Onfray writes obscurely that there is no philosophy without self-psychoanalysis. He proclaims himself an adamant atheist and he considers religion to be indefensible. He instead regards himself as being part of the tradition of individualist anarchism, a tradition that he claims is at work throughout the entire history of philosophy and that he is seeking to revive amidst modern schools of philosophy that he feels are cynical and epicurean.
View on the history of western philosophy and philosophical project
In an interview he establishes his view on the history of philosophy. For him "There is in fact a multitude of ways to practice philosophy, but out of this multitude, the dominant historiography picks one tradition among others and makes it the truth of philosophy: that is to say the idealist, spiritualist lineage compatible with the Judeo-Christian world view. From that point on, anything that crosses this partial — in both senses of the word — view of things finds itself dismissed. This applies to nearly all non-Western philosophies, Oriental wisdom in particular, but also sensualist, empirical, materialist, nominalist, hedonistic currents and everything that can be put under the heading of “anti-Platonic philosophy”. Philosophy that comes down from the heavens is the kind that - from Plato to Levinas by way of Kant and Christianity - needs a world behind the scenes to understand, explain and justify this world. The other line of force rises from the earth because it is satisfied with the given world, which is already so much."
"His mission is to rehabilitate materialist and sensualist thinking and use it to re-examine our relationship to the world. Approaching philosophy as a reflection of each individual’s personal experience, Onfray inquires into the capabilities of the body and its senses and calls on us to celebrate them through music, painting, and fine cuisine."
Hedonism
He defines hedonism "as an introspective attitude to life based on taking pleasure yourself and pleasuring others, without harming yourself or anyone else." "Onfray's philosophical project is to define an ethical hedonism, a joyous utilitarianism, and a generalized aesthetic of sensual materialism that explores how to use the brain's and the body's capacities to their fullest extent -- while restoring philosophy to a useful role in art, politics, and everyday life and decisions."
Onfray's works "have explored the philosophical resonances and components of (and challenges to) science, painting, gastronomy, sex and sensuality, bioethics, wine, and writing. His most ambitious project is his projected six-volume Counter-history of Philosophy," of which three have been published.
For him "In opposition to the ascetic ideal advocated by the dominant school of thought, hedonism suggests identifying the highest good with your own pleasure and that of others; the one must never be indulged at the expense of sacrificing the other. Obtaining this balance — my pleasure at the same time as the pleasure of others — presumes that we approach the subject from different angles — political, ethical, aesthetic, erotic, bioethical, pedagogical, historiographical." For this he has "written books on each of these facets of the same world view."
His philosophy aims "for "micro-revolutions, " or revolutions of the individual and small groups of like-minded people who live by his hedonistic, libertarian values."
Anarchism
Recently Michel Onfray has embraced the term postanarchism to describe his approach to politics and ethics. He advocates for an anarchism in line with such intellectuals as "Orwell,
la philosophe Simone Weil, Jean Grenier,
la French Theory avec Foucault, Deleuze, Bourdieu, Guattari, Lyotard,
le Derrida
de Politiques de l'amitié et du
Droit à la philosophie,
mais aussi Mai 68" which for him was "a nietzschetian revolt in order to put an end to the "One" truth, revealed, an to put in evidence the diversity of truths, in order to make disappear ascetic Christian ideas and to help arise new possibilities of existence"
Relation to hedonism
In
La puissance d'exister: Manifeste hédoniste, Onfray claims that the political dimension of hedonism runs from Epicurus to John Stuart Mill through Jeremy Bentham and Claude Adrien Helvétius. What political hedonism aims for is to create
the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.
Atheology
The "
Atheist Manifesto is a religious and historical time capsule containing" what he sees as "the true deceptions of theological philosophy. It is divided into four parts: atheology, monotheisms, Christianity and theocracy. Each section details the historical chronology of the three major religions; Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and atheism. Michel Onfray pulls back the veil on the Holy of Holies, delves into the workings of Islam, and excavates for the true identity of Jesus Christ while uncovering the groundwork laid during the Age of Enlightenment."
"As Onfray details the myth and bloody history of monotheistic religions, he concludes that monotheism in general, and the religious beliefs of the major players on the Middle Eastern and Western stages in particular, have two ideologies in common: extinguishing the light of reason and total investment in death".
Recently he has been involved in promoting the work of Jean Meslier. Meslier was a French Catholic priest who was discovered, upon his death, to have written a book-length philosophical essay promoting atheism.
The Atheist Manifesto has been criticized for its historical inaccuracies regarding the life of Jesus. Amongst the "incalculable number of contradictions and improbabilities in the body of the text of the synoptic Gospels", two claims are made: crucification victims were not laid to rest in tombs, and in any case, Jews were not crucified in this period. John Dickson, of Macquarie University, has pointed out that Philo, writing about the time of Jesus, tells us that sometimes the Romans handed the bodies of crucifixion victims over to family members for proper burial. Josephus even remarks: "the Jews are so careful about funeral rites that even malefactors who have been sentenced to crucifixion are taken down and buried before sunset". Regarding the second claim, Dickson calls this a 'clear historical blunder':
Varus, governor of Syria, crucified 2000 Jews involved in the rebellion of 4 BC (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 17.295). In the late 40s AD the sons of Judas the Galilean, named James and Simon, were crucified by order of Tiberius Alexander (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.102). In the final weeks of the siege of Jerusalem, according to Josephus, the Romans were crucifying 500 Jews a day, stationing the crosses in full view of the city walls: "The soldiers out of rage and hatred amused themselves by nailing their prisoners in different postures; and so great was their number, that space could not be found for the crosses nor crosses for the bodies" (Josephus, The Jewish War 5.451)...
But perhaps the clearest evidence of Onfray's mistake is the discovery in 1968 of archaeological remains of a crucifixion victim in a Jewish tomb. The tomb, just north of Jerusalem, contained numerous ossuaries (burial boxes), one of which bore the inscription "Jehohanan and Jehohanan ben Jehohanan," meaning that the box contained the bones of a father and his son of the same name, "John". Analysis of the bones revealed the remains of a male heel bone which had been pierced through by an iron nail. The nail, which was 11.5cm long, was badly bent and so had never been removed from the foot. A plaque of wood from an olive tree was still attached. It was a remarkable find and has taught us quite a bit about crucifixion, not the least of which is that Jews were certainly crucified in the first century and some of them were properly buried.
