Academics From France

"The speech of the Word of Life is not made up of words lost in the world and stripped of power. Its word is its embrace, the pathetik embrace in which, holding itself, it holds the person to whom it speaks by giving him life – by giving him to be embraced within this embrace in which absolute Life embraces itself. The embrace in which absolute Life embraces itself is its love, the infinite love with which it loves itself. Its word is that of love, in the end the only one that the anguished people of our day, lost in world’s ennui, still want to hear. But what does this word say to them? Just itself, just their own life, too – the unspeakable happiness of experiencing oneself and of Living."

"Man’s forgetting of his condition of Son relates not only to the Concern for the world in which he constantly invests himself. As we have seen, it is the phenomenological essence of Life that makes Life what is most forgotten, the Immemorial to which no thought leads. Because Forgetting defines its phenomenological status, life is ambiguous. Life is what knows itself without knowing it. That it suddenly knows it is neither incidental nor superfluous. The knowledge by which one day life knows what since the beginning it knew without knowing it is not of a different order than the knowledge of life itself: it is a pathetik upheaval in which life feels its self-affection as absolute Life’s self-affection. This possibility, which is always open to life, to suddenly experience its self-affection as absolute Life’s self-affection, is what makes it a Becoming. But then, when and why is this emotional upheaval produced, which opens a person to his own essence? Nobody knows. The emotional opening of the person to his own essence can only be born of the will of life itself, as this rebirth that lets him suddenly experience his eternal birth. The Spirit blows where it wills."

"Let us just say here that if science is capable of making the slightest material modification to nature, this is only insofar as a real action cannot be reduced to a merely theoretical relation between a knowing subject and a known object. In reality, it always takes the unperceived detour through Bodily-ownness (Corpspropriation). Only someone who has hands and eyes in the sense of a radically immanent power of grasping and seeing, only a being originally constituted in oneself as a subjective and living Body -- only the scientist not as a scientist but as this kind of being -- can turn the pages of a book and read it. Likewise, only such a person can carry out a scientific operation of any kind: handle a tool, press a button, follow the results of a change on a graph, and then understand the results of a sophisticated experiment. These results are ultimately offered as sensible givens, and they are only accessible in that form. The same goes for experimentation properly so-called. The conduct or handling of it always refers back to and presupposes an action of the original Body."

"This situation does not only hold for scientific practice, it also determines the condition of the worker in the modern world. What characterizes the modern worker is the gradual decrease of the role of living work, or subjective praxis, in the real process of production, whereas the role of the objective, instrumental network continually increases, first in the form of machines in a traditional big industry and later cybernetics and robotics. The law of the gradual decrease of profit margins in the capitalist era is only the expression on the economic level of the crucial phenomenon that has come to affect modern production: the invasion of technology and its expulsion of life."

"Le spectacle de la beauté qui s'incarne dans un être vivant est infiniment plus émouvant que celui de l'œuvre la plus grandiose."

"The radical and essential pre-destination implied in the condition of Son (identical to his Arch-generation) is what constitutes the principle of the Christian ethic, the Commandment. John perceives this Commandment in its original form, in God’s phenomenological life and identical with it. He calls it God’s love. God’s love is the first and only Commandment of the ethic. “The commandments ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet,’ and whatever other commandments there may be, are summed up in this one rule: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Romans 13:9). […] The Commandment is only a Commandment of love because Life is love. Life is love because it experiences itself infinitely and eternally. Because it is Life, “God is love,” as John says (1 John 4:8). It is because God (as absolute Life) is love that he commands Love. He commands it of all the living by giving them life, by generating them in himself as his Sons, those who, feeling themselves in infinite Life’s experience of self and its eternal love, love themselves with an infinite and eternal love, loving themselves inasmuch as they are Sons and feeling themselves to be such – in the same way that they love others, inasmuch as they are themselves Sons and inasmuch as they feel themselves to be such. If the Commandment only prescribes love because the One who commands is himself love, it is because far from resulting from the Commandment, love is on the contrary the presupposition of it."

