To affirm a theory and to live the opposite—is it a contradiction, a lie, madness, freedom?
Rousseau wrote a treatise on education, while abandoning his own five children. Kierkegaard composed religious texts while living as a libertine, Beauvoir founded the philosophy of feminism while enjoying a servile relationship with her American lover. Foucault exalted the courage of truth while orchestrating keeping his Aids a secret. Deleuze hated travelling, while becoming the philosopher of nomadism.
Who are we when we think? Several people, no doubt, as shown by the thinkers, who invented multiple personalities through their theories. Instead of denouncing their errors or their hypocrisy, François Noudelmann studies the most complex of lies—the one towards oneself, through the anxieties, the flights and the metamorphoses of these philosophers with a double persona.
“A magnificent book, and a brilliant analysis of the distortions between proclaimed ideas and the lives lived.”
Les Inrocks
François Noudelmann teaches at New York University, where he directs the Maison française. He has written numerous essays translated into a dozen languages, including Le toucher des philosophes : Sartre, Nietzsche et Barthes au piano (Gallimard, 2008) and Penser avec les oreilles (Max Milo, 2019).
