Andre Gorz , of his true name Gerard Horst , born with Vienna in February 1923, dead on September 24th, 2007 with Vosnon, is a Philosophe and Journaliste French.

Extremely discrete personality, he is the author of a thought which oscillates between philosophy, political and critical theory social. Disciple of the Existentialisme of Jean-Paul Sartre, it breaks with this one after 1968, and becomes one of the principal theorists of the ecology policy. He is cofounder, in 1964 Nouvel Observateur , under the pseudonym of Michel Bosquet , with Jean Daniel.

Life and philosophy

Born with Vienna (Austria) in February 1923, André Gorz born under the name of Gerald Horst is the son of a Jewish tradesman and a secretary Catholique resulting from a cultivated medium. If his/her parents do not express a great direction of national identity or nun, it is high in a context anti-semite which leads his/her father to be converted with Catholicism into 1930. In 1939, his/her mother sends it in a catholic institution of Lausanne to avoid its mobilization in the German army. In 1945, it leaves the School of engineers of the University of Lausanne with a diploma for the occupation of engineer Chimiste. It at that time takes part in the meetings of the company of students “the Humanities”, but it carries especially an interest to the Phénoménologie and the work of Sartre. Its meeting with this last the following year marks its intellectual formation then. Beginning in the working life as translator from American news in a Swiss editor, it publishes his first articles in the newspaper of a co-operative movement. In June 1949, it moves with Paris where it works initially with the international secretariat of the Movement of the Citoyens of the World, then as private secretary of a military attach3e of the embassy of India. Its entry with Paris-Press mark its beginnings in journalism. It takes there the pseudonym of Michel Bosquet and there become acquainted with a chronicler, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber which, in 1955, recruits it as economic journalist with the Express train .

In parallel, it côtoie the group of the sartriens and adopts an approach existentialist Marxisme which leads it to grant a central place to the questions of Aliénation and release, the whole within the framework of a reflection whose discussion thread is the attachment with the existential experiment and the analysis of the social systems from the point of view of lived individual. These references to phenomenology and the Marxist existentialism constitute the philosophical bases of its first books, signed André Gorz: the Traitor (the Threshold, 1958), the Morals of the history (the Threshold, 1959) and the Bases for a morals (Galileo, 1977). In the first which holds of the autobiography, self-analysis and the test philosophico-policy, it expresses this theorization of the conditions of the possibility of a car-production of the individual. Whereas it outlines with the second a theory of alienation, it marks in the third its attachment with the sartrien project of rehabilitation of the man in the Marxism starting from the individual conscience.

In the middle of its reflection thus is essential the question of the autonomy of the individual. It draws a design from it deeply émancipatrice from the Social movement where the notion of development of individual autonomy is perceived like the condition sine qua non of the transformation of the company. This idea that individual and collective release is conditioned mutually, it divides it with Herbert Marcuse, personal friend but especially great figure of a École of Frankfurt from which the various generations of authors (max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Jürgen Habermas) constitute the other great beam of influence of its thought. Marked by the project which the approach francfortienne underlies - to exceed the economism of the traditional Marxist analysis of the company -, he criticizes the tender of the company to the requirements of the economic reason. The Structuralism, from its postulate (centrality of the structure) and its denial of the prone and the Subjectivity, is the subject also of violent criticisms.

Its at the same time anti-institutional, anti-structuralist and anti-authoritative positioning is found in the line which it assigns with the review Modern times starting from its entry at the steering committee of the review sartrienne (1961).

Indeed, it took such an ascending intellectual whom it quickly exceeded his economic attributions to ensure the Directorate of Political Affairs. It then made there the radical Italian echo like Garavani, the Communist néo-keynésien Bruno Trentin or the libertarian trade unionist Vittorio Foa. Imposing itself like “the intellectual leader of “the Italian” tendency of the new left, he exerts a certain influence on the militants of UNEF and the CFDT, in particular Jean Auger, Michel Rolant and Fredo Krumnow. With working Strategy and neocapitalism (the Threshold, 1964), he addresses himself besides specifically to the trade union movements in an exposure of the various strategies which theirs are offered and of a severe criticism of the capitalist model of growth . The same year, it leaves the Express train with Serge Lafaurie, Jacques-Laurent Bost, K.S. Karol and Jean Daniel to found the Nouvel Observateur .

