 are we not exaggerating? No, we're not exaggerating, well no, we're not exaggerating because this is the people, it's not a question of law, it's not a question of demonstration, this isn't a demonstration, it's a revolt of the people, so we're not going to revolt, we're not going to call them and say, well, we're going to go from this point to that point, we're just going to say gently, missions where we're fed up, and then we go home—but he doesn't care, meanwhile his wife gets her hair done for 10,000 euros a month, they buy 50,000 euros' worth of dishware, or I don't know, they're having a swimming pool built, and the gentleman isn't well, he's tired, he goes on vacation—when I go to Belgium to see friends in Belgium, I take my car, he takes a private jet, he talks to me about ecology, taking a private jet to go to Belgium, so at some point that's enough, they have drivers, they have everything they need. The other day I hear a deputy tell me: before we made 10-15,000 euros, today we make 5,000 euros, and you realize, we're forced to eat pasta—he dared say that to me, 5,000 euros and you eat pasta—so the person who makes 1,200 euros, what do they eat?
52:23 Rocks? Dirt, they graze on grass, I don't know—with 5,000 euros the guy only eats pasta, and how do the others manage, then? That's what we're really demanding—you're complaining because you make 5,000 euros, imagine the person who makes 900 euros, how is that? Are you going to continue the movement, or are you going to...? Ah, no, but as long as there's no resignation, personally I'll continue, but that's not possible, resignation, we've never seen that—but we're living under a dictatorship, he's not president, I'm sorry, tomorrow we're all going to the prefectures, article 68 of the constitution, article 68, quite simple to remember, the constitution, we're demanding his removal, finished—the majority of the people demand his removal, it's over, because normally this is a republic, this is a democracy, and here we're living under a dictatorship, that's how it is, thank you, thank you Bachir. There's no more community, it's society waking up, before it was, you know as well as I do, men against women, Hutus against Tutsis, Corsicans against French, gays against straights, the intersectional against the plurisectional—well, I'm not saying that's unimportant
End of communities, obscene return of the social 53:33 all of it, what was serious was that this was in the foreground, and that there was the inquisitorial eye of public force constantly policing what should remain private. We agree on that, don't we, there is indeed a private domain—should I, say, finish off a close relative who is suffering atrociously from an incurable illness and is in the final stages of treatment—I have no idea, and in 500 years I probably won't know any better, it's a moral problem, you see, how can one know things like that? The doctor can inform me about all the ways to do it as gently as possible, that's all well and good, but for the rest, for the decision, you see, they were discussing that more than anything on TV panels, more than the societal chit-chat that you condemn, I presume, as we do, this societalism—well, yes, there were only communities left and the mind had become scanned
54:46 if I may say so, in the bürgerliche Gesellschaft, in civil society—I say that because word for word in German it's "bourgeois society," but in French that could be misleading—and so the mole pokes the tip of its nose back out, obscenely, to the surface. So you thought we'd been rid of wage demands, all that's over, Cohn-Bendit rid us of that half a century ago, didn't he, as you said, metro, work, sleep, the CGT, the PCF, that's all they think about, that's outdated, what we want is to go into the girls' dormitory, that's how it started in '68, no?
55:23 fed up with Gaullo-communism, well yes, exactly, and now he's become a pillar—well, he's disappeared a bit from circulation, no, no, he'll be back for the European elections, he'll come tell us watch out how you voted, Dominique, don't fall for it, he was even invited once to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, no kidding—but of course, yes, but that, I learned that, that was the epiphany, the Macronian epiphany—no, no, we thought he'd had his moment but it had won everywhere, because me, in France, in Europe, but in France it was serious, because France and Italy were the only two countries that were worrying for the current masters of the world, for NATO, in 1945—it's the Grenelle accords all the same that put an end to '68—yes, that is, what was most traditional in the movements of the left, in the social—yes, yes, we'll come back to that, I maintain that the societal, I maintain that the societal is more archaic than the social—well, we're in complete agreement there, I think we're preaching, the learned women are feminists in Molière, only it was reserved for a minority of myths—continue your argument
56:34 so I continue: first reference, Shakespeare's mole—there it is, it pokes its nose back out, and it's not a hyperbole when I say obscene, it's literally so, what's obscene is what comes onto the stage in a way that shouldn't show itself—what's disturbing, since men and women have been doing this for 10,000 years, there's nothing obscene about it, so they do it in private—and then, second reference, the Gospel, a Hegelian reference too—ah yes, of course—the stone that was rejected has become the head of the corner. But yes, this popular France, which isn't really—it's not the unemployed man you'd interview in a housing project in La Courneuve, it's not that, nor of course the Bouygues shareholder, no, it's in between, it's the guy, a small craftsman who works like a madman and by the 18th of the month has nothing left, that's not right, it's the grandfather who says I can no longer give my grandchild an allowance, my pension is being cut—was that right, yes—the great majority, yes, so that's what's coming back to the surface, in short, this mass that was in abstention—I'm not putting abstention in my pocket, no one has the right to annex abstention, but I note there must have been a good chunk in the abstention that was like that, there it is, there it is
57:44 that's the great surprise for me, so this is where I do not underestimate the importance of the event, even though I agree with you that I cannot, at present, know whether it will be inscribed in the great book of history written by the world spirit, in Hegelian terms—we agree on that—but in any case I note that at my age, this is the most singular event I have seen in over half a century. There's a question I want to ask you—go ahead, otherwise I'll have to be stopped with a rifle—no, no, but I might caricature, I wonder whether you end up considering that revolutions are first of all cultural—go ahead, you mean—I'm not sure I understand—I mean that subjectivity, or intersubjectivity, is an essential factor, but if the tendency, the desire, the subjective doesn't find something to
