Marie-Hélène Gauthier
LilleHere we discover the career of Marie-Hélène Gauthier, a lecturer in aesthetic philosophy at the Université de Picardie, and author of several books...
Studies, reading, projects... Here's what she has to say!
Can you introduce yourself? What are you currently doing?
I am a Maître de conférences Habilité à Diriger des Recherches at the Université de Picardie Jules Verne, and I have been teaching specifically for nearly 4 years at the UFR des Arts, where I created, with the head of the UFR de Lettres, Anne Duprat, Professor of Comparative Literature, a Master's degree in Comparative Aesthetics (Arts / Humanities / Philosophy) backed by the C.R.A.E research team, Centre de Recherches en Arts et en Esthétique, a first in the French university landscape, I believe.
I teach courses there that deal with literary aesthetics, the ontology of art, and try to relate this to changes in the structure or disintegration of the contemporary subject, and its unsupported friability.
What do you remember about your studies? Of your teachers?
I was lucky enough to do my schooling at the Lycée international de St-Germain-en-Laye, where I passed two baccalauréats, including the international baccalauréat, which included a section on comparative literature, then in preparatory classes at Henri IV.
During my khâgne year, I was taught by Pierre Jacerme, who was absolutely decisive for me, who had hesitated for a long time between the Letters option and the Philosophy option. His rigour, but above all his power of questioning, of putting into perspective all the texts scrupulously followed, within a constant renewal of conceptual articulations, of assertions too quickly formulated, this opened the click of a form of vocation.
Then, Pierre Aubenque, who was also my thesis supervisor, his lectures, his books, so elegant and which brought Aristotelian studies back up to date, his cultivated presence, always alert, and Jean-Paul Dumont, whose acquaintance I made when I had just been appointed assistant normalienne at the University of Lille 3, and with whom I maintained a dialogue that was all the more constant because we were neighbours, were models for me, of probity and intellectual rigour, in a hermeneutical attitude that I subsequently tried to follow as far as I was able. No commentary for the sake of a simple philological grasp, but a necessary return to the construction of an interpretative scope.
Finally, at the ENS, the courses, the synthetically dazzling mind of Pierre-François Moreau, his mastery of texts taken to their thematic and argumentative heart, exerted the same lasting influence.
Which philosophy book have you been particularly passionate about? The author for whom you fell in love at first sight?
On the syllabus for the competitive exam in khâgne, there was Book V on justice, from the Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. First reading, first discovery, first feeling of being in a related, familiar universe, to refer to this notion of oikeion, which crosses Aristotle's thought in a fertile way.
And then, during the first year of school, and the degree courses at Paris-IV, La Métaphysique, by the same philosopher, which I read for months, along with the works of Pierre Aubenque, but also Paul Ricoeur's course, then published at the Centre de Documentation Universitaire de la Sorbonne, Etre, Essence et Substance chez Platon et Aristote. A revelation, if I may put it that way. And one that determined my academic trajectory, from master's thesis, DEA, to thesis (L'âme dans la Métaphysique d'Aristote, éditions Kimé, 1996). Up to the Habilitation, which included an unpublished work on Philia, in the Ethics of Aristotle (also published by Kimé, 2014). I don't know if you can call it love at first sight, but a happy, passionate immersion.
Have you ever tried your hand at writing? Could you tell us about your creations?
I recently completed a collection of texts, not philosophical, more literary, but which would neither fit the genre of a novel, and no more that of a collection of short stories. Rather, it would be a declension of inner states in the face of widespread incomprehension. I'm still at the stage of reworking, of making corrections. It's not my job, I've responded to an uncontrolled force, a compelling need, but I have no illusions. I'm not a writer.
What are your projects, your research work?
I began a kind of shift in my work at the time of my Habilitation. Starting from the importance of affectivity, the sensitive faculty and the diversity of reality in certain ancient philosophies, their extended epistemology, and their different ethics, I sought to see what influence these ancient systems might have had on certain writers, great readers of philosophy, in terms of the constitution of their inner universe, their writing, but also in terms of the possible revival, through these forms of writing, of what philosophy alone no longer addresses today, or not necessarily as well.
I have therefore written a book entitled La poéthique : Paul Gadenne, Henri Thomas, Georges Perros, published by Editions du Sandre in 2010, and pursued this line of work in occasional articles: the influence of a certain life ethic on writers and the modulation of philosophical discursivity by deporting it to the side of literary creation, in certain particular corpora.
In this same spirit, I am currently preparing a comparative essay on Henri Thomas and Michel Lambert, a Belgian writer and short-story writer, whom I believe to be of the utmost importance, literary, but also for the theme I have chosen: a "poetics of untying", that déliaison which arises from the multiple flaws of the subject due to the contemporary world, as well as to the psychological, emotional, mental constitution specific to the universes implied by these two authors, one of whom connects, and the other unties, perhaps.
Thank you Marie-Hélène, for this testimonial!
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