Whereas it continues its development of a theory of the revolutionary reforms in difficult Socialism (the Threshold, 1967) and Réforme and revolution (the Threshold, 1969), the wave of dispute soixante-huitarde marks it deeply. Its vision existentialist of the Socialisme enters in convergence with this spontaneism gauchist which denounces how the various forms of Institution S (the State, the School, the Family, the Company, etc) limit the freedom of the man. The theses of Ivan Illich on education, the medicine or the abolition of paid work, are essential then on the center of its reflection. It publishes thus in 1969 one of its speeches in Modern times and, in 1971, it meets it with the Nouvel Observateur at the time of the publication of its book a company without school . Later, it publishes in the weekly magazine a version summarized of Convialité (1973) under the title “To release the future”. Its bonds with old the Prêtre are reinforced in 1974 at the time of a stay in California from which it draws two long articles for Nouvel Observateur .

But its evolution has repercussions in its collaborations. At Modern times , for which he assumes the leading responsibility since 1969, its relations are degraded at the point, which in April 1970, its article “To destroy the University” (April 1970) causes the departure of Pontalis and Pingaud. It denounces there also the tendency Maoist in which the review fits since 1971. And, in 1974, a dissension about a number devoted to the Italian group Lotta Continua generates its resignation of the committee. If it remains “a long time without effect”, this resignation reflects its distance of Jean-Paul Sartre. In the same way, with the Nouvel Observateur , it is isolated economic service with the profit of more traditional economists while conducting a campaign against the nuclear industry which is worth with the newspaper of the important pressures on behalf of Électricité de France in term of publicity. The refusal of the weekly magazine to grant an special issue to him on the subject the pleasing one to even publish its file in That To choose? in a number with success.

Its evolutions go hand in hand with its investment within a current of the radical ecology of which he affirms himself with the wire of his tests like a major figure.

The monthly magazine ecologist the Savage , rested by a man - Alain Herve - also founder of the French section of the Friendly of the Earth (1971), constitutes as from 1973 a distribution support of its ideas ecologists. Pillar of a newspaper which it pushes with a greater politization, it publishes articles occasionally there. But he plays especially a part with his collection of tests and articles Écologie and political (Galileo, 1975) whose test Écologie and freedom only constitute with him “one of the texts founders of the ecological problems”. He breaks there with a tradition Libertaire which up to that point registered its reflection in a logic of subversion of the capitalist system. In a draft of marriage between Marxism and ecology where it deviates temporarily from its presupposed existentialists and phenomenologic, it tries to bring an ecological answer to the needs for the system while denouncing the destroying implications of the paradigm productivist as regards balances ecologists and social.

Through a thought basically anti-economist, anti-utilitarian and anti-productiviste, it combines this rejection of the capitalist logic of accumulation of raw materials, energies and work to a critic of the consommationism amplified after his reading of the report/ratio of the Club of Rome on the limits of consumption. The influence of Louis Dumont is then made feel in the vision that it adopts Marxist tradition like rising, as well as the liberal tradition, of an economic thinking. Its opposition to the Individualism hedonist and utilitarian as much as to collectivism materialist and productivist reflects the importance which has at his place the claim of the value S of the person. Its defense of the autonomy of the individual being consubstantial to his reflection ecologist, it sticks, with Illich and against the currents environmentalists systemists or ecocentrists, to defend a humanistic current for which the environment is conceived in the broad sense like a human environment.

