Combray Section I - 'Overture' (Discussion Thread 1)

[Fionnuala]

when I would enter secondary school and enroll in the class called Philosophy.

It's interesting to see the English version, Traveller. But I think it is not perfectly faithful.
I think the original text implies that he looks forward to when, in collège (or what's called lycée today) he enters the Philosophy class.
And that would definitely be at eighteen.

[Traveller]

Fionnuala wrote: " I think it is not perfectly faithful.
I think the original text implies that he looks forward to when, in collège (or what's called lycée today) he enters the Philosophy class.
And that would definitely be at eighteen. ..."

Hmm, I don't think that the English version contradicts that, Fionnuala. It's more Proust's use of the word 'collège' that flummoxed me, especially when I originally read this section, which made me marvel that the narrator was so advanced for his age. I think we have to assume that either there's a mistake or that the words collège and lycée were either interchangeable or more loosely used, or that the use of lycée only came later...

[Traveller]

Hmm, I'm trying to look up the etymology of the word lycée. This source interestingly mentions that in circa 1802 it denoted a “State-run secondary school”. https://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/lyc%C...

Ok, here is a more extended piece on the origin of the word: https://www.lalanguefrancaise.com/dic...

which in English would roughly translate to:
Lyceum antonomasius, from the Latin Lyceum, later, from the ancient Greek Λύκειον, Lúkeion, philosophical school (founded by Aristotle in Athens near the temple of Ἀπόλλων λύκειος, Apóllôn lúkeios ("Apollo of Lyceum") in -335) which was a gymnasium (hence the common word Gymnasium in German to designate a high school) in the north-east of Athens.
(1721) Appears with the meaning of "place where men of letters assemble". (1790) The meaning of educational institution dates from the French Revolution and, with the law of 11 Floréal year X (1802), it takes on the specific meaning of "secondary school run by the State".

Regarding the word "collège":

I let this wikipedia page https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coll%C3... translate itself to English (for the benefit of our English members), and it says more or less:

"Etymology (of the word collège) :

From the 12th century, throughout Europe, colleges were complementary institutions to universities. They were often founded by pious bequests. Their mission is to accommodate students from medieval universities, but also to provide additional education and educational support, in particular for artisans (those who were studying in the faculty of arts).

See: Education in the Middle Ages as well as medieval colleges

In modern times in France, colleges were educational institutions. Several categories of colleges were distinguished.

University colleges: these are the heirs of the colleges of medieval universities.
Non-university colleges: these are educational establishments independent of universities, but providing preparatory training, equivalent to current secondary education. They could be secular or held by a congregation whose aim is teaching, such as the Jesuits, the Oratorians or the Doctrinaires1.

To this distinction was superimposed a hierarchy of the teaching capacities of the colleges.

Full-service colleges: teach grammar, rhetoric and philosophy.
Colleges of humanity: ensure the teaching of grammar and rhetoric.
Colleges teaching only grammar, a category to which the Latin regencies belong, an establishment where a single regent (teacher) teaches Latin to his pupils. "

So, I'm thinking that in Proust's specific circles 'collège' was the word they used loosely for private high schools, and that at the time, maybe the word lycée was more used for state-run schools? I don't know, this is my closest guess, because I'm assuming the narrator's family was wealthy enough to have him sent to a private school.

[Fionnuala]

Very thorough research, Traveller. I think it's certainly possible that the narrator uses the words collège and lycée interchangeably. Proust may have had his own lycée, the Lycée Condorcet, in mind when he wrote that passage about the final year philosophy class. In a previous work called Jean Santeuil, he had focused on the philosophy teacher Jean Santeuil meets in the final year of lycée and who had a major influence on him.
Today in France the words collège and lycée are more specific. My daughters all went to collège at 11 and then on to lycée at 15, finishing with the one year Philosophy class. That's the standard procedure now in France for young people pursuing an academic education. Those who don't want to follow that path have to attend college but can choose a lycée technique at age fifteen where there's no final year philosophy class.

[Traveller]

Fionnuala wrote: "My daughters all went to collège at 11 and then on to lycée at 15, finishing with the one year Philosophy class. That's the standard procedure now in France for young people pursuing an academic education...."

I'm very glad to hear that, Fionnuala, I wish more of the world would teach certain philosophy classes and make them compulsory, especially at university level, where for example I think all professionals such as doctors, lawyers and business professionals should be forced to take ethics classes with application to their profession. And people studying in the sciences should have included a class in the philosophy of science.

