tom rockmore dufrenne humanisme

7/28/2019 Tom Rockmore Dufrenne Humanisme

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~ U F R E N N E , HUMANISM ANDIANTIHUMANISM

This paper will discuss the French philosopher MikelDufrenne's defense of humanism. When the history of this period isfinally written, the struggle between humanism and antihumanismwill appear as one of the central problems of our time, indeed of theentire modem period, not only in philosophy. It seems obvious thatwhat is calIed progress has often been bought at great human cost,leading not to less but rather to more human alienation, howeverunderstood, as the real condition of the development of modemindustrial civilization.

This problem is central to Dufrenne's life and work. Dufrenneis widely known in France and in the United States for hisgroundbreaking contribution to phenomenological esthetics as weIl asfor. his view of the apriori. In France, he is also weIl known for hisdefense of humanism in the late 1960s in a moment when it was, as itis now, only slightly more unpopular to oppose antihumanism intheory than in practice.

Dufrenne's commitment to humanism is doubly determinedboth politicaIly and philosophically. His commitment tophilosophical humanism derives from his strong political interest in abetter life for all people. For Dufrenne, philosophy does not reduceto, but also cannot be isolated from, politics, of which it was thenatural extension. Like many other French inteIlectuals of hisgeneration, he took very seriously the idea of the intellectualresponsibility of intellectuals, which he understood aso a personalcomittment which influenced his philosophical writings. Withoutever reducing philosophy to mere ideology, he strove to enlist it as ameans toward realizing the general goal of a better world for all menand women.Dufrenne was not a Marxist in any obvious sense, althoughhis political commitment often led hirn toward Marxism, althoughmore on a political than on a philosophical plane. Unlike so many

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Marxists and even non-Marxists, who talk about man in the abstract,Dufrenne was interested, not in an abstFact concept, but rather inconcrete human beings. Like many other intellectuals, he rallied to acertain French view ofMarxist humanism. This is the same Marxisthumanism which was criticized by Maurice Merleau-Ponty as inpractice falling short of the ideal when the Stalinist purges becameknown, which was reaffirmed as an ideal by Jacques-Yves Calvez,arid which was later criticized again, but in an infinitely moresuperficial way, by the socalIed new philosophers (Henri-Levy,Lardieu, Glucksmann, Jean-Marie Benolt, and so on). In France,institutional Marxism was represented by the French CommunistParty, which' attracted many intellectuals after the War until thestudent revolution in the late 1960s, and which remained strong untilit was defeated in aseries of deft political maneuvers in the early1980s by F r a n ~ o i s Mitterand. Although Dufrenne was severelycritical of the French Communist Party, he remained committed to acertain ideal conception of Marxism, which, even now, after thesudden, unforeseen decline of the Soviet bloc, continues to attractFrench intellectuals.1Dufrenne's personal and philosophical commitment to aacertain conception of humanism was determined as weIl by thebroadly humanist character of the French intellectual tradition.Humanism in general has two main meanings, including the revivalof ancient learning during the Renaissance, and the concern with acertain conception of human being as conceptually central. At leastsince the sixteenth century, French philosophy has always centeredon a conception of the subject. This is already a main theme in thewritings of such early modern French philosophers as MichelMontaigne and Rene Descartes, in Enlightennlent figures like DenisDiderot and Condorcet (pseud. of Marie Jean Antoine de Caritat),and then more recently in Jean-Paul Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and evenMartin Heidegger, the central "French" philosopher since the War.2Traditional French intellectual humanism played an

1. See, e. g. Jacques Derrida, Spectres de Marx, Paris: Editions Galilee, 1993.2. See Tom Rockmore, Heidegger and French Philosophy: Humanism,

Antihumanism and Being, London: Routledge, 1995.

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important role in Heidegger's emergence as the dominant philosopherin the French context. Since the historical context is i ~ c r e a s i n g l yobscured by time, it is often overlooked that Heidegger's decisivebreakthrough in French philosophy occurred immediately after theWar in the outcry provoked by Sartre's famous popular lecture,Existentialism is a Humanism.3 If Sartre's aim was to provoke, thenhe clearly succeeded. His lecture provoked not only Catholics madeuneasy by his Marxism, but also Heideggerians concemed with histendentious reading of his own theory as continuous withHeidegger's, leading finally to Heidegger's own effort, in his Letteron Humanism, to dissociate his view from Sartre's.

