http://www.philomag.com/article,dialogue,nicolas-sarkozy-et-michel-onfray-confidences-entre-ennemis, 288.php
For Fran and others who may not have heard of Onfray :-)
Onfray is a well- known figure in France -- not just through his many books, which avoid academic cant and are rendered in an elegant but accessible, sparkling prose that is admired even by critics who abhor his ideas -- but as a frequent guest on French TV's numerous literary and intellectual chat shows. The national public radio network France Culture annually broadcasts his course of lectures to the Universite Populaire on philosophical themes. But Onfray has deliberately rejected the incestuous and corrupt Parisian mediatic-politico-academic microcosm and its seductive but ephemeral blandishments, and insists on living in the small Normandy town of Argentan where he was born, just 57 km. from Caen. Free from the distractions of urban mundanities, Onfray devotes his time exclusively to his intellectual work, which helps explain his astonishing output at such a relatively young age. http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2006/03/michel_onfray_o.html
Onfray is a well- known figure in France -- not just through his many books, which avoid academic cant and are rendered in an elegant but accessible, sparkling prose that is admired even by critics who abhor his ideas -- but as a frequent guest on French TV's numerous literary and intellectual chat shows. The national public radio network France Culture annually broadcasts his course of lectures to the Universite Populaire on philosophical themes. But Onfray has deliberately rejected the incestuous and corrupt Parisian mediatic-politico-academic microcosm and its seductive but ephemeral blandishments, and insists on living in the small Normandy town of Argentan where he was born, just 57 km. from Caen. Free from the distractions of urban mundanities, Onfray devotes his time exclusively to his intellectual work, which helps explain his astonishing output at such a relatively young age.
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2006/03/michel_onfray_o.html
There's an English translation of an extract from it in the New Staesman site, here's a bit of it:
Nicolas Sarkozy debates belief, freedom and work with the atheist philosopher Michel Onfray ... An exchange O: As our meeting comes to an end, I would like to give you some useful gifts before we leave. (He gives Sarkozy four parcels.) S (amused): Do you really think that my situation is that bad? (Sarkozy unwraps the books, while Onfray comments on his choice.) O: I give you Totem and Taboo because Freud talks about the murder of the father and the exercise of power in the herd. Then, 'Antéchrist by Nietzsche because of his radical critique of Christian morals - for you who sometimes goes to church with your family. I also recommend Michel Foucault to you, particularly in your role as interior minister, where you are fond of disciplinarian solutions . . . In Surveiller et punir, Foucault analyses the jail system and its relationship with the liberal norm. And finally Proudhon, because he shows that, if one is not a capitalist, it doesn't necessarily mean one is a communist. S: Have I ever tried to say such a thing? O (looking at his notes): Yes, in your book Témoignage, page 237: "Communism, the other word for anti-liberalism . . . " S: Are you a communist? O: That's the point: I am not a communist nor a capitalist. http://www.newstatesman.com/200706040046
Nicolas Sarkozy debates belief, freedom and work with the atheist philosopher Michel Onfray
... An exchange
O: As our meeting comes to an end, I would like to give you some useful gifts before we leave. (He gives Sarkozy four parcels.) S (amused): Do you really think that my situation is that bad? (Sarkozy unwraps the books, while Onfray comments on his choice.) O: I give you Totem and Taboo because Freud talks about the murder of the father and the exercise of power in the herd. Then, 'Antéchrist by Nietzsche because of his radical critique of Christian morals - for you who sometimes goes to church with your family. I also recommend Michel Foucault to you, particularly in your role as interior minister, where you are fond of disciplinarian solutions . . . In Surveiller et punir, Foucault analyses the jail system and its relationship with the liberal norm. And finally Proudhon, because he shows that, if one is not a capitalist, it doesn't necessarily mean one is a communist. S: Have I ever tried to say such a thing? O (looking at his notes): Yes, in your book Témoignage, page 237: "Communism, the other word for anti-liberalism . . . " S: Are you a communist? O: That's the point: I am not a communist nor a capitalist.
