Michel Onfray

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Michel Onfray 2012

Michel Onfray (born January 1, 1959 in Argentan , Normandy ) is a French philosopher , writer and founder of the Université populaire de Caen .

Life

Onfray was born into the family of a farm laborer in Normandy. He has a younger brother. Due to a broken family situation, at the age of ten he was placed in a training institute run by Salesians , where he was to be prepared for a trade. In this institution, whose regiment he experienced as painful (he calls it " Terror of Pedophilia "), he stayed for four years. After another three years in other boarding schools, he looked for "the wide open" and began studying philosophy, which he completed with a doctorate.

Since 1983 Onfray has been teaching philosophical subjects at a higher vocational school in Caen . In 1989 he began to publish philosophical books that soon made him so popular and financially independent that he retired from civil service in 2002 and was able to found the Université populaire de Caen , a free people 's university . Onfray gives courses in a multi-year course that present the history of philosophy since its inception in such a way that the hedonistic philosophers, mostly ignored or marginalized in normal academic operations, are in the foreground. The result of the first course was published in a 9-volume Contre-histoire de la philosophie (2006–2013).

In spring 2020 Onfray founded the magazine Front Populaire , the first issue of which he announced for June 2020.

Onfray had been in a relationship with Marie-Claude Ruel since 1977, who died in 2013 as a result of cancer.

position

Michel Onfray began his journalistic activity in 1989 with the rediscovery of the forgotten French philosopher Georges Palante , who emerged as a Left Nietzschean with his publications at the beginning of the 20th century . Onfray reissued the most important writings of Palante and wrote a monograph on him. Onfray saw themselves as continuing the thinking Palantes and wanted a contemporary Linksnietzscheanismus justified. He wrote numerous books in this spirit, some of which received widespread attention both in France and through translations. His greatest book success so far was the 2005 Traité d ' athéologie . Physique de la métaphysique , of which more than 200,000 copies have been sold in a few months and translations in several languages ​​have already appeared.

Onfrays thinking ties in with the ancient Epicurean and hedonistic philosophy and follows its sometimes narrow line of tradition up to our time (cf. his Contre-histoire / counter-history of philosophy ). On this basis he criticizes all transcendental philosophy and religions , especially monotheistic ones . Onfray takes the view that belief in God is by no means helpful, but even harmful and dangerous. On the other hand, he sets a renewed philosophy of hedonism.

Some reviewers praise the sharpness and style of his writing. Others criticize that he basically does not bring anything new ("Onfray runs open doors at least with parts of his book", writes Peter Hölzle), but also that his "polemics" (Kai Köhler) are not very differentiated.

Politically, Onfray is a laicist and “ libertarian capitalist ” referring to theorists like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon . In the French presidential elections in 2002 he voted for Olivier Besancenot , the candidate for the Trotskyist Ligue communiste révolutionnaire . He also supported the Front de gauche as a left-wing rallying movement. Since his closer involvement with Albert Camus around 2010, Onfray changed his political position. He continues to regard himself as “left”, but as a representative of “contemporary post - anarchism ” sharply criticizes the positions of the various left parties, such as gender theory , the approval of the European Union - he particularly sharply criticizes the Maastricht Treaty - or the uncritical attitude towards the Islam . He also agrees with arguments by right-wing authors such as Alain de Benoist or Éric Zemmour if he thinks they are valid. On the occasion of the 2017 presidential election , he declared that he would not be able to vote because none of the candidates had convinced him. He continued his sharp and extensive criticism until 2020.

