IT MIght seem audacious to discuss the political philosophy of a man who viewed himself neither as a philosopher nor as someone who was particularly “plugged into” reality. yet there are good reasons for doing so. first, todorov was always excessively modest about his achievements, and his own assessment of himself and of his work should be taken with a grain of salt. second, there is in his oeuvre a clear development from literary criticism and literary theory to cultural studies and philosophy, and many of the topics he addresses in his later work—such as the war in iraq, the use of torture, and the challenges of large-scale migration—fall squarely in the area of political thought. third, while todorov's individual interventions in this area have by no means gone unnoticed, they have not so far generated systematic and in-depth reflection on his overall politico-philosophical position. moreover, the scholars who discuss his work tend to offer either unqualified praise or equally one-sided condemnation.in this chapter, then, i wish to examine tzvetan todorov's political philosophy from both a more comprehensive and a more critical point of view; that is to say, to render visible its theoretical foundations and core principles and to assess the practical real-world conclusions he draws from them. in so doing, i shall be following the example of todorov himself, who consistently stresses the importance of reaching beyond any simplistic positive/negative dichotomies.

Anthropology

The best access point into Todorov's political philosophy, it seems to me, is his anthropology—his Enlightenment-inspired view of humans as social beings. Before addressing his general anthropological view, however, I wish to look in some detail at his interpretation and use of two specific anthropological notions, those of free will and barbarity.

In the first part of Les ennemis intimes de la democratie (2012), Todorov returns to the ancient controversy between Pelagius and St. Augustine. Whereas the former had propounded that people had been given free will by God and were therefore able to bring about their own salvation, the latter had maintained that the existence of original sin meant that no one could be saved by his own efforts.

THE INTERVIEW WITH Tzvetan Todorov reproduced below, one of the last before his death on February 7, 2017, was conducted in Paris on March 5, 2016. Short editorial glosses have been added in square brackets, while longer comments and literature references are provided in the notes. Bibliographical details of Todorov's own texts mentioned in the interview can be found in the introduction to this volume.

The Enlightenment

Of all the periods of the history of ideas, the Enlightenment has inspired you most. Why is this era so important? It is important for me, as it is for all of us, because it is the era that gave shape to our modern identity. It is the time when the small changes that had been accumulating since the Renaissance started to bring forth radical change. We entered fully into modernity. So this period of mutation, of transition, is particularly interesting because we can see the past and the present interacting and thus casting light on each other.

You disagree with Horkheimer's and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment, which propounds that, in the wake of the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution, reason turned against itself and, having become inextricably linked to capitalism and science, is today little more than blinkered “instrumental reason.”

I do not share their point of view, but I think I need to make something clear from the outset, because it will be relevant for the other questions you may ask me: I do not see myself as a philosopher. I think of myself more as a historian—a historian of ideas, yes, with opinions, defending particular positions, but not conversing with the great philosophers of the past. Coming back to the actual question, I also see the dark side of the Enlightenment. There are some aspects of the Enlightenment that for me seem to be its shadow, a potential threat. But I don't have the same pessimistic view as Horkheimer and Adorno, who during the Second World War observed a kind of global destruction of the European spirit, of the path of European history, as if everything had to lead to totalitarianism, which dominated political and public life in Europe at that time. I feel that they overemphasize a particular, existing but not unavoidable, historical development.

“TZVETAN TODOROV IS a skinny guy in glasses with an enormous mass of curly hair. He is also a linguistic researcher who has lived in France for twenty years, a disciple of Barthes who worked on literary genres (the fantastic, in particular), a specialist in rhetoric and semiotics… . Having grown up in a totalitarian country evidently aided the development of a very strong humanist conscience, which comes out even in his linguistic theories… . [He speaks] immaculate French but with a st ill very noticeable accent”: this is how Laurent Binet's novel La septieme fonction du langage (The Seventh Function of Language, 2015) describes the thinker who is the topic of our volume of essays. Binet's book, part literary fiction and part crime story, is set in 1980/81—the period when François Mitterra nd succeeded Valéry Giscard d’Estaing to the presidency—and features a range of famous philosophers and literary theorists, from Michel Foucault, Hélene Cixous, and Julia Kristeva to Jacques Derrida and Bernard-Henri Lévy. Tzvetan Todorov's presence among these luminaries is not accidental: he was undoubtedly one of France's most important and most respected intellectuals of the past fifty years. Yet Todorov plays only a minor role in the novel, and this is perhaps no coincidence either: although a thinker of the highest caliber, he never achieved the iconic status of a Foucault or—to name another Eastern Europe–born theorist—a Slavoj Žižek.