http://www.newstatesman.com/200706040046
Onfray then commented on the encounter in his blog - there's an English summary of it:
... So Michel Onfray's blog in which he describes meeting the candidate was a must-read. For those who can't face 3,113 words in French (and you thought I'm long-winded!) I will give a résumé (meaning shortened version, for those with no French at all). Michel Onfray is a 47 year old philosopher, already cited in this blog some time ago, who achieved high-profile with his book La Traité d'Athéologie, which sold a remarkable 300,000 copies. Put simply, he is a hedonist, believing in the present, not in the dream of a rosy future, whether religion-based or utopic. He believes in the value of our senses, that we should know the world and see the world as it is. Anyway, the French magazine Philosophie asked Onfray to interview Sarkozy. On his blog, he describes the meeting: Onfray is accompanied by two of the staff of the magazine, Sarkozy by two advisors. "A stormy beginning. Aggression on his part. He paces round his cage, looking, weighing me up, judging. A great wounded animal, he has read my blog and looks me up and down." Onfray recently started a blog for this election, and early on he compared Sarkozy to the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. In the same way that the wolf disguises his grey fur with the grandmother's nightdress, the lupine free-marketeer Sarko has dressed himself up in clothing of the left, claiming to believe in the Republic and its social, caring values. It is for this comparison that the following scene is enacted: "His legs are crossed, one of them incessantly twitching nervously, the foot never stops moving.....First blow with his paw, claws out, then a second, a third, he can't stop, lets himself go, aggressing, hitting, striking hard, talking to himself, a flow of words impossible to control or canalize. One, two, ten, twenty autistic sentences. His cabinet director and colleague watch and listen to him impassively. I can imagine them present at a heavy [police] interrogation, wearing the same mask, the mask of a person in authority watching someone die without a flicker of emotion. The monologue continues, interminable torrent, bitchy comments thrown out like gall from a sick, bilious man or the venom surging through the body of a person intent on murder. Boasting, provoking, sure of his ground as he pushes his adversary to fight back, he says in essence: "So you've come to see the great demagogue, you who are nothing whatsoever, you throw yourself into the wolf's jaws!" I say something, it is torn apart, destroyed, broken, rejected..... I try again. Same treatment, a torrent of acid words. I try again, same thing. I begin to find it's going on a bit long..." As Onfray says, how, if one has wanted, since the cradle, to be president of the republic, if one aspires to walk with the great of this world, be the head of the army, have a nuclear arsenal at one's disposal, how can one turn like a mortally wounded animal on someone just because they wrote on their blog something mildly critical. All Onfray said in his blog was that Sarkozy had recently converted to Gaullism, the idea of the nation and the republic. "In fact the whole of the first half hour were a hysterical piece of play-acting of someone lost body and soul in a dance of death around a ritual victim, while round about two men from each camp impotently watch this primitive scene." ... http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/blog/franceprofonde/portrait-of-a-president/
... So Michel Onfray's blog in which he describes meeting the candidate was a must-read.
For those who can't face 3,113 words in French (and you thought I'm long-winded!) I will give a résumé (meaning shortened version, for those with no French at all). Michel Onfray is a 47 year old philosopher, already cited in this blog some time ago, who achieved high-profile with his book La Traité d'Athéologie, which sold a remarkable 300,000 copies. Put simply, he is a hedonist, believing in the present, not in the dream of a rosy future, whether religion-based or utopic. He believes in the value of our senses, that we should know the world and see the world as it is. Anyway, the French magazine Philosophie asked Onfray to interview Sarkozy.
On his blog, he describes the meeting: Onfray is accompanied by two of the staff of the magazine, Sarkozy by two advisors. "A stormy beginning. Aggression on his part. He paces round his cage, looking, weighing me up, judging. A great wounded animal, he has read my blog and looks me up and down." Onfray recently started a blog for this election, and early on he compared Sarkozy to the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. In the same way that the wolf disguises his grey fur with the grandmother's nightdress, the lupine free-marketeer Sarko has dressed himself up in clothing of the left, claiming to believe in the Republic and its social, caring values. It is for this comparison that the following scene is enacted: "His legs are crossed, one of them incessantly twitching nervously, the foot never stops moving.....First blow with his paw, claws out, then a second, a third, he can't stop, lets himself go, aggressing, hitting, striking hard, talking to himself, a flow of words impossible to control or canalize. One, two, ten, twenty autistic sentences. His cabinet director and colleague watch and listen to him impassively. I can imagine them present at a heavy [police] interrogation, wearing the same mask, the mask of a person in authority watching someone die without a flicker of emotion. The monologue continues, interminable torrent, bitchy comments thrown out like gall from a sick, bilious man or the venom surging through the body of a person intent on murder. Boasting, provoking, sure of his ground as he pushes his adversary to fight back, he says in essence: "So you've come to see the great demagogue, you who are nothing whatsoever, you throw yourself into the wolf's jaws!" I say something, it is torn apart, destroyed, broken, rejected..... I try again. Same treatment, a torrent of acid words. I try again, same thing. I begin to find it's going on a bit long..."
