The conversation with the French philosopher Frédéric Lenoir flows better on level ground.
It is not that this author, who has sold millions of copies of his books, avoids controversial topics or is opposed to confrontation;
He is simply connected to the video call from a car, in the company of some friends, and the connection deteriorates noticeably when they climb the side of a mountain on the Los Angeles highway.
“You just caught me in the middle of a road trip, and my friends have an unavoidable commitment.
“I promise that as soon as we can, we will stop on the shoulder,” he apologizes.
The shoulder took a while to arrive, exactly, until the last question.
Luckily, the expository clarity that Lenoir exhibits in his works endured in a conversation frozen at each change in height.
He has just published
Philosophy of Desire
(Ariel, 2024), an essay in which he addresses the importance of desire in human life, the need to regulate it in a world saturated with options and technology, and the contribution of social networks, society consumption and pornography in the decline of what the philosopher Henri Bergson called the “élan vital” (vital impulse in French).
Question:
In your latest book, you state: “A human being without any desire is a living dead.”
Why is desire so important in our lives?
Answer:
I believe, as Spinoza said, that desire is what constitutes our uniqueness as human beings.
It is the fundamental engine of our existence;
Without it, we would not have the desire to live, nor to get up in the morning.
To some extent, depression is an illness that can be defined as an absence of desire.
I am firmly against the ascetic approach that seeks to suppress it, since I believe that this would be equivalent to losing our humanity.
For me, the key lies in how to direct the impulse of desire in a constructive way.
Q:
You even relate desire to the ecological crisis.
Does the future of humanity involve learning to regulate our desires?
A:
Yes. The current alliance between technology and ecological liberalism allows most of us to respond to the incentives of the most primitive part of our brain, which makes us always want more.
This flight forward is catastrophic from an ecological point of view, because infinite growth is impossible in a finite world with limited resources.
Furthermore, it is a source of permanent dissatisfaction for those who are never satisfied with what they have.
Q:
How is it possible to discern authentic and beneficial desires from those that are instilled by consumer society, the family or the dominant religion?
A:
There we cannot escape what Socrates tells us: know yourself.
We must carry out introspection work to observe ourselves.
It is a task of critical observation of oneself, which can be carried out through psychoanalysis, personal introspection, or meditation.
With time and experience, one gets to know oneself.
This is what Jung calls the process of individuation.
Normally, it occurs between the ages of 35 and 50, as earlier one is caught up in the influence of society and family.
However, there comes a time, in the middle of life, when one wonders: Have I chosen my profession well?
Have I chosen my partner well?
Maybe I need to do something that makes me feel happier and more useful in society.
That is why many people seek therapy and reorient their lives at that age, because we look for what is best for us as individuals.
We should all limit our desires to be happier and improve our quality of life.
Q:
You practice fasting and, daily, you only allow yourself 20 minutes of information;
In addition, he is a declared defender of
mindfulness
.
Don't these practices contribute, as you have previously criticized, to “suppressing desire”?
A:
I am very Epicurean.
Being an epicurean does not mean seeking an abundance or quantity of desires, but rather prioritizing quality over quantity.
It is better to have a little high-quality food than a lot of low-quality food.
This ethic focuses on moderating our desires, not suppressing them completely: it is about limiting them to what is essential and valuable.
By practicing fasting, I seek to get my body used to limiting its desires and savoring any food even more.
By restricting the amount of information I consume daily, I seek to avoid the mental saturation and stress caused by an excess of information, which is usually mostly negative.
I would say that we should all limit our desires to be happier and improve our quality of life.
Q:
Was it easier to manage desire in the times of Epicurus or Aristotle than today?
A:
Yes and no.
On the one hand, the management of desire has been a topic studied throughout the history of philosophy.
In that sense, the core of the human being has not changed.
What has changed drastically is the social environment, which exacerbates the difficulties in regulating desire, because today we cannot but desire.
The possibility of doing everything complicates the lives of many Westerners, who are often indecisive, without knowing exactly what they want, or what is best for them.
A modern illness, well described in the book
The Fatigue of Being Yourself,
by Alain Ehrenberg, is the exhaustion resulting from trying to be authentic.
The search for authenticity is fine, but it can be exhausting, and many individuals feel tired because they have too many options to choose from.
