Transcript
It's the multiplicity, yes. . . yes. It's the multiplicity, yes. . . yes.
Claire ParnetGood. . . We are going to pass on to "F"
Let's pass on to "F", yes. . .
Claire ParnetI chose the word "fidelity," fidelity in order to speak of friendship since you have been friends for thirty years with Jean-Pierre Bamberger, a day doesn't go by without you calling one another or seeing each other, it's like a couple. . . In any case, you are faithful in friendship, faithful to Félix Guattari, Jérôme Lindon. . . I can name others: with Elie [Sambar], Jean-Paul Manganaro, Pierre Chevalier- Your friends are very important for you-François Châtelet, Michel Foucault, who were your friends, you paid homage to them as your friends with a very great fidelity. So I would like to ask you if this impression is correct, that fidelity is necessarily linked to friendship for you, or the reverse?
There is no fidelity. . . Yes, it's because we are in "F". . .
Claire ParnetYes, and the "A" was already taken, so it gets rather arbitrary. . .
. . . but it's something other than fidelity, friendship [is]. . . In order to be the friend of someone, it's a matter of perception. It's the fact that. . . It's not that one has shared ideas, but what does it mean to have something in common with someone? I am speaking banalities here. . . You understand each other without needing to explain yourselves. It's not talking on the basis of ideas in common, but you have a language in common, or a pre-language in common. There are people, I cannot understand a thing they say, even if they say things quite simple, even if they say, "Pass me the salt," I still have to ask myself, "What are they saying?" On the other hand, there are others who may speak to me about an extremely abstract subject, and I may not agree with them, yet I understand everything, I understand everything they say. . . Ok, that means that I have something to say to them and they have something to say to me, and it is not at all the community of ideas which. . . In this, there is a mystery, this kind of indeterminate basis that results in. . .
Claire ParnetWhose turn is it? It's still your turn. . .
Ah, yes?. . . So it's true, there is a huge mystery there, the fact of having something to say to someone, getting along so well, without ideas in common, without being able to attribute that to. . .. I have a hypothesis, that each of us is apt to seize a certain type- no one is ever able to seize all the types at once- a certain type of charm, a perception of charm. And what do I call "charm"? It's not at all that I am trying to reduce friendship to homosexuality, not at all, but rather a gesture someone makes, a thought someone has, even before the thought is meaningful, or someone's gesture, someone's modesty. It's these kinds of charm that extend all the way into life, into its vital roots, and this is how someone becomes the friend of another. If you take a person's statements. . . There are statements that can be spoken only if the person saying them is vulgar, or disgusting, a kind of statement. . . We'd have to look for examples, and we don't have the time, but everyone can find plenty of examples. For each of us, there are statements, if you hear that statement, you say, "My God, what am I hearing? What is this garbage?" One mustn't think that one can make a statement like that at random and then take it back. There are statements that can't be. . . And inversely, for charm, there are insignificant statements that possess such a charm, that demonstrate such a delicacy, that you say immediately, "That person, he's mine," not in the sense of property, but he is of my own kind, and I hope to be able to be of his own kind. From there, friendship is born, friendship can be born. So, there is indeed a question of perception, perceiving something that suits you or that teaches you something, that opens you, that reveals something to you.
Claire ParnetAlways deciphering signs.
Yes, that's it, that's it. You describe it quite well. That's all there is, that's all there is, someone who emits signs, we receive them or we don't. All friendships are on this basis. To become sensitive to the signs emitted by a person, that's what I think explains. . . So in this way, one can spend hours with someone without saying a word, or preferably, saying things that are completely meaningless, saying things generally. . . It's comical, friendship is comic art.
Claire ParnetThere you are, you really like the comedy of couples, likes [Flaubert's] Bouvard et Pécuchet, or Beckett, Mercier et Camier . . .
Well, you know, with Jean-Pierre, I tell myself that we are the pale reproduction of Mercier and Camier, yes, yes, indeed. . . Jean-Pierre. . ., I am tired all the time, I have fragile health, Jean-Pierre is a hypochondriac, and our conversations really are like the kinds in Mercier et Camier. . . One says to the other, "how are you doing?" The other answers, "I'm pumped, but not to the max." Now that's such a charming reply that you have to love someone who says that. . . "How are you doing?" "Like a cork buffeted by the sea." So these are excellent phrases. With Félix, it's different. . . With Félix, we wouldn't be Mercier and Camier, we'd be, I don't know, Bouvard and Pécuchet, having thrown ourselves into all our work together, we threw ourselves into our encyclopedic endeavor, really. . . It's the kind, "Hey, we have the same hat brand, yes," and then the attempt, the encyclopedic attempt to construct a book that touches on all fields of knowledge... With someone else, we'd exchange dialogue like Laurel and Hardy. I don't mean that one has to imitate these grand couples, but that's what friendship is. Great friends are Bouvard and Pécuchet, they're Camier and Mercier, they're Laurel and Hardy, even if they had a fight and broke up, that makes no difference. Obviously, in the question of friendship, there is a kind of mystery. . . I mean that it's closely connected to philosophy. In "philosophy," as everyone has noted, there is the word "friend." I mean that the philosopher is not a wise man, first because that would make everyone laugh. He presents himself, literally, as a friend of wisdom, a friend. What the Greeks invented is not wisdom, but the very strange idea, "friend of wisdom." What could "friend of wisdom" possibly mean? And that's the problem of "what is philosophy?": what does "friend of wisdom" mean? It means that he is not wise, this friend of wisdom. So, obviously, there is an easy interpretation, that he tends toward wisdom, but that doesn't work. What is it that inscribes friendship into philosophy, and what kind of friendship? Do we have to. . .. Is it in relation to a friend? What did the Greeks think about this? What does it mean, the friend of. . . I say it again, if one interprets the friend to be someone who "tends toward. . .", this is someone who lays claim to wisdom without being a wise man. And what does "lay claim to wisdom" mean? It means there is another who lays claims since there is never only one claimant. If there is a suitor for a girl, it means there is more than one suitor, the girl has several suitors.
