Agathe Vidal
GrenobleMeet Agathe Vidal, consultant in ethics and philosophy, founder of the Institut Cogito and Philo and co...
Studies, readings, projects... Here is what she has to say!
Could you introduce yourself? What are you currently doing?
I am currently training in the didactics of philosophy in Belgium, in order to study the different ways in which philosophy is taught, its relationship to other disciplines, and its impact across all the sectors in which philosophy has a presence.
This choice was driven by the question of philosophy's place in society and the means by which it can be transmitted.
When I taught, my students felt that three hours a week was not enough. They were frustrated by the demands of the assessments given how little time they had to become familiar with the discipline. They could see the connections with other subjects, but regretted encountering philosophy only in their final year and having no real framework within which to engage with it.
That is how I began to create philosophy workshops.
Until then, my experience of philosophy workshops had been limited to those at L'AGSASS and those carried out with GENEPI.
The Philo and co website began primarily as a way of creating philosophy workshops for my students. Other people gradually started attending, and the site became an opportunity to organise events for associations.
It was in this context that a request arose for an initiatory novel — Se manquer — which gave rise to rich encounters and exchanges that only confirmed the need for everyone to have a space in which to practise philosophy: to engage with authors and philosophical themes, but also to reflect on the role and practice of philosophy within society.
With this in mind, I founded the Institut Cogito in 2017, to create a structure through which anyone — individuals or companies — could receive training and support in their philosophical enquiry.
The principle is to offer tailored training courses, events and support, giving everyone the opportunity to engage with the discipline.
What memories do you have of your studies and your teachers?
During my undergraduate years, people regularly questioned me about the usefulness of philosophy in a capitalist world. My answer was that studying philosophy would probably not pay the bills, but would offer me the luxury of fulfilment.
Looking back, my studies seem to me above all to have been a privilege — at a time of ongoing reforms, the development of new forms of teaching (online), and budgetary cuts to research laboratories.
I was fortunate enough to have teachers who were, for the most part, as brilliant as they were passionate. If studying philosophy was an opportunity in terms of access, it was even more so in terms of having the means — social and intellectual — to make the most of our teachers' knowledge and grasp their intentions.
Which philosophical book have you been particularly passionate about? Is there an author you fell in love with at first sight?
I would say that Levinas fascinated me above all, particularly his ethics of the face, in which he describes our encounter with the face as from the outset ethical
:
It is when you see a nose, eyes, a forehead, a chin, and can describe them, that you turn to the other as to an object. The best way to encounter another person is not even to notice the colour of their eyes!
Can we speak of a kind of attention to the face? Perhaps not exactly — it is rather a matter of attending to something that surpasses us while connecting us to others. Without venturing into the mystical dimensions of this text, might it not be through this "encounter" that all our interactions with others should begin?
On the form of our interactions, I am also struck by the third part of the third chapter of Being and Nothingness:
To meet the gaze of the Other is to affirm oneself in one's own freedom and, from the depths of that freedom, to confront the freedom of the other.
The idea of the relationship as a subject–object encounter resonates with me as strongly today as it did when I first read those pages — perhaps that is why these authors, along with Kant and Merleau-Ponty, never leave me.
Beyond this deep attachment, my encounter with Edgar Morin only confirmed my intuitions — particularly through his approach in Volume VI of Method: Ethics, and through the idea of complex thinking.
Have you ever tried your hand at writing? Could you tell us about your work?
I started writing at thirteen, when I wrote my first "social" novel.
Since that day I have developed a strong appetite for the humanities and social sciences, devouring psychology books — notably during maths lessons — before immersing myself in philosophical texts and never letting go.
Later, as a teenager, I would write exercises based on concepts to pass the time in my home province. When I moved to Paris I continued to write — novels, reflections, poems, and aphorisms — and wrote another novel in the form of philosophical reflections alongside my philosophy studies.
Philosophical narrative has come to play an important role as a response to the demand from readers who wish to engage with philosophy while experiencing it as reflection. It was with this in mind that I published Se manquer, and I hope to publish further initiatory novels in the same vein.
Thank you, Agathe, for sharing your story!
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