English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Montage: a family in a cabin in the forest 0:00 This is not my natural environment. I live in the forest, in a cabin, with my wife and our two daughters. I was born in Paris, I spent my whole youth in the somewhat bourgeois district of Parisian life. This reminds me a bit of the Robinsonades that Marx spoke of. It even reminds me a lot, you see. Apparently one renounces the world, it's destitution, but today there's the internet, but there's electric power, and then there are the good girls who are subjugated, as Clouscard says, it's always the same ones doing the dishes, let it be said in passing, even though this claims to have freed itself from all these historical, macho, sexist constraints, etc.
0:39 You always find the same divisions. To do the shopping in the nearest town takes 15 minutes by car. So you don't take the girls? No, I find it a bit stressful for them, the shops. Actually, there's something really unnatural about the supermarket, you know. It's a heaping-up of things. I used to rub shoulders with a very wealthy milieu, I earned a good living. I was in big apartments, on the Bentley plan, basically the dream life, really. And yet...
1:09 I knew something was wrong. These are the most unhappy consciousnesses imaginable that are being offered to us as a model of rediscovered happiness. You know, to get to that point? Fertile disobedience for all those who would like to live in nature. And this year, in the midst of the health crisis, this movement found a particularly strong echo.
1:42 Do you realize how much this delights the Medef and the employers? They say to themselves, good riddance, at least here are people we won't run into on our path. It's not a CGT strike. And what if you had simply called the landlady? I can't make assumptions, I think they wouldn't have agreed. It's true that in terms of diplomacy, it's better to ask the owner's permission. I fully agree with that. It's no coincidence that these people most often clash with those who work in primary production. I'm thinking of farmers.
Freeing oneself from nature: the Dutch example 2:12 As if by chance. Two years ago, that's what he wanted to leave. When I see Paris like that, it's a sadness. Tears well up in me, for myself, for my children, for all these people themselves. Because I say, but they're crazy, actually. What a nice little scheme. Good evening dear friends, good evening dear comrades. I'd like to focus precisely on a question that comes from Emmanuelle Cristiani.
2:43 It's one of the best questions, I love it. I'm not saying that to flatter her, that's not my style. I don't give gifts in that department. It's one of the best questions I've ever been asked on this site. I'm not going to talk behind her back. I'll skip her thanks. I'll go straight to the content of her question. The will regarding the human being's quest for freedom. She situates her question within the framework of what I've called the return to the logic of the subject. And regarding the human being's quest for freedom.
3:16 The will to free oneself from nature, which gradually led us to civilization. That's a sentence that makes me breathe, you see, literally. Something that's healthy, somehow. Compared to what? Compared to the poisoned and pestilential air one hears these days, where everything is done to demonize human initiative, isn't it, and to deify nature. Not all ecologists are like that. Not all ecology is ecologist and naturalist. Far from it. You know that's what I call for.
3:46 Because I am an ardent defender of the environment. Provided one takes it in its true sense. One in which there is as much made by man—and even more often made by man—than raw nature, so to speak. And above all, provided one takes it in its dynamic. The Dutch who are in the Zuiderzee today. That is, on these lands hard-won from the sea's waves, through a colossal collective effort.
4:16 And which aroused Hegel's admiration, in his Aesthetics. That's what makes Dutch painting able to render to us seemingly trivial things of the most prosaic everyday order. A gleam in a gaze, a scrap of scarf left on a table, a bouquet wilting in a vase. And all these objects take on an almost supernatural presence. Because it truly was something supernatural that made this smooth, untroubled daily life possible.
4:51 It's a gigantic collective effort directed here against the natural element. I maintain that it's a bit more salutary to sum up the relationship between freedom and civilization with this statement of Emmanuelle's, which I repeat to you: the will to free oneself from nature, which gradually led us to civilization. There, everything is included, the 'gradually.' It didn't happen on a December 31st at midnight.
Autonomy in today's discourse 5:22 In certain current discourses, whether ecological or economic, a term keeps coming back. Well, that's topical. Biden's recovery plan, you saw it, people think it's going to be big infrastructure works. I'm not against that. On the contrary, the United States badly needs it, with potholes in the roads and bridges that have become precarious. And indeed some have already collapsed. But that's not what it's going to go toward. It's going to go toward what's supposedly going to save us all and unite the left. And I saw yet another statement from a leader of the left, from those who still proclaim themselves to be of the left.
5:59 But that's their right. How does Marx put it? Just as one doesn't judge an individual by the idea he has of himself, one doesn't judge an era by its self-consciousness. The dominant ideology of our era is conscious of itself as being of the left. Fine, that's its business, but that's not the basis on which we should judge it. What now unites, what would unite Jadot, Lordon, Clémentine Autain and France Insoumise—let's all embrace, Folleville—what is it? Well, it's the green economy.
