Philosophie du surréalisme

The psychopathology of metaphysics: Depersonalization and the problem of reality

“…"No one would become a philosopher," he said in a 1974 note, "if he were not first a little crazy, I mean if he were not led by some feeling of unreality experienced in front of things, to ask himself questions that reasonable people do not ask themselves" (Alquié 1974(Alquié /2023. 38 Earlier, he made the point by invoking a general "nostalgia of Being" driving philosophers' reason (Alquié 1955). Like Schopenhauer and Maine de Biran before him, Alquié took the experience of perfect realness that derealization, as he claimed, presupposes to be affective and primarily introverted.…”

“…Even though he rejected the naive solution and endorsed the philosophers' solution, the historian of philosophy and Descartes scholar I mentioned in the Introduction, Ferdinand Alquié, can be regarded as having developed a full philosophical system that takes Janet's suggestion extremely seriously. Noticing two 1631 letters to Guez de Balzac in which Descartes seems to avow episodes of derealization, Alquié (1955, 27; 1956; 1974/2023, 329–33) argued that Descartes's rationalism was in fact secretly indebted to some very personal but metaphysically relevant experiential insights—“derealization” insights to the effect that (2*) might be wrong and (3*) true. Alquié later generalized this point, arguing that we were all separated from what is perfectly real (he calls that “Being”) and that any authentic philosophy is an endeavor to make explicit something like an experience of derealization toward the “objective world.” He argued, finally, that philosophers' experience of derealization or quasi‐derealization presupposes a prior but radically elusive experience of perfect realness (Alquié 1979).…”

“…It was a problem for Plato and Aristotle just as it is a problem for us. The French philosopher and historian of philosophy Ferdinand Alquié, who spent all his career working on this problem, came up early with a laconic formulation: “Metaphysics has always seemed to be, in one way or another, an endeavor of derealization” (Alquié 1955, 98). The problem of reality has also very recently been addressed, albeit indirectly, in the more specific context of debates about structuralism.…”