Philosophy in France

It need occasion no surprise that Recherche de la Liberté by Daniel Christoff (P.U.F.) 1957, 220 pp., is devoted to philosophy of value. Freedom, one wants to say in this sort of context, is the attribute or even the essence of, for example, Sartre's pour soi; but since such a description would be, in existentialist language, a contradiction in terms, freedom had better be identified with the means whereby the dynamic self escapes from its essence, as Sartre would say. Because of this dynamic role of freedom in Continental philosophy it is natural that M. Christoff should be happier talking of liberation than of liberty. The word liberation refers to the process of value-making, and perhaps it is chosen in order that such question-begging terms as “creation of values” may be avoided. Question-begging because, although M. Christoff is by no means an exponent of the “objectivist” theory of values, he does not play down the importance of the concept in the interest of what is strictly never done but always in process of being done. He denies that rational thinking is “an immobile system of concepts”, and sees an alternation (presumably “dialectical”) of conceptualization and valuation as the activity of mind. It is not only in his view of liberty as liberation that M. Christoff reminds one of Lavelle and Gabriel Marcel, but also in his particular brand of altruism. He seems to see Sartre's point of view about “others” without sharing it.