When Anne Dufourmantelle drowned in a heroic attempt to save two children caught in rough seas, obituaries around the world rarely failed to recall that she was the author of a book entitled In Praise of Risk, implying that her death confirmed the ancient adage that to philosophize is to learn how to die. Now available in English, this magnificent and already much-discussed book indeed offers a trenchant critique of the psychic work the modern world devotes to avoiding risk.

Yet this is not a book on how to die but on how to live. For Dufourmantelle, risk entails an encounter not with an external threat to life but with something hidden in life that conditions our approach to such ordinary risks as disobedience, passion, addiction, leaving family, and solitude

Keeping jargon to a minimum, Dufourmantelle weaves philosophical reflections together with clinical case histories. The everyday fears, traumas, and resistances that therapy addresses brush up against such broader concerns as terrorism, insurance, addiction, artistic creation, and political revolution. Taking up a project than joins the work of many French thinkers, such as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Hélène Cixous, Giorgio Agamben, and Catherine Malabou, Dufourmantelle works to dislodge Western philosophy, psychoanalysis, ethics, and politics from the redemptive logic of sacrifice. She discovers the kernel of a future beyond annihilation where one might least expect to find it, hidden in the unconscious.

In an era defined by enhanced security measures, border walls, trigger warnings, and endless litigation, Dufourmantelle’s masterwork provides a much-needed celebration of the risks that define what it means to live.

Translator’s Introduction: The Risk of Reading | ix

To Risk One’s Life | 1

Eurydice Saved | 4

Minuscule Magical Dependencies | 8

Voluntary Servitude and Disobedience | 11

In Suspense | 13

At the Risk of Passion | 17

Leaving the Family | 22

Forgetting, Anamnesis, Deliverance | 24

Incurable (In)fidelities | 29

Zero Risk? | 33

How (Not) to Become Oneself . . . | 36

Being in Secret | 39

Befriending Our Fears | 41

At the Risk of Being Sad | 46

At the Risk of Being Free | 49

The Time They Call Lost | 52

Dead Alive | 55

Of a Perception Infinitely Vaster . . . | 59

Anxiety, Lack—Spiritual Hunger? | 63

Farewell Magic World: Beyond Disappointment | 67

Life—Mine, Yours | 70

At the Risk of the Unknown | 72

At the Risk of Being Carnal | 74

May There Be an End to Our Torment . . . | 79

Breaking Up | 82

At the Risk of Speech | 86

Solitudes | 89

Laughter, Dreaming—Beyond the Impasse | 93

Hope No More | 101

Once Upon a Time, the “Athenaeum” . . . or, Why Risk Romanticism? | 106

Risking Belief | 111

Risking Variation | 114

The Event: Hyperpresence | 119

Intimate Prophecy | 122

At the Risk of Bedazzlement | 127
Desire, Body, Writing | 130

Healing? | 139

An Other Language | 142

Risking Scandal | 145

Taking the Risk of Childhood | 148

Assiduity | 151

Risking the Future | 154

At the Risk of Beauty | 158

At the Risk of Spirit | 162

Risking the Universal? | 164

Hauntings | 167

Spirals, Ellipses, Metaphors, Anamorphoses | 170

Envisaging Night | 173

Revolutions | 176

At the Risk of Going Through Hell (Eurydice) | 180

Notes | 187