"La communauté est une nappe affective souterraine et chacun y boit la même eau à cette source et à ce puits qu'il est lui-même – mais sans le savoir, sans se distinguer de lui-même, de l'autre ni du Fond."

"La culture est l'ensemble des entreprises et des pratiques dans lesquelles s'exprime la surabondance de la vie, toutes elles ont pour motivation la « charge », le « trop » qui dispose intérieurement la subjectivité vivante comme une force prête à se prodiguer et contrainte, sous la charge, de le faire."

"What then is culture? Every culture is a culture of life, in the dual sense whereby life is both the subject and the object of this culture. It is an action that life exerts on itself and through which it transforms itself insofar as life is both transforming and transformed. "Culture" means nothing other than that. "Culture" refers to the self-transformation of life, the movement by which it continually changes itself in order to arrive at higher forms of realization and completeness, in order to grow. But if life is this incessant movement of self-transformation and self-fulfillment, it is culture itself. Or at least it carries it as something inscribed in it and sought by it. What life are we speaking about here? What is this force that is continually maintained and grows? It is not in any way the life that forms the theme of biology and the object of science. It is not the molecules and particles that the scientist tries to reach through microscopes and whose natures are developed through multiple procedures in order to construct laboriously a concept of them that is more adequate but still subject to revision."

"That one should love the other is a prescription any ethic could accommodate, as uncertain as its foundation might be. An ideology lacking any foundation, as for example democratic socialism in our day, could equally lay claim to it. But that one should love the other who is your enemy, even if he is depraved, degenerate, hypocritical, or criminal, is in effect only possible if this other person is not what he appears, not even this I Can, the transcendental ego who has committed all this misdeeds. It is only if, as Son, the other carries within him Life and its essential Ipseity that he may, in his depravity, be the object of love, or rather not him – in the sense of a person, the one whom other people call a person – but the power that gave him to himself and constantly gives him to himself even in his depravity. The command is to love the other insofar as he is in Christ and in God, and on this condition alone."

"This is because the doing carries life as its irresistible presupposition, because there is no doing unless given to itself in life’s self-givenness, unless the work of salvation is entrusted to it. Entrusted to doing and to action, but not to any old action. If we examine the list of works of mercy, we see that is not a simple enumeration of empirical attitudes and conduct that would be beneficial to people who practice them. A hidden contrast runs through them, but not an opposition between simple precepts still removed from their achievement in practice, which is demanded as the single road that leads to life. Instead, the opposition appears on the level of the action itself. It distinguishes and contrasts two types of action – in effect, one that leads to life and the other to death."

"Ma chair n’est donc pas seulement le principe de la constitution de mon corps objectif, elle cache en elle sa substance invisible. Telle est l’étrange condition de cet objet que nous appelons un corps : il ne consiste nullement en ces espèces visibles auxquelles on le réduit depuis toujours ; en sa réalité précisément il est invisible. Personne n’a jamais vu un homme, mais personne n’a jamais vu non plus son corps, si du moins par « corps » on entend son corps réel."

"This is why, as soon as this condition fails to appear, the imprescriptible love of others also disappears. The other is now just another person, a person as people are – hypocrites, liars, ambitious, sinful, egotistical, blind, fighting ferociously for their own advantage and prestige, no less combative toward others who oppose their projects and desires. Forgetful of their veritable condition and the other’s veritable condition, they behave toward themselves and others as mere people. Then the whole edifying morality that wishes to found itself on the mere person, on the rights of man, discovers its emptiness, its prescriptions are flouted, and the world is given over to horror and sordid exploitation, to massacres and genocides. It is not by chance that in the twentieth century the disappearance of “religious” morality has given rise not to a new morality, a “secular morality,” albeit a morality without any definite foundation, but to the downfall of any morality and to the terrifying and yet daily spectacle of that downfall."

"Aucun objet n'a jamais fait l'expérience d'être touché."

