Life manual for survivors

For an atheistic ethic

In this work with a bearing title in these times of crises and uncertainty, Pierre Zaoui immediately warns us: his intention is not to teach us how to overcome or overcome the disasters that befall us. It is not a question of reaching the other shore as quickly as possible, but of continuing to live through the painful, difficult or even upsetting events that life has in store for us. And continuing to live is certainly not letting life disintegrate, but it is no longer pretending to discover real life, as if these catastrophes were a form of redemption, an antechamber of what a life would be like. authentically human life, characterized by beatitude and fullness. Because the objective of this work is expressed in the subtitle of the Introduction: to propose “ ideas for the constitution of an atheist ethic ”, both without consolation and relying on the affirmative power of life itself, human – all too human.

And this is not the last of the paradoxes that the author delights in handling with skill, in order to uncover categories that are too well thought out – and above all too reassuring, to be relevant to the complexity of life – of traditional philosophies. . It is not a question for the author of considering any philosophy as illegitimate, but of relying on a chosen lineage (Parmenides, Nietzsche, Deleuze, among others), in order to assign a courageous and radical program to what could be a new philosophy of life: on the one hand, “ try to think of equal treatment of life and death, pleasure and suffering, (…) and equally shit and kitsch (…), the beautiful and the ugly, the vile and the glorious, the miserable and the rich » (p. 28) ; and on the other hand “ philosophize what surrounds (us) and what falls on (us) » (p. 30). The question would therefore no longer be to have a true idea of ​​everything, but to have a fair idea of ​​everything that we encounter, of everything that happens to us without our having chosen or wanted it.

Setting this program as a task then leads us on a path strewn with pitfalls and ultimately uncertain by definition. ; as P. Zaoui tells us, what matters is not to imagine what could happen afterwards, but to continue living during it. What follows is a series of affirmations and counter-affirmations, which sometimes sound like imprecations, although the author denies wanting to give lessons about a good life or a true life: you have to go, but only when you can. necessary and because it is necessary ; we must not renounce all existential negativity, but we must not elevate it to the rank of engine of existence either ; we must neither patiently bear our fate while waiting for paradise, nor play the hero by taking pleasure in overcoming all catastrophes. We cannot deny that the program is convincing when it sets out the pitfalls to avoid, but we also cannot help but wonder what we have left, once all these illusions are deconstructed. ; and if going through disasters also meant using real life aids such as dreams, imagination, beliefs and other consolations ?

Illness, death, mourning… life !

Taking up D. Winnicott’s assertion that “ the absence of psychological disorders may be health, but it is not life », P. Zaoui then begins with courage and determination a great journey through the catastrophes inseparable from life, which are at the same time the most intimate and the most socially significant, the most singular and the most universal. Strengthened by his existential and non-doctrinaire convictions, and in a text which is at once a novel, a newspaper, a manual and an essay, he multiplies perspectives and mixes points of view, bringing his reader to a sort of immanent experimentation of what it could be like to experience these events in different ways, inseparably subjective and common. This crossing itself is akin to a true epic, punctuated with the right words (“ to live in truth is live without guarantee », p. 65), politically incorrect assertions (suffering is not the companion of creation, rather, “ misfortune is the ordinary alembic of wickedness », p. 89), strong theses (“ to think of death from within life is to renounce truly experiencing life as death », p. 145), as well as slogans (“ only death exists ; life, she insists », note, p. 165).

But this work also confronts, and without concession, major philosophical currents with the most common experience of life, neither heroic nor dilapidated, the “ life in short », with its share of joys and sufferings. Thus, P. Zaoui questions what it would be like to experience an unexpected event in Epicurean fashion – becoming responsible for one’s actions, even when they appear to be accidents – in Stoic fashion – knowing how to be worthy of what falls to us. on it and play its role – or in cynical fashion – transform its bad inclinations into vital force, with the risks of resentment and vanity. Likewise, while showing the contributions of the notion of “ life drive “, he notes that some of its uses can be ethically devastating and politically reactionary, before proposing to replace it with the couple “ line of life / line of death » (pp. 182-184). We therefore always oscillate between concept and experience, theory and practice, affirmations and restrictions, with the stated objective of being as close as possible to the twists and turns of life, and with the underlying danger of definitively getting lost and not knowing what to think anymore.

