In the Presence of Michel Houellebecq in the Presence of Schopenhauer

Front cover of the Polity Press edition (2020)

designed by Adam Renvoize

I.

The fact that Michel Houellebecq loves Schopenhauer and that the latter has had a profound and enduring influence on the former's own work reinforces my view that French literature and theory is almost wholly dependent upon a reading (and often radical interpretation) of German philosophy.

That's not a criticism, or an attempt to denigrate the suppleness and courtly charm of French writing, just an observable fact. Certainly, as Michel Onfray has demonstrated, the whole of Houellebecq's oeuvre can be understood in terms first set out in Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung two centuries ago, a text described by Houellebecq as "the most important book in the world" [2].

As Agathe Novak-Lechevalier notes:

"In both cases, suffering is taken for granted, and there is the same pessimism, the same conception of style, and even the same central  emphasis on compassion as the general basis for ethics; we also find the same salvific character of aesthetic contemplation, and the same impossibility of 'being at home' in the world." [xii]

Although I've never been quite as passionate about Schopenhauer as Houellebecq, I accept that "even if you ultimately find yourself in disagreement with him, you cannot fail to be deeply grateful to him" [4-5].

But then, as a Nietzschean, I would say that; for although Nietzsche stages a decisive break from Schopenhauer, it remains, nevertheless a break from Schopenhauer and not from Hegel or Schelling, for example. Schopenhauer, as Nick Land says, provides Nietzsche - and those who come after him, including Freud - with a philosophical tap-root.

It's surprising, therefore, and a little disappointing, to find Houellebecq confessing his hostility for Nietzsche: "I found his philosophy immoral and repulsive, but his intellectual power impressed me. I would have liked to destroy Nietzscheanism, to tear it down to its very foundations, but I did not know how to do so; intellectually, I was floored." [2]

Eventually, Houellebecq finds someone to take him beyond both his nemesis Nietzsche and his hero Schopenhauer - Auguste Comte; "gradually, with a kind of disappointed enthusiasm, I became a positivist" [3-4]. Which is, perhaps, something that happens to us all when we leave childhood behind, and wake up ...

II.

Having said that, Houellebecq admits that he rarely reads Comte; and never with that simple, immediate pleasure he gets from Schopenhauer. He also attempts to demonstrate, via a selection of favourite passages, "why Schopenhauer's intellectual attitude remains [...] a model for any future philosopher" [4].

Of course, Schopenhauer has long been a favourite amongst artists and writers (a fact which has often undermined his status amongst philosophers). For Schopenhauer dares to speak about those things many philosophers think either unknowable or unworthy of serious reflection; such as love, for example.

What's more, he does so - as Houellebecq reminds us - from an aesthetic perspective, thereby entering the field of "novelists, musicians and sculptors" [12]. Schopenhauer knows how to look at things attentively, allowing his entire consciousness be filled with 'the peaceful contemplation of a directly present natural object' - which is in itself something of an art (and the origin of all art, according to Houellebecq).

The artist, in other words, isn't simply one who makes things; he's one who loses himself in things. In other words, contemplation is the key and the artist "is always someone who might just as well do nothing but immerse himself contentedly in the world and in the vague daydream associated with it" [16].

The essential difference, argues Houellebecq, between the poet and the non-poet, is that the former "alone among grown-up men, retains a faculty of pure perception which is usually only met in childhood, madness, or in the subject matter of dreams" [17]. This form of intuition, born of contemplation that is free from all conscious thought or desire, is central to Schopenhauer's philosophy and is "as far removed from classicism as from romanticism" [24].

That may or may not be true, but the question is how far does Houellebecq buy into this neo-Buddhist bullshit? One might have assumed his later reading of Comte would have alerted him to the constant danger of falling back into metaphysics (including such an artisten metaphysik as Schopenhauer's, ever reliant upon metaphors borrowed from the world of theatre).

Perhaps if Houellebecq had (re-)examined Nietzsche's break with Schopenhauer (and, indeed, Nietzsche's rejection of his own early work, still written under the spell of the latter and of Wagner), he'd have produced a more interesting study than the one given us in this abandoned commentary - conceived primarily as a homage - from 2005, which remained unpublished until 2017 and probably would never have seen the light of day were it not written by (arguably) France's greatest living novelist.   

Ultimately, as Novak-Lechevalier rightly says, the book is valuable not for what it tells us about Schopenhauer, but for what it tells us about Houellebecq and his concerns:

"Little by little, the analysis emancipates itself from the letter of the [Schopenhauerian] text, and what we find is the outline of an investigation into the problems posed by splatter films and the representation of pornography in art, a criticism of the philosophies of the absurd, and, a little further on, a reflection on the emergence of urban poetry, the transformations of twentieth-century art, and the 'tragedy of banality' which 'remains to be written'." [xiii]

Thus, in this way, the book is an intensely personal exercise that reveals a number of distinctly Houellebecquian obsessions.


See: Michel Houellebecq, In the Presence of Schopenhauer, Preface by Agathe Novak-Lechevalier, trans. Andrew Brown, (Polity Press, 2020). All page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.