As Onfray says, how, if one has wanted, since the cradle, to be president of the republic, if one aspires to walk with the great of this world, be the head of the army, have a nuclear arsenal at one's disposal, how can one turn like a mortally wounded animal on someone just because they wrote on their blog something mildly critical. All Onfray said in his blog was that Sarkozy had recently converted to Gaullism, the idea of the nation and the republic. "In fact the whole of the first half hour were a hysterical piece of play-acting of someone lost body and soul in a dance of death around a ritual victim, while round about two men from each camp impotently watch this primitive scene." ...
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/blog/franceprofonde/portrait-of-a-president/
Hmmm - maybe I should have done this as a diary - but then it took less than an hour :-) Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2007/4/28/171617/546 Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
(Sarkozy standing in front of de Gaulle's tombstone in Colombey and asking: "when Gaullists come here, how long do they stay?"), which makes the following points:
But Onfray strikes me as almost as much of an attention seeking clown as Sarkozy, inasmuch as the latter can be thought of as such:
Sarkozy: I'm no more able to prove the existence of God than you are to deny it. Onfray: That's no good. It's the person who posits the existence of something who must be able to justify it.
Onfray: That's no good. It's the person who posits the existence of something who must be able to justify it.
Onfray strikes me as the idiot in that interchange: the very definition of religion is that you do not "justify" your faith/god in the same way as you justify something rationally or empirically. Sarkozy is in the right here.
And in this exchange, both of them sound like fools:
O: In French, the word travail comes from the Latin tripalium, which designates a torture device. Our activities can't compare with the burden of a worker who exhausts himself on the assembly line for eight hours a day. . . S: During my numerous visits to various workplaces, I have been struck by the happiness encountered in factories compared with the lack of it in offices. In Zola's time, in the mines, even if the work was very hard, people didn't feel lonely. The hardship was compensated by friendship and solidarity. The feeling of belonging to a modern world in the making helped the workers to hold on. Unlike today in offices, where you may sit at a comfortable desk obeying your boss, but you are isolated in front of your computer.
S: During my numerous visits to various workplaces, I have been struck by the happiness encountered in factories compared with the lack of it in offices. In Zola's time, in the mines, even if the work was very hard, people didn't feel lonely. The hardship was compensated by friendship and solidarity. The feeling of belonging to a modern world in the making helped the workers to hold on. Unlike today in offices, where you may sit at a comfortable desk obeying your boss, but you are isolated in front of your computer.
Whereas he is right that we cannot compare the long hours of an "information professional" with the long hours of a manual laborer, Onfray is completely irrelevant and comes across like a pedant by tracing the etymology of travail to a torture device.
On the other hand, Zola sounds ten times more stupid and frighteningly out of touch by trying to claim that coal miners' sense of "friendship and solidarity" made up for the abject misery of their jobs, and even made their jobs superior to modern information jobs.
But then, Sarkozy says something which have been expressed on this site:
... l'être humain peut être dangereux. C'est d'ailleurs pour cette raison que nous avons tant besoin de la culture, de la civilisation. Il n'y a pas d'un côté des individus dangereux et de l'autre des innocents. Non, chaque homme est en lui-même porteur de beaucoup d'innocence et de dangers.
In other words, humans are not perfect and will do bad things: thus, the need for the State and the norms of society.
Though on the other hand, he does say things which -- at least in the U.S., I believe -- would cause an uproar:
J'inclinerais, pour ma part, à penser qu'on naît pédophile, et c'est d'ailleurs un problème que nous ne sachions soigner cette pathologie. Il y a 1 200 ou 1 300 jeunes qui se suicident en France chaque année, ce n'est pas parce que leurs parents s'en sont mal occupés ! Mais parce que, génétiquement, ils avaient une fragilité, une douleur préalable. Prenez les fumeurs : certains développent un cancer, d'autres non. Les premiers ont une faiblesse physiologique héréditaire. Les circonstances ne font pas tout, la part de l'inné est immense.
The English summary on Prospect Magazine is worthless. Pure one-sided, unfair caricaturing. BHL's piece is far better than that. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
Onfray is completely irrelevant and comes across like a pedant by tracing the etymology of travail to a torture device.
The etymology of "travail" is the standard way in France of introducing the dichotomy of work as alienation/work as expression. It's pretty much a lieu commun. It's probably one of the defining divides between left and right. The 35 hours week was justified partly because salaried work is an alienation.