See also

Publications

Monographs

  • 1989: Le ventre des philosophes. Critique de la raison diététique .
  • 1989: Physiology de Georges Palante . Portrait d'un nietzschéen de gauche .
  • 1990: Cynismes. Portrait du philosophe en chien .
    • German edition: The philosopher as a dog. On the origin of subversive thinking among the Cynics . Translated by Eva Moldenhauer. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1991 ISBN 3-593-34417-3 .
  • 1991: L'art de jouir. Pour un matérialisme hédoniste .
    • German edition (part 1): The sensual philosopher. About the art of enjoyment. Translated by Eva Moldenhauer. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1992 ISBN 3-593-34711-3
    • German edition (part 2): Philosophy of Ecstasy. Translated by Eva Moldenhauer. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1993 ISBN 3-593-34832-2
  • 1995: La raison gourmande. Philosophy you goût .
    • German edition: The enjoyable reason. The philosophy of good taste. Translated by Leopold Federmair. Elster, Baden-Baden ISBN 3-89151-241-4 .
  • 1996: Les formes du temps. Théorie du Sauternes .
  • 1997: Politique du rebelle. Traité de resistance et d'insoumission .
  • 2000: Théorie du corps amoureux. Pour une erotique solaire .
    • German edition: Theory of the body in love. For solar eroticism . Translated by Ronald Voullié. Merve Verlag, Berlin 2001 ISBN 3-88396-167-1 .
  • 2001: Antimanuel de philosophie. Leçons socratiques et alternatives .
  • 2002: Célébration du génie colérique. Tombeau de Pierre Bourdieu .
  • 2002: L'invention du plaisir. Fragments of cyrénaïques .
  • 2003: Féeries anatomiques .
  • 2004: La philosophie féroce .
  • 2004: La communauté philosophique. Manifesto pour l'Université popular .
  • 2005: Traité d ' athéologie . Physique de la métaphysique .
    • German edition: We don't need a god. Why you have to be an atheist now. Translated by Bertold Galli. Piper, Munich 2006 ISBN 3-492-04852-8 .
  • 2006: La sagesse tragique. Du bon usage de Nietzsche .
  • 2006: La puissance d'exister. Manifestos hédoniste . Grasset, Paris ISBN 978-2-246-71691-4 .
    • German edition: The pure joy of being. How to be happy without God. Translated by Helmut Reuter. Piper, Munich 2008 ISBN 978-3-492-05136-1 .
  • 2007: La pensée de midi. Archeology d'une gauche libertaire. Galilée, Paris ISBN 978-2-7186-0755-9 .
  • 2008: Le souci des plaisirs. Construction d'une érotique solaire. Flammarion, Paris ISBN 978-2-08-121632-7 .
  • 2010: Nietzsche: Se créer Liberté . With illustrator Maximilien Le Roy. Les Éditions du Lombard, Brussels ISBN 978-2-8036-2650-2 .
  • 2010: Le Crépuscule d'une idole. L'Affabulation freudienne , Grasset, Paris ISBN 2-246-76931-0 .
    • German edition: Anti Freud. Psychoanalysis is disenchanted. Translated by Stephanie Singh. Knaus, Munich 2011 ISBN 978-3-8135-0408-8 .
  • 2010: Apostille au Crépuscule. Pour une psychanalyse non freudienne , Grasset, Paris ISBN 2-246-75781-9 .
  • 2012: L'ordre libertaire. La vie philosophique d'Albert Camus. Flammarion, Paris ISBN 978-2-08-126441-0 .
    • German edition: In the name of freedom. Life and Philosophy of Albert Camus. Translated by Stephanie Singh. Knaus, Munich 2013 ISBN 978-3-8135-0533-7 .
  • 2012: Le Postanarchisme expliqué à ma grand-mère: Le principe de Gulliver , Galilée, Paris, 2012 ISBN 978-2-7186-0878-5 .
  • 2014: La passion de la méchanceté. Sur un prétendu divin marquis. Éditions Autremont, Paris ISBN 978-2-7467-3955-0 .
  • 2015: Cosmos. Vers une sagesse sans morale. Flammarion, Paris ISBN 978-2-08-129036-5 .

Multi-volume works

  • Journal hédoniste (5 volumes: 1996, 1998, 2001, 2007, 2013)
  • Contre-histoire de la philosophie , Grasset, Paris:
    • 2006 / vol. 1: Les sagesses antiques - de Leucippe à Diogène d'Oenanda .
    • 2006 / vol. 2: Le christianisme hédoniste - de Simon le magicien à Montaigne .
    • 2007 / vol. 3: Les libertins baroques - de Charron à Spinoza .
    • 2007 / vol. 4: Les ultras des lumières - de Meslier à Sade .
    • 2008 / vol. 5: L'eudémonisme social - de Godwin à Bakounine .
    • 2009 / vol. 6: Les radicalités existentiales - Thoreau, Schopenhauer, Stirner .
    • 2011 / vol. 7: La construction du surhomme - Guyau, Nietzsche .
    • 2013 / vol. 8: Les freudiens hérétiques - large, rich, pious .
    • 2013 / vol. 9: Les consciences réfractaires - Politzer, Nizan, Camus, Beauvoir .

Secondary literature

Web links

Commons : Michel Onfray  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ He reports on it in detail in a self-portrait as a child , a text that he wrested after he had "written thirty books that served as a pretext for not having to write the following pages" (cf. The pure joy of Sein , pp. 13-56 (13)).
  2. ↑ His subsequent career was in 1997 in the book Politique du rebelle. Traité de résistance et d'insoumission (German translation: The rebel ) described.
  3. ↑ Homepage of Front Populaire magazine, accessed on June 13, 2020
  4. ↑ Jürg Altwegg: French Popular Front: “Frexit doesn't scare us”. In: www.faz.net. June 13, 2020, accessed June 13, 2020 .
  5. ↑ More about Onfray's biography and various aspects of his work in issue n ° 2218 of Le Point (12 March 2015) with the 15-page cover story Onfray, le philosophe qui secoue la France. (The philosopher who shook France up.)
  6. ↑ “Cette mafia qui se réclame de la gauche” . Interview in: Le Point , n ° 2216, 25 février 2015. ( online on Onfray's website )
  7. ↑ Martina Meister: Michel Onfray: The French who unites the EU haters behind them . In: THE WORLD . June 24, 2020 ( welt.de [accessed June 24, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Onfray, Michel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH Argentan