"Car notre chair n'est rien d'autre que cela qui, s'éprouvant, se souffrant, se subissant et se supportant soi-même et ainsi jouissant de soi selon des impressions toujours renaissantes, se trouve, pour cette raison, susceptible de sentir le corps qui lui est extérieur, de le toucher aussi bien que d'être touché par lui. Cela donc dont le corps extérieur, le corps inerte de l'univers matériel, est par principe incapable."

"Men turned away from Life’s Truth, caught in all the traps and marvels where this life is denied, ridiculed, mimicked, simulated – absent. Men given over to the insensible, become themselves insensible, whose eyes are empty as a fish’s. Dazed men, devoted to specters and spectacles that always expose their own invalidity and bankruptcy; devoted to false knowledge, reduced to empty shells, to empty heads – to “brains.” Men whose emotions and loves are just glandular secretions. Men who have been liberated by making them think their sexuality is a natural process, the site and place of their infinite Desire. Men whose responsibility and dignity have no definite site anymore. Men who in the general degradation will envy the animals. Men will want to die – but not Life. It is not just any god today who is still able to save us, but – when the shadow of death is looming over the world – that One who is Living."

"La souffrance forme le tissu de l'existence, elle est le lieu où la vie devient vivante, la réalité et l'effectivité phénoménologique de ce devenir."

"Material phenomenology is able to designate this invisible phenomenological substance. It is not a nothing but rather an affect, or put otherwise, it is what makes every affect, ultimately every affection, and every thing possible. The phenomenological substance that material phenomenology has in view is the pathetic immediacy in which life experiences itself. Life is itself nothing other than this pathetic embrace and, in this way, is phenomenality itself according to the how of its original phenomenalization. Life is thus not a something, like the object of biology, but the principle of every thing. It is a phenomenological life in the radical sense where life defines the essence of pure phenomenality and accordingly of being insofar as being is coextensive with the phenomenon and founded on it. For what could I know that could not appear ?"

"Bouvart went to see one of the lords of the old Court, who was seriously ill for a fortnight. As he entered, Good day, Mr. Bouvart, said the patient. I am happy to see you. I feel much better; I think I no longer have a fever. Look! — I am certain of it, says the doctor; I noticed it at your first word. — How is that? — Oh! Nothing simpler. In the first days of your illness, and as long as you were in danger, I was your dear friend; you called me nothing else. The last time, when you were somewhat better, I was just your dear Bouvart. Today, I am Mr. Bouvard. It is clear that you are cured."

"We know that, in Paris, fashion imposes its dictates on medicine just as it does with everything else. Well, at one time, pyramidal elm bark had a great reputation; it was taken as a powder, as an extract, as an elixir, even in baths. It was good for the nerves, the chest, the stomach — what can I say? — it was a true panacea. At the peak of the fad, one of Bouvard’s [sic] patients asked him if it might not be a good idea to take some: "Take it, Madame", he replied, "and hurry up while it [still] cures." [dépêchez-vous pendant qu’elle guérit]"

"It is said that he replied to Cardinal ***, a not very regular prelate (some say Abbot Terray), who was complaining of suffering like a damned person: "What! Already, monseigneur?" In my opinion, he might well have said this about one of his patients, but not to his face; manners would not allow that."

"Mr. *** was being tried for a dishonorable matter; he got sick, and died. Bouvard [sic] was his doctor, and said: I got him off the hook. It was said of the same person: He is truly sick, he can't take any more [presumably medicine]."

"La propriété exclusive est un vol dans la nature."

"It is less difficult for a woman to obtain celebrity by her genius than to be forgiven for it."

"While some may regard Chomsky as an eminent linguist, he does not understand the most obvious meaning ofwords in context. To fail to see any "hint of anti-Semitic implications" in Faurisson's collective condemnation of the Jewish people as liars is to be either a fool or a knave. Failure to recognize the anti-Semitic implications of Holocaust denial is like saying there would be no racist implications in a claim that Blacks enjoyed slavery, or no sexist implications in a statement that women want to be raped. The Holocaust is the central historical event of modern Jewish history. Efforts to deny or minimize it are the current tools of the anti-semite and neo-Nazi. Not surprising, both Faurisson and Chomsky are frequently quoted with approval by these hatemongers."