After Ecology and freedom , its presentation of ecology like a tool of radical and frontal social transformation of capitalism reflects a design definitely more anticapitalist. Stressing the intrinsic relation between productivism, Totalitarianism and logic of profit, he affirms in particular a bond structural between ecological crisis and capitalist crisis of suraccumulation. He calls then with a “ecological, social and cultural revolution which abolishes the constraints of capitalism”. But he also aspires to reconcile this ecologist project with the socialist Utopia of an abolition of the Salariat. This one is present in its Adieux at the proletariat (Galileo, 1980), virulent dispute of the Marxism and the worship of the Prolétariat which runs up against the circles of the traditional left but collects a success (: 20000 specimens) near a generation for which the large power stations became institutions not answering the individual aspirations with a greater autonomy.

The beginning of the Years 1980 mark its rupture with various currents on which it had been dependant. Initially, with the mobility sartrienne of which it ceases collaborating in the review after the death of its founder (1980). Then, with the various Marxist sensitivities of which he retorts with the attacks with the Ways of the paradise (Galileo, 1983). Lastly, with the pacifist movements when, in 1983, he refuses to be opposed to the installation of American nuclear missiles in West Germany, asserting which they “had placed the life above freedom”. This same year, it withdraws Nouvel Observateur .

The reviews Multitudes and EcoRev' publish articles of him. Of Marxist formation, it carried out a fine analysis of capitalism, in particular in its most modern aspects, explaining how it uses capacities of the workers whom they can develop only by one system of formation, and of the personal investments which are not remunerated. It became favorable to the introduction of a returned social, independent of work, in particular developing its reflections around the difference between richness and value, the latter being characterized by its character monnayable.

Interview Andre Gorz

Andre Gorz-YouTube

Death

It puts an end to its days at the 84 years age, with his Dorine wife, reached of a serious disease, the September 24th 2007 in its house of Vosnon (Aube). It is with it that it had devoted in 2006 the book Lettre to D. Histoire of a love , an ode with Dorine. Extract:

You will have eighty-two years. You reduced of six centimetres, you weigh only forty-five kilos and you are always beautiful, gracious and desirable. That made fifty-eight years that we live together and I love you more than ever. Recently, I fell down in love with you once again and I again carry in me an overflowing vacuum that does not fill that your body tightened against mine We would like each one not to survive dead of the other. We often said ourselves that if, by impossible we had one second life, we would like to live it together.

Works

Works

• the morals of the history (Threshold, 1959)
• working Strategy and neocapitalism (Threshold, 1964)
• the traitor (the Threshold, 1957 and Folio Tests, 2005. In this edition the Foreword of 1967 is)
• difficult socialism (Threshold, 1967)
• Réforme and revolution (Threshold, 1969)
• Critique of daily capitalism (Galileo, 1973)
• Critique of the division of the labor (Threshold, 1973. Work collective)
• Écologie and political (Galileo, 1975)
• Écologie and freedom (Galileo, 1977)
• Fondements for a morals (Galileo, 1977)
• Adieux at the proletariat (Galileo and the Threshold, 1980)
• the Ways of the Paradise (Galileo, 1983)
• Métamorphoses of work (Galileo, 1988 and Folio Tests, 2004)
• Capitalisme Socialism Ecology (Galileo, 1991)
• Misères of the present, richness of possible the (Galileo, 1997)
• immaterial the (Galileo, 2003)
• Letter with D. Histoire of a love (Galileo, 2006)

Audio

• radio Broadcast: France Culture devoted on October 14th, 2005 an emission to the philosopher Philosophie in situations: Andre Gorz, philosophizes of future by François Noudelmann (realization: Perrono pebble)
• radio Broadcast: France Culture diffused a portrait of Andre Gorz, on December 20th, 2006, within the framework of the emission Surpris by the night , realized by Gaël Gillon and produced by Béatrice Leca.

External bond

• “To dare the exodus” of the company of work in the peripherals speak n° 10 to you, spring 1998

• Psychologies.com, '' Extrait from Andre Gorz: A life to like '', May 2006, according to Letter with D , Andre Gorz, ED. Galileo, 2006.

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