I am thinking of the little book entitled Vie et mort de Jean Cavaillès,2 precisely because it was not written in a scholarly register and attempts, but with a harsh simplicity, to pay homage to a murdered philosopher–resistance fighter, and because it can communicate to those of a different age something of the lost secret of the masters.
This little book brings together three texts that belong to a genre whose obsolescence will lead astray only those who consent in advance to being destroyed by the barbarism of our times: the official ceremony in honour of a great man who has died.
Mao Zedong did not go in for modern ironies and held that ‘When anyone in our ranks who has done some useful work dies, be he soldier or cook, we should have a funeral ceremony and a memorial meeting in his honour.’3
We have here the inauguration of the Amphithéâtre Jean-Cavaillès in Strasbourg (1967), a commemoration on Radiodiffusion-télévision française (1969) and a commemoration at the Sorbonne (1974). In them, Canguilhem sums up the life of Jean Cavaillès: philosopher and mathematician, teacher of logic, cofounder of the ‘Libération-Sud’ liberation movement, founder of the ‘Cohors’ military action network, arrested in 1942, escaped, arrested again in 1943, tortured and shot. Found in a common grave in a corner of the citadel in Arras, and immediately baptized ‘Unknown Man 5’.4
But what Canguilhem is trying to reconstruct goes beyond the obvious naming of a hero (‘A philosopher-mathematician carrying explosives, lucid and rash, resolute but without any optimism. If that is not a hero, what is a hero?’). Faithful, basically, to his methodology of seeking coherence, Canguilhem is trying to decipher the link between the philosophy of Cavaillès, his commitment, and his death.
It is true that it appears to be an enigma, as Cavaillès had nothing to do with the political theory of committed existentialism; Cavaillès worked on pure mathematics. What is more, he thought that the philosophy of mathematics must rid itself of all reference to a constituent mathematical subject, and should examine the internal necessity of mathematical notions. The final sentence in his essay ‘Sur la logique et la théorie de la science’ (written when he was first imprisoned in the camp at St-Paul d’Eygaux on the orders of the Pétainist State), which has become famous, argues that the philosophy of consciousness must be replaced by the dialectic of concepts. To that extent, Cavaillès anticipated by twenty years what the philosophers of the 1960s were trying to do.
And it is precisely in that demand for rigour, in this educated cult of necessity, that Canguilhem sees the unity between Cavaillès’s commitment and his practice as a logician. Because, having learned from Spinoza, Cavaillès wanted to de-subjectify knowledge and because he also regarded resistance as an unavoidable necessity that no reference to the Ego could circumvent. In 1943, he therefore declared: ‘I am a follower of Spinoza, and I think that we can see necessity everywhere. The logical deductions of mathematicians are necessary. The stages of mathematical science are necessary. And the struggle we are waging is necessary’.
Unburdened of any reference to himself, Cavaillès therefore practised extreme forms of resistance, going so far as to enter the Kriegsmarine’s submarine base in Lorient dressed in a workman’s overalls, in the same way that one does science with an understated tenacity. Death is no more than one possible and neutral conclusion because, as Spinoza states, ‘A free man thinks of nothing less than death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death.’5
As Canguilhem says: ‘Cavaillès was a resistance fighter for reasons of logic.’ And that assertion is all the stronger in that we can assume that Canguilhem, who remains silent about this point, was, despite himself, as we know, also active in the Resistance for more or less the same reasons. As a result, he can legitimately mock those who, although they philosophize about the personality, ethics or consciousness, ‘talk so much about themselves only because only they can talk about their resistance, given that it was so discreet’.
We probably have a clear enough idea of why Georges Canguilhem is in a position to point out to us what philosophical authenticity is. It is not about politics, and our differences would probably have become obvious, but about what makes politics a universal possibility: being able to attach so little importance to oneself even though an undeniable historic cause demands our devotion. If we do not meet that demand, we sacrifice not only our dignity, but all ethics and, ultimately, all logic and therefore all thought.
The order of thought means nothing without the irrepressible demand that founds its subjective consistency. The lesson is not pointless at a time when Polish workers are themselves giving a name to their resistance and when war is once more stalking the world.
It is therefore right, and opportune, to pay tribute to Canguilhem as he pays tribute to Cavaillès, and, of course, to be thankful to both of them, given that, to cite Spinoza once more, ‘Only free men are very thankful to one another.’6
Sartre was involved in three great political struggles. It was thanks to them that he became the emblematic figure of the progressive intellectual everyone in the movement mourns today, whilst everyone on the side of reaction denounces him for what they call his mistakes, perversions or crimes. In the 1950s, and in the face of hysterical anti-communism and pro-Americanism, Sartre took the side of the Parti Communiste Français on the grounds that it was the sole expression of the working class. In the 1960s, Sartre supported the anti-imperialist struggle. He opposed the colonial war in Algeria. He discovered the popular power of the peoples of the Third World. In the early 1970s, or after May ’68, Sartre came to understand the reactionary character of the PCF. Together with the Maoists of the day, he took the side of the immigrants, the unskilled factory workers, the miners of the Nord département, and of anti-capitalist and anti-union struggles.
Thirty years of correctness in revolt, well-judged changes of position, and the anger appropriate to them. And all bathed in unchallenged international glory. In terms of our literary history, the only comparison is with Voltaire, the literary prince of the eighteenth century who defended Calas, Sirven and the chevalier de la Barre; Rousseau, the best-selling novelist whose Social Contract was burned; and Victor Hugo, a living historical monument who was almost the only artist and intellectual to protest against the coup d’état of 2 December, and then the repression of the Commune. They are our great national writers. They combine a vast readership, a glorious status, a refusal to bow before anyone, and a freedom of movement in revolt that has never been crushed. They are writers who never surrender.
If there is something enigmatic about Sartre, it is not, as they say today, the fact that he marched side by side with the Stalinists in the 1950s. Quite the contrary: for him, that was the moment of a real conversion. Whilst he did not really have any illusions about the PCF, Sartre realized at that time that the choices facing intellectuals were historically situated. Anyone who claimed to be able to remain neutral had simply chosen to side with the forces of social conservatism. When he said that ‘an anticommunist is a dog’, he was simply recognizing the necessity of political reality. In 1950, it was quite true that an anti-communist had simply abdicated his responsibility and chosen servitude and oppression, both for himself and for others. It was that historical, limited nature of choice that wrested Sartre away from the metaphysics of individual salvation.
We can pinpoint the moment of that conversion – and it was both pure and confused – in his play Lucifer and the Lord. Goetz wanted to be the hero of Good, and then he wanted to be the hero of Evil. But that formal ethics led to disaster in the Germany of the Peasants’ Revolt. Goetz therefore rejoined the peasant army, with one specific task in mind: winning the war. Like Stalin, he ruled that army, which was threatened by divisions amongst the peasants, through terror. These are Goetz’s final words:
I shall make them hate me, because I know no other way of loving them. I shall give them their orders, since I have no other way of being obeyed. I shall remain alone with this empty sky above me, since I have no other way of being among men. There is this war to fight, and I will fight it.1
From that