“Echos des rencontres III,” from a volume dedicated to the work of Louis Marin, was originally published in Signes, Histoire, Fictions, edited by Frédéric Pousin and Sylvie Robic (Paris: Editions Arguments, 2003), 136–43.

I feel the honor I’ve been granted, or the blessing I’ve been accorded, all the more profoundly since I have no right to preside over this session. This is not a figure of rhetoric or of politesse. Claude Frontisi has given me excessive credit in having me lead a seminar on Louis Marin. No, this seminar does not have a director. Along with a few friends and colleagues, we had decided several years ago to begin to host such a seminar— notably with Pierre-Antoine Fabre, Nicole Loraux, Yves Hersant, Catherine Peschanski, and others who are also here. Before we judged it necessary to dedicate it to the published and forthcoming works of Louis Marin, this seminar existed— in fact, since my arrival at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. With Louis and others, since 1985–1986 we had organized it around the always changing theme of “Philosophy and Social Sciences.” We had here, with Louis, many enthralling exchanges. For me personally, my relationship with Louis was that of an admiring friend who is trying to follow or intersect as best he can an immense trajectory, having the growing feeling that he is still far from having taken its measure— and this colloquium will have made even clearer to me my inability to take that measure.