How is it that an obscure German thinker, highly critical ofFrench thought, convinced that when the French think they think inGerman, since, by implication they cannot think in their ownlanguage, a known Nazi, could replace Sartre as the French masterthinker after the War? The answer in part lies in the fact that at a timewhen Being and Time, Heidegger's main treatise had not beentranslated into French, his Letter on Humanism, which was in fact aletter to the French in his time of need when he was being called toaccount for his Nazism, presented his theory as a new and deeperhumanism. The answer in part further lies in the French Heideggerianeffort to reject Sartre's unprecedented hegemonie role in Frenchphilosophy and literature while providing a different, more accurateview of Heidegger's contribution. It should not be overlooked thatSartre's controversial claim that his theory was continuous withHeidegger's still rankled so much that many years later at the end ofthe 1960s it was still a major theme for Jacques Derrida, who, afterBeaufret's death, became the central French defender and student ofHeidegger's thought.4Heidegger's conception of humanism has attracted a lot ofattention, particularly in the wake of the appearance of Victor Fariasbook, Heidegger and Nazism, whose appearance in 1987 sparked an

3. See lean-Paul Sartre, L'existentialisme est un humanisme, Paris: Nagel, 1964.4. See "Les tins de I'homme," in Marges de la philosophie, Paris: Les Editions de

Minuit, 1972, pp. 129-164.

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immense controversy.5 In reaction to the Farias book, Luc Ferry andAlain Renaut published a sharp attack on socalled Frenchantihumanism,6 which appeared in 1988, twenty years after theFrench student revolution. Ferry and Renaut aim to diagnose a linkbetween Heidegger's antihumanism, understood as the rejection ofmodernity, and the supposedly basic error of contemporary Frenchphilosophy. The book contains an unusually direct critique of FrenchHeideggerianism divided into three sub-types, First, there is the zerodegree, which is represented by Beaufret's denial of any relationbetween Heidegger and Nazism, Second, there is Heideggerianorthodoxy, which admits that the early Heidegger was not yet free ofthe metaphysics of subjectivity. And, third, there is unorthodoxHeideggerianism, which illustrated by Derrida, who finally differsfrom the orthodox variant in strategyonly.The renewed attention to Heidegger's Nazism in the wake ofthe Farias book occurred long after Dufrenne's book had appeared.Neither Nazism nor Heidegger is the explicit focus of his study.Unlike many other French intellectuals, Dufrenne never becameobsessed with Heidegger and never wavered from his support for arather different kind of humanism. Dufrenne's concern with a betterlife for all human beings, hence with humanism as distinguished frorna n t i h u m a n i s ~ , found expression politically in his stand in favor ofdifferent issues over the years, such as his defense of the Frenchlanguage. Like many other intellectuals, he linked his defense of thelanguage to a certain vision of France and the French. This sameconcern is the basis of his interesting book, which has never beentranslated, Pour l'homme. Since the term "l'hommme" in French,which has no easy equivalent in English, refers indiscriminately toboth sexes, the title can be very roughly rendered into English as ForMen and Wornen.The central theme of the book is indicated in the very firstsentence, where he writes: "This essay proposes to discuss theantihumanism intrinsic to contemporary philosophy and to defend

5. See Vietor Farias, Heidegger et Je nazisme, Paris: Editions Verdier, 1987.6. See Lue Ferry and Alain Renaut, La pensee 68, Essai sur l'anti-humanisme

contemporain, Paris: Gallimard, 1988.

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against it the idea of a philosophy which would be concerned withmen and women [qui aurait souci de l'homme].,,7 Here Dufrenneunderstands antihumanism in a wide sense including not onlyphilosophical theories which diminish the importance of the subjectas weIl as political practices which develop the interests of somepeople at the expense of others.

His book came out du;ring the Vietnamese War, which washighly unpopular in France. As a group, French intellectuals of allpersuasions were united in their opposition to what they regarded, touse the jargon of the period, as the imperialist aggression of theUnited States against the Vietnamese. It is then not. by chance thatthere are repeated references throughout the book to the courage ofthe Vietnamese people.The discussion develops in two roughly equal parts,including an account of some main themes in contemporary Frenchphilosophy at the time he was writing in the late 1960s and a sketchof a humanist theory, ending in a postface on the prospects for menand women today. As concerns antihumanism, Dufrenne's main pointis that, in ways linked to their own positions, many contemporaryphilosophers and others turn away from human beings in developingtheir ideas. According to Dufrenne, who is mainly concerned withFrench philosophy, in which Heidegger played a dominant role afterthe War, Heidegger's ontology, Levi-Strauss's structuralanthropology, Lacan's psychoanalysis and Althusser's Marxism sharea "separation from [mise al'ecart] and dissolution ofhuman being."g

In support of this view, Dufrenne provides a rapid but verybroad discussion of the state of French philosophy in the late 1960s,which he regards as basically antihumanist. His main targets in orderof importance seem to be first Althusser, second Foucault, and thirdHeidegger. Throughout he s i ~ p l y assurnes that epistemology, .bywhich he means contemporary French epistemology inspired byBachelard, is simply incompatible with taking human subjectivity. I 9serlous y.