6:33 What a nice little scheme. Let's not go into detail. Let's get back to our path. In certain current discourses—so, you see, current ones—whether ecological, economic, or personal, the term 'autonomy' keeps coming up. And you say, yes, freedom, autonomy, blah blah blah. What is excellent in Emmanuelle Cristiani's question, which proves how philosophically pertinent she is, is that—if it's true that the most important thing in philosophy is knowing how to open up a problematic—
7:10 It's less the questions and the solutions brought to them that matter. Solutions are generally the part most quickly superseded in the history of thought. But what remains fundamental are the problematics. I don't believe physics is still stuck with Pythagoras or the mathematics of Pythagoras—physics with Lucretius, Democritus or Empedocles. I say that because they were all called physicists, almost all the pre-Socratics.
7:41 That's because they all wrote a work called roughly 'On Nature'—'Peri physeôs' in Greek. So it's not their particular vision that matters. For some, the earth floats in a liquid on a cylinder. What matters is that they posed problems that people continue to debate, including those working with the largest particle accelerators—the problems of the relationship between the continuous and the discontinuous, between the one and the many.
Natural liberty and civil liberty in Rousseau 8:12 Well, I'm making Emmanuelle blush. She tells me, 'But I don't see how I fit in between Anaximander and Anaxagoras of Clazomenae.' But yes, you do. Because she sees clearly that autonomy can turn against itself. This autonomy, the autonomy spoken of in current discourses—I'm not talking about Kantian autonomy, I'll come back to that, that is, obedience to the law one has prescribed for oneself, a notion borrowed from Rousseau, the greatest borrowing Kant makes from Rousseau, and which allows for the constitution of what Clouscard calls 'the philosophy of the French Revolution.'
8:52 From Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, all the way to Marx, Lenin, etc. Philosophy of the French Revolution. You see how important the stakes behind Emmanuelle's question are. So, it's not Kantian autonomy, no—this autonomy that consists in making oneself autonomous from the rest of society. She sees very well that this comes to oppose freedom. I say it first abstractly, gratuitously, without demonstration. The modern concept of freedom appears in Rousseau, of whom Kant says—I will never stop repeating it, to sum it up—that in this sense he is the Newton of morality, that is, freedom plays in Rousseau the role that gravitation plays in the natural sciences.
9:32 It's exactly the opposite, but it has the same importance. Gravitation, freedom. That is, freedom is foundational to the anthropological sphere in Rousseau. I refer you—I said this would be gratuitous, I'm not going to give a demonstration, but Rousseau handles that very well himself. I'm not talking about the Rousseau of exclamation points and moods, though that's a very great Rousseau too, the landscape-painter Rousseau, so to speak. I'm talking about the one who shows implacable rigor in The Social Contract.
10:06 A logical rigor, in particular, in his first book, chapter 8, especially the passage where Rousseau distinguishes. Note this well, so you can find it easily: natural freedom, which one loses when one leaves animality to become a man, when one passes, as he says, from the state of nature to the civil state, one loses natural freedom but regains civil freedom in return. You'll say, what, is it a null operation? Not at all. And Rousseau specifies carefully—natural freedom, now let's specify.
10:37 How did he define it? As having no limit but the strength of the individual. Well, that doesn't get you very far. I always use the example of that poor cheetah, who has to try 15 times to catch prey despite its speed, and when it has finally caught one, it thinks it will finally be able to feed its cubs, starving, waiting at the den—especially since it doesn't have many per year, the cheetah is an endangered species because it reproduces little and its hunting is difficult. So I continue: the moment it has finally caught one, there's a lion who until then had been dozing, who takes it away with a single swipe—a swipe where it doesn't even need to bare its claws, because it would tear its head off, and it doesn't have to do it again.
11:21 When Rousseau says freedom that has no limit but the strength of the individual, don't think of today, don't look around you, look instead at the animal world—and not domestic animals, which are still an intermediate status, so as not to complicate things. So, to continue with Rousseau: one must clearly distinguish natural freedom, which has no limit but the strength of the individual, from civil freedom, which is limited only by the general will. You see the connection to autonomy.
11:52 Emmanuelle Cristiani shows very well that this very current desire for autonomy, in the discourse of the dominant ideology—dominant in the sense that all you have to do is step outside your door, and there, someone will talk to you about permaculture, someone else about self-sufficiency, about local produce. Not since Pétain has there been such insistence on tying us to the land. 'The land does not lie,' Pétain said. But let's not make amalgams. The people I'm talking about are sometimes naive, sometimes influenced by the dominant religions, but most have nothing to do with France and collaboration, let's be clear.
