EDGAR MORIN
In his latest work, Une politique de civilisation*, Edgar Morin develops the views on the state of the world which he had already outlined in Terre-Patrie, and proposes a reform of politics and our way of thinking, to take us beyond the multi-faceted, global crisis we are currently experiencing.
Label France: For a number of years now, it has been widely acknowledged that our societies are in a state of economic, social and political crisis. Why do you believe this situation to be fundamental?
Edgar Morin: All that which, in the past, made up the radiant face of Western civilisation is now becoming its darker side. For instance, individualism, one of the great achievements of Western civilisation, is now accompanied more and more by such phenomena as fragmentation, solitude, egocentricity and the disintegration of solidarity. Technology is another ambiguous product of our civilisation that has freed mankind from an enormous expenditure of energy by transferring that burden to machines; however, it has also subordinated society to the quantitative logic of its machines.
Industry, which mass-produces inexpensive consumer goods to satisfy the requirements of a large number of people, is the source of the pollution and degradation that is threatening our living environment. In this respect, the motor car seems to have reached a cross-roads of our civilisation's vices and virtues. Science itself, long believed to be the source of nothing but good for mankind, has revealed a more worrying side with the nuclear threat or the risks involved in genetic engineering.
So perhaps one might say that the myth of progress has actually collapsed. That myth has been the bedrock of our civilisation, implying always that tomorrow would necessarily be better than today, a view shared equally by both East and West; after all, Communism always held the promise of a glorious future. That does not mean that all progress is now impossible; however, it can no longer be considered as automatic and does imply all manner of regressions. Today, we are forced to recognise that our industrial, technological and scientific civilisation creates as many problems as it solves.
Is this a crisis that affects only Western societies?
This situation is a world crisis inasmuch as Western civilisation has become globalised as has its ideal, which it called development. Development was seen as a sort of driving force, with a technological and economic engine capable of pulling the carriages of social and human development.
And yet, we have realised that development, originally viewed only from an economic aspect, does not preclude human and moral under-development. Firstly, in our wealthy and developed nations and, secondly, in traditional societies.
So all our old solutions are now being called into question, presenting us with huge challenges for ourselves and the planet, and the threat posed by what is referred to as the global economy, of which we do not yet know whether the benefits it promises in the form of high living standards will not come at the price of a serious deterioration in the very quality of that life.
This deterioration in quality over quantity is the mark of our civilisation crisis since we live in a world dominated by a technological, economic and scientific logic. Only that which is quantifiable is perceived as real, everything else is dismissed, from political thinking in particular. Unfortunately, neither love nor suffering, pleasure, enthusiasm nor poetry are quantifiable.
I fear that the path of accelerated and accrued economic competition will lead us only towards higher unemployment. The tragedy is that we do not have a way out. Our tools of thought, our ideologies have proved to be failures: Marxism, for instance, believed, unfortunately mistakenly, that by eliminating the ruling class one could eliminate the exploitation of man by man. So we are somewhat at bay.
Has there ever been a situation as extreme as ours in the past?
This technological, economic and scientific development, with its specific effects, is a phenomenon unique in history. But borderline situations have occurred in the past. When a given system finds itself saturated with problems it can no longer resolve, it has two possibilities: either general regression or a change of system.
The example of regression is illustrated by that of the Roman Empire. As we know today, it was not the invading hordes that caused the downfall of the Roman Empire but the fact that Rome proved incapable of changing and of resolving its economic problems. By contrast, the emergence of historic societies in the Middle East some ten thousand years ago, when small nomadic tribes progressed from being hunters and pickers to taking up agriculture and settling in village communities, is a successful example of how an overly categorised or dispersed organisational system was overcome to solve the problems posed by a large concentration of populations.
When such changes occurs, a threshold is crossed and a change of scale occurs in reality. Is it in the logic of the future of human societies to accede to the stage of globalisation, which you also refer to as "the planetary era", one which, today, is perceived more than ever as a threat?
Indeed, because globalisation is out of control, it is accompanied by many instances of regression. But it is a possibility that could be desirable. Obviously, globalisation has a very destructive aspect: it generates anonymity, reduces individual cultures to a common denominator and standardises identities. However, it is also a unique opportunity to promote communication and understanding between the peoples of the planet's various cultures and encourages their blending.
This new chapter will come about only once we become fully aware of the fact that we are citizens of the planet first and foremost, and then Europeans, French, Africans, Americans... the planet is our homeland, a fact that does not deny the individual homelands of others. The awareness of our global destiny as a community is the prerequisite for change that would allow us to act as co-pilot for the planet, whose problems have become inextricably intertwined. If not, we would experience a fate similar to that of "balkanisation", a violent and defensive retaliation against specific ethnic or religious identities, which is the opposite of this process of unification and solidarity throughout the planet.