Claire ParnetAbove all, you're not promised, not promised to wisdom. . .
No, I'm not promised to wisdom, I'm a claimant to wisdom. So, there are a number of claimants to wisdom, and the Greeks, what did they invent? In my opinion, it's the invention of the Greeks: in their civilization, they invented the phenomenon of claimants, that is. . . What they invented is the idea that there is a rivalry of free men in all domains. Elsewhere that did not exist, the idea of the rivalry of free men, but in Greece, yes: eloquence. . . which is why they are so litigious, it's the rivalry of free men, free men, friends sue each other, fine. . . And the young boy or the woman has suitors, Penelope's suitors, ok. . . there are several suitors. It's the Greek phenomenon par excellence. . . For me, it's not the miracle, the Greek phenomenon is the rivalry of free men. That explains the friend: Philosophy lays claim, there is a rivalry toward something. Toward what? So one can interpret. . . If you consider the history of philosophy, there are a number of people for whom philosophy is linked to this mystery of friendship. . . There are some for whom it is linked to the mystery of "engagement"- which perhaps isn't too distant- Kierkegaard, the "broken engagement." There would be no philosophy without the broken engagement, his first love,
Claire ParnetRegine. . .
but as we said earlier, it's perhaps the rehearsal of the final one, so it's perhaps the final love. So in philosophy, perhaps the couple is important for philosophy. It's strange. I believe that we cannot know what philosophy is until we have dealt with these questions: about the fiancé( e), about the friend, about what the friend is. That's what is very interesting, it seems to me. . . Well, rather interesting . . .
Claire ParnetAnd Blanchot, in Friendship, had an idea. . .
Ah, well, Blanchot, that belongs. . . Blanchot and Mascolo are typical, they are the two contemporary writers who, in relation to philosophy or even in relation to thought, give the importance to friendship, but in a very special sense. They don't tell us, you have to have a friend in order to be a philosopher or to think. They maintain that friendship is a category or a condition of the exercise of thought. That's what is important. It's not the actual friend, it's that friendship as a category is a condition for thinking, hence the relationship Mascolo-Anthelme, for example, hence Blanchot's declarations about friendship. It matters little if. . . So, I had the idea, rather, that I adore distrusting the friend. . .
Claire ParnetIt's the litigious tendency of the Greeks. . .
For me the friend is. . . friendship is distrust. There is an hour. . .. There's a poem that I like very much by a German poet. . . "Between dog and wolf, the hour in which one must distrust even the friend." There is an hour in which one must even distrust the friend. I distrust my Jean-Pierre like the plague, I distrust my friends, but I distrust them with such gaiety that they do no harm because whatever they might do to me, I find it quite funny, all right, very. . . And there is such a conversation and such a community between friends, or with the fiancé( e), or with. . . But, if you will, one cannot believe that all of these are events of little private affairs. When one says "friendship," when one says "the lost fiancé( e)," etc., it is a question of knowing under what conditions thought can occur. For example, Proust judges that friendship is zero, not just for him personally, but for thought, that there is no thought in friendship. On the other hand, there is a thought of jealous love, as the condition of thought.
Claire ParnetI would like to ask the final little question about friends: it seems that with Foucault. . . Châtelet is yet another case, since you were friends with him at the Liberation and you did all your studies together. But with Foucault, you had a friendship that was not a friendship of a couple, was not a friendship like you have with Jean-Pierre or with Félix or with Elie [Sambar] or with Jérôme [Lindon] since we are talking again about others like in some film by Claude Sautet. But your friendship with Foucault was very profound, but still rather distant. . . It had some quality that was much more formal for someone looking from outside. So, what was this friendship?
Yes, Foucault was someone who was very mysterious for me. Perhaps we met each other too late in life, perhaps. . .. Foucault, for me, was a great regret for me, and since I had enormous respect for him, I did not try to. . . To say precisely how I perceived him, he was the rare case of a man who entered a room, and it changed, it changed the atmosphere. Foucault is not simply a person. . . Besides, none of us is simply a person. It was really as if an air, like another gust of air, as if he were a special gust of air, and things changed. . . There were no. . . It really was atmospheric, there was a kind of an emanation, there was a Foucault emanation like someone who has a glow. So, having said this, Foucault corresponds to what I mentioned earlier, that is, there was no need to speak with him, we only talked about things that makes us laugh. Having a friend is nearly saying, or rather not saying, what makes us laugh today, finally, what makes us laugh in all these catastrophes. But for me, Foucault is the memory of someone. . . Oh yes, when I talk about a person's charm, a person's gestures, Foucault's gestures were astonishing. . . They were a bit like gestures of metal, of dry wood, strange gestures, fascinating gestures, very beautiful. Well. . . that's enough. Finally, that people only have charm through their folie, that's what is difficult to understand. It's the side. . . The real charm of people is the side of someone that shows that they're a bit unhinged, the side of them where they don't really know too well where they are at. That doesn't mean they fall apart, on the contrary, these are people who don't fall apart. But if you can't grasp the small root or the small seed of madness in someone, you can't like them, you can't like them. It's really the side where they are completely somewhere-where we all are, we all are-a bit crazy. But if you don't grasp someone's small point of insanity, the point where-I am afraid or on the contrary, I am quite happy- the point of madness is the very source of their charm. . . Yes. . .