Sarkozy's discourse is clearly promoting the later : more overtime, claiming 35 hours is a "minimum length of work week" ; see the recent Christine Lagarde speeches.
Sarkozy even went a bit too far, claiming that Le travail, c'est la liberté in one of his speeches ; I won't translate in german but I don't like that sound.
In Sarko's mouth, it also means that those that do bad things shall be locked away for ever. And are wholly responsible ; prevention doesn't work, people let the bad side win and can only be corrected through punishment.
It did cause an uproar in the French blogs, although it wasn't much picked up by French media (which seem unable to do much uproaring about Sarko these days) Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
But Onfray has deliberately rejected the incestuous and corrupt Parisian mediatic-politico-academic microcosm and its seductive but ephemeral blandishments, and insists on living in the small Normandy town of Argentan where he was born, just 57 km. from Caen. Free from the distractions of urban mundanities, Onfray devotes his time exclusively to his intellectual work, which helps explain his astonishing output at such a relatively young age. http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2006/03/michel_onfray_o.html
But Onfray has deliberately rejected the incestuous and corrupt Parisian mediatic-politico-academic microcosm and its seductive but ephemeral blandishments, and insists on living in the small Normandy town of Argentan where he was born, just 57 km. from Caen. Free from the distractions of urban mundanities, Onfray devotes his time exclusively to his intellectual work, which helps explain his astonishing output at such a relatively young age.
The rest of it is well worth reading and might change your impression of Onfray.
Sarkozy: I'm no more able to prove the existence of God than you are to deny it. Onfray: That's no good. It's the person who posits the existence of something who must be able to justify it. Onfray strikes me as the idiot in that interchange: the very definition of religion is that you do not "justify" your faith/god in the same way as you justify something rationally or empirically. Sarkozy is in the right here.
Sorry, B-K, but if that's what you think then I'm afraid you're the "idiot". It's not the "definition of religion" that you don't justify it - are you not aware of the LONG tradition of Christian theology which has attempted to justify its beliefs, e.g.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, formulated the famous "five ways" by which God's existence can be demonstrated philosophically: ... Two other historically important "proofs" are the ontological argument and the moral argument. The former, made famous by St. Anselm in the eleventh century and defended in another form by Descartes, holds that it would be logically contradictory to deny God's existence. http://mb-soft.com/believe//text/argument.htm
St. Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, formulated the famous "five ways" by which God's existence can be demonstrated philosophically:
... Two other historically important "proofs" are the ontological argument and the moral argument. The former, made famous by St. Anselm in the eleventh century and defended in another form by Descartes, holds that it would be logically contradictory to deny God's existence.
http://mb-soft.com/believe//text/argument.htm
Onfray is quite right the onus is on the person claiming something to give reasons to support their claim - as Christian theologians have tried - unsuccessfully - to do. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
Onfray's latest book, Traité d'Athéologie (Paris, Editions Grasset), became the number one best-selling nonfiction book in France for months when it was published in the Spring of 2005 (the word "atheologie" Onfray borrowed from Georges Bataille). This book has just repeated its popular French success in Italy, where it was published in September 2005 and quickly soared to number one on Italy's bestseller lists. An acerbic, stylish, and erudite polemic against received religions in general and Christianity in particular, Onfray's latest book is a powerful antidote to the tsunami of religious fanaticism that is engulfing the Western world as well as the Islamic countries, and which is rapidly turning the United States into a theocracy. [NB] On the occasion of the publication of his Traité, Onfray debated on French national TV a panel of Catholic theologians that included the new Cardinal of Paris, Monseigneur Vingt-Trois (and swatted them all down like flies).
Onfray's latest book, Traité d'Athéologie (Paris, Editions Grasset), became the number one best-selling nonfiction book in France for months when it was published in the Spring of 2005 (the word "atheologie" Onfray borrowed from Georges Bataille). This book has just repeated its popular French success in Italy, where it was published in September 2005 and quickly soared to number one on Italy's bestseller lists.
An acerbic, stylish, and erudite polemic against received religions in general and Christianity in particular, Onfray's latest book is a powerful antidote to the tsunami of religious fanaticism that is engulfing the Western world as well as the Islamic countries, and which is rapidly turning the United States into a theocracy.
[NB] On the occasion of the publication of his Traité, Onfray debated on French national TV a panel of Catholic theologians that included the new Cardinal of Paris, Monseigneur Vingt-Trois (and swatted them all down like flies).
