Professor at the Sorbonne, the author of an abundant work where neighboring metaphysics, moral philosophy and literary creation died on February 27, at the age of 99.
Born March 27, 1922 in Altillac, in Corrèze, the philosopher Marcel Conche died, Sunday, February 27, in his house of Treffort, in Isère. He would have been 100 years old in a month. Its long course was most singular. No social determinism predisposed it to become a professor at the Sorbonne or author of an abundant, diverse and original work, with fifty titles.
His solitary childhood, in rural areas, takes place between harvest, herds and harvest. For a long time, of his own admission, he ignores the existence of high schools. This isolation does not prevent it from manifesting a personal, early and spontaneous interest, for philosophical reflection. With the money of his first communion, he buys the thoughts for myself of the Stoic Mark Aurèle, and is passionate about Pascal’s thoughts, who become his bedside book.
Look for what is true, how to live, according to what standards, to find by what paths understand the puzzles of existence, here is his first questions. Which constitute for Marcel Conche existential, first, natural requirements. That’s why they never left it. He has continued to resume them, to propose answers, to dial clear and profound books.
Endurance and rare obstinacy
Finally arrived in high school, he falls in love with his professor of letters, that he marries soon after. It has become an aggregate of philosophy in 1950, having learned the Greek and Latin late, it turns into a publisher and translator of Heraclite, anaximander, parmenid, commentator and analyst of Pyrrhon, Epicure, Lucrece, not to mention Montaigne. He devoted to these authors of scholars and bright works, published first to the Editions de Megare, a confidential house he had created himself, then resumed to the university presses of France (PUF).
For a kind of rare stamina and obstinacy was one of his character traits. It was important to him immediate notoriety, but he did not recoil an inch when he had started a task, as demanding and arid it was. This same attitude, modest but tenacious, presided over his university career, who led him to teach until 1963 in high schools (Cherbourg, Evreux, Versailles), then at the University of Lille, where he was the assistant. ‘Eric Weil until 1978, and finally at La Sorbonne, where he holds the Chair of Metaphysics until 1988. Atypical, ironic professor, appreciated by his students, he had noticed in particular by accessibility and coherence. of his classes, including his book on the random (beautiful letters, “Marine ink”, 2012) provides a good example.
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