Freedom is not given from the outset 58:54 objectify itself in, it has no future—that's why I'm following with interest these days the evolution of relations between the yellow vests and the CGT, this very day, I'm very well informed on the matter, I'll tell you about it—yes, I'll go back to what you just said, which is very important indeed, intersubjectivity and everything that follows—I note all the same that you said, we now know what freedom is—yes, I agree, I agree with you, an sich, as we say, in-itself, but it's the word "know" that bothers me a little, it doesn't take the form of a knowledge—no, it's not knowledge, it's an ellipsis—that was an ellipsis, there it is—it's true that in the modern world, in a more precise history, the one dating from the late 18th, early 19th century, which combines the ruptures, the cracks made by these enormous cracks
1:00:04 which are the English industrial revolution, the political revolution, the French political revolution—that freedom was produced—yes, we're agreed on that, I'll use a rather Marxian term on purpose—but we still need to know it—yes—no, freedom in-itself becomes freedom for-itself. As I speak to you, there are millions of Indian children who make—5-year-olds who produce bricks to pay off their parents' debts—yes, so when you say, I agree with you that we shouldn't sacrifice equality, sacrifice equality to freedom—but I mean, when there are inequalities like that, freedom becomes derisory—of course, but still I believe it's the fundamental value, I believe—I was in total disagreement with François Hollande, whom I once heard say that equality was the absolute value—for me it's freedom, properly understood, freedom—they didn't think that at all—yes, yes, I don't know if—well, in any case, freedom, one must first affirm that it is from the outset
1:01:15 in every man—freedom, you often insist on that—however, it can only be itself if it affirms itself freely, that is, by liberating itself from what it is at first, in order to become concrete. Freedom is there from the outset, and it is always, right to the end if I may say so, something to be produced, that is, there is an identity to maintain between freedom, which is, and liberation, which is also a duty and a necessary demand. One is free from the outset, every man is free from the outset, and yet has to liberate himself his whole life from the abstraction in which everything is made—agreed—but I've noticed that you often repeat this, it makes me think—it's a homage—it makes me think of Rimbaud when he says, what I loved was freedom, free—yes, that's it, yes, I see very well—only Marx said
1:02:25 a very forceful statement: the act of freedom must itself be performed freely—yes, exactly, agreed, only, between us, what would not be Hegelian, and what could lend itself to confusion—I won't say you're not Hegelian, I learned to be Hegelian alongside you—but it would not be Hegelian if we understood that freedom is from the outset—what bothers me a bit is that it's not naturalistic, the concept of freedom, it is produced by history, and it is quite right that patriarchal and archaic societies are not free—Fichte says something: you watch a small animal that has just been born, and you watch a child that has just been born, their gesticulation is totally different, the animal's is stereotyped, the little human's is surprising, disappointing, enriching, it is free—yes, but you'd have to say it's a quasi-chromosomal thing—yes, and above all, this isn't the freedom we're talking about, we're talking about politics, that's not what I meant, I'll remind you—so what I'm going to say
1:03:36 I repeat, political freedom is the absolute condition of every other form of freedom—fine, the condition in law, I agree, but I'll let you make your point, I hand it back—yes, one last objection from me and then we'll turn to the audience. I'm going to the text you know better than me, a remark in paragraph 185 of the Philosophy of Right: the development—that's grist to your mill—the independent development of particularity is the moment that manifests itself in the ancient states through the introduction of the corruption of manners, and this is, for them, the supreme cause of decadence. Those states, which are still at the patriarchal or religious principle, or at the principle of a more spiritual but simpler morality, and which are generally founded on immediate, primitive intuition, could not endure within themselves either the division of that intuition or the infinite reflection of self-consciousness which produces freedom. Of course, they succumbed—these ancient, traditional, substantial patriarchal states, etc.—they succumbed to this reflection when it began to appear in consciousness. In Hegel, sophistry, skepticism
Paragraph 185 and negation through the social 1:04:46 are modes of appearance, for example this restlessness of the subject which is essentially modern—they succumbed to this reflection when it began to appear in consciousness, then in reality, because their principle, that of a communal collectivism and not a social one, I specify, because their principle, too simple, did not possess the true and infinite force found only in unity. I believe it's the nation-state that lets the contradiction of reason develop in all its force in order then to master it, and which maintains itself in this contradiction while also unifying it within itself. I think that's a text that sums up well what is positive in what you're saying, but still, that freedom is produced in history, it's not there from the outset like that in my chromosomes—of course, but it's nonetheless present in the form—fine, well, for now, on this question of freedom, the primacy of freedom over equality, which is our recurring controversy, let's stop there, at least as far as I'm concerned
1:05:56 I would like to come back—so, in the end you've discussed your latest book very little, but I think there will be questions—they'll read it—no, no, but there have been attentive readers, so François Potier, who must be champing at the bit because he has, moreover, an extremely positive review of what's in your latest book on these questions—very briefly, I'd like to mention that in a typically Hegelian way one begins with the fundamental principles of logic, so before talking about politics, political action, and the rest, one talks about acting, and there's a formidable progression from acting to political action, passing of course through consciousness and will, which is nonetheless very important and which many have forgotten today. From there you address the social with the different variants of the social contract, obviously reviewing, at the end, Rousseau, and afterward you have—and this was normally the theme of the evening, which was indeed addressed but we kept coming back