[Nick]

So we are still looking for a precise reference to little Marcel’s schooling level at the overture and a late 19thC definition of college in France.

Little Marcel grows up in the book so time might make a continuous discussion theme .

[Fionnuala]

I've always felt that Time is treated very unusually in the Recherche, Nick, so I think it's a waste of 'time' for us to get too focussed on exactly what age the narrator was in this or that episode—in spite of the time I've spent explaining that when he says he was looking forward to Philosophy class, he must be at least fifteen or sixteen;-)

I notice as I reread that even within the space of one sentence, the narrator can roam in Time.

[Nick]

Fionnuala wrote: "I've always felt that Time is treated very unusually in the Recherche, Nick, so I think it's a waste of 'time' for us to get too focussed on exactly what age the narrator was in this or that episod..."

It's like Proust invented the greatest waste of time ever.

I experience the same thing in these sentences. I've noticed your comments on reading the same sentence more than once. Perhaps that is the point, the flow of time is disrupted in the reader who experiences it as the loop he designed for us. Linear time ceases in these pages.

[Fionnuala]

Traveller wrote: "I'm very glad to hear that, Fionnuala, I wish more of the world would teach certain philosophy classes and make them compulsory, especially at university level.."

I remember that one of my daughters had to study extracts from Henri Bergson—whom Stephen mentioned in an earlier comment as an influence on Proust, is that right, Stephen? Anyway, my daughter found Bergson difficult. Actually, they all found the philosophy texts chosen for that course difficult as did their classmates. Philosophy might be the subject in which students get the lowest marks in the baccalauréat, the end of school exam at age eighteen. Perhaps indeed, university level might suit better—or perhaps setting exams in it is the wrong approach.

[Nick]

Fionnuala wrote: "Traveller wrote: "I'm very glad to hear that, Fionnuala, I wish more of the world would teach certain philosophy classes and make them compulsory, especially at university level.."

I remember that..."

I read Time and Free Will a long time ago by Bergson. I'll see if any of my underlinings might be useful to reading Proust.

[Fionnuala]

Nick wrote: "...Perhaps that is the point, the flow of time is disrupted in the reader who experiences it as the loop he designed for us. Linear time ceases in these pages..."

Yes, that's how I read it, Nick. I remember that in my review of this first book back in 2013, I described reading the book as like being on a train that went around and around the same circular track where people and landscapes are visible momentarily again and again, but because the people may be moving too, they may turn up in different backdrops as we go round and round. A bit fantastical I know, but...

[Nick]

Fionnuala wrote: "Nick wrote: "...Perhaps that is the point, the flow of time is disrupted in the reader who experiences it as the loop he designed for us. Linear time ceases in these pages..."

Yes, that's how I re..."

It is one of the few books I know that has its very own way of organising the reader. So perhaps your perception is not so fantastical. As the narrator looks into the deep time he has known, we are also looking for the same places, over and over.

[Kalliope]

Nick wrote: "Fionnuala wrote: "Traveller wrote: "I'm very glad to hear that, Fionnuala, I wish more of the world would teach certain philosophy classes and make them compulsory, especially at university level....."

I've read his Le Rire. Some of his ideas of what makes something 'funny' have stayed with me.

Bergson and Proust were related. The philosopher married a cousin of Proust.

Incidentally, Bergson's name is engraved in one of the pillars in the Panthéon.

[Kalliope]

Nick wrote: "It's like Proust invented the greatest waste of time ever...."

Or may be he showed that time is never wasted...

[Nick]

Kalliope wrote: "Nick wrote: "It's like Proust invented the greatest waste of time ever...."

Or may be he showed that time is never wasted..."

That's it, Kalliope! Or time is never lost.

I have this pet interest in neurological science. Probably started with Oliver Sacks. But the synapses are potentially wonderful little stores of endless bits of data. Its only that we cannot access it all. Though some people with brain injuries can have access to wonderful stuff the rest of us can't. So when I first read Proust, I kept wondering if all this stuff is just there waiting for a brain trauma to release the flow. Or a narrative possibility.

[Fionnuala]

Kalliope wrote: "...I've read his Le Rire. Some of his ideas of what makes something 'funny' have stayed with me..."

I'd be interested in that text, Kalliope. Must have a look for it...

