Hi Michel, I am thinking of making some new
puppets. We already have Deleuze. Then there
is Marx and we have Salvador Dalí. Anybody
else whom you would like to meet? Perhaps
somebody more personal, somebody who was important
for your career?
Well, it would be easier to say whom I
would not prefer to meet again... But, seriously,
who was important for my academic life? Hhm,
perhaps Georges Canguilhem…
Ok, but he is not a particularly prominent
figure… Nobody knows him. And even those
who do know him, often fail to pronounce his
name.
Come on, it’s not that hard: Can-gui-lhem.
Sounds like an Asian name to me, like Gen-ghis
Khan or Mao Ze-dong…
Another one of your stupid jokes. If you
continue like this, I get very upset. Canguilhem
was one of the most important, if not the
most important philosopher in postwar France.
You probably recall what I say in my preface
to the English translation of The Normal and
the Pathological: „Take away Canguilhem
and you will no longer understand much about
Althusser, Althusserism and a whole series
of discussions which have taken place among
French Marxists; you will no longer grasp
what is specific to sociologists such as Bourdieu,
Castel, Passeron […]; you will miss an entire
aspect of the theoretical work done by psychoanalysts,
particularly by the followers of Lacan.“
Sounds impressive, indeed. But it’s hard
to spell out Canguilhem’s role in positive
terms, isn’t it? And outside of France,
he seems to be a largely unknown author, completely
forgotten and unread. So, when did you meet
him first?
Must have been in 1950 or 1951, in the
context of my state exams in philosophy. In
these highly centralized exercises, you could
not avoid him. For decades Canguilhem was
head of the committee, and as everybody knew,
he could be very harsh. We called him “le
Cang” and also “King Cang.” I only got
to know him better, when I had finished my
doctoral thesis.
Would you say that Canguilhem was your
teacher?
Well, I did not take any courses with him.
It was only in 1955 that Canguilhem got a
position at the Sorbonne. At that point, I
wasn’t a student any more. Some years later,
one of my former philosophy professors, Jean
Hyppolite, had to realize that my doctoral
thesis dealt with the history of psychiatry.
Hyppolite declared himself incompetent in
this matter and sent me on to Canguilhem.
That must have been in 1960 or so.
Why did he send you away?
Well, Hyppolite himself was a pure philosopher,
whereas Canguilhem was not only trained in
philosophy but also in medicine. At some point,
he had even worked in the psychiatric context,
in Saint-Alban in 1944. Hyppolite knew about
all of this, so he put us in touch.
I always thought that Canguilhem did history
of science, hence your interest in his work.
That was an additional reason. In 1955,
when he came to the Sorbonne, Canguilhem succeeded
Gaston Bachelard as director of the Institute
for the History of Science and Technology.
For me, others things were decisive, however.
On the one hand, there was Canguilhem’s
ability and willingness to resist. He had
been a militant member of the Résistance.
He literally risked his life when fighting
the Nazis. Some of his colleagues with a similar
temper were actually killed, for example Jean
Cavaillès. This, by the way, was his reason
for spending some time at the psychiatric
hospital in Saint Alban. Together with a group
of injured comrades he was hiding from the
Germans. Ever since then, Canguilhem had a
very special energy, a way of being convinced
and intensively engaged, a vital force that
was a crucial inspiration to me…
I guess we already talked about this critical
vitalism.
Right. And then, on the other hand, we
had a shared interest in a topic that was
much debated in the 1950s, the question of
psychology. Canguilhem had done one of his
articles packed with ideas and arguments.
The title was “What is psychology?,” and
in it you can read things like this: “In
a lot of works of psychology, [...] there
is a mix of philosophy without rigor, ethics
without exigency, and medicine without control.
Such works are a philosophy without rigor,
because psychology is eclectic in the pretext
of objectivity.“
Pretty tough...
Yeah, but right on target. These sentences
reflect the situation that, back then, we
had at the French universities. Canguilhem
did not accept that psychology would push
aside philosophy, perhaps even replacing it.
Programs in psychology were relatively new
in the 1950s, and he remained quite skeptical
about them.
But you also studied psychology, didn’t
you?
True, but only for a year or so, after
my degree in philosophy. It took me a while
to understand how psychologists treat human
beings once they found out that some of these
beings do not meet the average expectations
or cannot fulfill the given norms of a society.
Canguilhem helped me a lot in getting this
straight.
By highlighting the autonomy of the subject,
or more precisely its normativity, that is
the ability of the organic individual to determine
him- or herself the norms according to which
he or she wants to live…
Voilà. In that sense, it would be very
interesting to have a Canguilhem puppet. I
am sure he would have to say some interesting
things about the life of puppets.
Depending on his resistance against the
puppeteer. So let me see what I can do.
Bye, bye, Michel.
Bye, bye.
