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| Mulhall |
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| Han-Pile |
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| Johann-Glock |
The 10th November appears to be French philosopher’s day. A couple of incidents sprang to mind with today’s broadcast of Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ program. Melvyn and his guests, Stephen Mulhall, Professor of Philosophy at New College, Oxford; Beatrice Han-Pile, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex; and, Hans Johann-Glock, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Zurich, were discussing the Continental-Analytic split in Western philosophy. The premise was that the Analytic school favoured a logical scientific approach, in contrast to the Continental emphasis on the importance of time and place. Inevitably in such discussions, the likes of Derrida and Company, from the French academies were brought into the frame, which is only right when matters of logic, time and place are under scrutiny. There was also mention, of course, of Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Russell. All this lot spent a great deal of time on language, and are at the very heart of the theories connected with performance writing. (By the way, the University of Essex is extremely lucky to have Professor Han-Pile. She’s great)
In keeping with this theme, on the night of the 10th of November 1619, into the small hours of the 11th, while stationed in Neuberg asn der Donau, Germany, Rene Descartes experienced a series of three powerful dreams or visions, that he later claimed profoundly influenced his life. For a start, they inspired his Meditations on First Philosophie. He concluded from these visions that the pursuit of science would prove to be, for him, the pursuit of true wisdom and a central part of his life's work. Descartes took the view that all truths were linked with one another, so that finding a fundamental truth and proceeding with logic would open the way to all science. This basic truth, Descartes found quite soon: his famous "I think". 
174 years on from Descartes visionary night, during the establishment of the First French Republic, one of its leading philosopher/politicians, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, organised a Festival of Reason which took place on the 10th November 1793. In boasted a Goddess of Reason, in the guise of an actress, on an elevated platform in the Notre Dame Cathedral. As personification for the goddess, Sophie Momoro, wife of the printer Antoine-François Momoro, was chosen.Antoine-François Momoro was a French printer, bookseller and politician during the Revolution. An important figure in the Cordeliers club and in Hébertism, he is the originator of the phrase Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, the motto of the French Republic
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| Momoro |
After working for the fall of the Girondist in the struggle between the Commune and the Convention, he participated in attacks on Danton, Robespierre (who he accused of modérantisme) and the Committee of Public Safety. Pushed onwards by a report by Saint-Just to the Convention denouncing the "complot de l’étranger" woven by the Indulgents and Exagérés, the committee decided on the arrest of the Hébertistes on March 13, 1794. The revolutionary tribunal condemned Momoro to death, and he loudly replied "You accuse me, who have given everything for the Revolution!" He was guillotines with other leading Hébertistes the following afternoon.
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| Chaumette |
As to Chaumette, His ultra-radical ideas were soon regarded as affront to the National Conventions' policies, and as the public and official opinion began to turn against the likewise minded Hébertists in the early spring of 1794, Chaumette increasingly became target of counterrevolutionary allegations. Robespierre - as promoter of the Cult of the Supreme being that was in direct opposition to Chaumette's Cult of Reason - had him accused with the Hébertists as being part of a conspiracy to starve Paris and subsequently overthrow the Convention. He was sentenced to death on the morning of April 13 and guillotined that same afternoon.
It seems typical of the French philosopher/politicians, they all seem to lose their head one way or another.
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