[Nick]

Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "...I've read his Le Rire. Some of his ideas of what makes something 'funny' have stayed with me..."

I'd be interested in that text, Kalliope. Must have a look for it..."

I took an interest, too. Found it at Gutenberg Project in an english translation which I downloaded last night see here

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4352

[Traveller]

Fionnuala wrote: "Traveller wrote: "I'm very glad to hear that, Fionnuala, I wish more of the world would teach certain philosophy classes and make them compulsory, especially at university level.."

I remember that..."

Stephen might also have mentioned it, but I definitely mentioned the Bergson influence, yes. Indeed, philosophy can be very boring if introduced in a too dry or academic way, but a good teacher can help to bridge the gap, as well as can good introductions written for the layman. This book is for example an excellent introduction for the young person or layman: The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

But I was rather more referencing a part of philosophy that would be called "applied philosophy", to be learned in conjunction with attaining a professional degree. A part of applied philosophy is for example the discipline "Ethics", which I feel is very important to examine, especially in today's day and age where the world is so materialistic that anything goes as long as you can make money out of it.

As for your daughter studying Bergson: I can't help wondering why they would make a rather arbitrary choice such as Bergson as an introduction to philosophy. It might have been a better idea to have a general introduction such as the book I mentioned, in the second-last year on a very light level, and then maybe just examine different schools of thought at the final level.

Ah well, maybe I don't have the background to second-guess the decision. Maybe it's become tradition so nobody thinks to question it. Or there might be a very good reason for it that's not obvious to the casual observer. (It could, for example, have been chosen for the very reason that it helps to illuminate other writer's work, such as for example the Bergson-Proust connection that you guys are discussing above.)

An introduction to the Socratic method and critical thinking, would be a must for anyone who needs to be able to develop a solid argument, and would make a very good foundation for college and university, and would therefore be a very good thing to be taught at this level.

[Fionnuala]

Nick wrote: "...the synapses are potentially wonderful little stores of endless bits of data..."

Proust's narrator's various eureka moments throughout the Recherche are indeed like little traumas that open the doors of the inaccessible stores of his memory. The skillful linking of them all together by means of Proust's unusual language and logic continues to surprise and delight me, even more so with this read. I don't find myself asking why he makes a character say this or that, or do the other. I'm just trusting the logic of the narrative.

[Nick]

Fionnuala wrote: "Nick wrote: "...the synapses are potentially wonderful little stores of endless bits of data..."

Proust's narrator's various eureka moments throughout the Recherche are indeed like little traumas ..."

Well said. I've found much more in chapter one than first time. I found pressure to get through it first time, even at a slow pace, that I knew I was missing things.

I can't wait to read the section again with the theatre poster and the encounter with the uncle and his apartment. or the moments of Swann and his obsession in love. The recurrence of the 'little piece' is just that example of neurological data - qualia - I think they are called. Proust knew something.

[Fionnuala]

Traveller wrote: "...As for your daughter studying Bergson: I can't help wondering why they would make a rather arbitrary choice such as Bergson as an introduction to philosophy...."

The French idea of an introduction to philosophy is very different to that in English-speaking countries, Traveller. It works around certain notions such as art, justice, nature, language, and many more, and then leaves a lot of freedom to individual philosophy teachers to pick texts with which to examine those notions.
The kind of foundation course you've described is one I followed myself at an English-language university, with separate modules in history of Philosophy, ethics, epistemology and logic.

If you're interested, here's a list of the texts which French philosophy teachers choose from—though they are also free to move outside this list for supplementary material:
Les présocratiques ; Platon ; Aristote ; Zhuangzi ; Épicure ; Cicéron ; Lucrèce ; Sénèque ; Épictète ; Marc Aurèle ; Nāgārjuna ; Sextus Empiricus ; Plotin ; Augustin ; Avicenne ; Anselme ; Averroès ; Maïmonide ; Thomas d’Aquin ; Guillaume d’Occam.
N. Machiavel ; M. Montaigne (de) ; F. Bacon ; T. Hobbes ; R. Descartes ; B. Pascal ; J. Locke ; B. Spinoza ; N. Malebranche ; G. W. Leibniz ; G. Vico ; G. Berkeley ; Montesquieu ; D. Hume ; J.-J. Rousseau ; D. Diderot ; E. Condillac (de) ; A. Smith ; E. Kant ; J. Bentham.
G.W.H. Hegel ; A. Schopenhauer ; A. Comte ; A.- A. Cournot ; L. Feuerbach ;
A. Tocqueville (de) ; J.-S. Mill ; S. Kierkegaard ; K. Marx ; F. Engels ; W. James ; F. Nietzsche ; S. Freud ; E. Durkheim ; H. Bergson ; E. Husserl ; M. Weber ; Alain ; M. Mauss ; B. Russell ; K. Jaspers ; G. Bachelard ; M. Heidegger ; L. Wittgenstein ; W. Benjamin ; K. Popper ; V. Jankélévitch ; H. Jonas ; R. Aron ; J.-P. Sartre ;
H. Arendt ; E. Levinas ; S. de Beauvoir ; C. Lévi-Strauss ; M. Merleau-Ponty ;
S. Weil ; J. Hersch ; P. Ricœur ; E. Anscombe ; I. Murdoch ; J. Rawls ;
G. Simondon ; M. Foucault ; H. Putnam

