“How did a philosopher emerge from the scrub of Corrèze?” It is with this question that Marcel Conche, born in Altillac in 1922, comes back to the Corrèze of his birth “full of age and reason,” in the poet’s words. He hadn’t intended to come back to live here. Chance decided otherwise (just as it was chance that saw him become a philosopher when nothing marked him out as one): in 2009 he stacked the boot of his Renault Clio with indispensible books (Montaigne and his beloved Greeks: Parmenides, Heraclitus, Epicurus…) and moved back into Maisonneuve, his childhood home.
Returning to Maisonneuve felt like coming full circle. It didn’t matter that the house had completely changef since he was a child. He made Epicurus’s pared down philosophy his own: the path to happiness comes through the realisation of our natural and necessary desires (food, shelter, thought) and scorn for empty desires (money, glory, greed, carnal passion…).
Where did Marcel Conche hear his philosophical calling? Was it in the woods of Altillac where he liked to get to know Dionysus? Or in the currents of the Dordogne as he sat before them meditating on the passing of time long before reading Heraclitus? Was it there in Corrèze, despite the boredom these “rural circumstances” afforded him, that he chose Epicurus’s naturalist philosophy as self-evident?
Combining childhood memories, a chronicle of early twentieth-century rural life, evocations of his great loves, and lessons in philosophy, Conche describes himself, alone, in a world in which the Greek gods – the only gods in which he believes – occasionally manifest themselves.
Marcel Conche is both one of the most classic and one of the most original philosophers of our time. His work is read by generations of students but also increasingly by enthusiasts of accessible philosophy.
Pour lui, revenir à la Maisonneuve, c’est boucler une boucle. Qu’importe si la maison ne ressemble plus du tout à celle qu’il a connue et aimée enfant. Il a fait sienne la philosophie dépouillée d’Épicure : la voie du bonheur passe par la réalisation des désirs naturels et nécessaires (se nourrir, s’abriter, philosopher), et le dédain des désirs vains (l’argent, la gloire, la gourmandise, la passion amoureuse…).
Où Marcel Conche a-t-il entendu sa vocation philosophique ? Est-ce dans les bois d’Altillac où il se plaît à côtoyer Dionysos ? Est-ce dans le courant de la Dordogne, devant laquelle il médite sur le temps qui passe bien avant d’avoir lu Héraclite ? Est-ce dans le rythme des jours qui lui a donné la lenteur nécessaire à la pensée ? Est-ce là, en Corrèze, malgré l’ennui que lui procure sa « condition paysanne », qu’il a choisi comme une évidence la philosophie naturaliste d’Épicure ?
Alternant souvenirs d’enfance, véritable chronique de la vie paysanne du début du xxe siècle, évocations de ses amours et leçons de philosophie, il se raconte, solitaire, dans un monde où les dieux grecs, les seuls auxquels il croit, parfois se manifestent.