"Faurisson, a specialist of the many forged pseudo-ancient narratives produced during the Romantic period to give a country a glorious past depicted in an epic of its own, like Ossian for Scotland or the Ura Linda Book for Frisia, started his negationist career with the claim that the Diary of Anne Frank was -- you guessed it -- a forgery..... Faurisson wanted to take it a step further, though: he denied the veracity of the diary. It was the girl’s father who, after his return in 1945 to Amsterdam, had edited the diary before publishing it, and he had left out some passages he deemed inconvenient, especially about the sexual awakening of his pubescent daughter. Even so, this petty fault-finding left the girl’s report about the persecution of the Jews entirely unchallenged. This will remain a common scenario in the negationist movement: focusing on marginal elements that are convenient and obscuring what proves the genocide. This is not uncommon among polemicists defending any cause, but the grimness of the case makes it more serious here."

"Some time ago I was asked to sign a petition in defense of Robert Faurisson’s “freedom of speech and expression.” The petition said absolutely nothing about the character, quality or validity of his research, but restricted itself quite explicitly to a defense of elementary rights that are taken for granted in democratic societies, calling upon university and government officials to “do everything possible to ensure the [Faurisson’s] safety and the free exercise of his legal rights.” I signed it without hesitation."

"I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work relatively apolitical liberal of some sort"

"The theory of functions of several complex variables has gone from its infancy with the work of Hartogs, Levi and Poincaré shortly after the turn of the century to its current role as a central field of modern mathematics, much as its predecessor, function theory in one complex variable, did in the 19th century. A central figure in this development has been Henri Cartan, whose series of papers in this field starting in the 1920's dealt with fundamental questions relating to Nevanlinna theory, generalizations of the Mittag-Leffler and Weierstrass theorems to functions of several variables, problems concerned with biholomorphic mappings and the biholomorphic equivalence problem, domains of holomorphy and holomorphic convexity, etc. The major developments in the theory from 1930 to 1950 came from Cartan and his school in France, Behnke's school in Münster, and Oka in Japan. The central ideas up to that time were synthesized in Cartan's Séminaires in the early 1950's, and these were very influential to the next several generations of mathematicians. Cartan's accomplishments were broad and he influenced mathematics through his writing, his teaching, his seminars, and his students in a remarkable manner."

"Like every old civilisation still represented on this globe, India has been, and is, increasingly, in spite of appearances, returning to its original sources... It is from the depths of that old civilisation that India is most likely to draw the strength needed to adapt itself to the modern world."

"The boundless riches of the Hindu faith, its universal appeal, its tolerance, the profundity of Hindu philosophy and its enduring roots among the Indian people all this made India a poor soil for West-Christian sowing."

"The enthusiasm for Indian culture was widespread. Amaury de Riencourt in his The Soul of India tells us that philosophers like Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Schleiermacher, poets such as Goethe, Schillar, Novalis, Tieck and Brentano, historians like Herder and Schlegel, all acclaimed the discovery of Indian culture with cries of ecstasy: "India, the home of universal religion, the cradle of the noblest human race, of all literature, of all philosophies and metaphysics." And he adds that "this enthusiasm was not confined to Germany. The entire Romantic movement in the West put Indian culture on a lofty pedestal which the preceding Classical Movement had reserved for Greece and Rome.""

"It is indeed a striking thought that the same region of central Italy twice, in the shape of ancient Etruria and modern Tuscany, been the source of civilization in Italy. Since the seventh century BC and from the fifteenth century onwards, in the dawn of antiquity as well as at the beginning of modern times, the same region of the peninsula has been distinguished by exceptional qualities. The birth and re-birth or Renaissance of Italy had the same cradle."