There are several reasons for this relative lack of fame. First, Todorov was always excessively modest about his work, and his self-e ffacing manner was directly at odds with the demands of our media age and its obsession with c elebrity. Though not a recluse and not afraid to express his opinion, he never sought the limeligh t and he engaged in few controversial debates. More over, w hen he expressed himself publicly, he did so with the same rhetorical restraint and intellectual fair-mindedness that a re characteristic of his academic work. This, it seems to us, is the second reason he never became one of the “stars” of the intelligentsia. European—and especially French—thought has a tendency toward binarism and extremism, be it of the left-wing or the right-wing variety.

Introduction

This chapter lays out a conservation timeline, from past to future, for the Amsterdam version of Van Gogh's Sunflowers. It starts by considering the restoration history of the painting in order to assess its current physical state, and looks ahead to formulate an appropriate strategy for future conservation treatment and display. Due attention is paid to the two recorded episodes of restoration performed in 1927 and 1961 by the Dutch restorer, Jan Cornelis Traas. Based on physical and chemical investigation of Sunflowers we attempt to reconstruct what these former treatments (which are barely documented) entailed and consider the repercussions for the present condition of the painting. The former interventions by Traas also serve as a benchmark to reflect on current choices made, highlighting the extent to which ideas and methodologies have continued to evolve over the past century as conservation has moved further away from being a singularly craft-based activity to become an established historical and scientific discipline underpinned by ethical guidelines.

Jan Cornelis Traas (1898–1984)

As mentioned, the two main recorded interventions to the Amsterdam Sunflowers may be associated with the Dutch restorer, Jan Cornelis Traas, who treated the picture in 1927, close to the start of his career, and again in 1961, shortly before he retired. Traas was the first restorer to be appointed at the Mauritshuis in The Hague where he worked from 1931 to 1962 and treated hundreds of paintings, including iconic masterpieces such as Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer. Yet despite the magnitude and importance of his restoration oeuvre, J.C. Traas (as he is usually referred to in surviving documents), has remained somewhat obscure. He is shown here in the only known surviving photograph of him at work, shortly before he retired (fig. 7.1). Unlike his illustrious contemporaries, A. Martin de Wild (1899–1969) and Helmut Ruhemann (1891–1973), for example, Traas did not publish anything, he appears to have kept no records of his work and no personal archive is known. However, the study of some newly discovered historical documents, combined with physical examination of Sunflowers and a large number of other works he treated, allows us to recover an idea of his working practices and approaches viewed within the context of his day.

Life and Work

Of the two authors of Dialektik der Aufklärung, Theodor W. Adorno is by far the more influential philosopher. Born in Frankfurt in 1903, he lived his first eleven years in the same street on which Arthur Schopenhauer had once resided. His father, Oscar Wiesengrund, owned a successful wine business; his mother, Maria Calvelli-Adorno della Piana, had been an opera singer. It was only when Adorno emigrated to America, in 1938, that he replaced the patronymic Wiesengrund with the less German-sounding surname taken from his mother. Maria's unmarried sister, Agathe, a well-known pianist, also lived with the family, and within this environment Adorno developed a passion for music. Indeed, for a while he even considered becoming a professional composer: in 1925, after having completed a PhD in philosophy at the tender age of twenty, he moved to Vienna to study composition with Alban Berg, who, like his master Arnold Schönberg, was among the most famous avant-garde composers of the day. But Adorno, though not without musical talent, lacked genuine creativity, and he soon returned to Frankfurt — and to philosophy. In this field, he possessed an originality and mental penetration matched by few. He never lost his interest in music, however, and a significant part of his oeuvre is devoted to the topic.

