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On first inspection, one gets the impression that Paul Valery's relations with philosophy throughout his intellectual career were as plain and simple as could be. Over and over again, he claimed that he had no use for philosophy, that it did not fulfill any of his private needs or answer any question he might naturally ask. He confesses:
I find myself within philosophy as a barbarian would within Athens: knowing full well that he is surrounded by most precious objects and that everything under his eye is worthy of respect; yet losing countenance there, feeling bored, embarrassed, and vaguely awed with a superstitious terror, with sudden flashing impulses to smash everything or set on fire all those mysterious wonders for which he does not have a model in his soul. (Valery, "Descartes" in Oeuvres, p.792)
In the meantime, he grants that even if the problems of philosophers are not those that he himself would have chosen and the difficulties which to them seem most serious and formidable are to him invisible most of the time, he be utterly naive and arrogant to claim to be wholly immune to philosophy. As he takes the risk of introducing himself as an antiphilosopher, he knows that, whether he likes it or not, that very move is already included within philosophy:
I don't feel comfortable within philosophy. We agree it is unavoidable, and no word may be uttered without some tribute being rendered to it. How could that be prevented, since it is itself unable to vouch for what it is? It is all but meaningless to assert, as is often the case, that we all philosophize unconsciously, since the very person engaging in it could not precisely account for what he is doing." ("Descartes," p.791).
Thus it is difficult to name what exactly what one is not doing when one claims not to be philosophizing as it is to name what one is doing when one decides to philosophize and even to devote one's life to it. Valery's view is that philosophizing is exactly what we should not attempt to do, that philosophy exists only inasmuch as it is not a result of the will to philosophize. This he calls "the invisibility of true philosophy," the paradox being that philosophical works somehow are the least likely place to look for philosophy..."