Les racines philosophiques du « rester en lien » : la clinique du souci

Abstract

If suicide remains “the only really serious philosophical problem” (A. Camus), historically a certain number of philosophers have legitimized it while others have condemned it. Among the philosophers who admitted that suicide could be a possibility, some showed understanding and others remained more modest. Kierkegaard's philosophical stance, demonstrating that one can never decide for the other where existential problems are concerned, opens a third way. Following him, Michel Cornu coined the expression “ethics of concern”. That restlessness, etymologically, can be understood at the same time at the epistemological level (lack of a single constituted knowledge, hence the need to resort to a fully interdisciplinary approach of the “suicide” object), but as a relational attitude as well, namely a restlessness vis-à-vis the other, in other words concern for the other. This concept of concern does not exist in philosophical literature as such, but it has been addressed by philosophers. Therefore, it is essential to begin with a differential reflection on the notions of concern, care and solicitude. Then three “philosophies of solicitude” will be developed, those of Heidegger (concern in itself), Ricœur (concern as reciprocity) and Levinas (concern as responsibility). The monitoring devices, which will be widely discussed in other articles of this special issue, are based on philosophical notions borrowed from Heidegger (thoughtful solicitude), or Ricœur (solicitude) and Levinas (responsibility) or Cornu (ethics of concern). In addition, throughout our text we have mentioned a certain number of tensions inherent to these notions themselves, such as that intrinsic to the term solicitude (both care and concern), or peculiar to the authors’ work (substitutive solicitude – thoughtful solicitude for Heidegger), or related to the debate of ideas (solicitude for Ricœur – responsibility for Levinas). Implementing these monitoring devices in clinical practice as well as in the territories will raise other problems, in particular, between benevolence and monitoring, but also between justice and equity, which will be our conclusion.