Michel Onfray
Michel Onfray , born on January 1st 1959 with Nickel silver, is a Philosophe French contemporary.
He published many works. Its courses of Histoire of philosophy are regularly diffused on France-Culture.
Biography
Born from a farm laborer father and a mother cleaning lady in Argentan in the Flowering ash, he becomes doctor in Philosophie and teaches this matter in the final classes of the private technical school Sainte Ursule of Caen of 1983 with 2002. Refusing the teaching of philosophy such as it is exempted (according to him, state education teaches the official story of philosophy and does not learn how to philosophize), it resigns in 2002 to create the popular Université of Caen and proclamation in of it 2004 writes ( the philosophical Community ).
Michel Onfray estimates that there is no Philosophie without Psychanalyse, neither Sociologie, nor Sciences. A philosopher thinks according to the tools of knowing it has, if not it thinks apart from reality.
Its writings celebrate the Hédonisme, the direction, the Athéisme, the philosopher, in the line of the Greek thinkers celebrating the autonomy of thought and life. Posting a Atheism without concession, it exposes in what the Religion S are indefensible as tools of domination and cut with reality. He manages thanks to his direction of the “Mot” to explain his theories within Média S famous preserving S (where it is often invited “to be the atheist of service”, dixit itself).
Michel Onfray asserts himself of a line of intellectuals close to the libertarian individualistic current among which cynical philosophical (Diogène), epicureans (Épicure) but also through all the history of philosophy (Brothers of the Free-Spirit, the thinkers Libertin S, the École of Frankfurt…).
Philosophy
Michel Onfray claims primarily intellectual heritage of philosophers like Epicure, Freud, Nietzsche. These three thinkers have jointly to invite to a continual going beyond: the important thing is not what they said, but the process which led them to say it.
Michel Onfray borrows from the thought nietzschéenne his vision of the Occident, the morals and his essential criticism of Christianity. De Epicure, it retains the ataraxie like starting point of a possible hedonism, placed thus under the sign of arithmetic of the pleasures. De Freud it preserves the conceptual toolbox inviting at the permanent psychological analysis of the company, in its relationship with the death instinct, the culpability.
He resolutely proposes to a thought materialist of which he speaks in praise and the presentation in all the fields which interest it: political ethics of life, , use of the body, reports/ratios in love, etc For this philosopher, the probity and the knowledge of the world are keys impossible to circumvent: “It is necessary to leave reality and to build with this one”. He works with the déconstruction of the myths guided by the “death instinct”, i.e. the refusal of the world and the existence to the profit of the dreams and the tales. Position which leads it to a “nonChristian atheism” (an atheism which does not preserve the uses of Christianity in the everyday life).
He proposes an art of living hedonist centered on the existence, the culture of arts and the knowledge, blooming, the pleasure, the report/ratio with oneself and the report/ratio with others. By pointing finger the forms of alienations and pains which it charges to the religions and the political and economic dogmas, it replaces the individual in the center of his existence by inviting it “to think its life and to live its thought” (this formula is of Andre Count-Sponville): “principle of a solar and sovereign ethics”. For him, to work on the rejection of the tales, the pleasure, the use of its body and the report/ratio with the others, are essential components which make it possible not to fall under the cut from idealistic thoughts, “praising shortly which sing”, of alleged existences after death or the values consumerists, as many thoughts consolatrices which give a happy life to later. It approaches in Théorie of the body in love: for erotic solar a the question of sexuality and tries to reactualize the libertinage: it criticizes there philosophies which speak in praise of the love to the detriment of the pleasure of the body (like Plato for example).
For Michel Onfray, happiness is to be made in the life at the moment present. It is built with the daily newspaper thanks to a patient " sculpture of soi" who requires choices in all the fields: philosophical of course, but also esthetic, political, gastronomical, etc
Preaching a virulent atheism, it peels during its conferences with the popular Université of Caen the way in which the Platonic ascetic idealism, then Christian, and finally German, always influence our manner of thinking and of designing the world, therefore our manner of living our existence. From this “against-history of philosophy”, Michel Onfray draws from the lesson, the ideas, of the thoughts, suitable to allow the manufacture of a happy daily life.
Existential Hapax
See also: Hapax
The existential Hapax is a concept created by Michel Onfray. It is about an event which occurs once in the life of an individual and who gives birth to abruptly and necessarily a advance from life and thought original and personnel. Onfray quotes as example the famous fall of horse of Michel de Montaigne, where this last, through the strange shock that it produces, takes suddenly conscience of the fragile materiality of its being, of the unit of its heart and its body, and of the strong contingency of the facts which compose the human existence. Onfray also evokes the philosopher Jules Lequier, who child, posed his hand on a bush, making flush out a small bird which flew away, then was made grab by another bird of prey which passed at the same time. This event terrorized Lequier as much as it obsessed it, thus it carried out all its life of work on the Déterminisme and the human Liberté. In the portrait of the philosopher as a libertine , it introduces the origin of the thought hedonist and materialist of this philosopher, whom it makes go up at 1742, at the moment when Mettrie is doctor with the French guards near the duke of Gramont during the war of Flandres. On the battle field, Mettrie notes whereas when “the flesh is lacking, the thought does not take place”. Lastly, it mentions the conversion of Augustin d' Hippone, when the wind would have opened its Bible in a page particularly striking, whereas it was in a garden.