7. Mikel Duftenne, Pour l'homme, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1 9 6 ~ , p. 9.8. Dufrenne, Pour l'homme, p. 10.9. See Dufrenne, Pour l'homme, e. g. p. 192.

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In his review of contemporary philosophy, Dufrenne findsantihumanism, a term on loan from Althusser, virtually everywhere inthe discussion. It is, to begin with, astapie of Althusser's famousantihumanist reading ofMarx's theory, through a creative applicationof Bachelard's idea of an epistemological break (coupureepistemologique). According to Althusser, Marx's early philosophicalhumanism later gave way to a scientific antihumanism in which thereal subject is not men and women hut the structures of modemcapitalism. In drawing the consequences of this approach, Dufrennepoints out that Althusser's epistemological reading of Marx reducesthe theory to an epistemology]O based on the evacuation of the realsubject. Antihumanism is further present in Foucault's archeologicalepistemology, which Dufrenne reads as intending to found thesciences through the analysis of the articulation and function ofwhatFoucault, in L'archeologie du savoir,] 1 calls episteme.]2 According toDufrenne, in clairning that human being is a relatively recentinvention the early Foucault simply replaces real men and wornen byconcepts in his theory.13 Dufrenne sees this t ~ n d e n c y at work in thefree-floating character of episteme, which, in Foucault's discussion, isunrelated to the historical context. 14Dufrenne's remarks on Heidegger follow the widespreadFrench anthropological reading of the latter's theory hased on theinfluence within the French context of his Letter on Humanism,which was initially formulated as a letter to the French philosopherJean Beaufret. We recall that in distinguishing his analysis of Daseinfrom the human sciences in Being and Time,15 Heidegger leaves openthe possibility of a new kind of philosophical anthropology. In basinghirnself on the later Heidegger, Dufrenne correctly points out that inthe philosophy of being, which he regards as positivist, human being

10. See Duftenne, Pour l'homme, p. 49.11. See Michel Foucault, L'archeologie du savoir, Paris: Gallimard, 1969.12. See DufTenne, Pour I'hommme, p.38.13. See DufTenne, Pour l'homme, pp. 42, 15614. See DufTenne, Pour I'homme, p. 110.15. See Martin Heidegger, Seing and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and

Edward Robinson, Evanston: Harper and Row, 1962, 10, pp. 71-76.

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is thought through being as opposed to thinking being through humanbeing. 16 In the book, Dufrenne makes astart toward overcomingphilosophical antihumanism in a very rapid sketch of a philosophy ofhuman being. His conception of humanism encompasses acommitment to fulfilling lives of individual people as weIl as to asuitably anthropological approach to philosophy, which accepts itssocial responsibilities in taking shape as a form of human discoursebetween people about the world and human beings. 17

In restating the philosophical importance of human being,Dufrenne develops ideas drawn from Emmanuel Levinas, KarlJaspers, Paul Ricoeur, and others. Breaking with Heidegger, hefollows Levinas in regarding ethics as prior to ontology .18 InDufrenne's view, a person is not and cannot be reduced to a concept,although only a person can entertain concepts or recognize anotherhuman being. 19 According to Dufrenne, any philosophy of humanbeing must turn on a philosophy of the will, or ethics, or better aphenomenology of ethics whose aim is to show how men and womencan realize themselves,20 not ideally ,but really.21 As GeorgesCanguilhem has pointed out, not only do biology and medicinepresuppose anthropology, but anthropology rests on ethics, that isvalues realized in the constitution ofthe cognitive object.22I believe that Dufrenne is correct to s e ~ humanism as deeperthan antihumanism, which presupposes the subject it supposedly"deconstructs" as the condition of its deconstruction. His diagnosis ofthe antihumanist turn in recent French philosophy following the turnto Heidegger is largely correct. Certainly the turn away from humanbeing is pandemie in recent French philosophy whieh, in that respeet,simply parts company with one of the central- themes of the entireFrench philosophical tradition. Since Dufrenne did not work out his

16. See Dufrenne, POlle l'homme, p. 23.17. See Duftenne, Poue l'homme, pp. 122-123.18. See Duftenne, POlle l'homme, p. 153.19. See Dufrenne, POlle l'hommme, p. 155.20. See Duftenne, Poue I'homme, p. 191.21. See Duftenne, Poue l'homme, p. 202.22. See Dufrenne, Pour I'homme, p. 223.