Mutual dependence, general will, and totalization 12:28 I show them the need to make certain clarifications to avoid certain pitfalls. Namely, there is in the discourse of modern people the idea of not needing anyone. My question is: in a world where men are, in fact, increasingly dependent on one another—there, we come back to reality. There, they're speaking of their own discourse. In their discourse, one should be as autonomous as possible and depend as little as possible on the rest of society.
12:58 The good individual against the wicked society. Hannah Arendt isn't far off. But in reality, these people live in a world where—and I quote her—'in a world where men are, in fact, increasingly dependent on one another.' Look how all of a sudden that showed itself the moment exchanges broke down, when certain international exchanges were suspended because of Covid, look at the shortage of paracetamol, for instance, where eight-tenths of it was manufactured in Asia.
13:28 Particularly in China. In a world where men are, in fact, increasingly dependent on one another. And yes, just as our headaches depend on something made in China, in ways evident and less evident. Well spotted. I don't know if people are conscious of it or not. 'Might the human being today want to free itself from humanity?' A very fine formulation. I don't know. How can one be a human being and want to free oneself from humanity? Whereas Rousseau says the opposite.
13:59 That is the line of thought I've called—which inaugurates the philosophy of the French Revolution, to cite Clouscard—which sees clearly a whole ensemble starting from Rousseau, who is its founder, the Newton of morality. Namely that in passing into the civil state, one loses natural freedom, which has no limit but the strength of the individual—I'm summarizing—and gains in exchange civil freedom, which is limited only by the general will. It is precisely the presence of the general will—not of a few who hold power, or of a minority, or of a social class that oppresses others and exploits others.
14:36 No, of the general will. The will of all and of each, which is not the same thing. Both, you see? Here, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. And this totality is never completed. Those who criticize totalitarianism act as though Rousseau's writing prescribed a completed totality. Not at all—it is always in the process, as Sartre said of Clouscard's work, in L'Être et le code, a totalization, not a totality.
15:06 You see the difference between the suffix '-ty,' which is finished, completed, a fixed quality—water and oil are or are not non-miscible liquids—and then there is freedom, where one doesn't have it, and then there is liberation, the act of freeing oneself from a prior determination. As I showed the Dutch did, by conquering new territories—it's the highest population density in Europe, more than 400 per km², an almost Asian density, take the word of someone born in Vietnam—freeing themselves by conquering new territories on a space that had been occupied by the North Sea, the Noordzee.
15:51 I am quite serious when I emphasize the excellent dichotomy that Emmanuelle Cristiani introduces here, like a blade, opposing this concept of freedom that took millennia to produce. Freedom that has no limit, or practically no limit, other than the general will. The power of the general will combined with technical progress—imagine what that could yield.
16:22 In any case, that goes much further than the strength of the individual, which used to limit each of us, often like an animal. So it's very good that she saw the dichotomy between this post-Rousseauian and post-Kantian sense of freedom—which of course acquires an even more historical and social content with Hegel and Marx, and on to Lenin, one could go further—and this autonomy worn like a sash, so to speak, by those who belong, let's say who do not belong, to the most disadvantaged classes in the world we live in, to use a periphrasis in which everyone will recognize themselves.
Robinsonades and flight from otherness 17:04 So, let me start again. There is in the discourse of modern people the idea of not needing anyone. This reminds me a bit of the Robinsonades Marx spoke of. It even reminds me a lot, you see—it's the illusion of the theorists of liberal, bourgeois economics, of classical capitalism, imagining producers isolated from one another. 'Isola' means an island in Italian. Isola, an island. Isn't it? And the idea of not needing anyone, like Robinson on his island.
17:38 That's why Marx classified these discourses under the genre of Robinsonade. My question is: in a world where men are, in fact, increasingly dependent on one another, in ways evident and less evident—there again, once you notice it, that changes nothing about the matter—might the human being today want to free itself from humanity? That much is understood, isn't it, what is most dangerous in this ideology? To see it as freeing itself from its own humanity.
18:08 Superb, isn't it? Not only would it want to free itself from humanity, but to free itself from its own humanity. That reminds me of certain discourses—I don't want to make amalgams, but read, read some German theorists of the 1930s, German, German, Nazi ones. Many Germans opposed those Germans and ended up in the camps, which is why we hear less about them now. But there were far more of them than people believe. Addressing mute beings or things rather than humans capable of speech, isn't that right?
