Michel Onfray

Michel Onfray (French: [miʃɛl ɔ̃fʁɛ]; born 1 January 1959) is a contemporary French writer and philosopher who promotes hedonism, atheism, and anarchism. He is a highly prolific author on philosophy, having written more than 80 books.

He has gained notoriety for writing such works as Physiologie de Georges Palante, portrait d'un nietzchéen de gauche, Politique du rebelle: traité de résistance et d'insoumission, Traité d'athéologie: Physique de la métaphysique (translated into English as Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), La puissance d'exister and La sculpture de soi for which he won the annual Prix Médicis in 1993.

His philosophy is mainly influenced by such thinkers as Nietzsche, Epicurus, the cynic and cyrenaic schools, French materialism, and individualist anarchism.

Life

Born to a family of Norman farmers, Onfray was abandoned by his parents to an orphanage from age 10 to 14 (his mother had been abandoned to the same orphanage in her own youth). Overcoming these early hardships, Onfray graduated with a PhD in philosophy. He taught this subject to senior students at a technical high school in Caen between 1983 and 2002, before establishing what he and his supporters call the Université populaire de Caen, proclaiming its foundation on a free-of-charge basis and on the manifesto written by Onfray in 2004 (La communauté philosophique).

Michel

Michel may refer to:

People

Fictional characters

Other

See also

On n'est pas couché

On n'est pas couché is a French television programme on France 2.

References

Jean-Pierre Chevènement

Jean-Pierre Chevènement (French: [ʒɑ̃ pjɛʁ ʃəvɛnmɑ̃]; born 9 March 1939) is a French politician who served as a minister in the 1980s and 1990s and who was a candidate in the 2002 French presidential election. After serving as mayor of Belfort, he was elected to the Senate for the Territoire de Belfort in 2008. As a cofounder of the PS and founder of the Republican and Citizen Movement (MRC), he is a significant figure of the French left.

Biography

Background

The Chevènement family is of Swiss origin, with their original name, Schwennemann, having been gallicized to Chevènement. He was born in Belfort near the Swiss border, speaks German, and studied in Vienna.

Beginning in politics

Chevènement's idiosyncratic left-wing nationalism has led to comparison with the late British politician Peter Shore. He describes his Eurosceptic and Gaullist position as "republican". He was Mayor of Belfort from 1983 to 2008 and was a Deputy in the National Assembly from 1973 to 2002.