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view of human being in detail here or in subsequent works, 1 willconfine my remarks to his account of forms of antihumanism inFrench philosophy, which calls for three comments intended not tocriticize but rather to supplement his own remarks.To begin with, I would suggest that the antihumanismrnning throughout much French structuralism can be traced back tothe fantastic influence ofthe later Heidegger in France after the War.When Heidegger's Nazism was debated during the late 1940s in thepages of Les Temps Modemes, the danger this represented for theacceptance of his philosophy in French philosophy was quickly andeffectively. defused. In the French debate, the mistaken convictionthat Heidegger was basically a humanist philosopher, perhaps of anew, deeper kind, remained remarkably intact until the appearance ofFarias's book. Since that time, French philosophers, who uncriticallyregarded fundamental ontology as basically humanist in spite ofHeidegger's questionable political past, have begun a rapid retreatfrom the rampant Heideggerianism dominant in French philosophysince the 1960s.Heidegger's philosophy is difficult to grasp, especially forthose who read his texts in translation. Can it be that the weIl knownFrench humanist reading of Heidegger was based on amisunderstanding of his position? It is worth remembering that afterthe famous but obscure tuming in his thought, perhaps even as aresult of it, Heidegger rejects humanism as the term is usuallyunderstood, which he simply equates with philosophicalanthropology, and further "deconstructs" the "essence of historicalman" which he misleadingly compares to a "fleeting cloud shadowover a concealed land. ,,23

Heidegger's controversial reading of Descartes, which isalready i m p o ~ a n t in his initial position, forms the basis of his laterantihumanism. Recent French discussion ofDescartes tends to regardHeidegger's critique of the Cartesian view of the subject as neglecting

23. See "The Age oftheWorld Picture," in Martin Heidegger, The OuestionConceming Technology and Other Essays, translated by William Lovitt, New York: Harper andRow, 1977, p. 153.

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the e x i s t ~ n t i a l dimension as resting on a distortion.24 Yet fidelity tothe text has never been a primary concern either of Heidegger or ofhis followers. In rejecting Descartes's supposed anthropologicaltendency, which appears to be a clear misreading, Heidegger'santihumanist25 view of human being as determined by being waswidely adopted in the context of the French effort to escape fromcenturies of Cartesian thought. It is certainly no acccident that aversion of Heidegger's later view of the subject recurs in Foucault'sfamous suggestion that what he calls man will disappear "like a facedrawn in the sand at the edge of the sea. ,,26Second, there is the problem of the relation of epistemologyand human being. A robust conception of the human subject is not

incompatible with epistemology in general. It is only incompatiblewith a particularly widespread and influential form of epistemology,in practice that form of epistemology which since Plato's Republichas continued to dominate the entire philosophical tradition. Platonicepistemology stresses a normative conception of knowledge asunrevisable, in a word as absolute, hence as beyond the cognitivecapacities of finite human beings. This normative view of knowledge,influentially restated at the dawn of the modem tradition byDescartes, goes back in the tradition at least until Platonism, that isthe influential series of philosophical ideas routinely but uncriticallyattributed to Plato, as opposed to Plato's own theory.The early adoption of a view of knowledge as absolute islinked in the philosophical tradition with two other equally influentialfeatures of Platonism. On the one hand, there is the tendency, whichis very strong in modem philosophy, to understand the cognitivesubject as a function ofwhat we mean by knowledge, for instance inDescartes, Kant, and Husserl. Such philosophers exemplify thewidespread approach to the cognitive subject simply in temlS of the

24. See Michel Henry, Genealogie de la psychanalyse, Paris: Presses universitaire deFrance, 1985; see also "Le cogito s'affecte-il?," in Jean-Luc Marion, Ouestions cartesiennes,Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1991, pp. 153-188.

25. See Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, Heidegger et les modemes, Paris: Grasset,1999.

26. Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les choses: Une Archeologie des scienceshumaines, Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1966, p. 398.