1:07:06 to your earlier works on the same subject—the national, the societal, and the social. So I come back to this, and it's the end of my talk, in order possibly to launch the debate, and in any case it's the question I put to you, and which I don't think we've answered: that you elude the negation of the end of history by the social—I put that very crudely, but you understand me—the critique of Hegel by Marx, which you consider invalidated by history, well, that history seems rather to be starting up again, because what else is it, independent of everything that's been said, but the return of the social as a brutal negation, certainly for now absolute and first, pending the second moment of negation which will allow something positive to be produced, and that is certainly where we are, waiting for that—but in any case what's clear is that the first movement, which relaunches history so to speak, is indeed a social movement which no one disputes was spontaneous
1:08:16 popular, massive, and which moreover—and I'll reassure you, I'll end on this—has a truly astonishing characteristic, including for intellectuals, philosophers, or future intellectuals and philosophers, which is that it was spontaneously perfectly understood. First, it was born spontaneously, it didn't need an intellectual, a leader, or a hero. Second, it was totally spontaneously understood for what it was by the bulk of the population, including in its objective demands. And third, it fell typically into the rejection of what is currently most idiotic, eco-ideology, with nonsense like the carbon tax—that's quite revealing, and to bring the questions back to the fact that the justice that's expected is not climate justice, which they, rightly, couldn't care less about, and it concerns—and it's in this sense that I say to you, this is indeed the great return of the social in the Marxist sense of the term, and which is the negation, first and foremost, not at all of the national—you yourself have pointed this out—but of the societal. There, that's it, you can, if you like, make a comment, and afterward we'll turn to the audience
1:09:26 To the audience, just to say that I'm not at all sure — and today is a day that should already have brought some elements of an answer — but I'm not at all sure that the societal has already become the social today. No, not only has it not become that, but it's the very heart of the current confrontation. And since the production of the societal is the Macronist liberal state and everything behind it, well, that's what's in crisis, in the purely Hegelian sense, today. Besides, you've noticed they have no answer at all, just idiotic gesticulations, perceived as such by the vast majority of the population. We're in the power of the negative, pure and hard — I'm not the one who's going to teach you that. No, no, agreed. But the societal we're in today, if it was a production of a social, it was of a social that was shot through with negativity and that wasn't equal to its own demands.
1:10:36 Is the societal a mediator allowing us to pass from one form of the social to another form of the social? I'm not at all sure of that. I'm even convinced of the opposite — that's roughly what I've been explaining to you. Now, on this, François, who was impatient and read your book attentively — and I can tell you very scrupulously — thank you, it's really excellent, thank you, because you wrote about the moral contract, the social contract, the nation — I'll say a word about that — society and the societal you were speaking of, and for the nation it's a model of its kind, thank you, and I came a long way to meet you here, a big thank you. But what are — right, I'll try to be as simple as possible, I'll quote you and then I'll follow up, all right? Page 240, you say very rightly: the nation-state is the only real community
The people revive the nation 1:11:46 strong and ordered in which man can fulfill his capacities and his loyalties, and you quote, page 222, Fernand Braudel: every nation is divided and lives from being so, and you go on to the contradictory and historical development of the nation. Yes — when you have gilets jaunes who say that on the 20th or the 15th of the month they don't have enough to cover their accounts, yes, that's not the societal, that's the social, and they're saying that the nation which should allow them to fulfill their capacities and purposes — well, it's not working. When the gilets jaunes say at some point 'Frexit,' since we're a nation dominated by the major economic policy orientations of the European Union, saying Frexit, they're expressing the national level, not the societal level. And that — that's my question — don't you think that the only one expressing the societal level is Macron, with his idiotic debates and his sort of psycho-whatsit relations, of course relayed by BFM TV
1:12:56 and the media, in their class arrogance, and that on the contrary the minority — which incidentally is a minority you call urban, I come from Carcassonne, it's peri-urban, and I can tell you it's much larger among the 63% of the population, even if they go up to Paris to demonstrate, but it's there all along, all week, with the roundabouts, I know something about it — well, don't you think that this people is reinvigorating the nation by doing both social and national political action, and that it's Macron and what's behind him who's doing the societal to try to make things pass? That's what I mean — I understood you well. What I mean is that if the social carries the societal, like the political, even if it doesn't define it, doesn't determine it — the social carries the social because it's the place
1:14:06 of power. If the social carries the societal, within the societal it isn't expressed as social, and consequently — but we agree, we're totally in agreement — an expression that cannot, hence its current silence and its state of total dilapidation faced with negative protest. That's why the societal cannot by itself designate a force capable of changing things, because what changes things is the social, and ultimately, because that's where all the power lies — the political. So you're agreeing with Marx. Of course, there we are, reconciled — I'm not a Marxist but I'm Marxian, theoretically. Sorry, François, let me cut in for a second, François, excuse me a second, I'll give you back the floor right away — just to point out, regarding what was just said, because he's too modest to say it himself: it's Bernard Bourgeois, it was Bernard Bourgeois who got Marx imposed on the philosophy agrégation exam
1:15:16 for the first time — he's not a Marxist. There were two authors who had never appeared on the written exam syllabus of the agrégation — there were several. Hobbes had never appeared on the written syllabus, I'm the one who did that. Plotinus had never appeared — that's different, I did that too. I wanted to get Fichte and Marx put on, who had never been on the syllabus — I couldn't, because I had to leave things at the latest point, but I had told my successors that Fichte and Marx had to come, and they did indeed come, and I was reminded of it — the Macronists fled. Sorry, excuse me, to finish, and then I promise — you write, page 216, a few marvelous sentences that answer exactly what we're talking about: societal interaction in particular is not creative, it's recreational — welcome — in the tension of life, to recognize it as something, sorry, to absolutize it, to make it the principle of human coexistence in all seriousness, that is precisely hardly serious.
