巴迪欧：法国哲学是希腊哲学和德国哲学后第三个黄金时代
2014-07-15
巴迪欧：法国哲学是希腊哲学和德国哲学后第三个黄金时代
让我们以一个悖论展开对当代法国哲学的反思吧：它是最具普遍性的，同时也是最独特的。黑格尔称之为“具体的普遍性”（concrete universal），它因特定的时间与空间而具体，又因包罗万象而普遍。哲学就是这样一种典范，它探讨一切，具有绝对的普遍性；但是其内部又存在着鲜明的文化和民族独特性。换言之，在哲学史上存在着多个由空间和时间所限定的哲学阶段，我们或许可以把它们称为哲学时刻（moments of philosophy）。于是，哲学既是具有普遍意义的理性思维的结果，同时又是在特定时空范围内才呈现出来的。让我们看看历史上特别重要、也尤其出名的两个例子。第一是从公元前五世纪到公元前三世纪的希腊古典哲学，开始于巴门尼德，结束于亚里士多德，这是一个奠定西方哲学基础的极具创造力的哲学时刻，虽然持续的时间并不长。第二是从18世纪晚期到19世纪初期的德国唯心主义，始于康德，终于黑格尔，中间经过费希特和谢林，同样富于创新却更加短暂。我想提出并论证的是一个更加具有民族性和历史性的观点：20世纪下半叶出现了一个堪与古典时期的希腊哲学和启蒙时期的德国哲学相提并论的法国哲学时刻，其影响至今犹存。
1943年萨特完成了奠基之作《存在与虚无》，20世纪90年代初德勒兹最后的作品《什么是哲学？》问世。法国哲学阶段在他们两人之间展开，历经巴什拉、梅洛-庞蒂、列维-斯特劳斯、阿尔都塞、福柯、德里达、拉康，当然也包括萨特和德勒兹，也许还可以算上我自己。如果法国哲学阶段这一说法能够成立的话，我应该是其最后的代表，时间会告诉我们答案。所谓“当代法国哲学”也正是萨特开山之作和德勒兹最后一笔之间大量工作的总和。我认为它是哲学史上一个极具创造力的新时刻，它既是独特的，又是普遍的。现在的问题是，我要如何去定义这些努力？在1940年到20世纪末的法国哲学界，到底发生了什么？上面提到的那些人，又有何作为？存在主义、结构主义、解构主义又是什么？那个时刻在历史性上和思想性上是一致的吗？如果确实如此，又是怎样地一致？
我想从四个方面来试着回答这些问题。首先是当代法国哲学的来源：我将说明其源于何处，先驱是谁，它又是如何诞生的。接下来我想谈谈当代法国哲学的主要内容和举措。第三，我将阐述一个重要问题，即这一时期哲学家与文学的关联，进而论及哲学和文学的关系。最后，我将论及贯穿这一时期的哲学和精神分析学之间的持久论战。来源、内容和举措、风格与文学、精神分析学，这些就是我用来界定当代法国哲学的四条途径。
概念与内在生命
为了考察这一哲学时刻的起源，我们需要追溯到20世纪初法国哲学界出现的一个基本分歧；法国哲学界此后分成了两个流派。1911年，柏格森在牛津大学发表了两篇著名的演说，后来被选入其作品集《精神哲学运动》。几乎与此同时，布伦茨威格的《数学哲学的诸阶段》于1912年出版。就在“一战”前夕，这段插曲证实了两种截然不同的哲学倾向的存在。柏格森提出关于生命与变化的哲学，我们现在称之为内在生命哲学（aphilosophy of vital interiority），讨论存在与变化（being and becoming）；沿着这个方向走过20世纪，我们会在其尽头发现德勒兹。在布伦茨威格的著作中，我们发现了基于概念的数学哲学（a philosophy of the mathematically based concept），探讨如何建立一种哲学上的关于思想与象征的形式主义（a philosophical formalism of thought and of the symbolic）；它同样贯穿了整个世纪，其中最为突出的人物包括列维-斯特劳斯、阿尔都塞和拉康。
于是，法国哲学在20世纪开端就表现出分裂和辩证的特点。一边是生命哲学（a philosophy of life），另一边则是概念哲学（a philosophy of the concept）。生命与概念的纷争在接下来的时间中一直占据着问题的核心，而这些争论的焦点则是生命与概念的交汇：人的主体问题。人，一方面是有机的生物体，另一方面又是抽象概念的创造者，他的主体性混合了其内在的生物性以及思维所赋予的创造能力和抽象能力。自从柏格森和布伦茨威格走上不同的道路，20世纪法国哲学围绕着人的主体问题，通过探讨肉体与思维、生命与概念的关系，一砖一瓦地发展起来。康德曾把哲学比作战场，如今我们多多少少都是疲惫不堪的战士，到了20世纪后半叶，哲学战争的最前线从本质上讲仍然是主体问题。阿尔都塞把历史定义为无主体参与的过程，把主体归于意识形态范畴；德里达通过解读海德格尔，把主体划进形而上的领域；拉康创造了一个新的主体概念；当然，萨特或梅洛-庞蒂赋予了主体绝对的中心地位。既然这场争论中最重要的问题是生命与概念之间的关系，于是我们首先可以把当代法国哲学界定为一场关于人的主体问题的论战。
当然，要继续追本溯源的话，我们还可以回到更早的时期，把法国哲学的分歧归于笛卡尔思想的影响。从某种意义上讲，战后的法国哲学可以被看作是一场关于笛卡尔的思想及其意义的大讨论，因为正是笛卡尔创造了主体这一哲学范畴。笛卡尔的理论既涉及人的身体——即动物机能（the animalmachine）——也涉及纯粹思辨。因此，他既关注现象的物理学也关注主体的形而上学。所有当代伟大的哲学家都曾写过跟笛卡尔有关的文章：拉康号召人们回归笛卡尔，萨特就笛卡尔对自由的论述写过一篇著名的文章，德勒兹对笛卡尔保持一贯的敌视态度。简言之，战后法国哲学家都是笛卡尔思想的传承者。该起源也支持之前我们对当代法国哲学的第一个界定，即：当代法国哲学是一场围绕主体问题的概念之战。
四大运动
接下来，我将尝试从这些哲学家共同的学术活动方面来界定当代法国哲学。我将勾勒出四大运动，它们能够清楚地说明这段时期特有的哲学研究方式。所有这些运动从某种意义上讲都属于方法论的范畴。第一大运动和德国有关，准确地说是对德国哲学的法国化运动。当代法国哲学事实上也是一场关于德国哲学遗产的讨论，其中标志性的事件有两个，其一是科耶夫的黑格尔研讨会，拉康是成员之一，列维-斯特劳斯也受其影响，其二是20世纪30、40年代经由胡塞尔到海德格尔发展起来的现象学。再有，萨特在柏林读到德国哲学家的原版著作后，大幅度地修改了自己的哲学观点；德里达的思想也许首先可以被看作是对德国哲学的独创性解读；对于福柯和德勒兹来说，尼采的著作是他们最基本的参考资料。