These planetary problems surpass the competence of individual nation-states and would require political solutions on a planetary scale. Does this mean we should set up a world government with all the totalitarian risks that implies?
Not at all. I believe that our hope undoubtedly lies in the setting-up of a world confederation that would itself be a confederation of confederations at the level of the continents, of which Europe could be a model and an example. I believe we need to set up a number of world bodies to regulate vital problems such as the environment, nuclear power and economic development, which, given its socio-cultural consequences, would have to be under political control.
But the essence of the politics of civilisation would have to be implemented at the level of each individual country. What would be its ultimate aims and its broad outlines?
If there is a crisis of civilisation, it's because the fundamental problems are generally considered as individual and private problems by politics, which fails to see the way in which they are related with collective and general problems. The politics of civilisation aims to place man at the centre of politics, as both a means and an end, and to promote a good way of life rather than well-being. The politics of civilisation would have to revolve around two main axes, applicable to France but also to Europe: making towns and cities more human, which would require huge investments, and preventing the rural mass exodus.
Your critics would then raise the problem of financing these huge projects in times of crisis...
Of course, but only because they are working on the basis of separate budgets. It would be necessary to create an accounting system that quantifies the ecological and health repercussions of our society's malaise.
It seems you believe that, millions of years after he first appeared, homo sapiens is still in prehistoric times when it comes to spirit and behaviour. To what extent is our way of thinking and grasping reality a handicap to overcoming our current problems?
Pertinent knowledge exists only if one is capable of placing one's information within a context, globalising it and situating it within an overall framework. Our thought system, which permeates education from primary schools to universities, is a system that breaks down reality and renders our minds incapable of linking up the knowledge we are made to pigeonhole into disciplines. This hyper-specialisation of knowledge, which consists of carving out a single aspect from reality, can have considerable human and practical consequences in the case, for example, of infrastructure policies, which all too often neglect the social and human dimension. It also contributes towards dispossessing citizens of the right to take political decisions and transferring that privilege to experts.
The reforming of thought teaches us to tackle complexity with the aid of concepts capable of re-establishing the links between the different types of knowledge available to us as we reach the end of the 20th century. Such a reform is crucial in the planetary age where it has become impossible, and artificial, to isolate an important problem at the national level. This reform of our way of thinking, which itself requires a reforming of education, is not happening anywhere even though it is needed everywhere.
In the 17th century, the philosopher Pascal already understood how everything is linked, realising that "all things aid and are aided, cause and are caused" he even had an understanding of retroaction, which was admirable for his time, "and everything being linked by an invisible link that binds the parts most distant from one another, I hold it to be impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole just as it is impossible to know the whole without knowing the parts". That is the crux of the matter, the direction of learning in which education ought to be heading.
But, unfortunately, we have followed the model of Descartes, his contemporary, who for his part advocated breaking down reality and problems into constituent parts. And yet, the whole produces qualities that are not extant in the individual parts. The whole is never just the sum of its parts but always something more.
You propose overcoming the traditional antagonism that exists between the particular and the universal. Why is it not contradictory to "want to safeguard the diversity of cultures and develop the cultural unity of humanity"?
It is essential to be able to consider the unity of the many and the multiplicity of the unit. We tend too much to overlook the unity of mankind when we see the diversity of cultures and customs and to dismiss the diversity when we see the unity. The real problem is being able to see one in the other; after all, the nature of mankind lies precisely in this potential for diversity, which cannot call into question the unity of mankind from an anatomical, genetic, cerebral, intellectual and affective point of view.
It is easy to see, then, that the general and the particular are not conflicting since the general itself is singular. The human race is singular compared with other species yet it produces multiple singularities. Our universe itself is singular yet produces diversity. One must always be able to think of the unit and the multiple; if not, minds incapable of considering the unity of the many and the multiplicity of the unit will inevitably promote a unity that standardises and multiplicities that withdraw into themselves.
To regenerate democracy, you advocate drawing new strength from the values of the Republican trinity, namely "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". How should we re-examine the way in which those values relate?
What is interesting is that the formula itself is a complex one: the three terms are both complementary and antagonistic. Liberty on its own quashes equality and even fraternity. Once imposed, equality destroys liberty without achieving fraternity. As for fraternity, which cannot be decreed, it must regulate liberty and reduce inequality. It is a value which, in fact, is based on one's own relationship with the general interest, in other words citizenship in its deepest sense. As soon as the spirit of citizenship crumbles, as soon as we cease to feel responsible for - and united with - those around us, fraternity is done for. These three notions are therefore very important. There are historic moments in which the crucial matter is that of liberty, especially in conflicts of oppression such as under the Occupation in France, and those where the main issue is that of solidarity, as is the case today.