Marx, philosopher of freedom 1:16:26 You've said it all. I have a question — a question about your reading of Marx, because it seems to me that in the philosophy of history you propose, you class Marx in a certain way as a philosopher of equality, and ultimately what one could object to you is that perhaps before being a philosopher of equality, Marx is a philosopher of freedom. Yes. And so that's what — how to put it — that's what, in a certain way, is what's coming back to the forefront of the political scene, that freedom as you conceive it is perhaps formal freedom, freedom of right, but what Marx allows us to think is a more concrete freedom. Yes, and so that's perhaps why, in your
1:17:36 historical division, liberty, equality, fraternity — I would contest, in the end, the second moment for me is perhaps also centered on liberty. What I mean is that equalization is at least — I say this for those who don't want it — equalization is at least an elementary measure of prudence, you see. But if equality is an absolute requirement, I think that liberty must never be denied, first of all in what is most primary and abstract about it: the liberty to think and to express oneself. In the name of the pursuit of equality, you see, what I criticize is egalitarianism, which believes it possible, in order to go faster
1:18:46 in the realization of equality, to silence by force those who recall the absoluteness of the liberty to think and to express oneself — that's what I condemn. Liberty, for me, is first and last. But there, in any case, you're not in disagreement with Marx? No, we agree on that. No, Marx is nonetheless the one who said: individuals have always started, and always start, from themselves. Individuals have always and in all circumstances started from themselves, but they were not unique in the sense that they could not do without having relations among themselves; on the contrary, their needs, their nature, and consequently the way of satisfying them, made them dependent on one another — relations between the sexes, exchange, division of labor — so it was inevitable that relations should be established among them. Moreover, they entered into relation not as pure selves
1:19:56 but as individuals arrived at a determinate stage of development of their productive forces and their needs, and this determinate commerce in turn shaped production and needs; it was precisely the personal behavior of individuals in their reciprocal behavior as individuals that created the existing stable relations and continues every day to create them. They entered into relation with one another being what they were, they started from themselves as they were, independently of their conception of life. I would say that for Marx the word 'social' itself is a word with a negative meaning — the word with a positive meaning is not 'social,' it's 'association,' the association of free workers post-revolution. But the word 'social,' with its solidity, sometimes oppressive for Marx, has a dimension
1:21:07 that is also negative — you mentioned in a previous discussion, just an aside, and rightly so in my view, the fact that in Marx — the Marx I mean as philosopher, in Marx's ontology — being, at the level of his conception of being as social being, the social is on the side of necessity, and I think that's very right, that sums it up rather well. Maybe, yes, I don't know if I have a question, a remark — I can combine the two, it's a bit related to what our comrade was saying: it was the third of the 1844 Manuscripts, where Marx criticizes egalitarianism, so to speak abstract egalitarianism, where he calls it 'primitive communism,' which he clearly distinguishes from what he means by communism, which aims to realize a concrete equality and not an abstract equality that would be a kind of, well, given equitably, equal to everyone in a purely numerical way. And he says moreover that this communism presents itself first as the generalization of private property — in fact, wanting to abolish it, one generalizes it first, and that's abstract egalitarianism. That's it. And otherwise, as a question, I had — you often make the distinctions between the political
1:22:17 and politics, and I wanted to ask you to clarify a bit — is it like Hegel making distinctions between the logical and logic? Yes, the political is a dimension of existence, and politics is the management — the management of the political, which can even be done for self-interested reasons, and interested in denying the political, that is the essential point. It's a management of the political that can go against the political.
Reading of Rousseau's Letter on virtue 1:22:59 It's called the Letter on Virtue, for those looking for it. You can get it for 2 euros from Éditions Mille et une nuits, it's worth it. So, alongside the Letter on the Individual. It begins like this. You might ask me — he's answering someone who asked him — what virtue is, for you. Whether a man who had received nothing from society could owe it anything. That's a fundamental problem. But please consider that such a supposition is good for nothing when it rests on the impossible.
1:23:33 What rests on the impossible? That a man owes nothing to society. And everyone sees that it is utterly impossible for a man to be born, to live, and to preserve himself within society without owing it anything. He would be wrong to plead his poverty, his ills, his misfortune. The State will answer him. And here begins an incredible prosopopeia of the State — the State as general will here, not the State apparatus. The State says this to him: perhaps it would have been better for you to be born in the depths of a desert.
1:24:05 But you are in my bosom. You have lived there. You could not have lived there had I not preserved you. You should have left life if it was a burden to you, or left the country if its laws seemed too harsh to you. Die or leave if you want to owe me nothing for the future. But give me the price of 30 years of life. I have never seen Rousseau be so precise — you, the individual, owe me the price of 30 years of upkeep. Isn't that right? You had to die or... sorry, excuse me.