However, we can only praise the great honesty with which P. Zaoui confronts the experiences of life in their singularity and complexity, the radicality with which he attempts to outline an ethics without value judgment, and the patience with which he facing each affect, without ever evading, including when their study invalidates his present theories. We thus understand his frequent use of telling images and metaphors, as when he speaks of the despair specific to the experience of mourning, which is “ in truth more maritime than fluvial, and functions, not by sudden and complete engulfment like during a flood, but by asynchronous waves “, despair in which “ we therefore feel too stuck and too loose, always out of time » (pp. 221-222). And we can only admire the vital force with which the author affirms that the duty owed to the dead must be in fair articulation with the necessary preservation of survivors, that we do not have to learn to die, since all death always arrives from the outside, as if through a break-in, or else it is a question of dying only at the moment when one dies, and therefore of affirming life until the end. Ultimately, everything could be summed up in this sentence: illness, dying, mourning are above all “ living experiences » ; and crossing them also means knowing how to experience them when the time comes.

Events and words

Ending this journey of life’s small and major catastrophes with a chapter on happiness may seem paradoxical: is it not a question of trying to ward off bad luck, or even of making a life of suffering an obligatory passage in order to to painfully conquer and deserve your paradise ? We cannot say that P. Zaoui fully escapes this pitfall, in his unbridled desire to find the best part of ourselves even in the painful and obscure. But we understand his project better by paying attention to the characterization he gives of his “ little Jewish happiness »: rough, difficult, imperfect, but real (p. 277). It is not in fact a question of seeking the theological or historical truth of Jewish happiness, but of noting what it can have that is concrete, carnal, everyday, without expecting any plenitude. We thus read that this happiness “ is only to burst, crack, split, and thus constantly transfigure itself » (p. 301). This is the condition for thinking about happiness without giving it up, even in the midst of disasters. In other words, it is about reconciling happiness and event.

And this is, ultimately, the challenge of this entire work: to lead us to move the moral and logical categories that are familiar to us, in order to welcome the event at the heart of this cracked thought, as that which escapes the customary repetitions, and is unspeakable and incomprehensible in earlier forms of discursivity and rationality. So, for example, what counts according to P. Zaoui is not the big, noisy and obvious upheavals, but the very small catastrophes, which are the echo of a deeper, continuous and irreducible upheaval. Or again: great health is not robust health, but “ more essential capacity to extract from one’s sufferings and brokenness a power of superior affirmation of life » (p. 344). We could fear, in this last statement, a return to the exaltation of the emergence of the best in the midst of the worst, but we are grateful to the author for not giving an embalmed version of life, for not advocating the worst for the worst, and to have the courage to abandon any pre-established doctrine in order to face life in all its complexity and ambiguity.

However, it remains to be questioned about the status of language in this enterprise, about the place given to the discourse on these disasters, which should above all be lived and experienced. Once again, P. Zaoui tells us everything that this discourse should not be: an abstract conceptualization, a pure experiential, an exorcization which transmutes “ hair, dirt, mud » instead of thinking about them as they are. But paradoxically, the refusal to qualify results in an overflow of qualifications, the unspeakable nature of these experiences gives rise to an overflow of words ; so much so that one can wonder if the author does not end up, through witticisms and puns, becoming intoxicated by his own speech. The endless enumerations which say one thing then its opposite are probably intended to highlight the fact that the catastrophes of life are neither unilateral nor unequivocal. ; but we end up fearing that the author is paying himself with words by using them too well.

We are, however, in the order of the experimental, of the indeterminate which nevertheless seeks to say itself, and above all to think itself, because “ to think is not to stop living, but to stop to live is to take one step back in the hope of being able to jump two steps further » (p. 51). And the fact remains that the literary references are precious, the philosophical mentions often iconoclastic, and the rendering of the affects speaks and signifies, even if we suspect the author of having wanted everyone to be able to recognize themselves in them. , thus showing itself to be more consoling and reassuring than was desired in the initial project ; as if the words, although contrary to usual discourse, still constituted acceptable ointments for our wounds that are too raw – and therefore fundamentally alive.