Ulysse Manhes is a normalien, specialized in philosophy and songwriter of French songs.
The 2022 presidential election is on everyone's lips, already overweight in the media. The camps and the parties observe each other, the speeches sharpen. The polls beat the campaign as much as they did. Who will propose, who will oppose, who will convince? The electoral commitment becomes a strange citizen imperative, that of being embodied in an offer, of electing one “Form” rather than another (to use a term dear to Witold Gombrowicz): in this period of appeal to the political responsibility, Gombrowicz's work offers precisely a few conceptions about man and his supposed maturity.
Contemplating the commotion and the noise rising from the inhabited ground, I realized that the isolation in my reading had gradually become my main refuge.
There are endless things happening in a secluded life and recently a collision accidentally occurred in my reading, concerning precisely this question of commitment and responsibility, a highly relevant coincidence between the work of Witold Gombrowicz and that of Jean-Paul Sartre.
This is what made me decide to write this little column.
Often without our knowledge, we are immersed in Sartrean morality.
His reflections have become injunctions and his projects directions;
impossible, after him, to think the action of men outside the categories of responsibility and commitment
Ulysses Manhes
“
My aunts, those many half-mothers hanging on and glued to me, but genuinely loving, had for a long time tried to use their influence so that I would step aside and become someone, for example a lawyer or a tobacconist. My indefinite character pained them to the extreme, they didn't know how to talk to me since they didn't know who I was, so they just mumbled.
- My little Joseph, they said, it is high time, my darling! What are people gonna say? If you don't want to become a man of art, be at least a ladies' man, or a horseman, but at least we know what to expect ... Let us know what is going on. hold…
”
These words of the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz came to mind when the television broadcast one of these traditional debates on the next presidential election ... The speakers, in their entirety, resembled Joseph's aunts: to them listen, the time for trial and error was over: we had to take options, demonstrate serious choices in order to
concretely
(electorally)
exhibit
a maturing maturity and finally spend the time of words in the time of deeds. So there too, everyone had to know what to expect. The debate ended with this apparent consensus of the existence of a collective, civic responsibility in the election, instantly reminding me, like a copy / paste, of the words ofSartrean order on the condemnation of man to engage.
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Sartre, today, still exercises in our time a magic of Pythia. Freedom, responsibility, commitment, absurdity, nothingness, bad faith, situation, choice, anguish, action, praxis… The formulas of the sage of Café de Flore shed light on our contemporary ideas: “
Act or gesture, such is the dilemma
”; "
We do not do what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are
"; or the most famous, which has become the vulgate of the Bac de Philosophie: “
Man is condemned to be free; condemned because he did not create himself, and moreover however free because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does
”.
Everywhere, often without our knowledge, we are immersed in Sartrean morality. His reflections have become injunctions and his projects directions; impossible, after him, to think of the action of men outside the categories of responsibility and commitment where the human animal is first of all nothingness on legs, obliged by its very freedom to answer for it, autonomous to the point of vertigo , cornered to the choice until the stun. Mythology of maturity, Sartrian existentialism makes everyone an adult from childhood and introduces
seriousness
into lives: there is no longer any question of hiding behind one's little finger while avoiding life - Sartre urges us to assume it. to the full and to heroically endorse the Form we choose for ourselves. Our modernity has learned the lesson:"
In the harsh times we are living through, there is no thought or art that does not call you out loud: let's see, don't dodge, don't elude, accept the decisive game, assume your responsibility;
above all do not joke, do not run away, do not slip away
[1]! "
(Witold Gombrowicz).
The postulate is erroneous, according to which man should be defined, that is to say unshakeable in his concepts, categorical in his declarations, clear in his ideologies, keen in his tastes, responsible in his words and in his actions, precise and crystallized in its way of being.
Witold Gombrowicz
Let's listen to television, radio waves, advertising slogans, social networks: everywhere, injunctions are raining down: be (eco) responsible and pro-active, fight against discrimination, stop smoking, vote, stay positive, be indignant with others outraged… Being a citizen means first of all knowing what to expect, taking a stand on a cause; engage, join speeches, parties, memberships; it is to believe
, with a
sure soul, in convictions; in a word, it is to behave like an
adult.
The ethics of maturity even penetrates the world of children (so often enlisted from an early age in generational causes).
And yet. "
The postulate is erroneous, according to which man should be defined, that is to say unshakeable in his concepts, categorical in his statements, clear in his ideologies, keen in his tastes, responsible in his words and in his actions , precise and crystallized in its way of being. Take a closer look at the chimerical nature of this postulate. Our element is eternal immaturity
[2] ”. Gombrowicz's fictional work responds to that, philosophical, of Sartre, for whom to engage is first of all to conquer authenticity. Gombrowicz opposes Sartre with this ironic observation:
“
Every morning, I saw one of my 'colleagues' appropriate a faith, a belief, an attitude either ideological or aesthetic, and that in the fallacious hope of finally becoming a real writer ... And all this ultimately degenerated into a series of grimaces, a real pyramid of boasting (…). Because after all - we are someone or we are not, but we would never know how to manufacture ourselves by artifice. However, in Independent Poland, making an existence by artifice replaced more and more for people a real existence: all these intellectuals, these artists strove to be someone with the secret ulterior motive of succeeding in being (…) All of them were feverishly looking for a Shape so as not to melt like sugar
[3]… ”
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Thus, where Sartre brandishes commitment to escape the facticity of social roles, Gombrowicz conversely notes the
artificial
nature
of commitment, due to a fundamental element but overlooked: immaturity. Eternally childish, definitely irresponsible, the individual of Gombrowicz stares at the existentialist and writes: “What a hoot! So many postures! How many doubts have you had to throw overboard to
convince
yourself
of your side? ” The discourse of commitment requires, in order to adopt it, to learn to ape the spirit of seriousness: an image factory only to know what to expect ...
The Sartrean speech, in electoral moments, can be recognized by the injunctions to vote. He invites the citizen to raise his political conscience to the height of the event. History on the move would tend to prove him right: the Arab Spring for example, so promising of freedoms, got bogged down in the political immaturity of peoples, unfortunately still incapable of the collective discipline necessary for democratic exercise. Let us not forget that, in his electoral laws, Maurice Duverger recalled the requirement of political maturity of citizens. In France, the Sartrean injunction to engage, for its part, comes up against regular disaffection, as growing as it is incomprehensible (remove the voting rights of abstainers and you will see the outcry). In reality,this diffuse abstention strangely resembles the omnipotence of a spoiled child, the pleasure of ignoring a fundamental right out of pure temperamental whim. So here we are in the heart of the Gombrowiczian observation: immaturity is the natural state of man with, as a corollary, his structural irresponsibility.
So there is no need to get excited for too long.
Literature, by its diversity, offers us beautiful models of analysis and in particular this possible childishness which bones the progressive ideal of ourselves.
Let us note in passing that it is rather reassuring that some have clearly identified it because we then feel less alone in our intuitions.
The presidential election will then be able to really show what it has become for many: a funny thing, one more opportunity to curl up a good blow, a large festive sandbox because finally, we also know it, the freedoms, the fundamental rights and dictatorships are just as much hilarious fictions ...
[1] Witold Gombrowicz,
Journal.
Volume I, 1953-1958
, Gallimard, coll.
“Folio”, 1995, pp.
396-397.
[2] Witold Gombrowicz,
Testament.
Interview with Dominique de Roux
, Belfond, 1990, p.
29.
[3] Witold Gombrowicz,
Journal, Tome I, 1953-1958
,
op.
cit.
, pp.
358-359.