1:24:35 Until you are no more, you owe me what you have been. We do not regard ourselves as those primitive and imaginary men who needed no one because nature alone seemed to provide for everything. Nature has, so to speak, abandoned its functions as soon as we usurped them. Social man is too weak to be able to do without others; he needs everything from the moment of his birth. Anticipating the thesis of the generic prematurity of man, of the newborn's inviability at birth.
1:25:06 Social man is too weak to be able to do without others; he needs everything from the moment of his birth until that of his death. Rich or poor, he could not subsist if he received nothing from others. I'll skip ahead, he develops this. After showing all the material advantages that seem obvious, he adds this. But an infinitely superior advantage — and here we move to the societal, but I'm not against the societal, I'm getting back to our discussion, provided it comes as a luxury once the social has developed — but an advantage infinitely superior to all physical goods, and which we owe unquestionably to the harmony of the human race, is that of arriving, through the communication of ideas and the progress of reason, at the intellectual regions, of acquiring the sublime notions of wisdom and moral goodness, of nourishing our feelings with the fruit of our knowledge, of raising ourselves by greatness of soul above the weaknesses of nature, and of equaling, in certain respects — that's a limit — through the art of reasoning, the celestial intelligences.
Religion of capital, environmentalism and the supreme being 1:26:04 That's astonishing. You recalled the importance of the principle of secularism. Yes. And the question I wanted to ask you is: don't you think that in the current state of things, secularism is not respected, because there is a religion that is not held in suspension — the religion of capital, the religion of profit — and so, if we place ourselves in your perspective of reaffirming secularism, we would have to go so far as to challenge this sort of dogma...
1:26:46 The religion of the invisible hand. Yes, that's it, for which fairly heavy sacrifices are consented to nonetheless. I'll add my voice to that — there's also another religion, the worst of all, this sort of idiotic millenarianism they call the ecological transition, saving the planet and the rest. Where it's a matter of being saved, you know, we're really in the stupidest millenarianism. We must be saved because the apocalypse is upon us, and so we're going to have to believe, and we're even going to seek indulgences to earn our salvation.
1:27:18 That's the other unspoken and permanent religion being imposed on us, which is totally contrary to the spirit of secularism and of the nation. My only reservation concerns the metaphorical use of the word 'religion' here. Yes. I think we must be wary of metaphors, and that philosophical analysis and language must be realistic and rigorous.
1:27:48 Ah, but perhaps regarding the young man's objection — although everyone understood what he was alluding to, that's not the case for me — there we really are in the realm of the religious. Yes, we really are in the religious in the case of ecology, or ecologism, or whatever you want to call it — the saving of the planet. If I may, in the Hegelian analysis of the religious, there is first natural religion, if I remember correctly. It's the first, the oldest. Yes, yes, of course. Before aesthetic religion, there's natural religion, that is, animism roughly speaking.
1:28:18 We must distinguish between the affirmation of a nature and naturalism. Yes, yes, quite so, of course, and the natural. No, no, but what there is — natural religion, that is, fetishistic immanence. When one speaks, as Marx speaks of the fetishism of the commodity, there is something religious in our adherence to capital. There, to give the young man his due. Now, I agree with you, we must be careful about metaphors, because when a concept means everything, it no longer means anything, doesn't it? Even the Marxists, a long time ago, had gone against the Marxist vulgate, or anti-Marxian one, in any case.
1:28:58 Marx, in short, valued the individual or the person. It's true, Marx's assertion is peremptory: individuals have always started, and always start, from themselves. Marx was an atomist, and remained one socially speaking too — but watch out, his atomism was that of... With the clinamen. Of Epicurus and not of Democritus. There, of Epicurus, and not of Democritus, that is, the atom plus...
1:29:29 The clinamen. The clinamen, that is, the inclination toward the other. Or at least... A true atomist. Or at least the will. Yes, but then, the relation... The relation of freedom to the will. Yes, yes, yes. The free exercise of the will. And for that, there must be the clinamen playing the role of the will. It's there for that. And which is the will. That said, I find that Bernard Bourgeois has a... I'm not flattering him, but still, I mean, you formulated very well the relation of the...
1:30:03 of secularism, as you said, it's the... Yes, it's the negative of the nation. There, there, there. It's... For republicans, one must not abstract from everything. And vice versa. Except from national belonging. Now, that's precisely where there's a small... a gap that remains to be filled. Yes. And in the events we're living through, perhaps an occasion to start trying to fill it, is the one where Robespierre failed in his best intention.
1:30:37 It's that of the Supreme Being. I'm staying deliberately on the religious. Yes. That is, of a secular religion. Yes. Let's be clear. Yes. Or of sensible reason, to borrow the notion from a historian we know well, and on which she insisted very rightly. You know better than anyone this text with which the young Hegel, the young Schelling, the young Hölderlin begin, don't you? The mythology of reason. I worked a great deal reading Robespierre in every possible way. There. No, but I know well that you don't speak of him the way Courtois does.
1:31:08 It's a great thought. I've read the revolutionaries, Marat too, Danton. And allow me to add, since he's not being named, Michel Clouscard devotes almost the first 80 pages of his essay — now called Critique of Liberal Libertarianism, prophetic if ever there was one, given what's happening — he's 40 years old nonetheless — and which was originally called Rousseau or Sartre.
1:31:39 Implying: we had Rousseau, why did we go looking for Sartre? I don't know. I think you'll agree with Bernard. Yes, yes, I was there. I remind you of his critique of Sartre. But the first 40, 50, almost 80 pages are devoted to the concept of the Supreme Being in Rousseau. Coming from a Marxist, explicitly self-described as an orthodox communist, that's worth recalling. I remember, I once went to give a lecture in Pamplona, at the University of Opus Dei.
