Maurice Blanchot facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Maurice Blanchot
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| Born | 22 September 1907 Devrouze, Saône-et-Loire, France
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| Died | 20 February 2003 (aged 95) Le Mesnil-Saint-Denis, France
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| Education | University of Strasbourg (B.A., 1922) University of Paris (M.A., 1930) |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
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Main interests
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Notable ideas
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The Neutral (le neutre) Right to death Two kinds of death |
Maurice Blanchot (born September 22, 1907 – died February 20, 2003) was a French writer, philosopher, and literary expert. He explored deep ideas about death and how language creates meaning in poetry. His ideas greatly influenced later thinkers like Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Nancy.
Contents
Maurice Blanchot's Life Story
Early Life and World War II
Maurice Blanchot was born in a small village called Quain, in France, on September 22, 1907. He studied philosophy at the University of Strasbourg. There, he became good friends with Emmanuel Levinas, a philosopher from Lithuania.
After his studies, Blanchot started working as a journalist in Paris. From 1932 to 1940, he was an editor for a major newspaper, the Journal des débats. In 1930, he earned his master's degree from the University of Paris. His thesis was about how ancient skeptics viewed dogmatism.
In the early 1930s, he wrote for several nationalist magazines. He also edited Le rempart, a newspaper strongly against Germany, and Aux écoutes, a weekly paper against the Nazis. He also wrote for Combat and L'Insurgé, which were right-wing newspapers. Blanchot wrote many strong articles criticizing the government and warning about the danger of Nazi Germany.
In December 1940, he met Georges Bataille, who was also a writer and anti-fascist. They became close friends. Blanchot stayed in Paris during the Nazi occupation. To support his family, he continued to review books for the Journal des débats from 1941 to 1944. He wrote about famous authors like Sartre, Camus, and Mallarmé. He used these reviews to explore how language works and how written words can have many meanings. He refused to become an editor for a pro-Nazi magazine. He was also active in the French Resistance, fighting against the Nazi occupation. In June 1944, he almost faced a Nazi firing squad, an event he wrote about later.
After the War
After World War II, Blanchot focused only on writing novels and literary criticism. In 1947, he moved from Paris to a quiet village in southern France called Èze. He lived there for ten years. Like other French thinkers, he chose to earn a living by writing, rather than working in universities.
From 1953 to 1968, he regularly published in the Nouvelle Revue Française, a well-known literary magazine. During this time, he lived a very private life. He often did not see close friends for years, but he kept in touch by writing many long letters. Part of his isolation was due to poor health throughout most of his life.
Blanchot's political views became more left-leaning after the war. He is known for helping to write the "Manifesto of the 121". This document was signed by 121 important people, including Jean-Paul Sartre. It supported the right of soldiers to refuse to fight in the Algerian War. This manifesto was very important in how intellectuals responded to the war.
In May 1968, Blanchot made a rare public appearance to support student protests. This was his only public appearance after the war. For fifty years, he continued to champion modern literature in France. In his later years, he often wrote against the appeal of fascism. He also criticized Martin Heidegger for not speaking out against The Holocaust after the war.
Blanchot wrote over thirty books, including novels, literary criticism, and philosophy. He often blended different types of writing in his later works. This meant his books moved freely between storytelling and philosophical discussions.
In 1983, Blanchot published La Communauté inavouable (The Unavowable Community). This book inspired Jean-Luc Nancy's work, The Inoperative Community (1986). Nancy's book explored the idea of community without focusing on religion or politics.
Maurice Blanchot passed away on February 20, 2003, in France.
What Maurice Blanchot Wrote About
Blanchot's writings often explored the idea of death. He looked at it not in simple human terms, but through ideas of things that seem impossible or make no sense. He was always interested in the "question of literature." For Blanchot, literature truly begins when it starts to question itself.
Blanchot was inspired by poets like Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Celan. He also used the idea of "negation" from Hegel's philosophy. He believed that literary language is different from everyday talk. It doesn't just describe reality; it creates its own reality. For example, Mallarmé wrote that when he says "flower," the actual flower disappears, and a new, imagined flower appears in the mind.
Blanchot believed that everyday language ignores the absence of a real thing when we talk about it. But literature, he thought, is fascinated by this absence. When you write about something, it's like a "negation of the negation." It's both the idea of the thing and the act of writing it down. For Blanchot, this is where literature becomes most creative. It challenges the line between an idea and what is real.
Some of Blanchot's most famous fictional works include Thomas l'Obscur (Thomas the Obscure), a story about reading and loss. Other important works are Death Sentence, Aminadab, and The Most High. His main theoretical books include "Literature and the Right to Death," The Space of Literature, The Infinite Conversation, and The Writing of the Disaster.
Big Ideas in His Work
Blanchot discussed ideas similar to Martin Heidegger about how literature and death are experienced. He called this experience "the Neutral" (le neutre). However, unlike Heidegger, Blanchot believed we cannot truly understand death. He thought death was the "impossibility of every possibility," meaning it's something we can't fully grasp or prepare for.
Later, Blanchot was influenced by Emmanuel Levinas on the idea of responsibility to "the Other" (meaning other people).
See also
In Spanish: Maurice Blanchot para niños
