Etienne Granier-Deferre

Paris

Here we discover the career of Etienne Granier-Deferre, a philosophy teacher at a Parisian lycée.

Studies, reading, projects... Here's what he has to say!

Can you introduce yourself? What do you currently do?

I am currently a philosophy teacher at the Lycée Charles de Foucauld in the 18^e arrondissement of Paris. I teach my 1ère and Terminales pupils the joys and fears of philosophy and I am preparing my doctorate, I am writing a doctoral project that I would like to present at Sorbonne-Université.

My career path has been rather irregular. I wasn't very academic so my choice of course is incongruous, to say the least.

After passing my baccalaureate in 2010, I chose the path of philosophy because it was the only school subject that could answer the questions that were arising in me about society, people, knowledge.

This was compounded by meeting my father-in-law, Richard Descoings, who introduced me to the world of research and was my first mentor. I owe my career path, my knowledge and my love of philosophy to him.

It wasn't until my second year of my philosophy degree, at the Sorbonne-Paris IV, that I decided to build a career in philosophy when I discovered the field of the ethics of war not forgetting my meeting with Marie-Kerguelen Le Blevennec who is my partner with whom I have worked for over seven years.

Alongside my studies, I was a supervisor at my old lycée, which is when I discovered the other side of the school system by working with the teaching staff. It was also at that point that I began to have the idea of teaching. Now it wasn't until I had my first 'real' class, at Notre-Dame des Oiseaux, that I realised that teaching was also my vocation.

What memories do you have of your studies? Of your teachers?

I have fairly clear memories of my studies. Although I was a little below average, I generally managed without difficulty. It was only in the transition from secondary to higher education that I realised the importance of and my real appetite for philosophical knowledge. In particular, it was when I met my terminale philosophy teacher, Mr Aget, that the doors to philosophy opened. I still remember his excitement and passion when he would talk to us about authors or works like Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men in his jeans/jeans jacket and big Timberlands ensemble. When I saw him, so passionate, I saw myself in his place.

And I must mention one last person here, my former research director, Jean-Cassien Billier, at the Sorbonne who managed to satisfy my appetite in his Introduction to Ethics and Ethics of War courses. It was a second revelation: my path would be in philosophy and more specifically in ethics.

I have very happy memories of my studies in general, my lycée because it was the meeting with my friends of today, a close-knit group for more than 15 years, and my university years because it was then that philosophy and teaching revealed themselves to me.

Which philosophy book have you been particularly passionate about? The author you fell in love with at first sight?

All books have fascinated me, some less than others but there are two that I will remember forever: The Social Contract by Rousseau and The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.

I fell in love with contractualist theses because they are both topical and empirical but also highly theoretical. The discovery of the concepts of "social contract" or "state of nature" illuminated, around my 18th birthday, my first questioning, my first doubts about the social aspect of man and his essence, his nature.

Despite this, I cannot deny my fondness for Platon and his discourses. The Platonic discourses read with great ease and are full of knowledge and questions. The maieutics make the content more fluid and understandable, it was a real revelation. What struck me most in his speeches was our ability to acquire knowledge. According to him, we all have this capacity. This egalitarian aspect of Plato's thinking gives me hope: knowledge knows no bounds, no limits, no elites. Each of us is capable of rising through knowledge. This is shown in the Meno in particular by the dialogue between Socrates and a slave.

Have you ever tried your hand at writing? Could you tell us about your creations?

I had a bohemian dream when I was a teenager. So I have hundreds of loose sheets containing my poems, and I'm planning to collect and organise them into a collection that might eventually see the light of day.

I am writing, today, a few essays. Some are accessible on my Academia page but the rest are not published because I use them to apply for colloquia or seminars. So I have to keep rewriting them and improving my ideas.

One of my proudest achievements is my final dissertation. I spent a lot of time on it and it is the starting point for my current research. I undertook a critique of the concept of supreme urgency, conceptualised by Michael Walzer, in just war theory. I put forward the idea that the concept of supreme urgency makes it possible to legitimise immoral conduct in war and thus may legitimise terrorist strategies.

What are your projects, your research work?

As I mentioned, I am working on a doctoral project in which I am questioning the legitimacy of state violence particularly in war. However, it's still only at the draft stage so talking about it would be far too premature. The idea is to try to highlight the gulf that exists between the theory that lays down the rules to be followed in war and the reality on the ground, and to do so through the study of the war on contemporary terrorism.

Thank you Etienne, for this testimonial.

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