Philosophy and the Passions Literature and Philosophy

Philosophy and the Passions Literature and Philosophy A. J. Cascardi, General Editor This series publishes books in a wide range of subjects in philosophy and literature, including studies of the social and historical issues that relate these two fields. Drawing on the resources of the Anglo-American and Continental traditions, the series is open to philosophically informed scholarship covering the entire range of contemporary critical thought. Already published: J. M. Bernstein, The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno Peter Bürger, The Decline of Modernism Mary E. Finn, Writing the Incommensurable: Kierkegaard, Rossetti, and Hopkins Reed Way Dasenbrock, ed., Literary Theory After Davidson David Haney, William Wordsworth and the Hermeneutics of Incarnation David Jacobson, Emerson’s Pragmatic Vision:The Dance of the Eye Gray Kochhar-Lindgren, Narcissus Transformed: The Textual Subject in Psycho- analysis and Literature Robert Steiner, Toward a Grammar of Abstraction: Modernity, Wittgenstein, and the Paintings of Jackson Pollock Sylvia Walsh, Living Poetically: Kierkegaard’s Existential Aesthetics Michel Meyer, Rhetoric, Language, and Reason Christie McDonald and Gary Wihl,eds.,Transformation in Personhood and Culture After Theory Charles Altieri, Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry: The Contem- poraneity of Modernism John C. O’Neal, The Authority of Experience: Sensationist Theory in the French Enlightenment John O’Neill, ed., Freud and the Passions Sheridan Hough, Nietzsche’s Noontide Friend:The Self as Metaphoric Double E. M. Dadlez, What’s Hecuba to Him? Fictional Events and Actual Emotions Hugh Roberts, Shelley and the Chaos of History: A New Politics of Poetry Charles Altieri, Postmodernisms Now: Essays on Contemporaneity in the Arts Arabella Lyon, Intentions: Negotiated, Contested, and Ignored Jill Gordon, Turning Toward Philosophy: Literary Device and Dramatic Structure in Plato’s Dialogues Michel Meyer, Philosophy and the Passions: Towards a History of Human Nature. Translated by Robert F.Barsky Philosophy and the Passions Toward a History of Human Nature by Michel Meyer, Université libre de Bruxelles Translation, Preface, Introduction, and Bibliography by Robert F.Barsky The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Meyer, Michel [Le Philosophe et les passions. English] Philosophy and the Passions : toward a history of human nature / Michel Meyer ; translation, preface, introduction, and bibliography by Robert F.Barsky. p. cm.—(Literature and philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-271-02031-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 0-271-02032-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Emotions (Philosophy) I. Barsky, Robert F. II. Title. III. Series. B105.E46 M4813 2000 128′.37 99−047157 Translation, preface, introduction, and bibliography © Robert F.Barsky 2000 Copyright © 2000 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper for the first printing of all clothbound books. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992. Contents Translator’s Preface / vii Translator’s Introduction / xi Introduction / 1 1 From the Passion of Discourse to the Discourse of the Passions / 9 2 Passion as a New Relationship with Being / 29 3 From Sickness to Sin / 59 4 The Genesis of the Individual and the Eruption of Guilt / 91 5 From the Experience of Passion to the Passion of Experience / 135 6 The Mirrors of the Sensible: Morals, Aesthetics, and History / 179 7 Toward a Critique of Pure Passion / 205 Epilogue / 275 Select Bibliography / 279 Index / 285 Translator’s Preface I started this project in 1995 while still a fellow at the European Institute for the Study of Argumentation, Free University of Brussels, under the tutelage of Michel Meyer. I have worked sporadically on it since then, but it was on account of the encouragement and the support of Michel Meyer himself, and Sanford Thatcher, of Penn State Press, that it now stands before you. One of the difficulties of translating a book like this is its sheer length; each page of the compact Livre de poche edition seemed to store an endless amount of clearly rendered, but quite complex philosophical ideas. I have made a faithful translation of the original, but I have also tried to make this book suitable for an American audience by changing some of the examples, smoothing out some of the stylistically exciting, but sometimes untranslatable French prose,and in certain cases,offering interpretations of problematic passages. The reason for my having inserted a dose of interpretation into the task of translation relates to the French context for which the original text was written, an issue that is of great significance for readers who are sensitive to the strange (mis)appropriations that have been made of (sometimes dubious) translations of French philosophers or theorists who have been so significant for the American