The Philosopher and His Poor by Jacques Rancière (PDF)

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What has philosophy to do with the poor? If, as has often been supposed, the poor have no time for philosophy, then why have philosophers always made time for them? Why is the history of philosophy—from Plato to Karl Marx to Jean-Paul Sartre to Pierre Bourdieu—the history of so many figures of the poor: plebes, men of iron, the demos, artisans, common people, proletarians, the masses? Why have philosophers made the shoemaker, in particular, a remarkably ubiquitous presence in this history? Does philosophy itself depend on this thinking about the poor? If so, can it ever refrain from thinking for them?Jacques Rancière’s The Philosopher and His Poor meditates on these questions in close readings of major texts of Western thought in which the poor have played a leading role—sometimes as the objects of philosophical analysis, sometimes as illustrations of philosophical argument. Published in France in 1983 and made available here for the first time in English, this consummate study assesses the consequences for Marx, Sartre, and Bourdieu of Plato’s admonition that workers should do “nothing else” than their own work. It offers innovative readings of these thinkers’ struggles to elaborate a philosophy of the poor. Presenting a left critique of Bourdieu, the terms of which are largely unknown to an English-language readership, The Philosopher and His Poor remains remarkably timely twenty years after its initial publication.

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Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Philosophy’s concern is to safeguard its own appearance. To naturalise its claims to nobility or intellectual prowess and superiority. Plato is the first to be criticised by Rancière. I need class analysis of the influence of the rediscovered ancient classics by the Humanist scholars in their role as the managers of the new city states of Europe and how this heretical force played within the Christian hegemony to produce the mind that freed itself from Christian mystical fatalism and gave rise to the Enlightenment and the coherence of the bourgeoisie as a class. I am indebted to Rancière for showing the key role that Plato’s ideas played in the constitution of or at least the justification of European class separation.The criticism of Karl Marx that follows seems almost theatrically overdone – when he is clearly an admirer. I think Marx can still give us the reference point that sees the capitalist system producing poverty, famine, war and environmental degradation rather than such negative conditions being seen as localised and reformable. At the same time Marx was of course limited by his class position and time period. Though it is good that Rancière points out these limitations with such force, we can still appreciate that Marx struck a red wedge into the heart of European philosophical discourse.Marxism as a field of discourse however has become overly academicised and out of touch with struggle since Lukacs and Gramsci were active revolutionaries. Ranciere’s criticism of the communist party route to socialism resonates with my experience. All my intuitions about Jean Paul Sartre from my youthful period of radicalisation in the late Sixties were brought into focus here. What I felt as his overbearing and out of reach presence was not just my own ignorance reacting from its subaltern position. He actually was out of touch with the class that I was part of!It is the critique of Bourdieu in the third and last section that for me is most useful. Distinction shows how society as a whole was structured by a set of aesthetic values – good taste that had morphed from the mores of aristocratic court society. However it had struck me in the early Nineties, in complete ignorance of Rancière’s ‘The Philosopher and His Poor’ (which was only published in English in 2004), how Bourdieu’s method was limited to measuring norms and culture didn’t evolve in that way. The new can only begin with the idiosyncratic. It was these actions on the edges of the normal distribution curve that mattered in terms of cultural resistance – things that Bourdieu failed to capture.On top of that Bourdieu seemed to have little detailed understanding of working class culture(s). For him working class culture was entirely dominated. Rancière is also himself prone to a kind of blinkered view of what is considered valid culturally. He doesn’t go to where working class people invest most of their attention.’Scourge though he may be of those Marxists contemptuous of the peasants’ taste for ugly trinkets and calendars, his universe of refer-ence is not that of Britney Spears, Roland Emmerich or J.K. Rowling, but that of a legitimate culture, a culture legitimated a posteriori by the critical and academic institution.” p.31 Nicolas Vieillescazes Radical Philosophy 177 2012Rancière opens up an incisive critique of Bourdieu’s method that I had felt but been unable to articulate. But there is a bigger aim here in ‘The Philosoher and His Poor’ than the debunking of a few stars of Humanist philosophy. The bigger idea is that philosophy and European literary history is complicit in the reproduction of the mental systems that maintain the ‘poor’ as a class. A reifying concept of intellectual inequality that allows the system of gross economic equality to seem natural. To me it is becoming clear this was formed by the 1000 year formation of the European Humanist/bourgeois class and is deeply embedded in state formation.Material wealth is justified on the basis a class separation of intelligence and a profound dis-entitlement of the thinking capacity of working class people. The key to our escape to a more rational way of living on earth is the human ability to think clearly. It is not about the reiteration of knowledge as accretions that reinforce the throne the oppressor. It is the idea that ‘the poor’ could get to make the tools to enable thinking about liberation on our own terms. Perhaps led by the work of some unpredictable vagabond intellectuals that overcome their embarrassing awkwardness with words, persist in blurting out their thinking and insist on being heard. Economic inequality has a corollary in our perceptions of who is intelligent and able to think about what might be possible.Rancière ends the book by summarizing his arguments in a sentence:”For me, this was not a question of opposing voices from below to discourse from above, but of reflecting on the relation of division of discourses and division of conditions, of grasping the interplay of borders and transgressions according to which the effects of speech that seize human bodies becomes ordered or disturbed” p.227.For more detailed reading: http://stefan-szczelkun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/my-reading-of-third-and-final-section.html

