"What all philosophy is always the autobiography and confession (body) of a philosopher"

In this first volume of the "Counter-history of philosophy," Michel Onfray is to present the ideas of the philosophers of antiquity who were to varying degrees ostracized, dismissed voluntarily by the proponents of classical historiography . Unlike the institutional practice of teaching that still dominates today in the European University under the aegis of Plato, Onfray is to communicate to his readers the alternative of a thought integral with the material reality a thought which focus the principles of a true art of living in society as well as with oneself and their praxis, applicable in everyday life; a thought, in fact, entirely oriented towards the creation of self.

The author updates a gallery of philosophers who in their time inaugurated by this alternative mode of existence devoted to their own will, to the development and affirmation of their subjectivity in the field of self-knowledge. The names of Leucippus, Democritus, Hipparchus Anaxarchus, Antiphon, Aristippus, Diogenes, Philebus, Eudoxus Prodicus Epicurus Philodemos of Gadara, Lucretius and Diogenes of OEnanda open each constituent chapters of this test and demonstrate the kind of 'precious and special attention that Michel Onfray manifest towards these philosophers. His exegesis made attempts to highlight the uniqueness of their discourse and action and to show the effectiveness in our time, in everyday life and morals of individuals who inhabit "I move history a philosophy that does not constitute against the body, against his will or without him, but with him [...] That the body is "great reason" and that every philosophy is always the autobiography and confession (the body) of a philosopher like Nietzsche says in The gay science, this is a truth of yesterday promising for tomorrow ... "he writes in his preface.

The values ​​of hedonism, celebration of the body, remain at the core of the argument of this set. Citing Leucippus, Democritus or Lucretius, among other examples, Onfray gives to see their philosophy a worldview that is based on the atomic structure of all body and radical departure concepts of transcendence and Platonic ideal: "In the World Leucippus, he said, there are only atoms, vacuum and movements made by the first in the second. Nothing else [...] With this option one, simple, clear and sharp, Leucippe stows men in real immanent in its sole material dimension. "Adopting the party against one of the immanence of mythology or religious fable, Onfray corroborates the arguments of scientific discourse to promote an atomistic phenomenology of the universe and adds that she is the source of moral joy: "The physics of atoms and particles of materialism lead a hedonistic ethics, ie moral joy. "

As to Democritus, the author notes that his philosophy is based on the same design: "On the philosophical field, Democritus Leucippus resumes simply: the real is constituted of atoms arranged in a vacuum; Causality is immanent and material; there is no divine right; everything passes, eternity is a fiction - and then only change is eternal. "

As for Lucretia, he describes it as a conscious thinker demystify all discourse organized around the theme of an order of the universe governed by gods and calling the popular belief. Decrypting the Rerum Natura ... on how the historical and semiotic analysis, Michel Onfray is Lucretia in the tradition of Epicurus and a portrait, too, an atomistic philosopher supporting the thesis of " vitalist materialism ":" The thought of atomistic philosopher falls into this oxymoronic sensibility: a vitalist materialism [...] is unknown no longer, Lucretia reduces all reality to compounds together and moving atoms in a vacuum. "Finally, in a subset of it called" Taming death, "Michel Onfray develops the idea that the vital impulse promoted by Lucretius crystallizes around the position that it recommends adopting facing death and its related drive. Lucretius asserts that death, as unsurpassable reality requires its acceptance and reconsideration "Death is not a disaster, wrote Onfray, just an atomic operation which corresponds to the end of the arrangements which constituted a body and a soul. "But passionate love is a form of life force that should be avoided because it paradoxically led to the decline of the subject. Onfray is expressed in terms of "loving disorder" to describe it, having regard to education that gives Lucretius, and advocates "amorous friendship": "Far from the brutal violence of passionate love, conclut- it, love is born in the case of a timeshare in a building. Lesson Lucretius: love is not given, it is built. "