An unlikely place for a confrontation between universalism and complexity

I found a very sensitive illustration of the confrontation between universalism/reductionism and complexity/relativism in a quite unlikely place. André Gorz writes in Lettre à D., Histoire d'un amour about the different way his wife, an englishwoman, and himself, influenced by French universalism, used to think:

"J'avais besoin de théorie pour structurer ma pensée et t'objectais qu'une pensée non structurée menace toujours de sombrer dans l'empirisme et l'insignifiance. Tu répondais que la théorie menace toujours de devenir un carcan qui interdit de percevoir la complexité mouvante du réel."

How lucid this statement is!

See also this post about the same confrontation.

Why writing and about what?

André Gorz writes in Lettre à D., Histoire d'un amour that what matters is writing, not what is being written. The topic, the subject are only the raw products for the writing process to work. They are only secondary to the act of writing:

"Ce n'est pas ce qu'il écrit qui est le but premier de l'écrivain. Son besoin premier est d'écrire. Ecrire, c'est-à-dire se faire absent du monde et de lui-même pour, éventuellement, en faire la matière d'élaborations littéraires. Ce n'est que secondairement que se pose la question du «sujet» traité. Le sujet est la condition nécessairement contingente de la production d'écrits. N'importe quel sujet est le bon pourvu qu'il permette d'écrire."

The writer becomes a novelist once what is being written starts to organize itself into a well-defined project:

"L'écriveur deviendra écrivain quand son besoin d'écrire sera soutenu par un sujet qui permet et exige que ce besoin s'organise en projet."

Sounds easy!

The importance of becoming against all odds

"To be free is nothing, to become free is very heaven."
Fichte, untraced, quoted in The Roots of Romanticism, The Restrained Romantics, by Isaiah Berlin

Berlin explains that "Fichte's whole notion is that man is a kind of continuous action [...]. In order to rise to his full height he must constantly go on generating and creating." (ibid, The Restrained Romantics). He continues by saying that "[Y]ou felt yourself properly only in a moment of resistance or opposition" (ibid, Unbridled Romanticism).

Thus, a romantic has to be active. He has to be not only when the world prevents him to do so, but also when his goal is unreachable. If he can reach his goal, the combat is not worthy. The romantic can fully experience life only when he tries to climb an impossible summit. Only in this situation, he will be able - indeed will be obliged - to express the fullness of her or his heart. Fichte's quotation and Berlin's explanations remind me the poetic lyrics of Mano Solo, a french-speaking singer, in Le Monde Entier:

"Si tu m'avais demandé, moi je t'aurai dit
Que dans la vie ce qui compte
c'est pas l'issue mais c'est le combat"

or André Gorz speaking of writing in Lettre à D., histoire d'un amour:

"Ce n'est pas ce qu'il écrit qui est le but premier de l'écrivain. Son besoin premier est d'écrire."

See also this quotation from Gandhi (in French) from Cedric's blog.