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requirements of knowledge as such. Yet if knowledge is humanknowledge, then the only real subject is a human being. The properapproach is to understand human knowledge as a function of knownhuman cognitive abilities, not human being as a function of therequirements of knowledge. Since human beings are shaped by theirhistorical context, this leads to a historical view of humanknowledge, whose main condition, as Dufrenne clearly saw, is ahistorical view ofhuman beings.On the other hand, at least since Plato there is the view that,when it is understood as a source of truth independ.ent of time andplace, philosophy is not only relevant, but even indispensable for thegood life. Over the centuries this general view has led philosophers toinsist on the political utility of merely doing philosophy, and even tointervene in politics. Yet as the efforts at political intervention byHeidegger and Georg Lukcs remindus, the political efforts of eventhe most important philosophers have rarely been as convincing astheir theories. Further, the claim for the political utility of philosophyis more often advanced than cogently argued. There seems to be nogood reason to follow Immanuel Kant or Edmund Husserl incontending that, say, the defense of what philosophers understand asreason is sufficient either to defeat great evil or even generallysocially useful.For philosophy to live up to its billing as sociallyindispensable or even useful for the good life, we must understand it,not as independent from, but rather as intrinsically related to, thecontext in which it emerges and to which it seeks to return. Theproper approach for philosophical humanism is not to abandon theproblem of knowledge, which has long been the main theme of thephilosophical tradition. It is rather to notice the incompatibility of acertain view of knowledge with a historical conception of humanbeing while working toward a postfoundationalist conception ofknowledge based on a historical conception ofhuman being.This leads up to my third remark concerning Dufrenne'sgeneral defense of humanism against antihumanism. What progresshas been made since the late 1960s when his book was written? Muchof this century has been taken up with a confrontation between

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sharply opposing views of the political and economic conditions ofsocial progress as represented by liberal democracy and variousforms of totalitarianism, including official Marxism, but alsoNational Socialism, and so on. It is no secret that the furtherdevelopment of industrial capitalism, leading to the still recentcollapse of official Marxism, has created an unprecedented situationin which economic liberalism now for the first time clearly dominatesthe entire planet. Presently, the social prospects for most of humanitysimply stand or fall on the results of an involuntary Pascalian wageron the social interest of a system only contingently related toparticular human interests. In the United States, we are presently stillin aperiod of unprecedented, or nearly unprecedented economicexpansion when paradoxically the very possibility of a rise in realwages is regarded as the main destabilizing economic factor. Thedifference between the way the economic and political systemfunctions when it is functioning well and its meaningfulness forindividuals is visible in the United States in the presently wideninginequality between the rich and the poor, in the increasing spread ofpoverty, especially among young children, in the inability to provideor at least the widerspread resistance to providing health insurancefor an important segment ofthe population, and so on.On the other hand, the development of French philosophysince the late 1960s has led away from antihumanism, although nottoward . humanism as Dufrenne conceives it. The rise ofpoststructuralism and the renewed discussion of what can neutrallybe called the Heidegger case offer interesting illustrations. Insimplistically associating the very idea of system with terrorism,French poststructuralism rejects any form of overarching explanation.Yet to refuse what Lyotard's calls a meta-recit is part of the rise inirrationalism following from the turn to Heidegger's view of FriedrichNietzsche.27 It would be very difficult, for instance, to defend theinference that geometry, the most systematic form of science, is alsothe most dangeous form of terrorism.As a result of the widespread current retreat from Heidegger

27. See AIain Boyer and others, Pourguoi nous ne sommes pas nietzscheens, Paris:Grasset, 1991.

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to religion now underway in French philosophy, especially Frenchphenomenology,28 French thinkers are in the process of substitutingan effort to understand human beings in terms ofGod, for instance inthe writings of Jean-Luc Marion or Remi Brague, instead of being.This general effort can be described as a qualified return to BlaisePascal, who, more than Descartes, centuries aga was concerned tograsp human being through divine being.29This religous turn is not unexpected; as there was no Lutherin France, there is not and never has been a clear separation betweenphilosophy and theology. One should not forget that the strugglebetween partisans of religious and secular humanism, which earlieropposed students ofDescartes, continues unabated throughout Frenchculture. If our concern is only humanism, then the return of religioushumanism certainly represents progress. Yet if our concern is humanbeing, not God, as Dufrenne clearly saw, the main problem is still tofind a way to understand philosophy solely in terms of human beingin order to render it useful to men and women.

Duquesne University TOM ROCKMORE

28. See Dominique lanicaud, Le Toumant theologigue de la phenomenologiefrancaise, Combas: Editions de I'Eclat, 1991.

29. Marion has always seen Pascal as more important than Descartes for a Christianthinker. See lean-Luc Marion, Sur le prisme metaphysigue de Descartes, Paris: Pressesuniversitaires de France, 1986.

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