French philosopher Roger-Pol Droit: “The West is choosing the death drive”
Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.
At a glance
Interview
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Context piece
- Roger-Pol Droit's new book, “Alice in the Land of Ideas,” follows a young protagonist through the history of philosophy and asks how people should live.
- Droit argues that modern society must recover and transform intellectual tools inherited from the past instead of treating history as obsolete.
- He describes the present as a form of nihilism in which personal feelings and “my truth” displace shared standards of truth and falsehood.
Why do people make war? Why do they destroy the Earth, animals and life? What kind of world should they build, and how should they live? These questions drive Roger-Pol Droit's new book, “Alice in the Land of Ideas,” a philosophical journey told through the eyes of a young protagonist.
They are philosophers, not only wise people. That is a myth that emerged in the 19th century.
The book travels through the history of Western philosophy, from the dialogues of Socrates to Freud. Alice moves between eras with the help of a fairy called Objection, meeting major Western thinkers as well as Buddha and Confucius. Droit, a French philosopher known for works of popular philosophy, says the figures in the book should be understood as philosophers, not simply wise people.
Droit argues that philosophy remains necessary even if it does not guarantee happiness. “To decipher our present and build a livable future, we must return to the large number of tools inherited from the past,” he says. The present can make the future seem frightening and indistinct, while the past is treated as useless or obsolete. Drawing on the image of a toolbox associated with Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, he says the point is not merely to study those tools, but to use them to understand the present differently.
To decipher our present and build a livable future, we must return to the large number of tools inherited from the past.
Socrates remains one of Droit's central reference points because of his acknowledgment that he does not know everything. Nietzsche also occupies a crucial place in his thinking. Droit says Nietzsche challenges the foundations of truth, morality and the value of values, while also recognizing the danger of nihilism.
What is exemplary about Socrates is ignorance. The only thing he says is that he has no doctrine, that he knows he knows nothing.
Asked whether people live in a nihilistic era, Droit answers yes, though in different forms. He describes an indifference to values and to the distinction between truth and falsehood, in which “my truth” replaces truth and emotions, fear or entertainment matter more than whether something is accurate.
Yes, in other forms. It is indifference to all values, to what is true and false, where my truth replaces truth.
About this summary
Originally published by Clarín in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.
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