法国哲学家们在德国探求着，接着又在黑格尔、尼采、胡塞尔和海德格尔的著作中寻找着。他们寻求的是什么？一句话：概念和存在之间的新关系。这一寻找过程被赋予了众多的名称——解构主义、存在主义、阐释学——而它们背后有着一个共同的目标：转化或者说替换概念与存在之间的旧关系。思想的存在主义转变，或者将思想与其根植的社会土壤联系起来，给抓住主体问题不放的法国哲学家们带来了极大的兴趣。这就是“德国运动”，在德国哲学传统中寻找着解决概念与存在关系的新途径。而且，在德国哲学被移植到法国哲学战场的过程中，德国哲学被彻底改头换面了。因此，这第一大运动就是对德国哲学的法国化运动。
同等重要的第二大运动与科学有关。法国哲学家们试图使科学超越知识哲学（philosophy of knowledge）领域。他们宣称科学不仅仅是思想或认知的对象，而且是一种生产或创造活动，它远远超越了知识的范畴。科学代表着发明和变革，不应仅仅是对已知现象的归纳整理，而应被视为可与艺术活动相媲美的创造性思维。德勒兹探讨了科学创造和艺术创作之间微妙而紧密的联系，将科学的定位从知识的领域转移到创造的领域，最终将其置于与艺术相近的位置。虽说德勒兹是这项举措的杰出代表，但是作为法国哲学的基本构成部分，这样的尝试在德勒兹之前其实早就已开始了。
第三大运动是政治活动。这一时期的哲学家都追求哲学对于政治问题的深层次介入。萨特、梅洛-庞蒂、福柯、阿尔都塞以及德勒兹都是政治上的积极分子；正如在德国哲学中寻求概念与存在的新关系一般，他们试图在政治中找到概念与行为、特别是与群体行为之间的新关系。这种将哲学运用于政治局势的强烈愿望转变了概念和行为之间的关系。
第四大运动是致力于哲学的现代化，这个“现代化”与那种政府官员使用的术语大相径庭。法国哲学家表现出一种对现代性的强烈兴趣，他们紧紧跟随当代艺术、文化与社会发展的脚步。非具象画、新音乐与戏剧、侦探小说、爵士乐与电影艺术都散发着强烈的哲学趣味，对于这些现代社会最鲜明的表现形式，哲学渴望参与其中。除此之外，性与新的生活方式也引起了哲学的强烈关注。在所有这一切中，哲学寻找着概念与艺术形式生产、社会形式生产以及生活方式之间的新型关系。因此，哲学的现代化实际上是寻求一种新的方式来解读各种形式的创新。
综上所述，法国哲学阶段包括吸收德国哲学思想、开辟视科学为创造的新视角、积极介入政治活动以及探索全新艺术形式与生活方式这些行动内容。而贯穿这些行动的一个共同努力就是为概念寻找一个新位置，或者说改变其现有的位置，即通过构建概念与存在、概念与思想、概念与行为、概念与表现形式之间的新关系，以取代概念与其外部环境之间的旧有关系。正是这种对哲学概念与外部环境之间关系的创新处理，将20世纪法国哲学革新又推进了一步。
写作、语言、表现形式
表现形式的问题，以及哲学与形式创新之间的紧密关系的问题，在哲学上是至关重要的。显然，哲学形式本身也是一个重要问题：如果没有新的哲学形式出现，就不可能完成对概念的更新。因此在创造新概念的同时，进行哲学语言的转化也很有必要。这种需求促使哲学与文学建立起特殊的联盟关系，这正是当代法国哲学最为显著的特点。当然，哲学与文学的联盟在法国源远流长。18世纪被人们称为“知识分子”（philosophes）的伏尔泰、卢梭、狄德罗等人的著作也是法国文学的经典之作，这些作家在某种意义上可以说是战后哲学与文学联盟的始作俑者。还有许多法国作家也不能单独被划归哲学或文学。比如，帕斯卡尔既是法国文学巨匠，也是伟大的思想家。20世纪的阿兰，虽然他与我们讨论的法国哲学时刻没有什么关联，但是从其写作意图和目的来看，他毫无疑问是一位古典派哲学家。他非常看重写作过程，写过小说评论，其中关于巴尔扎克的几篇极为有趣；他还写了许多当代法国诗歌评论，特别是对瓦莱里的评论。换言之，即便是在20世纪法国哲学界相当传统的人物身上，都能看出哲学与文学的亲密关系。
超现实主义者在其中也功不可没。在表现形式、现代性与艺术等方面，他们热衷于动摇旧有的关系，希望创造新的生活模式。虽然他们的所作所为大部分属于美学范畴，但这至少也为20世纪50、60年代的哲学活动打下了铺垫。比如，拉康和列维-斯特劳斯都是超现实主义群体的常客。在这段复杂的历史中，如果说超现实主义者是法国20世纪将美学和哲学课题融合在一起的最初代表，那么到了50、60年代则是哲学界试图通过创造一种独有的文风，为概念的重新定位找到一种富有表现力的哲学风格和表达方式。
正是在这一阶段，我们目睹了哲学写作上的惊人变化。我们大概用了四十年时间，才渐渐习惯德勒兹、福柯以及拉康的写作风格。如今的人们已经没法体会，当年与早期哲学风格的决裂是多么惊世骇俗。当时所有的思想家都绞尽脑汁去寻找属于自己的写作风格，开凿出新的创作方式；他们想要成为“作家”。阅读德勒兹或福柯的作品，我们可以看到他们史无前例的句式，还有从思想到词组完全独创的表达；字里行间流露出的韵律新颖别致，让人叫好，文章的构思中也散发出令人惊叹的创造力。德里达耐心地搭建语言之间复杂的关系，仿佛语言自己可以处理语言，而思想就在这过程中渐渐变成了文字。说到拉康的文法，其复杂程度堪与马拉美媲美，常常让读者感到手忙脚乱、头晕目眩，可以称得上是诗一般的语言——这一点已得到公认。
可以说哲学表达方式的转变与哲学和文学之间界限的交融同时出现。我们还应该提到萨特，他（和我一样）既是思想家，也是小说家兼剧作家。对语言表达的创新，消解了哲学与文学、哲学与戏剧之间的界限，这就是法国哲学时刻的独到之处。我们甚至可以说法国哲学的一个目的就在于构建出一个新的写作空间，在那里文学和哲学完全融为一体；一块文学和哲学共有的领域，这里的文字既属于文学，又属于哲学，不再存在两者分离的可能。可以说，在这样的空间里，概念和生命之间已不再有不可逾越的鸿沟，因为这种写作形式的出现最终赋予概念一个新的生命：这就是文学生命。
弗洛伊德：支持与反对
随着这种新写作形式的出现，一种全新的主体最终宣告诞生，它在哲学中的形象同时也被构建起来，并且以它为中心开辟出新的哲学战场。由于这种主体不再是传统意义上来自笛卡尔的理性和意识的主体，它就不可能是——用更专业的词汇来说——反思的主体（reflexive subject）。当代作为主体的人，较之笛卡尔笔下的主体，内涵更为丰富，它带有更为模糊的色彩，其生命与肉体的关系更加难以割裂；它更接近于一种生产或者说创造过程，这种创造力使其内部聚集了更为巨大的潜力。不论是否使用“主体”这一名称，这正是法国哲学一直致力于发现、阐释、思索的。如果说精神分析学家总是以一个提问者的形象出现，那是因为弗洛伊德学说从本质上讲也是一个关于主体的命题。这样说的原因在于弗洛伊德学说中的无意识其实也是对人类主体的一种提法——它超越了意识，将意识包含于其中而非局限于意识，这正是“无意识”一词的根本意义所在。