At the European level, you favour a federalist model. What might France's role be?
France could play a pioneering role because its culture has a legacy of universalism, of civic faith, both Republican and patriotic; but also because France is the only European country which, since the 19th century, has been a country of immigration while all the others are countries of emigration. It has inherited a tradition of integration of foreign nationals, through school and naturalisation, which, since the Third Republic (1870), has been automatic for children born in France. While never euphoric at the outset, this integration continues to work in spite of the particular difficulties in times of crisis; it explains why one quarter of France's population today has foreign forebears. Finally, due to its colonial past, France has been able to recognise as French citizens people from the Martinique and Vietnam, in other words people with a different colour of skin.
In the French model, national identity has always been transmitted through the Republican school and the teaching of the history of France. Schoolchildren have been taught about Vercingétorix, Rome and Clovis, in other words a very rich and eventful history. Indeed, on the one hand, French mythology glorifies the likes of Vercingétorix, a hero of independence, but does not, on the other, treat as collaborators the Gauls who were themselves Romanised. Thus, from its very beginnings, France accepted the blending of races with the Romans and, later, the Teutons. Made up, initially, of a tiny kingdom, the Ile-de-France, which expanded throughout the centuries by assimilating dissimilar regions, France is in fact characterised by a process of permanent Francisation.
The conclusion of your analysis is that the situation is "logically hopeless". Nonetheless, what is it that gives you hope?
I believe we need to open ourselves up to exchange. Just as Asia opened itself up to Western technology, we need to embrace the contributions of Asian, Buddhist and Hindu civilisations in particular, for the part they have played in the relation between oneself and one's inner self, between one's spirit, soul and body, aspects which our productivist and activist civilisation has totally neglected. We have much to learn from other cultures. Just as the Renaissance came about after mediaeval Europe returned to its Greek sources, we now need to find a new renaissance by drawing from the many sources of the universe.
There is also hope in the fact that we are still in the prehistoric age of the human spirit, that mankind's mental capacities are still not being used to full capacity, especially where our relations with others are concerned. We are still barbarians in our relations with others, not only between different religions and peoples but within our own families, between parents, where there is a lack of understanding.
Also, history tells us that we have to reckon with the improbable. Historically speaking, I have twice lived through the victory of the improbable. First, with the defeat of Nazism in 1945, even though Germany's victory was probable in Europe in 1941; then, with the collapse of the Communist system in 1989-90. The worst is never certain; in the words of Hölderlin, "wherever danger grows, salvation grows too", reminding us that danger will help us perhaps to find a way out, providing we become aware of it.
Interview conducted by Anne Rapin
*In which he presents his analyses alongside those of the political analyst and philosopher Sami Naïr.
Bibliographic milestones
Edgar Morin is one of France's leading contemporary philosophers, an emeritus research director at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). His large body of work is characterised by a concern for knowledge that is neither hampered nor pigeonholed, capable of grasping the complexity of reality, of observing the singular while placing it within the whole. In this spirit:
· he has conducted research into contemporary sociology (L'Esprit du temps, published by Grasset, 1962-1976...)
· he has sought to understand anthropo-social complexity by incorporating the biological dimension and the imaginary dimension (L'Homme et la mort, Seuil, 1951, Le Cinéma ou l'Homme imaginaire, Minuit, 1956, Le Paradigme perdu: la nature humaine, Seuil, 1973...)
· he has set out a diagnostic analysis and an ethic for the fundamental problems of our age (Pour sortir du XXe siècle, Nathan, 1981, Penser l'Europe, Gallimard, 1987, Terre-Patrie, Seuil, 1993, Une politique de civilisation, with Sami Naïr, Arléa, 1997)
· finally, over a period of twenty years (1977-1991), he has worked on a Method (Seuil) that would enable a reform of our way of thinking.
La Complexité humaine (Flammarion, 1994) combines key concepts from the work of Edgar Morin (excerpts from his main works), for an introduction to his "complex thought".
Most of these works have been translated (or are being translated) into Chinese, English, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish...
© Ministry of Foreign Affairs / Label France, magazine
In his latest work, Une politique de civilisation*, Edgar Morin develops the views on the state of the world which he had already outlined in Terre-Patrie, and proposes a reform of politics and our way of thinking, to take us beyond the multi-faceted, global crisis we are currently experiencing.
