Bruce Bégout's Philosophical Journal Explores the Gap Between Thought and Daily Life

Bruce Bégout's "Pensées privées," published by Éditions Jérôme Millon, is a philosophical journal that documents the inevitable gap between philosophy and everyday life. Unlike a traditional intimate diary, it presents an anonymous subjectivity that is neither tied to a specific body nor to a geographical or social context. The journal includes reading notes, speculative remarks, and developments of philosophical intuitions, serving as a prolegomenon to Bégout's 2005 work "La Découverte du quotidien." Notably, the journal entries taper off during the years when that book was being written, as it chronicles the philosophical attitude that made the book possible. It testifies to the necessary suspension of existence required for a non-naive philosophy of the everyday, acknowledging that the everyday is not just another theme of philosophy but the blind spot of its vision. The journal enacts, day by day, the mourning of this aim. The review is by Alexandra Makowiak.