因此，当代法国哲学与精神分析学之间展开了长久的对话。这场交流就像一出错综复杂、精彩纷呈的戏剧。问题的焦点仍然是法国哲学的两个分支：一为源自柏格森又流经萨特、福柯和德勒兹的存在主义生机论（existential vitalism），另一个是以布伦茨威格为开端，后经阿尔都塞和拉康发展起来的概念形式主义（conceptual formailism）。主体问题是这两条道路的交汇；在法国哲学中，主体或许最终可以被定义为产生概念的存在。从某种意义上讲，弗洛伊德学说中的无意识问题，就类似于哲学中的主体问题；无意识也是一种能产生概念的存在。存在如何能够产生出概念，从身体中如何能够创造出思想？如果同意这是一个核心问题的话，我们就不难理解为什么哲学会与精神分析学有如此深入的交流。但是当双方用各自不同的方式追求同一目标时，难免会有摩擦出现。在这种情况下，我们既是朝向共同目标的盟友，但不同的途径又让我们成为竞争对手。法国哲学时刻中哲学与精神分析学之间的关系也是这样：一个互相竞争的联盟，互相吸引又互相敌视，其间爱恨交织。难怪它们上演的戏剧会有如此强烈的复杂性和冲突性。
我们可以通过三段重要的文字来认识哲学与精神分析学之间的复杂关系。第一段出自巴什拉1938年《火的精神分析》的开头，它可以称得上是最能清楚表明哲学与精神分析学之间对立统一关系的例证。巴什拉在文中提出了一种基于诗与梦的新精神分析学说，一种包含火、水、气和土的基本元素论。有人可能会指出，巴什拉不过是用幻想（reverie）替代弗洛伊德理论中的性禁忌（sexual inhibition），进而说明这是一个更大更开放的范畴。第二段出自萨特的《存在与虚无》的末尾，他提议开创一种与弗洛伊德“经验主义的”精神分析截然不同的新精神分析法，暗示应该以存在主义理论模式为指导。萨特试图用他的“自由选择”来替代弗洛伊德学说中的情结（complex）——无意识结构。对萨特来说，决定主体的并非什么神经质的或者病态的结构，而是一种基本的对存在的筹划（project）。在萨特身上，我们再一次看到了哲学与精神分析学之间的交融。第三段文字来自德勒兹和加塔利所著的《反俄狄浦斯》第四章。德勒兹公开要与弗洛伊德式的分析一争高下，提出精神分裂分析法（schizoanalysis）来替代弗洛伊德的精神分析。就像巴什拉用幻想替代性禁忌、萨特用筹划替代情结，德勒兹通过《反俄狄浦斯》表明，他要用建构来替代表达；他反对精神分析的最大理由在于，精神分析未能对无意识加以建构，而仅仅是对无意识的力量加以表达。他明确提出，精神分裂分析法所要做的就是用建构替换“弗洛伊德式的表达”（Freudian expression）。我们看到三个哲学家——巴什拉、萨特、德勒兹——都想用自己的哲学模式来替换精神分析，仅仅这一点就足以让人惊叹。
伟大之路
最后，我们定义哲学时刻还有一种方法，即通过这一时期哲学家们的研究课题来定义。在战后法国哲学中，如果忽略哲学家们的著作、哲学系统甚至哲学概念，那么我们能否在他们的研究课题中找到某些共同之处呢？当然，参与其中的哲学家性格各异，研究同一课题的方式也不尽相同。然而，只要存在一个公认的主要问题，就会涌现出各种各样的研究方法、文本、思想家，一个哲学时刻便应运而生。从战后法国哲学界的研究课题中，我们可以总结出以下要点。
一，结束概念与存在的分离——不再把它们置于对立的位置；将概念表述为一个鲜活之物、一种创造、一个过程、一个事件，从而不再与存在分离。
二，赋予哲学以现代性，这也意味着把哲学带出书斋，使之在日常生活中徜徉。有关性别的、艺术的以及社会的现代性：哲学无一例外地参与其中。
三，抛弃知识哲学与行为哲学的二元对立，抛弃康德对知识理性与实践理性的分隔，把知识本身，甚至包括科学知识，也视为一种实践。
四，把哲学直接置于政治舞台，而不是打政治哲学的擦边球。“哲学斗士”（philosophical militant）出现，哲学把自己表现为一种积极的实践形式，对政治不再仅仅是反思，而是进行真正的干预。
五，重提主体问题，放弃反思模式，由此与精神分析学相联——与之竞争，并尽可能超越它。
六，创立哲学表达的新风格，并因此与文学争奇斗艳；这导致了18世纪哲学思辨型作家（philosopherwriter）以当代的面貌重现。
这就是具有独特研究课题和远大抱负的法国哲学时刻。如果要更进一步地界定当代法国哲学，就要提到其最根本的渴望——因为每一种存在都是欲望的存在——那就是将哲学转化为一种更适于表达新主体的积极主动的写作方式。出于同样的理由，哲学家也不愿再以沉思者或教授的形象出现。哲学家不想成为圣人，也不愿当牧师般的说教者。哲学家想要变成一个以文字为武器的战士，一个以主体为题材的艺术家，一个发明创造者，一个哲学斗士。这些名字无不流露出该时期哲学想要独树一帜的渴望。我想起《被砍倒的橡树》中马尔罗引用戴高乐说过的一句话：“伟大是一条通向未知之路。”20世纪后半叶的法国哲学抛弃了哲学曾经明确的目的，选择了这样一条通往未知的道路，选择了积极的行动与干涉而不是慧思与冥想。也难怪今天的人们会说哲学缺乏智慧。
法国哲学时刻更加关注伟大，而非幸福。我们的追求，尽管前途未卜，却超乎寻常：成为概念的探险者。既不追求生命与概念的界限分明，也不关心存在与理念的主从关系，我们想让概念开始一段探险之旅，尽管终点未知。不幸的是，探险的时代总是会被中规中矩的时代所取代。这也许是可以理解的吧——当代法国哲学具有一种海盗精神，用德勒兹的话说，就是游牧民族气质。“概念的探险者”（adventurers of the concept）可以成为把我们团结起来的令旗。因此，我提出，20世纪晚期的法国哲学时刻是一场哲学的探险。
Alain Badiou: The Adventure of French Philosophy
Let us begin these reflections on contemporary French philosophy
with a paradox: that which is the most universal is
also, at the same time, the most particular. Hegel calls this the
‘concrete universal’, the synthesis of that which is absolutely
universal, which pertains to everything, with that which has a particular
time and place. Philosophy is a good example. Absolutely universal, it
addresses itself to all, without exception; but within philosophy there