"Lesbians are not women."

"La Mettrie who had himself painted and engraved as a second Democritus laughs only the first time one looks at him. Repeated contemplation changes the philosopher into a fool, his laughter changes into a grin."

"In very different fashion does the book set to work that already in its very title declares that man is a machine. While the 'Natural History of the Soul' was cautious, cunningly arranged, and only gradually surprising us with its results, here, on the contrary,the final conclusion is expressed at the outset of the work. While the 'Natural History of the Soul' allied itself with the whole Aristotelian metaphysics only in order to prove by degrees that the soul is but an empty form, into which we may pour a materialistic content, here we no longer deal in all those fine distinctions."

"These features show truly the master Of jollities, laughter and wit; Too bold he was in his nature To take off the corners of it. He would have been but for one sage The victim alas! of the fools of his age."

"In conclusion, Lamettrie lays down the principles, " No senses, no ideas." " The fewer senses, the fewer ideas." " Little education, few ideas." " No sense-impressions, no ideas.""

"[H]e... finally concludes: " The soul, then, depends essentially upon the organs of the body, with which it is formed, grows, decreases: 'Ergo participem leti quoque convenit esse.' ""

"La Mettrie was born with a fund of natural and inexhaustible gaiety; he had a quick mind, and such a fertile imagination that it made flowers grow in the arid field of medicine. Nature had made him an orator and a philosopher; but a yet more precious gift which he received from her was a pure soul and an obliging heart. All those who are not imposed upon by the pious insults of the theologians mourn in La Mettrie a good man and a wise physician."

"Lamettrie is a bold who sees in materialism only the justification of his profligacy."

"[E]verything is the work of imagination, and... all the faculties of the soul can be correctly reduced to pure imagination..."

"[W]hy should we divide the sensitive principle which thinks in man? ...For a thing that is divided can no longer without absurdity be regarded as indivisible."

"[T]he sciences that are expressed by numbers or by other small signs, are easily learned; and... this facility rather than its demonstrability is what has made the fortune of algebra."

"A geometrician has learned to perform the most difficult demonstrations and calculations, as a monkey has learned to take his little hat off and on..."

"[I]magination is the soul, since it plays all the roles of the soul."

"The very much shorter section on the rational soul discusses freedom, reflection, judgment, and so on, with the same strong leaning to Materialism there follows a chapter over which is written, "...religious faith alone can confirm our belief as to the existence of a rational soul." ...[T]he object... is to show how metaphysics and religion came to adopt the notion of a soul, and it concludes by saying that true philosophy freely confesses that the... soul is unknown to her. ...[M]ention is also made of Voltaire's phrase, 'I am body, and I think;' and Lamettrie refers with pleasure to the way in which Voltaire scoffs at the Scholastic proof for the proposition that no matter can think."

"As a violin string or a harpsichord key vibrates and gives forth sound, so the cerebral fibres, struck by waves of sound, are stimulated to render or repeat the words that strike them."

"In the year 1742 he... received there a position as surgeon to the Guard. In this capacity he made a campaign in Germany, and... was seized by a violent fever, and used this opportunity in order to institute observations upon himself as to the influence of quickened circulation upon thought. He came to the conclusion that thought is nothing but a consequence of the organisation of our mechanism. ...[H]e tried during his convalescence to explain the mental functions by the help of anatomy, and he had his conjectures printed under the title of a 'Natural History of the Soul.' The regimental chaplain sounded the alarm, and soon a universal cry of indignation was raised... His books were recognised as heretical, and he could no longer continue to be surgeon of the Guard. ...about the same time ...writing a satire on his rivals, the foremost Paris practitioners. ...He fled in the year 1746 to Leyden. Here he wrote ...a new satire upon the charlatanism and ignorance of doctors, and soon afterwards (1748) appeared also his 'Homme Machine.'"

"Let us not limit the resources of nature; they are infinite, especially when reinforced by great art."