Anne Fremaux
NurembergHere we discover the career of Anne Fremaux, associate professor, doctor of philosophy and author...
Studies, reading, projects... Here's what she has to say!
Can you introduce yourself? What are you currently doing?
I am an agrégée and doctor of philosophy. My background is rather atypical as I first went to business school and worked in marketing before devoting myself to philosophical studies. I did my two-year bachelor's degree in Tours and then my bachelor's, master's and DEA degrees in Grenoble.
Passionate about ecology and the theme of nature that I had discovered in HEC prep school, I wrote my first political and philosophical essay in 2011: La nécessité d'une écologie radicale (ed. Sang de la terre). I then spent a year at Science Po. Grenoble where I prepared for the ENA competitive entrance exam, for which I was eligible. Then, personal reasons took me to Germany and the UK where I completed my thesis for my doctorate on environmental philosophy and political ecology.
At the same time, I wrote a anticipation novel on a theme that fascinates me: post/transhumanism, entitled L'Ère du Levant (ed. Rroyzz, 2016). My thesis was recently published by an American publishing house under the title After the Anthropocene: Green Republicanism in a Post-Capitalist world (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019).
I am now looking for an academic position in my field of research or in classical philosophy.
I am a fairly eclectic philosopher who encourages the dissemination of philosophy in society. In particular, it seems to me that the latter should take up contemporary subjects, as has already been the case for a long time in Anglo-Saxon countries, where philosophy departments offer courses on "the philosophy of sport", "the philosophy of economics", etc. During my years as a teacher in Grenoble, I also played an active part in passing on this discipline to the general public through lectures given within companies (CEA, Hewlett Packard) and through SAP, the Société Alpine de Philosophie. This is also why it is imperative for philosophy to take hold of the ecological crisis, the major challenge currently facing humanity.
However, I don't think that the study of the great authors and classical texts can be dispensed with: these are foundational elements before any successful excursus. I am therefore extremely grateful to the French school and university system for providing me with a quality education that combines the demand for knowledge with logical rigour. My travels have shown me that this is a very French particularity and it is therefore with sadness that I witness the withering away, seemingly unavoidable, of this French-style (cultural) exception
What memories do you have of your studies? Your teachers?
I remember my final year philosophy teacher as having a certain bonhomie and a typically 'philosophical' style: messy hair, unshaven beard, dreamy look, seemingly lost in thought and pretending to ignore disruptive chatter. On the other hand, I don't remember much about his lessons, apart from an essay on which I particularly struggled: Is existence simply living?". Even today, I find the subject irrelevant, too culturally engaged philosophically since it depends almost exclusively on the meaning and value that philosophers have given to the terms involved.
In prépa HEC, I really took a liking to philosophy, certainly not because of the human qualities of the teacher, but because of the quality of his classes (probably inversely proportional). The theme of nature, philosophically rejected to the margins since Socrates and Plato, was coming back to centre stage. In fact, it's a subject that has never left me.
Then came the discovery of the great authors: wonderful courses on Kant (CRP, CFJ) by Alain Séguy-Duclot in Tours and on Hegel by J.-M. Lardic in Grenoble.
Finally, there are the generous lectures and advice given by my thesis supervisor in Belfast, Professor John Barry, who introduced me to an applied, relevant and I would even say, "necessary" form of philosophy.
Which philosophy book were you particularly passionate about? The author for whom you fell in love at first sight?
My answer is not going to be very original: I was fascinated by two major works, during my studies. Firstly, by Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787) by Kant, which we read in class like a thriller. Our teacher would stop his lecture at a pivotal moment, for example after setting out the contradictory positions (or antinomies) that Kant was going to resolve. We would then wait impatiently for the next lesson to find out how he was going to do it. And each time, it was a guaranteed form of intellectual ecstasy in the face of the master's genius.
The second work that fascinated me was The Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel (1807), which I studied in depth during my master's degree carried out mainly on Kant and Hegel. Here again, I discovered the genius of the philosopher and his key concept, Aufhebung (supersumption), i.e. the overcoming of dialectical contradictions in a new synthesis in which negative elements are negated and positive elements retained. Indeed, I myself tried to achieve an Aufhebung in my thesis (albeit far from Hegel's complexity) to show that neo-republicanism retained the best of liberalism and socialism while surpassing them both (wink ;-)).
My favourite authors include Merleau-Ponty for phenomenology, Hannah Arendt and her first husband, Günther Anders, Adorno and Horkheimer as well as Marcuse (Frankfurt School) for critical thought as well as, among more recent authors, Castoriadis, Gorz, Illich, Chomski, or Mouffe.
At the moment, I am discovering an Italian philosopher, Umberto Galimberti, who, in his work, The reasons for the body invites us to renew our philosophical perspective on the body. His essay opens with Nietzsche's formula: There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom
... A vast programme skilfully explored!
What are your research projects or works?
My first academic book, entitled La nécessité d'une écologie radicale (ed. Sang de la terre, 2011) was an attempt at an intellectual synthesis between different fields of thought in ecological theory, from environmental ethics and philosophy, anthropology, 'green' economics to political ecology.
I explored the meaning of the "ecological crisis" or the fact that we are now living in an age of finitude (The time of the finite world is beginning
, said Paul Valéry in 1931) which calls for moderation and limitation, in contrast to the dreams of eternal abundance conveyed by the productivist economy in general, capitalist in particular.
The notion of "limits" has always been at the heart of political theory insofar as any governmental device seeks to establish the demarcation between legitimate and illegitimate aspirations and possibilities of existence. In recent decades, the notion of 'ecological limits' has been central to raising public awareness of the need to preserve the ecosphere and the conditions that sustain life on the planet.
However, theories of ecological modernisation, and particularly "green" capitalism (now renovated in the form of eco-modernism), challenge this notion by defending the myth of decoupling (i.e. the idea that the use of natural resources can be decoupled from economic growth thanks to technological progress). However, the hoped-for decoupling has never happened and will probably never happen because of a paradox explained by Jevons*. So what we need is not just more "green" technologies, but above all more democracy, more political and philosophical debate about the society we want to live in.
My thesis takes up all these themes, developing them in the light of a new paradigm: that of ecological republicanism, which I set out in my book from the social, economic, anthropological and political points of view. Indeed, in After the Anthropocene: Green Republicanism in a Post-Capitalist World (NY: Palgrave, 2019; my translation), taken from my doctoral thesis, I analyse the recent concept of the Anthropocene as part of the techno-managerial and deliberately apolitical logic of the environmental crisis. Against this view, the green republicanism that I defend in my research calls for social, ethical, cultural, economic and political change. More specifically, it is to the renewal of political institutions at local, national and international level that all my research is now devoted.
* Jevons paradox states the fact that as technological improvements increase the efficiency with which a resource is employed, the total consumption of that resource increases rather than decreases.
Thank you Anne, for this testimonial!
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