The Nazi ascent to power in 1933 robbed the Jewish philosopher of his teaching position at the University of Frankfurt and forced him into exile in Britain. He stayed there for the next five years — not, as he had hoped, as a university lecturer, but as a PhD student at Merton College, Oxford. His subsequent emigration to America was facilitated by Max Horkheimer.

Life and Work

The year 1788 stands out in the history of German philosophy for being the year in which Kant's Kritik der praktischen Vernunft was published, in Riga, and Arthur Schopenhauer was born, down the Baltic coast in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), on 22 February. This contingent conjunction of the two philosophers’ lives was a happy coincidence, since Schopenhauer would in due course become one of Kant's most devoted followers (as well as one of his most stringent critics). Their lives were markedly different, though, and can perhaps be taken as symptomatic of the larger differences between the Enlightenment and the Romantic age that followed it: whereas Kant's life was well-regulated, governed by duty and rational insight, and devoted to the pursuit of knowledge, Schopenhauer's was, at least for its first forty-five years, restless, effervescent, and diverse.

Schopenhauer's father, Heinrich, was a merchant and shipowner who moved the family to Hamburg for business reasons in 1793, when Prussia annexed the free city of Danzig. This was but the first major upheaval in the life of the philosopher, who continued to travel extensively in his childhood and youth, picking up fluent competence in foreign languages as he went, and gaining the education and experience required to follow in his father's footsteps. Arthur spent two years in Le Havre (1797–99), for example, and even enrolled for three months at a boarding school in London (1803).

Life and Work

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in the village of Röcken, Saxony, on 15 October 1844. His father and both grandfathers were Protestant clergymen, so the family naturally expected him to follow in this tradition when, after attending primary school in Naumburg, in 1858 he took up a place at the prestigious boarding school of Schulpforta nearby. Here, he excelled at the classics, which he went on to study at the universities of Bonn (1864) and Leipzig (1865–69), by which stage he had abandoned his religious faith. As a student he fell under the influence of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (after discovering Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung in 1865) and the ideas, music, and personality of the composer Richard Wagner, whom he first met in 1868. He would wrestle with their work for the remainder of his career.

Nietzsche's academic distinction was such that, on the recommendation of his supervisor Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, he was appointed Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel at the precocious age of 24 without even having completed his doctorate. He took up the post in the autumn of 1869. Upon his appointment, he renounced his Prussian citizenship, but he was nevertheless patriotic enough to volunteer for the Prussian army the following year, so as to fight in the Franco-Prussian War. His extremely poor eyesight confined him to service as a medical orderly. After a few weeks, he contracted diphtheria and dysentery at the front and was discharged. Poor health of one kind or another, especially migraine attacks, would dog him for the rest of his life.

Life and Work

Heidegger polarizes opinion. To some, he is the most important philosopher of the twentieth century; to others, he is little more than a mystifying word-spinner. The perplexingly difficult nature of his work derives to a significant extent from his exploitation of the resources of the German language, so — even more than with most other philosophers — there is a clear advantage in reading him in the original rather than in translation. In the immediate postwar period, the vogue for Existentialism favored Jean-Paul Sartre (whose early philosophy was largely based, as Hubert L. Dreyfus once put it, on “a brilliant misunderstanding” of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit), but the German thinker has since eclipsed him. However, while Heidegger's seriousness of philosophical purpose is beyond doubt, and while his critique of metaphysical abstractions often reads as yet another metaphysical abstraction — in the words of Malcolm Bowie, “a motor-cycle does appear in Being and Time, but such intrusions are rare” — his reputation is tarnished by some very concrete real-world decisions he took during a key period in his life.

Martin Heidegger was born in the Swabian town of Meßkirch, in southwestern Germany, on 26 September 1889. Initially destined for the priesthood, he studied theology and philosophy in Konstanz and Freiburg, flirting with the idea of a Jesuit novitiate. In the summer of 1911, he abandoned his plans to become a priest, dropped theology, and continued with philosophy alone, combining a study of the leading phenomenological and hermeneutic thinkers — Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) — with a focus on Scholasticism (medieval Roman Catholic thought).