Joel Zask. “Love makes you blind, but admiration opens your eyes.”

Admiration may seem an anachronistic gesture in an age of social media, outrage culture, or generalized victimhood. For the philosopher Joel Zask, who is attentive to ecological and democratic issues, admiration, on the contrary, constitutes an exemplary virtue. It makes us grow, deepens our curiosity, deepens our joy. Whether it focuses on landscapes or works of art, on heroes or ordinary people, it always escapes the sad passions and contributes to our moral upliftment. His essay Admire simply admirable.

Madame Figaro. – According to you, admiration is a neglected feeling in our society, divided between indifference and worship.
Joel Zask. – Today, especially with social networks, we can have the feeling that hatred, jealousy, sacrifice, indignation, in short, a whole series of negative emotions dominate. Charm or idolatry is valued in the same movement. We love it, we’re fans, etc. In my opinion, there is something harmful in this double movement. However, there is one wonderful feeling that makes us grow without self-love or self-depreciation: admiration. Although very common, we rarely talk about it. I wanted to praise it. I believe that if there were more public spaces where we could express our admiration, in everyday life, our lives and our society would be better.

How is admiration different from idolatry? ?
Idolatry breeds fundamental inequality. I put the person or thing I idolize on a pedestal and worship them. Admiration, by contrast, does not involve any hierarchical relationship. What I admire fuels my curiosity and desire to learn more, my need to persevere on my path. There would be many other differences, but I think one of the most important is that the worshiper comes into close contact with reality, while the idolater implicitly withdraws from it.

Aren’t admiring and loving the same thing?
Love easily blinds you, while admiration opens your eyes. In love there is a tendency to merge, to possess, while admiration involves establishing the right distance. We cannot see what is attached to us. To look at a Cézanne painting that I admire, for example, I have to stand back a little, find my place. To admire means to watch with joy, with pleasure. I was amazed at the level of knowledge the fans have about what they admire. They are often inexhaustible. I’d say there’s a fascination with friendship, right? Filia, in the Greek sense of the word, but not of love.

Why do you think admiration is missing from catalogs of virtues? What does it do to our culture and our knowledge? A way to admit inadequacy, a sign of infantilism.
True, admiration is often considered somewhat old-fashioned, childish, naïve feeling. It is easily confused with fascination, that is, with feelings that depersonalize us in the face of a being (“a great man”, a guru, an influential, charismatic leader). We also put it on the side of envy, this tendency to put oneself in the place of others, to take away from them. In all these cases it would be more of a vice than a virtue. Without denying that admiration can turn into negative feelings, I tried to identify its features, to perceive it, so to speak, in a chemically pure state. I drew on the philosophical repertoire of what used to be called “fame,” referring to the authors of extraordinary actions, and “wonderful truth,” the blend of science and aesthetics underlying the experimental sciences of nature. Admiration was never in the catalog of great Greek or Christian virtues; but why not include it in the list of virtues necessary to preserve the best of our time? We could run admiration exercises, offer them at school. Then we’ll create budding fans, not disaffected people or consumers who are potential “fans” of what they’re consuming.

Descartes said that rapture is “the sudden surprise of the soul.” So is admiration perceptible?
Indeed, under the influence of admiration, we restrain ourselves from our ordinary concerns. It relieves the burden of being yourself. And it “destroys individuality,” wrote the philosopher Emerson. On the contrary, we see that people who are full of themselves are generally incapable of admiration. If they turn outward, it is to look for their image there. To a fan, the world is anything but a sounding board in his favor. On the contrary, it makes him look deliciously weird and is likely to take him too far. The world, including what fits in a pocket handkerchief, becomes a space for exploration and travel. At the end of this road is not certainty, but the scientific spirit, whether specialized or amateur.

Can we be both captivated and more clear, restless and stronger in our ability to think and act?
As Descartes clearly explained, who considered it the first “passion of the soul”, admiration can be divided into several stages: first wonder, then attention, then observation and study of the object. This process is not linear, it is rather circular. the more I admire, the more I learn, and the more I study, the more I admire. For to admire is to know that, however thorough it may be, my investigation will never exhaust its subject. Wonder, doubt, wonder, wonder are different ways to enter into this movement that goes from the known to the unknown. This is not a case of charm on the one hand or meditation on the other. As for inattention and indifference, even denial of reality, it also fights against admiration.

“And you, what do you admire? ?” It was with this question that you went out to meet people. And you, Joel Zask, what do you admire? ?
I admire many things and people, some exceptional, most ordinary; like the wings of a butterfly, a picture of lightning in the sky, the great texts of philosophy, Matisse and his paper cut, the ancient gardens of Kyoto, the sculptor. Richard Serra, saxophonist Stan Getz… To write this essay, I tried to give my interviewees the opportunity to talk to me about what is most important to them. And I have to say, I loved hearing them say something really admirable. I am very grateful to them!

Admire. Praise for an emotion that makes us grow by Joëlle Zask, Éditions Premier Parallèle, 200 p., €16.