Abstract

In this article, originally published in 1946, Michel Tournier builds a new system of the world both inspired by Sartre’s philosophy and turned against his recent conversion to humanism. Tournier describes an impersonal world full of impersonal emotions and thoughts from which, suddenly, emerges the subject conceived on the model of the Cartesian Cogito. The appearance of the subject is indeed required by the world itself as long as the Cartesian ego, although mistaken and irrelevant, paradoxically contributes to the rational process of History.