Michel Onfray – författare

Michael Onfray passionately defends the potential of hedonism to resolve the dislocations and disconnections of our melancholy age. In a sweeping survey of history's engagement with and rejection of the body, he exposes the sterile conventions that prevent us from realizing a more immediate, ethical, and embodied life. He then lays the groundwork for both a radical and constructive politics of the body that adds to debates over morality, equality, sexual relations, and social engagement, demonstrating how philosophy, and not just modern scientism, can contribute to a humanistic ethics. Onfray attacks Platonic idealism and its manifestation in Judaic, Christian, and Islamic belief. He warns of the lure of attachment to the purportedly eternal, immutable truths of idealism, which detracts from the immediacy of the world and our bodily existence. Insisting that philosophy is a practice that operates in a real, material space, Onfray enlists Epicurus and Democritus to undermine idealist and theological metaphysics; Nietzsche, Bentham, and Mill to dismantle idealist ethics; and Palante and Bourdieu to collapse crypto-fascist neoliberalism.In their place, he constructs a positive, hedonistic ethics that enlarges on the work of the New Atheists to promote a joyful approach to our lives in this, our only, world.

In the twenty-first century, religion is making a comeback, bringing in its wake extremism of all kinds. From Christian anti-abortion campaigns to suicide bombers claiming the righteousness of Islam, we are witnessing a resurgence of fundamentalism. Michel Onfray''s response to the threat of a post-modern theocracy is to lay down the principles of an authentic atheism: exposing the fiction that is God, he proposes instead a new philosophy of reason that celebrates life and humanity. In Defence of Atheism demonstrates that organised religion is motivated by worldly, historical and political power; that the three dominant monotheisms - Christianity, Islam and Judaism - exhibit the same hatred of women, reason, the body, the passions; that religion denies life and glorifies death. Onfray exposes some uncomfortable truths: Judaism invented the extermination of a people; Jesus never existed historically; Christianity was enforced with extreme violence by Constantine; Islam is anti-Semitic, misogynist, warlike and incompatible with the values of a modern democracy.

De forma directa y con una buena dosis de sentido del humor, el filósofo Michel Onfray desvela las amenazas de la lógica kantiana personificadas en la figura del criminal nazi Adolf Eichmann, quien se declaró un lector atento de Kant durante su juicio en Jerusalén. En "Un kantiano entre los nazis", Onfray argumenta que, en efecto, el sistema ético de Immanuel Kant, su pensamiento sobre la ley y la obediencia, su filosofía del Estado y del derecho, de la legalidad y de la moral, es perfectamente compatible con las declaraciones del oficial nazi.A continuación, la insólita obra de teatro "El sueño de Eichmann" relata el encuentro onírico entre el genocida con los filósofos Immanuel Kant y Friedrich Nietzsche, a escasas horas de su ejecución.

The Cyrene School was a philosophical school of thought, founded in the fourth century BC by Aristippus of Cyrene (d. c. 435–356 BC), who held that sensual pleasure was the highest good and the only worthwhile goal in life. Known as the first school of hedonism, it eventually became superseded by the more comprehensive Epicurean philosophy. The central Cyrene School view is summed up in Aristippus''s statement, "I possess, I am not possessed," meaning that pleasure should be pursued but not enslaved. Indeed, the pursuit of pleasure was intended to encourage personal freedom insofar as one was not bound by the philosophical or cultural quests of others but could follow one''s own path and establish one''s own view of the meaning of life. Finally, we can say that the followers of these three philosophers, all of whom were named after them, developed their beliefs while opposing the increasingly established teachings of Epicurus. Like Aristotle (384–322 BC), Epicurus asserted that the goal of life was happiness (human flourishing and well-being—having a good soul), which was meant to be experienced in a state of tranquility and the absence of anxiety (ataraxia), as well as the absence of pain (aponia). He believed this state was achieved by enjoying simple pleasures, surrounding oneself with friends, and engaging in rewarding work.