exist powerful cultural and national particularities. There are what we
might call moments of philosophy, in space and in time. Philosophy is
thus both a universal aim of reason and, simultaneously, one that manifests
itself in completely specific moments. Let us take the example of two
especially intense and well-known philosophical instances. First, that of
classical Greek philosophy between Parmenides and Aristotle, from the
5th to the 3rd centuries bc: a highly inventive, foundational moment, ultimately
quite short-lived. Second, that of German idealism between Kant
and Hegel, via Fichte and Schelling: another exceptional philosophical
moment, from the late 18th to the early 19th centuries, intensely creative
and condensed within an even shorter timespan. I propose to defend a
further national and historical thesis: there was—or there is, depending
where I put myself—a French philosophical moment of the second half
of the 20th century which, toute proportion gardée, bears comparison to
the examples of classical Greece and enlightenment Germany.
Sartre’s foundational work, Being and Nothingness, appeared in 1943 and
the last writings of Deleuze, What is Philosophy?, date from the early
1990s. The moment of French philosophy develops between the two of
them, and includes Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, Lévi-Strauss, Althusser,
Foucault, Derrida and Lacan as well as Sartre and Deleuze—and myself,
maybe. Time will tell; though if there has been such a French philosophical
moment, my position would be as perhaps its last representative. It
is the totality of this body of work, situated between the ground-breaking
contribution of Sartre and the last works of Deleuze, that is intended
here by the term ‘contemporary French philosophy’. I will argue that it
constitutes a new moment of philosophical creativity, both particular and
universal. The problem is to identify this endeavour. What took place in
France, in philosophy, between 1940 and the end of the 20th century?
What happened around the ten or so names cited above? What was it
that we called existentialism, structuralism, deconstruction? Was there a
historical and intellectual unity to that moment? If so, of what sort?
I shall approach these problems in four different ways. First, origins:
where does this moment come from, what were its antecedents, what was
its birth? Next, what were the principal philosophical operations that it
undertook? Third, the fundamental question of these philosophers’ link
with literature, and the more general connection between philosophy
and literature within this sequence. And finally, the constant discussion
throughout this whole period between philosophy and psychoanalysis.
Origins, operations, style and literature, psychoanalysis: four means by
