The works of French philosopher Clément Rosset
Insights into the Frenchman's life from his friend and disciple, Santiago Espinosa
“I do not know where I come from, I do not know who I am, I do not know when I will die, I do not know where I am going, I wonder that I am so happy.” This quote from an obscure German cleric of the 15th century, Martinuws von Biberach, could be the viaticum for the entire work of French philosopher Clément Rosset. Drawing upon an evaluation as dark as his friend Emil Cioran, Rosset comes to an opposite conclusion: joy rings true only in the absolute recognition of the tragic nature of existence. As a philosopher-physician, he speaks only to the healthy, those able to withstand the ruthless cure that administers the truth without embellishment. Following in the footsteps of philosopher-artists like Lucretius, Montaigne, Pascal, Spinoza, Hume and Nietzsche – his main influence – he is a great stylist who devotes himself to short works, full of the most lofty references (Nicolas de Cues, Raymond Roussel, Marcel Proust…) to the most trivial (Tintin, poop, Camembert cheese…), and all with a joyful cadence and vitality.
Unlike philosophers of his era, this classical music buff went against the fashion of the day, albeit not by his own admission, an inventor of concepts. Too much a writer for philosophers and too much a philosopher for writers, he was just a man with a single idée fixe: the Real, a concept that he was very careful to define. However, he describes, with voracity, the incredible human ability to split this Real in half to better refuse it, deny it, flee from it, and often in a cruelly comic manner, to face it full on: “The Real is when we bang our head against the wall”, said Jacques Lacan.
An interview conducted by his friend and disciple Santiago Espinosa allows us to ascertain three major periods in his Oeuvre (1): After having seen a mason fall off a scaffold and die a violent death, Rosset got into philosophy with a book La Philosophie tragique (“The Tragic Philosophy”), published by Presses universitaires de France when he was 21. The crux of his thought, the use of references, are already present in his early work like the unruly L’Anti-nature (“Anti-nature”), but in a dense style. His beginnings as a professor at the University of Nice in 1967 revealed his most beautiful prose and best books, such as Le Réel et son double (1976) (“The Real and Its Double”), La Force majeure (1983) (“Force Majeure”) or even Le Principe de cruauté (1988) (published in English as Joyful Cruelty: Toward a Philosophy of the Real). In 1999, he retired from his post at university, following a severe depression which he writes about in Route de nuit (“Night Journey”). He then produced a succession of addenda to his thought on the real and the double, inadvisable as easy reading, except for the very efficient Loin de moi (2001) (“Far from Me”). If one wished to see the precision, density, and lightness with which the philosopher created his books, it would suffice to compare the latter luminous opuscule to its radio exegesis by Raphael Enthoven. Despite his best intentions, the educator presented it in a way that was more difficult, less pleasant, and notably longer than if he had simply read all 80 pages of the master’s finely wrought text.
This past March, Clément Rosset was found de-ceased in his home aged 78, an Americano on his desk and a piano piece by Chabrier on the turntable. He was not at all sick, except for osteoarthritis. “A successful death”, Montaigne would have called it, while Nietzsche, on the same to-pic, would have claimed, “That such a man wrote has truly augmented the joy of living on this earth.” What more could be said about Clément, in precise terms?
His last publications (only available in French):
ESQUISSE BIOGRAPHIQUE, ENTRETIENS AVEC SANTIAGO ESPINOSA published by Encre Marine
L’ENDROIT DU PARADIS published by Encre Marine
Good introductions to his work:
LE RÉEL ET SON DOUBLE (1976) a collection of essays, his key text on the Real and the double, also published in English as “The Real and its Double” The University of Chicago Press, 2012
LA FORCE MAJEURE (1983) published by éditions de minuit, a book about the joy of living and Nietzsche
L’ÉCOLE DU RÉEL (2008) published by éditions de minuit, a book that includes all his writing on the Real and the double