⭐The belated arrival of this early book of Jacques Rancière in English is very welcome. Andrew Parker’s Introduction, which tells the convoluted story of the book’s prior aborted translation, is worth reading by itself. And Parker goes beyond this story to provide not only the most thorough bibliography on Rancière that an English reader will ever have seen, but a compelling explanation of the philosopher’s place in relation to his, and our, contemporaries (Althusser, Balibar, Bourdieu), and of his importance. And the book itself is fascinating stuff: a journey through the philosophical tradition tracking the contempt-laden figure of the working man. Rancière finds his favorite example, the shoemaker, in so many texts from so many centuries that one almost needs to check the references, lest we start to think the whole piece is some kind of Borgesian joke; but this is, completely in earnest, a fascinating synthetic argument about the condescension philosophy, even leftist philosophy, shows toward “simple” workers. The tone of the book isn’t as hard to pin down as some of Rancière’s other work (e.g. the terrific “Ignorant Schoolmaster”), and it is a little more of a scholarly, historical effort, a little more humorous, and a little more accessible than you might expect, but it’s still a difficult, intelligent, and rewarding text for the philosophical reader.

⭐Plato deserves all the criticism he gets from Rancière. What we need is a class analysis of the influence of the rediscovered ancient classics by the Humanist scholars in their role as the managers of the new city states of Europe and how this heretical force played within the Christian hegemony to produce the mind that freed itself from Christian mystical fatalism and gave rise to the Enlightenment and the coherence of the bourgeoisie as a class. What I am indebted to Rancière for is in showing the key role that Plato’s ideas played in the constitution of or at least the justification of European class separation.The criticism of Karl Marx that follows seems almost theatrically overdone – when he clearly an admirer. I think Marx can still give us the reference point that sees the capitalist system producing poverty, famine, war and environmental degradation rather than negative conditions being seen as localised and reformable. At the same time Marx was of course limited by his class position and time period. Though it is good that Rancière points out these limitations with such force, we can still appreciate that Marx struck a red wedge into the heart of European philosophical discourse.[xi]Marxism as a field of discourse however has become overly academicised and out of touch with struggle since Lukacs and Gramsci were active revolutionaries. His criticism of the communist party route to socialism resonates with my experience. All my intuitions about Jean Paul Sartre from my youthful period of radicalisation in the late Sixties were brought into focus here. What I felt as his overbearing and out of reach presence was not just my own ignorance reacting from its subaltern position. He actually was out of touch with the class that I am part of!It is the critique of Bourdieu in the third and last section that for me is most useful. ‘Distinction’ shows how society as a whole was structured by a set of aesthetic values – good taste that had morphed from the mores of aristocratic court society. However it had struck me in the early Nineties, in complete ignorance of Rancière’s ‘The Philosopher and His Poor’ (which was only published in English in 2004), how Bourdieu’s method was limited to measuring norms and culture didn’t evolve in that way. The new can only begin with the idiosyncratic. It was these actions on the borders of the normal distribution curve that mattered in terms of cultural resistance – things that Bourdieu failed to captureOn top of that Bourdieu seemed to have little detailed understanding of working class culture(s). For him working class culture was entirely dominated. Rancière is also himself prone to a kind of blinkered view of what is considered valid culturally. He doesn’t go to where working class people invest most of their attention.Rancière opens up an incisive critique of Bourdieu’s method that I had felt but been unable to articulate. But there is a bigger aim here in ‘The Philosoher and His Poor’ than the debunking of a few stars of Humanist philosophy. The bigger idea is that philosophy and European literary history is complicit in the reproduction of the mental systems that both maintain the ‘poor’ as a class. A reifying concept of intellectual inequality that allows the system of gross economic equality to seem natural. To me it is becoming clear this was formed by the 1000 year formation of the European Humanist/bourgeois class and is deeply embedded in the functioning of the state.Material wealth is justified on the basis a class separation of intelligence and a profound dis-entitlement of the thinking capacity of working class/poor people.[xiii] The key to our escape to a more rational way of living on earth is the human ability to think clearly. It is not about the reiteration of knowledge as accretions that reinforce the throne the oppressor. It is the idea that ‘the poor’ could get make the tools to thinking about liberation on their own terms. Perhaps led by the work of some unpredictable vagabond intellectuals that overcome their embarrassing awkwardness with words, persist in blurting out their thinking and insist on being heard.Economic inequality has a corollary that is our perceptions of who is intelligent and able to think about what might be possible.Rancière ends the book by summarizing his arguments in a sentence:”For me, this was not a question of opposing voices from below to discourse from above, but of reflecting on the relation of division of discourses and division of conditions, of grasping the interplay of borders and transgressions according to which the effects of speech that seize human bodies becomes ordered or disturbed” p.227.

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