which to attempt to define contemporary French philosophy.
Concept and interior life
To think the philosophical origins of this moment we need to return
to the fundamental division that occurred within French philosophy at
the beginning of the 20th century, with the emergence of two contrasting
currents. In 1911, Bergson gave two celebrated lectures at Oxford,
which appeared in his collection La pensée et le mouvement. In 1912—
simultaneously, in other words—Brunschvicg published Les étapes de la
philosophie mathématique. Coming on the eve of the Great War, these
interventions attest to the existence of two completely distinct orientations.
In Bergson we find what might be called a philosophy of vital
interiority, a thesis on the identity of being and becoming; a philosophy
of life and change. This orientation will persist throughout the 20th
century, up to and including Deleuze. In Brunschvicg’s work, we find
a philosophy of the mathematically based concept: the possibility of a
philosophical formalism of thought and of the symbolic, which likewise
continues throughout the century, most specifically in Lévi-Strauss,
Althusser and Lacan.
From the start of the century, then, French philosophy presents a divided
and dialectical character. On one side, a philosophy of life; on the other,
a philosophy of the concept. This debate between life and concept will
be absolutely central to the period that follows. At stake in any such discussion
is the question of the human subject, for it is here that the two
orientations coincide. At once a living organism and a creator of concepts,
the subject is interrogated both with regard to its interior, animal,
organic life, and in terms of its thought, its capacity for creativity and
abstraction. The relationship between body and idea, or life and concept,
formulated around the question of the subject, thus structures the
whole development of 20th-century French philosophy from the initial
opposition between Bergson and Brunschvicg onwards. To deploy
Kant’s metaphor of philosophy as a battleground on which we are all
the more or less exhausted combatants: during the second half of the
20th century, the lines of battle were still essentially constituted around
the question of the subject. Thus, Althusser defines history as a process
without a subject, and the subject as an ideological category; Derrida,
interpreting Heidegger, regards the subject as a category of metaphysics;
Lacan creates a concept of the subject; Sartre or Merleau-Ponty, of
course, allotted an absolutely central role to the subject. A first definition
of the French philosophical moment would therefore be in terms of the
conflict over the human subject, since the fundamental issue at stake in
this conflict is that of the relationship between life and concept.