18:43 In other words, exchanging the relation to the other for the implacable relation to the thing. 'How will I feed myself without society? I can manage on my own.' Addressing mute beings or things rather than humans capable of speech and therefore of response—is that a way of fleeing the true otherness that is man for himself? There you go. Jonathan and Caroline wanted to break with the comfort of their former life, but without depriving themselves of a few essential pleasures.
The return to the land, from the documentary to the Ardèche 19:20 Piano Sonata in B minor, D. 817, by Franz Schubert, performed by Alfred Brendel. They arrived with one idea in mind: to try to live weighing as little as possible on this patch of nature. Well, but at some point the children get hungry—the rice cooking will end up being done on the gas stove.
19:50 The best illustration of this case that grounds Emmanuelle's question is the contemporary proliferation you can find by the shovelful on Facebook, on YouTube. Oh, so-and-so has been living in the forest for 18 years—I'm not singling out criminals here. I'm pointing to dead ends, with Emmanuelle's help of course, picking up on what she says, and not at all making a moral critique.
20:33 On the other hand, this is multiplying now, isn't it, but it already has historical depth. I remember when I started teaching, I was between 20 and 30, I was in the Drôme, and I remember that on the other side, in the Ardèche, there were so many very young people who, with Daddy's money—this isn't a moral reproach, they have the right to borrow money from their parents—but from fairly well-off parents who let them buy a few dozen sheep and goats.
21:03 It would never last very long. Clouscard devoted some very fine pages showing that apparently one renounces the world, it's destitution, but today there's the internet, there's electric power, and then there are the good girls who are subjugated, as Clouscard says, it's always the same ones doing the dishes, let it be said in passing, even though this claims to have freed itself from all these historical, macho, sexist constraints, etc. You always find the same divisions. I'm not pointing to cases of fraud like that of Lanza del Vasto back then, or of those who turned it into a business.
21:36 I'm talking about those who believed in it, aren't I? And you realize how much this delights the Medef and the employers, who say to themselves, good riddance, at least here are people we won't run into on our path. It's not a CGT strike demanding the reinstatement of dismissed employees at a Parisian hotel, or of staff at giant retail chains like Ikea or Carrefour. Yes, I'm naming names.
22:06 That can change. I'm not just talking about big retail. Alas, there's no shortage of choice, and I'm thinking above all of the factories that close, aren't I? After the promises made by prime ministers claiming to be of the left, which would never close under their watch. Do I need to name names? It's damning enough as it is. And besides, I'm not one who likes to go after individuals. I don't like shooting at ambulances, and even less at coffins sometimes.
Unhappy consciousness and Marie-Antoinette's hamlet 22:40 So, there it is. To what extent does this illustrate his point? These are consciousnesses that could hardly be more unhappy, and yet they're being offered to us as a model of rediscovered happiness. You know, to get to that point, there are good intentions behind the ZAD spirit, trying to find… Personally, I don't like journalistic categories. I don't like subscribing to the vocabulary that gets put in place, because words think for us based on how we determine the meaning of the words we use.
23:14 That's why I look twice at it. Here I say "zadist" so as to be understood by what people call a zadist, but that's not what I would call it. I call it unhappy consciousness. Unhappy consciousness in the upper layer of the middle classes. I can't be more precise if you want me to be sociological about it and have it measured. It's no accident that this most often clashes with those who are in primary production. I'm thinking of farmers.
23:44 As if by chance. Look at this one. He lives in total autonomy in a house made entirely of wood, purely natural materials, up in the heights of a tree's branches. Well, the dream, the dream of Marie-Antoinette. The farm at Versailles, just a stone's throw from the Great Revolution. People thought they had finally found the right path, the just path—going to raise sheep five minutes' walk from the château.
24:17 Still, heading toward the farm—go ahead, it's a wonderful place. Thanks again, Emmanuel. And quite simply, then, the queen decided to build this hamlet. So they had to drain all these marshlands to create this lake. It's a fake lake, it's a fake river. Everything is absolutely fake, and you get the impression of finding yourself in a village deep in the French countryside at the end of the 18th century. The return to nature was in fact simply a fashion at the end of the 18th century. If you like, the monarchies were wobbling a bit on their foundations—let's not forget that.
24:49 And so, to recharge themselves, people wanted to return to the essential, that is, to working the land—the men, the royal power that was close to its subjects, if you will. And the purpose of the hamlet had been built above all for the education of the dauphin in his role as future King of France. This was between 1783 and 1789, for six years. All the great intellectual, artistic, and political luminaries passed through here, in this sort of fermenting culture broth, and then at a certain point, everything comes undone and everything explodes.