[Traveller]

Fionnuala wrote: "Traveller wrote: "
The French idea of an introduction to philosophy is very different to that in English-speaking countries, Traveller. It works around certain notions such as art, justice, nature, language, and many more.."

Hm, yes, I understand, thanks for the clarification. The range of thinkers you give is indeed wide, which yet makes me wonder why so much detail is spent on specific texts, when there are so many topics of importance represented in the scope of philosophers you mention. I mean, in that list, you are going from epistemology, to ontology and metaphysics to statecraft and political science to sociology to philosophy of science and philosophy IN science to ethics, to existentialism, to human rights, to humanism, to gender philosophy and feminism, to criminology, to phenomenology and hermeneutics though interestingly not philosophy of language. Maybe they thought that Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricœur and Walter Benjamin is enough of a concession to 'meaning' and language. (Oh, and Wittgenstein). Hmm, I wonder why Derrida (being French) is not on the list. Derrida's absence might be because of his difficult style, though Kant, Hegel and Wittgenstein aren't the smoothest reads either.

But I get that what you're saying is that my classification above, is more an English-style classification, and that the French schools approach it more according to threads of thought that may run through several of those classifications.

What I am trying to say, though, is why not, at school level, examine these concepts such as the notions of art, justice, freedom vs determinism, nature, etc. in themselves but with reference to the philosophers that dealt with it. Perhaps this is what they are doing in any case, but since the teachers have so much freedom, some teachers are expecting rather a lot from their students! :)

Ok, we're having a fun digression, but now I'm running short on time again. Until later!

[Kalliope]

Yes, the British and French approach to philosophy is very different. Both my siblings studied Philosophy in a UK university and both have difficulties dealing with the French "philosophy" - they insist on calling the French protagonists "thinkers" or using the French term "philosophes", not "philosophers".

In France it is much more linked to literature. And in France literary people tend to be closer to politics too (as in Russia).

[Fionnuala]

Kalliope wrote: "...they insist on calling the French protagonists "thinkers" or using the French term "philosophes", not "philosophers"..."

Your siblings are on to something, Kalliope!

[Kalliope]

Fionnuala wrote: "Traveller wrote: "...As for your daughter studying Bergson: I can't help wondering why they would make a rather arbitrary choice such as Bergson as an introduction to philosophy...."

The French id..."

This is quite a list, Fionnuala. It also makes me think how philosophy is taught in France based on the close study of texts...

[Fionnuala]

Definitely a close study of texts, almost as in literature class. In fact some of the names in that list were studied in both philosophy and literature classes, Sartre, for instance, and Montaigne, and Simone de Beauvoir, and Rousseau and Diderot too.

[Kalliope]

Fionnuala wrote: "Definitely a close study of texts, almost as in literature class. In fact some of the names in that list were studied in both philosophy and literature classes, Sartre, for instance, and Montaigne,..."

I fully agree. This is what I meant above - also associated with politics.

And theory of art - Diderot, the Gautiers and Baudelaire. Also in a way Rousseau.

In the book I have read recently, the Mme de Sévigné letters are mentioned as a judiciary document too (in relation to the court case around Nicholas Fouquet).

[Fionnuala]

You're right, Kalliope, so many of those philosophers' names cross over into areas such as literature, politics, and art.
So interesting too about Mme de Sévigné's letters being used in Fouquet's court case! Who'd have thought! I have them, by the way, and dipped into them last time I was reading the Recherche—a little old blue hard-back edition from way back. Must get it out again.