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PHILOSOPHES. Emmanuel BERL (1892-1976). Autograph manuscript; 4pages small in-4 on 4 leaves torn from a spiral notebook. On philosophers and anti-Semitism. "I was and remain convinced that the philosophers lost themselves and us from the moment they wanted to bring out the multiple from the One and the real from Identity. The truth is that we have to choose between God, who is one, and the world, which is multiple and diverse. [...] Kroner hoped to make me at least sensitive to Hegelian power and architecture. [...] He didn't persuade me. I felt that stones have an innocence that ideas do not. Anti-Semitism and war were already lurking around me. How can we oppose war if the state that wages it is always right? How can we oppose anti-Semitism if the distinction between what is and what is not is blurred to the point of obliteration? German metaphysics carries war with it, like a cloud carries lightning, and all the more so the more obscure and voluminous it is"... It's no coincidence that the great systems and wars of the last century have come from Germany: "Reason has been made unreasonable. By the same token, we've opened the door to fury. Emasculated of his common sense, man no longer finds any obstacle to any of his passions. From a Hegelian point of view, Auschwitz is nothing other than a dialectical moment. I certainly didn't foresee either Auschwitz or Hitler, but I already suspected Ludendorf and Verdun. [...] It's quite simple that, having subordinated truths to Life, we now subordinate living beings to it. Determinism makes everything respectable. When you make causality a religion, like the Buddhists, you no longer dare crush a slug, because you see in it the immensity of the causes that created it. As soon as one substitutes for determinism - Evolution, or Dialectics - the vital impulse, Movement and the sense of History, there is no longer any reason to respect anything: what one crushes being never more than a bark, a waste product of the mysterious Force that one does not reach, by crushing"... Berl ends with a pirouette: "in Fribourg as in Paris, my comrades concluded that I understood nothing of Philosophy. It's probably true"... Attached is an interesting L.A.S. from Maurice de GANDILLAC, December 30, 1966 (2p. in-8): "We are not apparently on the way back to Being understood in the authentic sense that Heidegger seeks to return through the poets. Nothing is more buffoonish than the Lacan-Sartre-Althuser-Foucault quarrel, and the mutual accusations of serving as an alibi for the bourgeoisie (which has become as mythical as the people since the "On" reigns supreme)"... Plus a L.A.S. from Brice PARAIN concerning an edition of Wittgenstein translated by P. Klossowski, April 4, 1955.
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PHILOSOPHES. Emmanuel BERL (1892-1976). Autograph manuscript; 4pages small in-4 on 4 leaves torn from a spiral notebook. On philosophers and anti-Semitism. "I was and remain convinced that the philosophers lost themselves and us from the moment they wanted to bring out the multiple from the One and the real from Identity. The truth is that we have to choose between God, who is one, and the world, which is multiple and diverse. [...] Kroner hoped to make me at least sensitive to Hegelian power and architecture. [...] He didn't persuade me. I felt that stones have an innocence that ideas do not. Anti-Semitism and war were already lurking around me. How can we oppose war if the state that wages it is always right? How can we oppose anti-Semitism if the distinction between what is and what is not is blurred to the point of obliteration? German metaphysics carries war with it, like a cloud carries lightning, and all the more so the more obscure and voluminous it is"... It's no coincidence that the great systems and wars of the last century have come from Germany: "Reason has been made unreasonable. By the same token, we've opened the door to fury. Emasculated of his common sense, man no longer finds any obstacle to any of his passions. From a Hegelian point of view, Auschwitz is nothing other than a dialectical moment. I certainly didn't foresee either Auschwitz or Hitler, but I already suspected Ludendorf and Verdun. [...] It's quite simple that, having subordinated truths to Life, we now subordinate living beings to it. Determinism makes everything respectable. When you make causality a religion, like the Buddhists, you no longer dare crush a slug, because you see in it the immensity of the causes that created it. As soon as one substitutes for determinism - Evolution, or Dialectics - the vital impulse, Movement and the sense of History, there is no longer any reason to respect anything: what one crushes being never more than a bark, a waste product of the mysterious Force that one does not reach, by crushing"... Berl ends with a pirouette: "in Fribourg as in Paris, my comrades concluded that I understood nothing of Philosophy. It's probably true"... Attached is an interesting L.A.S. from Maurice de GANDILLAC, December 30, 1966 (2p. in-8): "We are not apparently on the way back to Being understood in the authentic sense that Heidegger seeks to return through the poets. Nothing is more buffoonish than the Lacan-Sartre-Althuser-Foucault quarrel, and the mutual accusations of serving as an alibi for the bourgeoisie (which has become as mythical as the people since the "On" reigns supreme)"... Plus a L.A.S. from Brice PARAIN concerning an edition of Wittgenstein translated by P. Klossowski, April 4, 1955.
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