We could, of course, take the quest for origins further back and describe
the division of French philosophy as a split over the Cartesian heritage.
In one sense, the postwar philosophical moment can be read as
an epic discussion about the ideas and significance of Descartes, as the
philosophical inventor of the category of the subject. Descartes was a
theoretician both of the physical body—of the animal-machine—and of
pure reflection. He was thus concerned with both the physics of phenomena
and the metaphysics of the subject. All the great contemporary
philosophers have written on Descartes: Lacan actually raises the call
for a return to Descartes, Sartre produces a notable text on the Cartesian
treatment of liberty, Deleuze remains implacably hostile. In short, there
are as many Descartes as there are French philosophers of the postwar
period. Again, this origin yields a first definition of the French philosophical
moment as a conceptual battle around the question of the subject.
Four moves
Next, the identification of intellectual operations common to all these
thinkers. I shall outline four procedures which, to my mind, clearly
exemplify a way of doing philosophy that is specific to this moment; all,
in some sense, are methodological ones. The first move is a German
one—or rather, a French move upon German philosophers. All contemporary
French philosophy is also, in reality, a discussion of the German
heritage. Its formative moments include Kojève’s seminars on Hegel,
attended by Lacan and also influential upon Lévi-Strauss, and the discovery
of phenomenology in the 1930s and 40s, through the works of
Husserl and Heidegger. Sartre, for instance, radically modified his philosophical
perspectives after reading these authors in the original during
his sojourn in Berlin. Derrida may be regarded as, first and foremost,
a thoroughly original interpreter of German thought. Nietzsche was a
fundamental reference for both Foucault and Deleuze.
French philosophers went seeking something in Germany, then, through
the work of Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger. What was it that
they sought? In a phrase: a new relation between concept and existence.
Behind the many names this search adopted—deconstruction, existentialism,
hermeneutics—lies a common goal: that of transforming, or
displacing, this relation. The existential transformation of thought, the
relation of thought to its living subsoil, was of compelling interest for
French thinkers grappling with this central issue of their own heritage.
This, then, is the ‘German move’, the search for new ways of handling
the relation of concept to existence by recourse to German philosophical
traditions. In the process of its translation onto the battleground of
French philosophy, moreover, German philosophy was transformed into
something completely new. This first operation, then, is effectively a
French appropriation of German philosophy.
The second operation, no less important, concerns science. French
philosophers sought to wrest science from the exclusive domain of the
philosophy of knowledge by demonstrating that, as a mode of productive
or creative activity, and not merely an object of reflection or cognition,
it went far beyond the realm of knowledge. They interrogated science
for models of invention and transformation that would inscribe it as a
practice of creative thought, comparable to artistic activity, rather than as
the organization of revealed phenomena. This operation, of displacing
science from the field of knowledge to that of creativity, and ultimately
of bringing it ever closer to art, find its supreme expression in Deleuze,
who explores the comparison between scientific and artistic creation in
the most subtle and intimate way. But it begins well before him, as one
of the constitutive operations of French philosophy.
The third operation is a political one. The philosophers of this period
all sought an in-depth engagement of philosophy with the question of
politics. Sartre, the post-war Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Althusser and
Deleuze were political activists; just as they had gone to German philosophy
for a fresh approach to concept and existence, so they looked to
politics for a new relation between concept and action—in particular,
collective action. This fundamental desire to engage philosophy with the
political situation transforms the relation between concept and action.
The fourth operation has to do with the modernization of philosophy, in a
sense quite distinct from the cant of successive government administrations.
French philosophers evinced a profound attraction to modernity.
They followed contemporary artistic, cultural and social developments
very closely. There was a strong philosophical interest in non-figurative
painting, new music and theatre, detective novels, jazz and cinema,
and a desire to bring philosophy to bear upon the most intense expressions
of the modern world. Keen attention was also paid to sexuality and
new modes of living. In all this, philosophy was seeking a new relation
between the concept and the production of forms—artistic, social, or
forms of life. Modernization was thus the quest for a new way in which
philosophy could approach the creation of forms.
In sum: the French philosophical moment encompassed a new appropriation
of German thought, a vision of science as creativity, a radical
political engagement and a search for new forms in art and life. Across
these operations runs the common attempt to find a new position,
or disposition, for the concept: to displace the relation between the
concept and its external environment by developing new relations
to existence, to thought, to action, and to the movement of forms. It
is the novelty of this relation between the philosophical concept and
the external environment that constitutes the broader innovation of
twentieth-century French philosophy.