1:32:13 And in the great lecture hall, in front of the effigy of Escrivá de Balaguer, I gave a lecture on the revolutionary philosophy of the French Revolution. That's a provocateur, well, no matter. But I studied extensively all these thinkers of the Revolution who had... That was after Franco's death. That was after Franco's death. Yes. Yes, it was after his death. To sum up in three seconds for these young people, I think many of them don't know what Opus Dei was.
1:32:46 Yes, yes. Say it in two words, because afterward a gentleman wanted to ask a question. It's an organization originally founded by the Spanish church, on its most reactionary side, under Franco's fascist dictatorship, based on... It was a new Inquisition, much more intelligent. It was practically the Inquisition. It penetrated business circles as well as political circles. I'll sum up very quickly, I had invited him along with Grimaldi. Opus Dei, meaning in Latin 'the work of God,' of course. But it's still present in the church today.
Social and societal in Hegel's vocabulary 1:33:24 Sir, you'd like to ask a question. A very simple little question. In the discussion, the social was opposed to the societal. I think everyone perceives that opposition well when one is inside it, when one lives it, and one perceives it as easily as the difference between truth and lies, to put it simply. But in Hegel's historical vocabulary, how does this opposition appear? What is the terminology he develops from, I think, the Phenomenology up to the end of his life?
1:33:57 Well, there are many questions in the book, but I'll give you the floor right away to answer this question, which indeed falls squarely within a large part of the work. If you like, Hegel doesn't use the word 'societal,' since... But he designates the thing through expressions like intersubjectivity. You see, the societal is intersubjectivity, that is, bonds that presuppose the primary reality of the individual.
1:34:35 The social, if you like, designates a structure, a structure that is also cultural in its content, into which the individual is born and by which he is impregnated — a sort of second nature into which he is born and in which he lives — whereas the societal doesn't designate a structure or a substance, a second nature, but a contingent relation that develops in the history of individuals, which is thus intersubjectivity insofar as it is distinguished from that sort of substantiality, or that substantialization of the relation between men, which the social designates.
1:35:30 This notion of the social is often used by Marx in this negative sense, of a native, imposed, necessary solidarity that is not the work of freedom. If I may, because it's also related to the order, the very organization of the work, which nonetheless has to be presented today, which begins with a long chapter on action.
1:36:02 So, if I say this, it's because among the developments you produce, and including — we talked about it before — am I soliciting your work, your comments, your observations, by saying that, to simplify enormously, the social is to action what the societal is to interaction, in the sense of the acting you describe at the beginning. Yes, if you like. Can you, since people haven't read it yet, talk a bit about action, in relation to this perspective of action, including political action.
1:36:36 If you like, the societal is what can be absolutized against the social by a way of thinking that posits the individual as an absolute principle capable of enclosing itself within itself. The societal is readily absolutized by individualism, insofar as it presupposes the existence of individuals.
1:37:07 it's the difference I make between interaction and what one might call co-action, well, which isn't... Collective action. There. Interaction, the dialectical inverse or opposite of collective action. Or what some modern thinkers distinguish as community and society. There. Gemeinschaft, unity, and Gesellschaft — that's interaction.
1:37:38 You also make an amusing comment about... It takes us back to a certain era, the 1970s, one of the most well-known intellectuals of the time, 'making society.' Yes. Why did they find it necessary to 'make society'? Can you say a bit about what you said about that? He's a conviviality thinker. So, 'making society,' obviously, that's Foucault. Yes, yes. Who's a problem. Yes, yes. No, but it's an expression of individualist thought. And Foucault was not a socialist thinker.
1:38:11 That's the least one could say. For him, there was no such thing as society. It had to be made. By each person. He came at his hour, that of the counter-revolution. Allow me to answer the gentleman with a small concrete example, very precisely. In Hegel, this is your question, it's the problem of education that arises, the education of children, pedagogy, etc.
Hegel against the pedagogy of play 1:38:41 And you see, in the 1970s, the struggle between directive teaching and avant-garde schools in which, you know, the child must be allowed to flourish. But still, an incredible text — the necessity of children being raised, the necessity of children being raised, as the feeling proper to them of not being satisfied with what they are, is the tendency to belong to the world of grown-ups whom they sense to be superior, the desire to become grown up.
1:39:11 The pedagogy of play — yes, in 1820 Hegel is already talking about playful pedagogy, while some people still think that's the avant-garde. The pedagogy of play, Hegel — it's not Meirieu who invented that. It treats the childish element as something valuable in itself, presents it to children as such, and lowers for them what is serious, while itself taking on a childish form that children hold in low regard. By representing them as complete in the state of incompleteness in which they feel themselves to be, and thereby striving to make them content, these methods disturb and corrupt their true spontaneous need, which is far better.
1:39:48 A tribute to children. Its effect is the detachment from the substantial realities of the spiritual world, and first of all contempt for men — these avant-garde educators who presented themselves as childish and contemptible to the children — and finally the vanity and self-confidence of children, full of the feeling of their own distinction. A text of striking relevance. We suffered from that for half a century after the war. For 40 years. It's nice to speak of it in the past tense, to be optimistic. We suffered from it especially from the end of the 60s onward.
