Philosophy and the Passions: Towards a History of Human Nature (Literature and Philosophy)

327 Pages·2000·1.68 MB·English

by  Michel Meyer

Philosophy
and the
Passions
L i t e r a t u r e a n d P h i l o s o p h y
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 prob-
lem brought to the fore by Sokal’s Hoax).1Meyer’s text is much closer to
traditional philosophy,both in style and in influence,so it poses no sig-
nificant 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 “sub-
ject,”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 trans-
lation to ensure that the audience focuses on the broader questions relat-
ing to passion, rather than the problem of gender discrimination (al-
though 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