Writing, language, forms
The question of forms, and of the intimate relations of philosophy with
the creation of forms, was of crucial importance. Clearly, this posed the
issue of the form of philosophy itself: one could not displace the concept
without inventing new philosophical forms. It was thus necessary not
just to create new concepts but to transform the language of philosophy.
This prompted a singular alliance between philosophy and literature
which has been one of the most striking characteristics of contemporary
French philosophy. There is, of course, a longer history to this.
The works of those known to the 18th century as philosophes—Voltaire,
Rousseau or Diderot—are classics of French literature; these writers are
in a sense the ancestors of the postwar alliance. There are numerous
French authors who cannot be allocated exclusively either to philosophy
or to literature; Pascal, for example, is both one of the greatest figures in
French literature and one of the most profound French thinkers. In the
20th century Alain, to all intents and purposes a classical philosopher
and no part of the moment that concerns us here, was closely involved
in literature; the process of writing was very important to him, and he
produced numerous commentaries on novels—his texts on Balzac are
extremely interesting—and on contemporary French poetry, Valéry
in particular. In other words, even the more conventional figures of
twentieth-century French philosophy can illustrate this affinity between
philosophy and literature.
The surrealists also played an important role. They too were eager to
shake up relations regarding the production of forms, modernity, the
arts; they wanted to invent new modes of life. If theirs was largely an
aesthetic programme, it paved the way for the philosophical programme
of the 1950s and 60s; both Lacan and Lévi-Strauss frequented surrealist
circles, for example. This is a complex history, but if the surrealists were
the first representatives of a 20th-century convergence between aesthetic
and philosophical projects in France, by the 1950s and 60s it was philosophy
that was inventing its own literary forms in an attempt to find a
direct expressive link between philosophical style and presentation, and
the new positioning for the concept that it proposed.
It is at this stage that we witness a spectacular change in philosophical
writing. Forty years on we have, perhaps, grown accustomed to the
writing of Deleuze, Foucault, Lacan; we have lost the sense of what an
extraordinary rupture with earlier philosophical styles it represented. All
these thinkers were bent upon finding a style of their own, inventing a
new way of creating prose; they wanted to be writers. Reading Deleuze
or Foucault, one finds something quite unprecedented at the level of the
sentence, a link between thought and phrasal movement that is completely
original. There is a new, affirmative rhythm and an astonishing
inventiveness in the formulations. In Derrida there is a patient, complicated
relationship of language to language, as language works upon itself
and thought passes through that work into words. In Lacan one wrestles
with a dazzlingly complex syntax which resembles nothing so much as
the syntax of Mallarmé, and is therefore poetic—confessedly so.
There was, then, both a transformation of philosophical expression and
an effort to shift the frontiers between philosophy and literature. We
should recall—another innovation—that Sartre was also a novelist and
playwright (as am I). The specificity of this moment in French philosophy
is to play upon several different registers in language, displacing
the borders between philosophy and literature, between philosophy and
drama. One could even say that one of the goals of French philosophy
has been to construct a new space from which to write, one where literature
and philosophy would be indistinguishable; a domain which would
be neither specialized philosophy, nor literature as such, but rather the
home of a sort of writing in which it was no longer possible to disentangle
philosophy from literature. A space, in other words, where there
is no longer a formal differentiation between concept and life, for the
invention of this writing ultimately consists in giving a new life to the
concept: a literary life.
With and against Freud
At stake, finally, in this invention of a new writing, is the enunciation
of the new subject; of the creation of this figure within philosophy, and
the restructuring of the battlefield around it. For this can no longer be
the rational, conscious subject that comes down to us from Descartes;
it cannot be, to use a more technical expression, the reflexive subject.
The contemporary human subject has to be something murkier, more
mingled in life and the body, more extensive than the Cartesian model;
more akin to a process of production, or creation, that concentrates much
greater potential forces inside itself. Whether or not it takes the name of
subject, this is what French philosophy has been trying to find, to enunciate,
to think. If psychoanalysis has been an interlocutor, it is because
the Freudian invention was also, in essence, a new proposition about the
subject. For what Freud introduced with the idea of the unconscious was
the notion of a human subject that is greater than consciousness—which
contains consciousness, but is not restricted to it; such is the fundamental
signification of the word ‘unconscious’.
Contemporary French philosophy has therefore also been engaged in
a long-running conversation with psychoanalysis. This exchange has
been a drama of great complexity, highly revealing in and of itself. At
issue, most fundamentally, has been the division of French philosophy
between, on one side, what I would call an existential vitalism, originating
with Bergson and running through Sartre, Foucault and Deleuze,
and on the other a conceptual formalism, derived from Brunschvicg and
continuing through Althusser and Lacan. Where the two paths cross
is on the question of the subject, which might ultimately be defined,
in terms of French philosophy, as the being that brings forth the concept.
In a certain sense the Freudian unconscious occupies the same
space; the unconscious, too, is something vital or existing yet which produces,
which bears forth, the concept. How can an existence bear forth
a concept, how can something be created out of a body? If this is the
central question, we can see why philosophy is drawn into such intense
exchanges with psychoanalysis. Naturally, there is always a certain friction
where common aims are pursued by different means. There is an
element of complicity—you are doing the same as I am—but also of
rivalry: you are doing it differently. The relation between philosophy and
psychoanalysis within French philosophy is just this, one of competition
and complicity, of fascination and hostility, love and hatred. No wonder
the drama between them has been so violent, so complex.