1:40:21 I notice that today's youth has a thirst to get out of that, which is entirely to their credit. Pedagogism destroyed the school as an institution. It destroyed pedagogy. Following a competitive examination jury for the agrégation that I had chaired, I had asked for an appointment with Savary, who had been appointed Minister of National Education. When he was appointed, a few of us — my friend Muglioni, the inspector Saint-Denis-Moy — were pleased. He had distanced himself from Socialist Party policy during the Algerian War.
1:40:56 So I said to myself, well, maybe he'll shake things up. Now, this is during the Mitterrand years. But that wasn't it. So I went to see him and I said, listen, Minister, we need to stop, in France, always carrying out reforms in the same style, in the same destructive direction for the school system. Leave French teachers alone. And the children too.
1:41:26 Leave them free to teach as they wish. When a teacher stands in front of his class, well, he learns how he himself must behave. Two weeks later, Luc Ferry calls me. He says, sir, I'm in a very awkward position. The minister just called me. He told me he was putting an end to your functions. Yes, I should explain that you had functions. Yes, I had been appointed to chair an agrégation jury, and well, I didn't reign, but I had — I was quite active within the school system.
1:42:01 Bernard Bourgeois is very modest. Especially in defending primary school, which had been massacred. I had written an article in Le Monde, 'The school without its republic,' which was published in the 80s. Le Monde had taken two or three years to publish it, the opposition was so fierce. It was finally published. So I had told Savary that all this had to stop.
1:42:31 He put an end to your functions. So Luc Ferry, whom you know — you're going to see, it's quite comical. No, but it's the truth. But it's the truth, and that's precisely why it's comical. I have a lot of esteem and sympathy for Luc Ferry. I don't. There, in situations, it's sometimes strange — he told me, the minister designated me to be your successor. I told him, listen, I'm glad for you, but don't get mixed up in this operation, whose purpose is not simply to change a chair of an agrégation jury, but to steer, through changing this important competitive exam, which has repercussions on the whole training of future teachers, future professors, the state of French education in a direction I consider negative.
1:43:29 So Luc Ferry calls me back the next day. He was a bit disappointed all the same. Yes, so he calls me back the next day, he says I'm really more and more embarrassed because the minister no longer wants you at all, and since someone else is needed, it might as well be me rather than someone else. So if you answer him — this is where it gets very funny — I told him, listen, I'm sure you'll be able to do it, but still, I advise you against getting involved in this political operation aimed at significantly altering, through repercussion, the style of teaching and the teaching of philosophy in France.
1:44:12 So then, I... He calls you back, I believe, the next day. He tried to put together a jury and for several weeks, in order to get a positive answer, out of all the professors he had approached who knew about the affair, he found — I had pushed him a bit — only one member for the jury, and then there was a change of government and Savary was replaced by Chevènement.
1:44:49 Chevènement overturned it, he overturned Luc Ferry's appointment order and reinstated me... Yes, because he's forgotten the funniest part. Luc Ferry calls Bernard Bourgeois back — if I may, since you told me the story — well, he's a little afraid that... But still, it should be said, since Luc Ferry is still present in the media, to recall this rather amusing episode from his institutional past — well, he's going to accept the responsibility despite the fact that Bernard Bourgeois tells him no, we can't accept that, and he answers you, yes, but you understand, if it's not me, it'll be worse, it's better that it's me — and shortly afterward, immanent justice, he's fired by Chevènement.
Contradictory capital and the failure of communism 1:45:28 Yes, yes, who reinstated me in my functions. Earlier you said you agreed with Marx about his negative description of capitalism. Yes. Well, I'm a reader of Marx. Marx — it seems to me that the whole work of Capital consists precisely in showing that capitalism moves toward its necessary self-destruction.
1:46:03 And from there... Because it contradicts itself. Yes, capital contradicts itself. Because there's a contradiction. Yes, there's a contradiction. From there, I don't see how one can say that and at the same time say that history is over. Because, until proven otherwise, we're still... No, but Marx doesn't say that history is over. No, but that's exactly it, it's you who says history is over. Ah no, that's Hegel. But Marx says it a bit too, since he says it's the end of prehistory. Formulate your question. Is history over?
1:46:33 But if history is over, Marx was wrong in his negative description of capitalism. It can't be both at once. So, for Marx, the internal contradiction of capitalism necessarily bringing about its annihilation... Or rather its sublation. Its sublation. Yes, still, there's annihilation. Yes, its abolition.
1:47:03 To use another translation. A new structure of human coexistence was going to be put in place where there would no longer be the social, but association. The word association of workers has a positive sense, whereas for Marx, the social as it stands, rigidified and so on, has a negative meaning.
1:47:34 On the question of the end of history. Now, it's true, capitalism is contradictory. It lives within contradiction, but up to now it has itself lived off those contradictions, because attempts to establish another regime, the socialist regime, in certain regions of the world, all those attempts have failed.
1:48:08 And they failed for a simple reason: people believed that, in order to achieve concrete freedom, they could forbid the very freedom to think itself by forbidding freedom of expression of thought. That's it. That's the heart of our disagreement, as you've understood, from the start. That's it. So I think that if the communist regimes, while imposing demands, especially concerning equalization, had allowed those opposed to that measure to express themselves freely — if freedom of thought, to express one's thought, however abstract it may be, had been maintained — I think the communist regime would not have collapsed.
