VIDEO – “It was either to philosophize or die”: the poignant confidences of the philosopher Alexandre Jollien in “Sept à Huit”

In the street, some still make fun of him, others recognize him. “You could say that my ass is between two chairs, it’s not easy: there are looks that kill and looks that save, heal and heal wounds”, confides the philosopher Alexandre Jollien in the video of “Seven to Eight” at the head of this article, a “Portrait of the week” broadcast this Sunday, January 16. Strangled by the umbilical cord at birth, he is a stillborn baby with an asphyxiated brain. “I almost broke down, my mother said I was all blue, I was close to death at that inaugural moment. So, when it comes to trust, you have to row afterwards”, smiles the Swiss writer.

Suffering from athetosis, he struggles to control the movements of his body. But his brain, he juggles with the most complicated notions of philosophy. Author of numerous works, which have become best-sellers and have won literary prizes for some, a specialist in Hellenist philosophy, Alexandre Jollien gives lectures which are triumphs.

Torn away from his family at the age of three, he was placed in an institution for disabled children, of which he remembers a “prison world” and in which he spent all his childhood and adolescence. He was taught to store cigar boxes but at 14, his life changed dramatically: he discovered Socrates and his thought, the “Know thyself”, during a visit to the bookstore. “The great freedom is to try to get out of these boxes”, he assures. An urgent, vital tour de force: “I believe that the tragedy of existence made me realize that it was either to philosophize or to die”, he says.

“At the beginning, I had the illusion that philosophy would help me to accept my condition, but it did much better: it gave me a vocation, a taste for others, a compass, an invitation to live not better, but better”, says the philosopher. “Who are we really and how to love the other without alienation, it’s really hard work.”

If this encounter with Greek philosophy led him on a path other than that for which he was destined, he never ceases to think of those who have not had his chance. “Thanks to others, I managed to escape some determinisms”, and his works remain “an invitation to solidarity, not to leave anyone on the sidelines”. “I do not pretend to be an apostle, but perhaps introduce into the debate of ideas and into hearts a certain curiosity for the other”, he slips.

A particularly valuable solidarity in this period of health crisis, he defends. If he did not wait for the Covid-19 pandemic so that “the precariousness of existence [lui] catches the eye every morning”, he calls on his readers to preserve “love, self-sacrifice, joy, carelessness” vs “all alienating passions”, “hate, resentment and anger”. “Being generous is not a diktat, it’s fidelity to life”, he says. “The joy is in the bond, the inner progress, the solidarity. Unfortunately, we live in a hyper individualistic world, we sometimes need to remember that we have to go back to basics.”

It is this search for the essential that he sought to stage by writing and directing alongside Bernard Campan the film Almost, which will be on view from January 26, and which marks its first step into the 7th art. Throughout this poignant story of friendship, two lost, disillusioned and lonely characters learn to live together: an undertaker played by Bernard Campan, and a disabled man, keen on philosophy. “It’s a spiritual quest: how to learn to get out of prejudices, learn to love, break down defense mechanisms, explains Alexandre Jollien. Thanks to the other, we free ourselves.”

The actor who gives him the reply is one of the close friends of the writer, who met him 18 years ago, a few days after the death of his father. “There was like a handover, Bernard has a very paternal, fraternal, friendly side”, salutes the philosopher, who says he has found in himself “a soul mate, someone hypersensitive, generous, (…) without ulterior motives.”

The film evokes in particular the difficult acceptance of their own body by people with disabilities. Today fulfilled within his family, with his wife and his three children, Alexandre Jollien has nevertheless journeyed to overcome his own anxieties. “When my daughter gave me a kiss for the first time, I was afraid that she would be dirty because I had been fed up with the idea that the body of a handicapped person was disgusting”, he recalls. “It’s abuse, which you end up internalizing, but the good news is that you can let go of it.” To do this,“I had to get used to the fact that a life can stretch out like a long calm river”, he concludes with a smile.