Three key texts may give us an idea of it. The first, perhaps the clearest
example of this complicity and competition, comes from the beginning
of Bachelard’s work of 1938, La psychanalyse du feu. Bachelard proposes
a new psychoanalysis grounded in poetry and dream, a psychoanalysis
of the elements—fire, water, air and earth. One could say that Bachelard
is here trying to replace Freudian sexual inhibition with reverie, to demonstrate
that this is the larger and more open category. The second text
comes from the end of Being and Nothingness where Sartre, in his turn,
proposes the creation of a new psychoanalysis, contrasting Freud’s
‘empirical’ psychoanalysis with his own (by implication) properly theoretical
existential model. Sartre seeks to replace the Freudian complex—the
structure of the unconscious—with what he terms the ‘original choice’.
For him what defines the subject is not a structure, neurotic or perverse,
but a fundamental project of existence. Again, an exemplary instance of
complicity and rivalry combined.
The third text comes from Chapter 4 of Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and
Guattari. Here, psychoanalysis is to be replaced by a method that
Deleuze calls schizoanalysis, in outright competition with Freudian
analysis. For Bachelard, it was reverie rather than inhibition; for Sartre,
the project rather than the complex. For Deleuze, as Anti-Oedipus makes
clear, it is construction rather than expression; his chief objection to
psychoanalysis is that it does no more than express the forces of the
unconscious, when it ought to construct it. He calls explicitly for the
replacement of ‘Freudian expression’ with the construction that is the
work of schizoanalysis. It is striking, to say the least, to find three great
philosophers, Bachelard, Sartre and Deleuze, each proposing to replace
psychoanalysis with a model of their own.
Path of greatness
Finally, a philosophical moment defines itself by its programme of
thought. What might we define as the common ground of postwar
French philosophy in terms, not of its works or system or even its concepts,
but of its intellectual programme? The philosophers involved are,
of course, very different figures, and would approach such a programme
in different ways. Nevertheless, where you have a major question, jointly
acknowledged, there you have a philosophical moment, worked out
through a broad diversity of means, texts and thinkers. We may summarize
the main points of the programme that inspired postwar French
philosophy as follows.
1. To have done with the separation of concept and existence—no
longer to oppose the two; to demonstrate that the concept is a
living thing, a creation, a process, an event, and, as such, not
divorced from existence;
2. To inscribe philosophy within modernity, which also means taking
it out of the academy and putting it into circulation in daily
life. Sexual modernity, artistic modernity, social modernity: philosophy
has to engage with all of this;
3. To abandon the opposition between philosophy of knowledge and
philosophy of action, the Kantian division between theoretical
and practical reason, and to demonstrate that knowledge itself,
even scientific knowledge, is actually a practice;
4. To situate philosophy directly within the political arena, without
making the detour via political philosophy; to invent what I
would call the ‘philosophical militant’, to make philosophy into a
militant practice in its presence, in its way of being: not simply a
reflection upon politics, but a real political intervention;
5. To reprise the question of the subject, abandoning the reflexive
model, and thus to engage with psychoanalysis—to rival and, if
possible, to better it;
6. To create a new style of philosophical exposition, and so to compete
with literature; essentially, to reinvent in contemporary terms
the 18th-century figure of the philosopher-writer.
Such is the French philosophical moment, its programme, its high
ambition. To identify it further, its one essential desire—for every identity
is the identity of a desire—was to turn philosophy into an active
form of writing that would be the medium for the new subject. And by
the same token, to banish the meditative or professorial image of the
philosopher; to make the philosopher something other than a sage, and
so other than a rival to the priest. Rather, the philosopher aspired to
become a writer-combatant, an artist of the subject, a lover of invention,
a philosophical militant—these are the names for the desire that runs
through this period: the desire that philosophy should act in its own
name. I am reminded of the phrase Malraux attributed to de Gaulle in
Les chênes qu’on abat: ‘Greatness is a road toward something that one
does not know’. Fundamentally, the French philosophical moment of the
second half of the 20th century was proposing that philosophy should
prefer that road to the goals it knew, that it should choose philosophical
action or intervention over wisdom and meditation. It is as philosophy
without wisdom that it is condemned today.
But the French philosophical moment was more interested in greatness
than in happiness. We wanted something quite unusual, and admittedly
problematic: our desire was to be adventurers of the concept. We were
not seeking a clear separation between life and concept, nor the subordination
of existence to the idea or the norm. Instead, we wanted the
concept itself to be a journey whose destination we did not necessarily
know. The epoch of adventure is, unfortunately, generally followed by an
epoch of order. This may be understandable—there was a piratical side
to this philosophy, or a nomadic one, as Deleuze would say. Yet ‘adventurers
of the concept’ might be a formula that could unite us all; and
thus I would argue that what took place in late 20th-century France was
ultimately a moment of philosophical adventure.