Conceptual character
See also: conceptual Character
Michel Onfray takes again the concept of conceptual character with Gilles Deleuze, by developing it. He designates fictitious, or semi characters fictitious, created by one or more authors in order to convey one or of the ideas.
Political points of view
He stated to have voted (French presidential election of 2002) for the candidate of LCR Olivier Besancenot estimating that “the left must be of left” to fight what he calls “dirty misery” (see its book Politique of the rebel ), and a left which is reactualized permanently.
Among its last declarations Michel Onfray explains being favorable with what could be “a libertarian capitalism”, to a “management Libertaire of capitalism” opposed to a liberal management of capitalism.
Invited Stephan Paoli on France Inter Wednesday, March 22, 2006, Michel Onfray states “not to be against capitalism” and for the “private property”.
In 2006, with the Festival of Humanity, during a debate with Governed Debray, he states to support actively the building firm of a unit alternative on the left, which aims to designate an one applicant with the Gauche antilibérale, which he calls “radical”, for the French presidential Election of 2007. He calls his wishes a general strike in the event of a second round confronting Jean-Marie Le Pen with Nicolas Sarkozy.
In December 2006, during an interview granted to the newspaper Le Monde, Michel Onfray declares that he considers catastrophic the incapacity of the left of the left to introduce an one applicant to the presidential election of 2007. He sees there primarily a problem of ego and state major within the Communist party and of the Communist revolutionary league. He says to think that this absence of unit will involve an important rise of the useful Vote on the left by a massive carryforward of voice in favor of Ségolène Royal. In what relates to it, he states to exclude to vote in favor of Marie-George Buffet, Olivier Besancenot or Arlette Laguiller of which the ideology raises, according to him, of a rather delirious cryptomarxism .
The January 7th 2007, Michel Onfray signs a petition launched by the collective " Linked with Bové" to ask for the return of Jose Bove which had announced the withdrawal " provisoire" of its candidature the November 24th 2006 to be opposed to the respective behaviors of PCF and LCR.
February 9th, 2007, Michel Onfray inaugurates a blog presenting his political standpoint for the presidential one of 2007.
Disappointed attitude of Jose Bove, he announces on April 4th, 2007 on his blog his support, as in 2002, in favor of Olivier Besancenot, candidate of LCR, because " he makes the best countryside with the left of the gauche" .
With the second turn of the election, he declares on his blog that he will vote white, without that being a call. A very sharp polemic will follow.
Polemic following the publication of the Treated atheology
See also: Treated atheologie#Polemic
The media success of the Traité atheology resulted in making think that the question of the religion was central in the thought of Onfray, even that Onfray was before a whole theorist of atheism. If Onfray is atheistic, it is the defense of the hedonism which it initially puts in the middle of its work. The Traité atheology had been written in 2005 following the debates which had followed the publication of its work anatomical Fééries in which it calls in question the Christian a-priori in the field of the bioethics questions.
The Traité atheology , sold with more than 300.000 specimens, clearly showed an renewed interest, in France, in 2005, for the questions about the religions, that the analyzes are carried out by holding of the Athéisme or by monks.
In its Against History of Philosophy , it defends particularly the Thèse mythist (nonhistorical Jesus). He just like considers that Jesus is Character conceptual (concept which he takes again with Gilles Deleuze), the Zarathushtra of Friedrich Nietzsche or the Socrate of Plato.
Its critic of Christianity, addressing himself to Catholicism in particular, wants to be objective. She nevertheless is received with reserve or hostility by other intellectuals (cf " God with spirit, answer to Michel Onfray" of Irene Fernandez) who reproaches him a passion blindness and an excessive lack of knowledge of the nature even of the religious phenomenon, Christian in particular. For as much, the thought of Michel Onfray is particularly followed in certain intellectual mediums in Italy, where the Vatican is.
The media success of the Traité atheology recently echoes that of other atheistic books published in English, and who was very great successes of publication, such as The God Delusion of Richard Dawkins, Breaking the Spell: Religion ace has natural phenomenon Daniel Clement Dennett, The end off faith of Sam Harris or God is not great: How religion poisons everything of Christopher Hitchens. One can see in the leading success of these publications the feeling, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, that the atheists must be more claiming of their rights as citizens not to believe in a religion, defend the separation of the Church and the State against the fundamentalist movements, and must thus for that be more active as a movement.
Quotations
- The policy it is ethics, and ethics it is of the policy. Extract of conference of the popular University of Caen.
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