literary,philosophical, and cultural scene, notably Baudrillard, Cixous, Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Guattari, Kristeva, and Lyotard (this is in fact one small part of the problem brought to the fore by Sokal’s Hoax).1 Meyer’s text is much closer to traditional philosophy, both in style and in influence, so it poses no significant problems in this regard; nevertheless, it does read as though it was written for some audience other than an American academic one. This fact came through clearly in the assessment by one of the project’s 1. See Impostures intellectuelles, and the many debates (described in Barsky, “Intellectuals on the Couch”) that have raged subsequent to the publication of Alain Sokal’s hoax in the journal Social Text. viii Translator’s Preface original reviewers, who wondered if in my earlier translation I wasn’t “perhaps trying too hard to be faithful to the flavor of the original,which has a certain French arrogance and off-handedness about it that might not come across too well to an American audience.” This “flavor” is indeed present in the French text, although the exact qualities to which this reviewer is referring would be hard to pinpoint. Furthermore, many issues which appear at the very center of postmodern texts, such as those relating to the “situatedness”of the author, the status of the “subject,” the slippery signifier, the complex sign / signified relationship, and the like, aren’t at issue here. Ideas are presented, clearly and convinc- ingly, and historical texts are mentioned and interpreted specifically as regards the central discussions of this book. Implicit, and sometimes explicit, however, is Meyer’s condemnation of sloppy philosophical rea- soning which is rampant, partly on account of what he takes to be the oft-misguided task that philosophers have set for themselves, and partly, perhaps, on account of their avoidance of the domain of “questioning.” More on this in the introduction. The reviewer may also have had some difficulties with the examples given in the text, which often place men in the forefront of significant actions described. I would think about this problem as I’d work through the translation, or as I’d place my coffee cup down on the “Jupiler” Beer coaster I brought from Brussels when I moved back to North America which bears the slogan:“Mannen weten warrom”:“Les hommes savent pourquoi.” The book, like the coaster, needs a little bit of cultural translation to ensure that the audience focuses on the broader questions relating to passion, rather than the problem of gender discrimination (although given the ambition of Meyer’s project many of his ideas could be fruitfully used for work in this and many other domains). I will offer a brief overview of these questions, and I’ll also offer some general obser- vations about Michel Meyer’s broad corpus of work, in the introduction that follows. I would like to thank Michel Meyer, who proposed and then followed this project to the very end, and who has consistently supported my work while making invaluable suggestions about the translation. Fran- çois Laville, whom I’ve never met but for whom I have the greatest respect, went through the entire translation and checked it against the original; I am very grateful indeed for the many suggestions and correc- tions he made. Ramen Gakhal, Katie McInnis, and Nancy Ray were financed by our wonderful University of Western Ontario work study program to track down translations and to trace texts relating to the introduction. I am also grateful to Penn State Press’s copy editor,Andrew Translator’s Preface ix Lewis, for his careful, meticulous work. Ray Dearin, who has written the biographical chapter for a forthcoming book (with Alan Gross) on Chaim Perelman, has generously offered invaluable information for the introduction, as have two of Perelman’s former students, my teacher Marc Angenot and my colleague Alain Goldschläger.Michael Holquist has given me the welcome occasion of spending a semester as a Visiting Fel- low at Yale University, which has allowed for passions and dialogue appropriate to the completion of this project. Funding for this project was provided by Les Fonds national de la Bel- gique, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the French Consulate in Washington, D.C., the University of Western Ontario, and Penn State Press. I wish to thank Yzabelle Martineau, and I passionately dedicate this translation to my sons, Benjamin and Tristan, who have put up with and responded to my interminable questions, while creating the pleasures of a bilingual household. Robert F.Barsky Brussels, Montreal, London (Ontario), New Haven (Connecticut), 1995–2000 Translator’s Introduction L’Institut de Philosophie, the Centre de Philosophie du Droit, and the European Institute for the Study of Argumentation (EISA) are housed in an old,rather Gothic-looking building located at 143 Buyl Street, Brussels.

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