Homage to the philosopher Clément Rosset
It is with great regret that the Book Office learnt of the death of Clément Rosset. A French philosopher and professor at the University of Nice, Clément Rosset passed away on March 28th, in Paris. Prolific author of a diverse work, covering ethics as well as aesthetics, Schopenhauer or his own illness, Clément Rosset deeply marked the readers of his sharp essays but also philosophers as different as Gilles Deleuze, Vincent Descombes or Jacques Bouveresse. He had articulated his thoughts around two notions: the tragic and the double.
To celebrate his work, we are here suggesting a glimpse into his two books which are available in English.
The Real and Its Double, University of Chicago Press, translated by Chris Turner
As a maverick philosopher unafraid of challenging the ideas and methods of his colleagues, Clément Rosset’s work attempts to connect sometimes-lofty academic philosophy with the concerns of everyday life. For decades, he has worked to illuminate some of the most obscure metaphysical issues, often using popular film, theatre, novels, and comic books to illustrate his ideas, and as a result he has gained a reputation as both a happy sage and a singular mind.
In The Real and Its Double, expertly translated by Chris Turner, Rosset takes on the question of the Real and humanity’s natural ability to sidestep and bypass it. The key to this type of evasion, Rosset suggests, is a certain form of oracular thinking that lies buried in the origins of Western metaphysics and psychology. Here, Rosset eschews the prolix and paradoxical psychological theories of Derrida and Lacan in favor of an exceptional lucidity that speaks to his Nietzschean-tragic love of life.
If good philosophy can be defined as expressing complicated things in a simple way, then here, in one of his best-known works, Rosset has proven himself a master.
Joyful Cruelty, Free Association
Out of print for nearly 20 years, this is the first work by Clément Rosset to be translated into English. In it, Rosset lays the foundation for a new philosophy that refuses to turn away from the world and thereby accepts a confrontation with reality in all of its raw immediacy. Verging on a spiritual practice, Rosset's theory is at once cruel because it destroys all illusion and joyful because it allows one to see the world in its simplest and purest terms. A simple solution to thousands of years of unanswered philosophical questions.
Selected biography of his works:
La Philosophie tragique, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1960
L’Esthétique de Schopenhauer, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1969
Le Réel et Son Double : essai sur l’illusion, Paris, Gallimard, 1976
Le Réel : Traité de l’idiotie, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1977
La Force majeure, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1983
Le Principe de cruauté, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1988
En ce temps-là - Notes sur Louis Althusser, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1992
Route de nuit : épisodes cliniques, Paris, Gallimard, 1999
Le Monde perdu, Éditions Fata Morgana, 2009
Récit d’un noyé, Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 2012
Esquisse biographique. Entretiens avec Santiago Espinosa, Encre Marine, 2017
L'endroit du paradis. Trois études, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2018