We are not naive; we know that for certain men (and women!) our topics are suspect, or susceptible to dishonoring philosophy. [...] Initially, what we knew is that neither one of us had embraced, as a vocation, this exercise of thought that is called philosophy. Not that we were wondering if we would be capable of it, if our names would be worthy to one day be added to those of the authors whose texts we were reading, or would be included in the dictionaries of philosophy (they have not been …). If we had doubts, they suggested rather a certain analogy with the “I would prefer not to” of the clerk Bartleby, that living enigma in Melville’s short story who, obstinately and with no other explanation except this formula, refuses to be engaged, to fill any one of the functions that his “boss” proposes, a boss becoming more and more obsessed, fascinated, ready to give anything to him if only he would accept it. Except, of course, that we are not living enigmas, that we have not driven any of our bosses crazy, that both of us have done what had to be done to earn our diplomas and even to launch our “careers” (which means beginning to work on our doctoral dissertations). Simply, if doing philosophy meant seriously considering inescapable dilemmas, irresolvable alternatives, injunctions that put us up against a wall, we would prefer not to. And when we saw the authors that we were reading striking a heroic pose, as if the destiny of humanity or the vocation of the subject was in play in the question they were posing, it must be said that we were laughing up our sleeves, knowing full well that this laugh could mean that we would never be “real” philosophers. But the principal difference with Bartleby, a masculine figure, unfathomable and fascinating, invented by a man, is that, at the end of the short story, he dies (in prison for loitering, preferring not to eat), whereas we are living. Moreover each of us has found her personal way to inscribe herself in this somewhat bizarre story that is called philosophy.