End of history in Hegel, of prehistory in Marx 1:49:10 There you go. A small additional point, Léo, if I may. You summed it up very well just before. Marx and Hegel agree at least on one point: starting from Hegel's observation, there is something that is radically finished in the history of the world. Only, that thing is called history in Hegel — that's what is finished — and in Marx, Marx says it's the end of human prehistory. The nuance is nonetheless important.
1:49:42 But what's invariant in this is that something indeed comes to an end. First point. Second — it seems to me — I've lost my train of thought. While you think about it, let me point out that in the passage where Marx brings this up, he doesn't say exactly that, but it amounts to the same thing: he says, look, the period we're living through will one day be seen by humanity, once it has moved beyond capitalism, possibly toward a classless society, the way we see, today, prehistory.
1:50:20 But then, it isn't over. Yes, but that's his way of saying that... at a certain point, in the 1859 preface, he says it will be the end of human prehistory once there is a classless society. Obviously, it's a certain period of history that comes to an end all the same. On that, he agrees, it's true. The appearance of the classless society in Marx and the disappearance of human prehistory. There you go. Thank you. A social formation never disappears before all the productive forces it is broad enough to contain have developed.
1:50:59 New and higher relations of production never replace it before the material conditions of existence for those relations have hatched within the womb of the old society itself. That is why humanity always sets itself only such problems as it can solve. For, on closer inspection, it will always be found that the problem itself only arises where the material conditions for its solution already exist, or are at least in the process of coming into being.
1:51:32 In broad terms, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be described as progressive epochs of the social and economic formation. Bourgeois relations of production are the last contradictory form of the process of social production — contradictory not in the sense of individual contradiction, but of a contradiction arising from the social conditions of existence of individuals. However, the productive forces developing within bourgeois society at the same time create the material conditions for solving that contradiction.
1:52:10 With this social formation, the prehistory of human society thus comes to a close. That's not yet the case today. Ah, but he says... You imagine the timescales being speculated about here. That also means that for Marx, there is no teleology, still less any eschatology, there's no destiny, and so on.
1:52:45 But there's an extension of history, of the development of history, so that if he, Marx, along with Hegel, after Hegel, but in agreement with him on this point, passes judgment on the science of sciences — for Marx as much as for Hegel, that being history — it must inform philosophy. Philosophy, I'm quoting almost word for word, is in the service of history. And Marx and Hegel also share the idea that it's freedom and the meaning of history. Well, the way we understand science, human science in the broadest sense, means that there will be a period in which the period we are living through — the capitalist era specifically, capitalist relations that result in this — will be seen with the same distance, the same detachment, the same externality that we can have today with respect to what we know of prehistory.
1:53:36 That's what... And that's linked to... And that's the... It's indeed a way of overcoming the contradiction. I don't know what you... Yes, did you want to add something? Where it seems to me there is a disagreement is that... Maybe I'm wrong, but I have the impression that a difference there might be between Hegel and Marx is that Hegel considers history to be already over, whereas Marx says history is soon to be over, or rather that prehistory is soon to be over.
1:54:06 Since capitalism is not a central society. Yes, of course. But there still remains... This history, if you will. This particular history. Yes. Hegel never says that history is finished, he never says that art in the Aesthetics is finished, he says that art will never cease to perfect itself. It has lost its function of representing the absolute, which is not quite the same thing. Yes, that's it. What you recalled — I'm speaking under your supervision, Bernard Bourgeois — which Dominique also recalled, is that all the determinations that allowed us to identify the affirmed absolute positivity of freedom, history has unfolded all those determinations, we have them, we now know them.
1:54:45 There you go. That's what... That's what came about. That's what you mean. Yes, yes. That's what came about. That's how we know the paths of freedom. So in that sense, that role of history there is finished. Yes. That's it. There you go. Very well summarized. And Marx doesn't disagree with that. He simply says that it's one history among others. For Léo, who has a Marxist reading — and I'm not the one contesting it, far from it — let me point out that what is still missing for history to be actually finished for-itself and not merely in-itself, is for all these inequalities to be resolved.
1:55:21 Agreed? Which leaves quite a few years still to the revolutionary camp, all the same, I must say. That's where he's nonetheless in disagreement with Hegel. That is to say, for him, despite everything, even if all these determinations are now known, that doesn't exhaust the subject, so to speak. In the sense — pardon the pun — on the subject of history... Well, there's the famous letter to Niethammer where he says 'I notice that everything continues.' Yes, yes. Of course. No, no, but the end of history is such that it can contain the most luxuriant events imaginable.
1:56:00 But, because humanity is engaged in the realization of a value which, unlike freedom, cannot be the object of a complete determination. We know, we have finally learned, what the systematically interrelated conditions of a free existence were. But what is equality between two men?
1:56:33 Given the multitude of factors involved, the talents still hidden... There, we're picking up where we started this evening. So we're at the conclusion. And after that it's the closing drink. We don't know, we can't know. Consequently, equalization is an infinite task for history, and one about which it might be hard to claim that it has a continuous meaning always heading in one and the same direction.
1:57:06 You see? Because equality, let's say, is impossible. Right. So that's... We'll come back to the debate... So, let me clarify. Bravo. Thank you. Bravo. Let me clarify. We'll take up the debate again on... Well, here we started from current events. We'll come back another time... The whole final third of Bernard Bourgeois's book and its conclusion, on the occasion of a future meeting that will also be tied to current events, at the time of the European elections, since it will concern foreign policy, and we'll also address the theme of Europe in the most contemporary sense that is discussed in his book.
1:57:50 Europe, that's the question. There you go. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks to all of you.
