How to Live? One Question and Six or Seven Life Lessons with Albert Memmi

Abstract

Memmi’s work is every sense a “life project”: a coherent project pursued throughout his long life as an intellectual, but also as the member of a minority group as he has consistently reminded his readers. It is therefore a personal project that is intimately intertwined with the life experiences of an individual, yet has implications for understanding broader communities and societies. The implication – and sometimes the stated intention – is that this is a life project from which the individual concerned and others who read the work can learn something, at both private and public levels, concerning the functioning of human interactions.  What then, does such an inventory of a lifetime of writing mean?