Michel Onfray on Home Household Management

Even when I'm not really listening to Michel Onfray's rapid fire lectures, when I'm daydreaming or looking at the scenery, I always pick up on the etymologies that pepper them. Aug. 15 was a question/answer session and when one of the students asked about Adam Smeess and the influence of the invisible hand, Onfray entered into somewhat of a diatribe against the notion that the free market would lead to general wealth. He pointed out that the word "economy" comes from the Greek word meaning "household management." So I learned, at least, that my "home economics" class in 7th grade was based on a redundancy, at least in terms of etymology.

Conférences de Michel Onfray for iTunes

Pour la littérature - NRF

Pour la litterature has had a series of shows about the NRF (Nouvelle Revue Française). I've been listening to Philippe Sollers and Angie David chat about the Revue in the 50s when it reappeared after a hiatus that began with the war and continued afterwards because it was proscribed for it's collaboarationisme.

Jean d'Ormesson considers the NRF to be a prominent literary figure of the 20th century and accordingly devotes a chapter to it in his Une Autre histoire de la litterature français (every other chapter is devoted to actual writers).

As usual, I don't hang on every word as I listen to these podcasts, but I especially like to hear Sollers talk. He recounts the involvement of Dominique Aury, the author of l'Histoire d'O. She wrote the book for her lover, Paul Paulhan, who was then the director of the NRF (and also 30 years her senior). Sollers recalls afternoons in the 90s at the comités des lectures at Gallimard where she would read her carefully taken notes and then slip into a peaceful slumber as the day gave way to crépuscule.

Pour la littérature on iTunes
Philippe Sollers - l'Infini
Angie David - Dominique Aury

Michel Onfray

This summer, Michel Onfray, the popular philosopher who founded the Université Populaire, has a series of lectures available on France Culture. As the site says, "he invites you to delve into the thought of radical existential philosophers and the formation of modern individualism with Emerson, Thoreau, Stirner and Schopenhauer." I listened to all of the lectures on Thoreau and they are all worth it. Start with the podcast of August 1 where he takes questions from his audience. The first student asks him to explain Hegel, which takes about 20 minutes, then someone asked if the idea of manifest destiny couldn't be blamed, in a way, on Thoreau. The answer, 30 minutes long, is no.
Onfray for iTunes.