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The left-bank literary clique led by Sartre…adopted ennui as a way of life as well as a philosophy

Extrait:

Yet miserabilism seems to have a greater hold on the French mind today.

I doubt, therefore I am

One reason could be the French appetite for brutal self-criticism. From Descartes onwards, doubt is the first philosophical reflex. “The rationalist tradition makes us sceptical; we exist through criticism,” argues Monique Canto-Sperber, a philosopher and director of Paris Sciences et Lettres, an elite university. “We treat those too full of hope as naive.” In “Candide, or The Optimist”, published in 1759, Voltaire mocks the folly of looking on the bright side in the face of unimaginable horrors. “Optimism”, says a disabused Candide in the novel, “is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.” When a French magazine recently tried to decode today’s national pessimism, it concluded: “It’s Voltaire’s fault”. “We find it more chic and more spiritual to doubt everything.”

Up to a point, this is an affectation of the elite. “It is in a certain Parisian milieu that there are intellectuals who are grumpy by trade,” argues Jack Lang, the Socialist former culture minister: “There is a gap with the rest of French society.” Yet France cherishes public intellectuals, so their influence spreads wide. It is a talking, thinking culture. Its films value dialogue over plot; its talk-shows are interminable. The French, wrote a helpful official guide for British servicemen heading to France for the 1944 liberation offensive, “enjoy an intellectual argument more than we do. You will often think that two Frenchmen are having a violent quarrel when they are simply arguing some abstract point.”

The country treats its philosophers like national treasures, even celebrities, splashing photographs of them across the pages of glossy magazines. And it ensures that the canon of French thought is fed to the whole country. All pupils taking the school-leaving baccalauréat exam must study philosophy, and teenagers are examined on such cheery essay questions as “Is man condemned to self-delusion?” or “Do we have an obligation to seek truth?”. So if French intellectuals are predominantly critical pessimists, miserabilism may in part be the consequence of holding them in such esteem. Were Americans to pay more attention to the writings of Noam Chomsky and Jared Diamond, perhaps they would be gloomy too.

Les réactions du Figaro:

Les Français déprimés par leur littérature

Si les Français ont le cafard, c’est la faute à Voltaire. S’ils sont moroses, c’est la faute à Rousseau. De l’autre côté de la Manche et de l’Atlantique, les Français sont catalogués comme des personnes portant sur leurs épaules toute la misère du monde. Plusieurs articles de la presse anglo-saxonne se sont déjà inquiétés de l’état moral des Frenchies . Mais cette fois, The Economist pense avoir décelé un élément d’explication à ce spleen généralisé, dans un article titré «Bleak chic», littéralement le chic maussade.