When you have so many options, you try to do everything and, in the end, you don't do anything right.
Once again, we find ourselves more focused on quantity than quality.
Q:
In the book, you analyze how the desire of young people is manipulated, especially through social networks.
A:
The vast majority of teenagers are completely hooked on the networks.
It is a kind of slavery;
They constantly need to check notifications.
In fact, workers at important technology companies recognize that social networks are designed to manipulate the psychology of young people, feeding their need for recognition through “likes.”
The dilemma lies in how to regulate this, which is very complicated, since globally it is extremely difficult to regulate social networks.
Personally, I believe more in self-discipline.
On the one hand, parents should limit their children's use of the platforms to the extent possible;
However, the best thing we can do is offer teenagers something that motivates them more than social media.
Q:
Like what?
A:
The philosopher Baruch Spinoza explains that it is possible to overcome an addiction to a misguided desire that makes us unhappy, simply through the force of reason and will.
To achieve this, it is necessary to generate a more powerful positive affect than the one we wish to counteract, and thus redirect our desire towards something, be it a person, an activity or an object, that provides us with greater well-being.
I know the case of a young woman who was completely addicted to social networks.
Her parents tried to help her overcome this addiction and discovered that she was passionate about horses.
Now, horses have become her new passion and she has kicked her old addiction.
It is crucial to offer them real experiences that provide them with greater satisfaction than what they can get from platforms.
Q:
You also express concern about the sexual exhaustion of young people.
A:
Indeed, there is a problem of sexual desire in the young generations.
Several studies have shown that young people have less and less sexual drive, which is mainly attributed to the consumption of pornography.
Sex scares them.
Boys are concerned about the idea of performance associated with sexual activity.
Many young adults talk about their fear of not being good enough, of not providing enough pleasure to their partner, or of not getting it themselves.
Girls are worried about not enjoying themselves as expected and have a greater fear of violence.
For this reason, they prefer to opt for chastity rather than face the risk of having sexual relations or forced practices.
Porn creates fear, without a doubt.
People have become accustomed to the virtual world, since direct interactions are more confusing and complicated
Q:
And physical contact, too.
A:
People have become accustomed to the virtual world, as direct interactions are more confusing and complicated.
Young people are no longer sure what they want, they are afraid of establishing relationships and they fear others.
They decide that they can satisfy themselves better individually than in the company of another person.
All of these factors make direct physical relationships, not only sexual in nature, but also emotional and affective, intimidating for many people.
Q:
Some of these young people, especially men, have found refuge in Stoic doctrine.
A:
The success of Stoicism today, in my opinion, is due to several factors.
First of all, its accessibility.
There are a series of maxims, recipes and formulas that one can try to apply in their daily life.
The Stoics understood this dimension of practical philosophy that can help us live well through principles perfectly applicable today.
For example, Epictetus, in his
Manual of Life
, differentiates between what is under our control and what is not;
What depends on us is what we can change, while what we cannot, it is better to accept with serenity instead of getting frustrated, since this way we avoid suffering twice.
These teachings are key to a fuller life.
Q:
And the other reason?
A:
The other reason is that it teaches us to regulate our desires.
It teaches us to let go of ballast, to let go.
In a world where we constantly want things, where we crave everything but cannot have it all, we feel deeply dissatisfied and trapped in a frenzy of desire.
As Kant said, seeking happiness through desire is an irrational fantasy.
Stoicism teaches us that to be happy we must limit our desires and accept reality as it is.
Learn to say yes to life, let go of ballast and accept reality.
That work of accepting reality is good philosophy, and is at the heart of Stoicism.
Q:
Three years ago you publicly denounced the creation of the health pass and the decision to lock people in their homes.
A:
I am convinced that one of the best ways to live fully and feel truly alive is to accept death.
If our entire life is organized around the fear of dying, we run the risk of leading a very limited and petty life.
The years marked by the covid-19 pandemic have revealed this obsession with health in many people and in the political management of the crisis: nothing mattered more than saving the greatest number of lives possible, even at the expense of freedom individual and the psychological and emotional balance of everyone.
In the spring of 2020, I denounced this policy of elevating health as a supreme value.
The fear of death leads us to make individual and collective decisions that limit life, sterilize it and take away all its flavor.