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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r__Sx7AvY0w
As you will see if you use the link, the conference took place at the Centre Universitaire Méditerranéen on 19th June 2011.
In my photo in the diary Onfray's mike can just be seen between his knee and a woman's head.
Here's a photo of Onfray with mike, typical of about 95% of the conference (Guisbert didn't "hog" it at all):
More interestingly, I think, one of my friends wrote a surprisingly critical report about it and I wrote a response defending Onfray. I later learned that my friend's wife is not only a doctor but also a psycho-analyst, and Onfray has written a very critical book about Freud.
As an example of inaccuracy and yet more hyperbole, you say that when the guy intervened with some rant about Marx, there were "Security guards running in from all corners". In fact one security guy went to the guy and spoke to him quietly without touching him, though he kept on ranting. Yes, Onfray did sensibly and with good humour say that he would reply to the guy and people did applaud hoping the guy would shut up till later. When it was question-time Onfray did make a point of replying first to the guy's point about Marx. Where was the "fawning adoration by Franz-Olivier Giesbert"? (He had said in his introduction that he admired Onfray, but this didn't affect the way he handled the session). He merely asked quite reasonable questions such as citing a philosophy book's title: "Why Philosophy ?" and he asked Onfray for his reasons for doing philosophy. Later, noting that Onfray has been accused of being polemical and aggressive, he asked why Onfray followed Nietzsche's idea of "philosophy with a hammer". Onfray replied that it was important to be clear and not hypocritical about some things and to express disagreements, without getting personal - as some of his critics HAVE done - even though you may not have read them. When a psychoanalyst in the audience asked a question Onfray welcomed this and said he was happy to discuss Freud's ideas rationally (and that some psycho-analysts had even said that his book had been valauble in causing them to rethink their attitude to Freud). Contrary to your ludicrous claim that there was "little or no argumentaion", Onfray replied to the guy asking about Marx that he was not totally opposed to Marx, that he particularly appreciated Marx's early writing on alienation. He said that his approach was often to set a thinker in context, thus while discussing Descartes he would also give more attention than was often the case to Gassendi. In the case of Marx, Onfray also dealt with Proudhon and the anarchists, as well as English thinkers such as Robert Owen. I'm not easily impressed, but in general Onfray's responses to interviewer or members of the audience were models of lucid argument, this quality partly explains the great popularity of his books. Have you read any ?
As an example of inaccuracy and yet more hyperbole, you say that when the guy intervened with some rant about Marx, there were "Security guards running in from all corners". In fact one security guy went to the guy and spoke to him quietly without touching him, though he kept on ranting. Yes, Onfray did sensibly and with good humour say that he would reply to the guy and people did applaud hoping the guy would shut up till later. When it was question-time Onfray did make a point of replying first to the guy's point about Marx.
Where was the "fawning adoration by Franz-Olivier Giesbert"? (He had said in his introduction that he admired Onfray, but this didn't affect the way he handled the session). He merely asked quite reasonable questions such as citing a philosophy book's title: "Why Philosophy ?" and he asked Onfray for his reasons for doing philosophy. Later, noting that Onfray has been accused of being polemical and aggressive, he asked why Onfray followed Nietzsche's idea of "philosophy with a hammer". Onfray replied that it was important to be clear and not hypocritical about some things and to express disagreements, without getting personal - as some of his critics HAVE done - even though you may not have read them. When a psychoanalyst in the audience asked a question Onfray welcomed this and said he was happy to discuss Freud's ideas rationally (and that some psycho-analysts had even said that his book had been valauble in causing them to rethink their attitude to Freud).
Contrary to your ludicrous claim that there was "little or no argumentaion", Onfray replied to the guy asking about Marx that he was not totally opposed to Marx, that he particularly appreciated Marx's early writing on alienation. He said that his approach was often to set a thinker in context, thus while discussing Descartes he would also give more attention than was often the case to Gassendi. In the case of Marx, Onfray also dealt with Proudhon and the anarchists, as well as English thinkers such as Robert Owen. I'm not easily impressed, but in general Onfray's responses to interviewer or members of the audience were models of lucid argument, this quality partly explains the great popularity of his books. Have you read any ?
The video, zeitgeistal as it was, nevertheless revealed what I perceived to be the real semiotic motivation for your inclusion of that particular photograph taken at the conference that took place at the Centre Universitaire Méditerranéen on 19th June 2011. In Nice.
What you sought, subliminally, was to emphasize your intimacy with O: you were there. You were a witness. In my business we call it brand identification, or, in some areas of the trade, consumer loyalty.
But the diplomat should always avoid such penetrating tokens of support. "In what way can I present information so that all aspects of the challenges to the veracity of such information are equally represented?" "I said that." You can't be me, I'm taken
In fact the reason for using one of the photos I took at the conference was much more prosaic; I wanted to use one of my own photos rather than having (as with some of the other pics in the diary) to borrow somebody else's from the net (though it's for small-scale, non-commercial use). Had I wanted to signal my "intimacy" with him, I might have chosen the photo I used in my previous reply to you. But I thought the one used, which puts him at a greater apparent distance from me, was a more interesting image and it fits with the point made in the diary about continental philosophy being more concerned with the historical context of ideas.
I think I make it quite clear that I respect and admire Onfray; it's for others to make their own judgments about the validity of his arguments and the worth of his Université populaire project and I cite some of his views and others can do their own research about him in order to form their own opinions.
I have no time for the idea that one should seek to conceal one's own convictions in the name of "diplomacy". That's the same sort of mistake as mainly US idea that in journalism objectivity is just a matter of balance - "he said - she said" ("I couldn't possibly comment"), instead of the careful study of the evidence in order to arrive at the truth, as far as it can be ascertained. Unfortunately, even the fact-checkers in US journalism suffer from the "balance" syndrome:
It drives home the point that what journalists call "objectivity" is really a radical post-modernism-a denial that anything can ever really be known about the world, that all we really can do is report various claims about the world. While factchecking as an enterprise would seem to inherently accept the idea that, yes, there are facts and they can be checked, in practice the people called factcheckers deny that what they do can be used to meaningfully distinguish between candidates... http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/10/09/factchecking-impossible-pointless-say-factcheckers/
http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/10/09/factchecking-impossible-pointless-say-factcheckers/
In Onfray's own case, he makes it quite clear in his recent book that he admires Camus and is very critical of Sartre; it's up to readers to decide whether his arguments and evidence justify his judgments.
But as Onfray himself said at the conference in Nice, to generally approve of someone doesn't mean one agrees with all of their views and I think, having read some Sartre and some things about him, including this:
http://www.liberation.fr/livres/01012346240-michel-onfray-ca-suffit
that he's not really fair to Sartre. But I'm happy to know where he stands with regard to the people he writes about, including justified (in my opinion) contempt for Freud. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
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