Grelet's solitary sailor is a radical theoretical figure, herald angel
of an existential rebellion against the world and against philosophy's
world-thought.
Over a decade ago, Gilles Grelet left the city to live permanently on
the sea, in silence and solitude, with no plans to return to land,
rarely leaving his boat Théorème. An act of radical refusal, a process
of undoing one by one the ties that attach humans to the world, for
Grelet this departure was also inseparable from an ongoing campaign of
anti-philosophy. Like François Laruelle's ordinary man or Rousseau's
solitary walker, Grelet's solitary sailor is a radical theoretical
figure, herald angel of an existential rebellion against the world and
against philosophy's world-thought, point zero of an anti-philosophy as
rigorous gnosis, and apprentice in the herethics of navigation.
More than a set of scattered reflections, less than a system of thought,
Theory of the Solitary Sailor is a gnostic device. It answers the
supposed necessity of realizing the world-thought that is philosophy (or
whatever takes its place) with a steadfast and melancholeric refusal. As
indifferently serene and implacably violent as the ocean itself,
devastating for the sufficiency of the world and the reign of semblance,
this is a lived anti-philosophy, a perpetual assault waged from the
waters off the coast of Brittany, amid sea and wind.
