Hugo and Michelet as thinkers (Paris Nanterre)

Argument

Victor Hugo, the writer, Jules Michelet, the historian. But also Hugo and Michelet thinkers. Or, if you will, philosophers, at least intermittent philosophers, since, occasionally, they both happened to claim to be such and there is no valid reason to challenge them on this point. Philosophers, that is to say capable of articulating either explicitly (in argumentative texts with doctrinal value), or in a more diffuse way (in speeches, in stories, in poems, in scattered reflections… ) a number of general ideas deepened and coordinated with each other.

Diverse (since they range from metaphysics to morality via aesthetics, to use traditional categories), these general ideas do have a center of gravity, which is explained by partly parallel biographical trajectories. Thus, having participated, certainly according to a different chronology in the two cases and according to distinct modalities, in a certain progressive enthusiasm which culminated around 1848, the two authors were indeed then forced to take into consideration the dark sides of the life of societies. , divisions, regressions and stagnations, without however abandoning their confidence in a majestic unity of History. Without renouncing either a certain faith in the superiority of republican and democratic ideals, and also in the eminent role of France. A brightly colored and unmistakable “worldview” marked by what has come to be known as “humanitarian romanticism,” with its characteristic lyricism, resulted. And it is undoubtedly she who, because of her inspiring force, allowed them to become thinkers, each in their own way, even if everything does not come down to that.

However, this vision of the world, which moreover has never been unanimous, has grown weary since the end of the 19th century. Evoking his early education, Sartre, in Les Mots, as a belated heir to this lassitude, cruelly expresses the way in which ideas to which we adhered passionately could turn into sad platitudes: “The grown-ups told us the history of France: after the first Republic, this uncertain, there had been the second and then the third which was the right one: never two without three. Bourgeois optimism was then summed up in the program of the radicals: growing abundance of goods, suppression of pauperism by the multiplication of enlightenment and small property”. In the eyes of some, Hugo and Michelet probably ended up quite quickly being assimilated to this very dull “radicalism”. It is true that, politically, on the left, firmer proposals (social democracy, Marxism) imposed themselves; the institutionalization of the social sciences made the sentimental approaches illustrated by works such as Le Peuple or Les Miserables appear old-fashioned and impressionistic; the advent of science-history sent Michelet back to an outdated stage of “positive” knowledge of historical facts; new literary sensibilities, between naturalism and symbolism, attracted attention, which brought Hugo back to an artistic past in the process of collapse (or, worse, perhaps, of academic consecration). And all this, before the violence and crises of the 20th century came to discredit for good the progressivism of which Hugo, like Michelet, had made himself the sometimes exalted prophets.

However, it is appropriate today to reopen this file. Not only because important recent works have made it possible to better identify the richness of ideas, the multifaceted philosophical richness, of the two works in question, decidedly irreducible to a few simplistic dogmas or a few naive clichés, and because it is becoming tempting , therefore, to believe in the still little perceived fruitfulness of a possible confrontation. But also because some of the Hugolian and Micheletian themes retain or rediscover a striking topicality today. We will give just one example. For the two authors, nature and society are in continuity; and according to them, a just and democratic society would also be a society where benevolence towards animals, as well as concern for nature, would become cardinal values. These are intuitions that, ultimately, few authors of the following century, whether in the literary order, in the philosophical order or in the social sciences, were able to adopt and deploy. Paradoxical proximities with our questions and our problems are therefore perhaps to be discovered.

This meeting has several objectives.

The first step is to take stock of the historical aspects of the question. Between Michelet and Hugo, what degree of familiarity, what presence in the correspondence, what cross-readings, what more or less precise references to the work of the other, what ways of being perceived jointly by contemporaries (or by commentators later) who were able to identify affinities and differences between the two works?

It is then a question of detecting some of the themes around which a rapprochement between the historian and the writer can prove interesting. Hugo addressing Michelet was well aware of an obvious community of inspiration: “So we sometimes dip our pen in the same inkwell; let me brag about it. This inkwell which is common to us is the great inkwell of darkness where there is so much light; it’s the unknown, it’s the infinite, it’s the absolute” he wrote to the author of L’Insecte who had just sent him a copy of his new work with the dedication “To our great Victor Hugo. Of heart. J.Michelet”. Starting from there, we do not only wish to place the accent on very abstract categories (History, the People, the Revolution…) capable of being the subject of broad general considerations more or less similar in the two authors . We would also like to draw attention to more specific objects that Hugo and Michelet came across and that they staged in an original, surprising, stimulating way: for example, and pell-mell, the Woman, the Orient, the violence, education, the forgotten, the reprobates and the marginalized of History, Paris, the Middle Ages/Renaissance divide, the sea, the animal, etc.

Lastly, it can be a question of points of friction and essential divergences (for example on religion), insofar as they prove instructive, whether in the context of the debates of the 19th century or from the contemporary point of view.

Procedure

Thursday March 9, Paris Nanterre University, Max Weber building, room 2

2 pm Aurélien Aramini & Tristan Bonnier: Introductory intervention: The relationship between Hugo and Michelet through their correspondence.

14.50 Aurélien Aramini: The young Michelet, reader of Hugo.

15.40 Pause.

15.50 Stéphane Haber: Ultra-violence. Ferocity and cruelty in society and in history according to Hugo and Michelet.

16.40 Jordi Brahamcha-Marin: Hugo, Michelet and pity.

Friday March 10, Paris Nanterre University, Max Weber building, conference room

9.30 Julien Pasteur: The Republic and the dead. Hugo Michelet.

10. 20 Hélène Kuchman: “Extravaguez”: power and dangers of the dream in the thought of Hugo and Michelet.

11.10 Pause.

11.20 Gérard Bras: A holy and divine justice, founded on Him who alone founds: the question of the religion of the People in Michelet.

12.10 Lunch.

13.50 Elisabeth Plas: The invisible tiger or evil in nature according to Michelet and Hugo.

14.40 Franck Laurent: Thinking and representing the territory: Michelet, Hugo.

15.30 Pause.

15.40 Tristan Bonnier: The evils of England: Anglophobia and patriotism in Michelet and Hugo.