Michel Onfray

View on the history of Western philosophy and philosophical project

Onfray has published nine books under a project of history of philosophy called Counter-History of Philosophy. In each of these books Onfray deals with a particular historical period in Western philosophy. The series of books is composed of the titles I. Les Sagesses Antiques (2006) (on western antiquity), II. Le Christianisme hédoniste (2006) (on Christian hedonism from the Renaissance period), III. Les libertins baroques (2007) (on libertine thought from the Baroque era), IV. Les Ultras des Lumières (2007) (on radical enlightenment thought), V. L'Eudémonisme social (2008) (on radical utilitarian and eudaimonistic thought), VI. Les Radicalités existentielles (2009) (on 19th and 20th century radical existentialist thinkers) and VII. La construction du surhomme: Jean-Marie Guyau, Friedrich Nietzsche (on Guyau's and Nietzsche's philosophy in relation to the concept of the Übermensch). VIII. Les Freudiens hérétiques (2013). IX. Les Consciences réfractaires (2013).

In an interview, Onfray established his view on the history of philosophy:

There is in fact a multitude of ways to practice philosophy, but out of this multitude, the dominant historiography picks one tradition among others and makes it the truth of philosophy: that is to say the idealist, spiritualist lineage compatible with the Judeo-Christian world view. From that point on, anything that crosses this partial – in both senses of the word – view of things finds itself dismissed. This applies to nearly all non-Western philosophies, Oriental wisdom in particular, but also sensualist, empirical, materialist, nominalist, hedonistic currents and everything that can be put under the heading of "anti-Platonic philosophy". Philosophy that comes down from the heavens is the kind that – from Plato to Levinas by way of Kant and Christianity – needs a world behind the scenes to understand, explain and justify this world. The other line of force rises from the earth because it is satisfied with the given world, which is already so much.^[17]

"His mission is to rehabilitate materialist and sensualist thinking and use it to re-examine our relationship to the world. Approaching philosophy as a reflection of each individual's personal experience, Onfray inquires into the capabilities of the body and its senses and calls on us to celebrate them through music, painting, and fine cuisine."^[18]

Hedonism

Onfray defines hedonism "as an introspective attitude to life based on taking pleasure yourself and pleasuring others, without harming yourself or anyone else."^[19] "Onfray's philosophical project is to define an ethical hedonism, a joyous utilitarianism, and a generalized aesthetic of sensual materialism that explores how to use the brain's and the body's capacities to their fullest extent – while restoring philosophy to a useful role in art, politics, and everyday life and decisions."^[12]

Onfray's works "have explored the philosophical resonances and components of (and challenges to) science, painting, gastronomy, sex and sensuality, bioethics, wine, and writing. His most ambitious project is his projected six-volume Counter-History of Philosophy",^[12] three of which have been published. Onfray writes:

In opposition to the ascetic ideal advocated by the dominant school of thought, hedonism suggests identifying the highest good with your own pleasure and that of others; the one must never be indulged at the expense of sacrificing the other. Obtaining this balance – my pleasure at the same time as the pleasure of others – presumes that we approach the subject from different angles – political, ethical, aesthetic, erotic, bioethical, pedagogical, historiographical....^[17]

His philosophy aims for "micro-revolutions", or "revolutions of the individual and small groups of like-minded people who live by his hedonistic, libertarian values."^[20]

In La puissance d'exister: Manifeste hédoniste, Onfray claims that the political dimension of hedonism runs from Epicurus to John Stuart Mill to Jeremy Bentham and Claude Adrien Helvétius. Political hedonism aims to create the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.

In La Raison gourmande, he analyses the relation between philosophers and wine: Gaston Bachelard and Burgundy, Michel Serres and Château d'Yquem. He names also the "alcoholic philosophers": Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Gilles Deleuze, Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, in particular, to whom he dedicated his Traité d'athéologie (2005).^[21]

Religion

Onfray has been involved in promoting the work of Jean Meslier,^[12][22] an 18th-century French Catholic priest who was discovered, upon his death, to have written a book-length philosophical essay promoting atheism.^[22]

In Atheist Manifesto, Onfray states that among the "incalculable number of contradictions and improbabilities in the body of the text of the synoptic Gospels"^[23] two claims are made: crucifixion victims were not laid to rest in tombs, and in any case, Jews were not crucified in this period. The historian John Dickson, of Macquarie University, has said that Philo of Alexandria, who wrote about the time of Jesus, noted that the Romans sometimes handed the bodies of crucifixion victims over to family members for proper burial. The Roman Jewish historian Flavius Josephus even remarks: "Jews are so careful about funeral rites that even malefactors who have been sentenced to crucifixion are taken down and buried before sunset."^[24] Regarding the second claim, Dickson calls this a "clear historical blunder".^[25]

In Onfray's latest book, Décadence he argued for Christ myth theory, which is a hypothesis that Jesus was not a historical person. Onfray based this on the fact that, other than in the New Testament, Jesus is barely mentioned in accounts of the period.^[26]

In July 2021, Onfray criticised Pope Francis's apostolic letter Traditionis custodes by arguing that the Tridentine Mass embodies “the heritage of the genealogical time of our civilization".^[27][28]