Michel Onfray

Michel Onfray's lectures at the Popular University this year focused on Sigmund Freud. Twilight of an Idol (the title borrowed from Neitzsche) is his recent book on the topic. He sets outs to debunk the legend.

Schools have a habit of teaching things in the form of post cards. They show you a picture of Plato pointing to the sky and Aristotle pointing to the ground and that image becomes the lesson. Onfray presents ten such post cards that make up the lesson/legend of Freud and for which he will present "counter post cards" over the course of the future lectures:

1. Freud discovered the unconscious all alone.
2. Our (Freudian) slips point to the unconscious.
3. Dreams are interpretable; they are the royal road to the unconscious
4. Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis was the result of hard science, namely, 18 cases.
5. Freud discovered a technique for treating psychopathology.
6. Repression is at the base of the problem. Pointing this out will solve the problem.
7. The oedipal complex is universal.
8. Resistance to psychoanalysis is a sign of abnormality, repression, and oedipal complex.
9. Psychoanalysis is an emancipating discipline, it leads to sexual freedom. (Freud said himself that this was not at all desirable).
10. Freud represents rationalism, in the tradition of the enlightenment.

Onfray concludes his introduction by borrowing again from Neitzsche who said that there was only one Christian and he died on the cross. There was only one Freudian, says Onfray, and he died in his bed September 23, 1939 in London.

Conférences de Michel Onfray

Michel Onfray

Michel Onfray's rapid-fire lecture style is hypnotic and captivating for the way he repeats each concept in three phrases using three alternate adjectives. This year's series of lectures is part of the series entitled "The Genius of Hedonism" and is devoted to the development of the idea of the "superman". I always think of Nietzsche when I hear the term, and never really understand quite what is meant. Nietzsche is present in these lectures, and Onfray promises more to come, but for the first sessions he focuses on the precursors to Nietzsche's superman. Six are devoted to Jean Louis Guyau.

Conférences de Michel Onfray: la construction du surhomme

Download Conférences de Michel Onfray for iTunes

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

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.