Label France: For a number of years now, it has been widely acknowledged that our societies are in a state of economic, social and political crisis. Why do you believe this situation to be fundamental?
Edgar Morin: All that which, in the past, made up the radiant face of Western civilisation is now becoming its darker side. For instance, individualism, one of the great achievements of Western civilisation, is now accompanied more and more by such phenomena as fragmentation, solitude, egocentricity and the disintegration of solidarity. Technology is another ambiguous product of our civilisation that has freed mankind from an enormous expenditure of energy by transferring that burden to machines; however, it has also subordinated society to the quantitative logic of its machines.
Industry, which mass-produces inexpensive consumer goods to satisfy the requirements of a large number of people, is the source of the pollution and degradation that is threatening our living environment. In this respect, the motor car seems to have reached a cross-roads of our civilisation's vices and virtues. Science itself, long believed to be the source of nothing but good for mankind, has revealed a more worrying side with the nuclear threat or the risks involved in genetic engineering.
So perhaps one might say that the myth of progress has actually collapsed. That myth has been the bedrock of our civilisation, implying always that tomorrow would necessarily be better than today, a view shared equally by both East and West; after all, Communism always held the promise of a glorious future. That does not mean that all progress is now impossible; however, it can no longer be considered as automatic and does imply all manner of regressions. Today, we are forced to recognise that our industrial, technological and scientific civilisation creates as many problems as it solves.
Is this a crisis that affects only Western societies?
This situation is a world crisis inasmuch as Western civilisation has become globalised as has its ideal, which it called development. Development was seen as a sort of driving force, with a technological and economic engine capable of pulling the carriages of social and human development.
And yet, we have realised that development, originally viewed only from an economic aspect, does not preclude human and moral under-development. Firstly, in our wealthy and developed nations and, secondly, in traditional societies.
So all our old solutions are now being called into question, presenting us with huge challenges for ourselves and the planet, and the threat posed by what is referred to as the global economy, of which we do not yet know whether the benefits it promises in the form of high living standards will not come at the price of a serious deterioration in the very quality of that life.
This deterioration in quality over quantity is the mark of our civilisation crisis since we live in a world dominated by a technological, economic and scientific logic. Only that which is quantifiable is perceived as real, everything else is dismissed, from political thinking in particular. Unfortunately, neither love nor suffering, pleasure, enthusiasm nor poetry are quantifiable.
I fear that the path of accelerated and accrued economic competition will lead us only towards higher unemployment. The tragedy is that we do not have a way out. Our tools of thought, our ideologies have proved to be failures: Marxism, for instance, believed, unfortunately mistakenly, that by eliminating the ruling class one could eliminate the exploitation of man by man. So we are somewhat at bay.
Has there ever been a situation as extreme as ours in the past?
This technological, economic and scientific development, with its specific effects, is a phenomenon unique in history. But borderline situations have occurred in the past. When a given system finds itself saturated with problems it can no longer resolve, it has two possibilities: either general regression or a change of system.
The example of regression is illustrated by that of the Roman Empire. As we know today, it was not the invading hordes that caused the downfall of the Roman Empire but the fact that Rome proved incapable of changing and of resolving its economic problems. By contrast, the emergence of historic societies in the Middle East some ten thousand years ago, when small nomadic tribes progressed from being hunters and pickers to taking up agriculture and settling in village communities, is a successful example of how an overly categorised or dispersed organisational system was overcome to solve the problems posed by a large concentration of populations.
When such changes occurs, a threshold is crossed and a change of scale occurs in reality. Is it in the logic of the future of human societies to accede to the stage of globalisation, which you also refer to as "the planetary era", one which, today, is perceived more than ever as a threat?
Indeed, because globalisation is out of control, it is accompanied by many instances of regression. But it is a possibility that could be desirable. Obviously, globalisation has a very destructive aspect: it generates anonymity, reduces individual cultures to a common denominator and standardises identities. However, it is also a unique opportunity to promote communication and understanding between the peoples of the planet's various cultures and encourages their blending.
This new chapter will come about only once we become fully aware of the fact that we are citizens of the planet first and foremost, and then Europeans, French, Africans, Americans... the planet is our homeland, a fact that does not deny the individual homelands of others. The awareness of our global destiny as a community is the prerequisite for change that would allow us to act as co-pilot for the planet, whose problems have become inextricably intertwined. If not, we would experience a fate similar to that of "balkanisation", a violent and defensive retaliation against specific ethnic or religious identities, which is the opposite of this process of unification and solidarity throughout the planet.
These planetary problems surpass the competence of individual nation-states and would require political solutions on a planetary scale. Does this mean we should set up a world government with all the totalitarian risks that implies?
Not at all. I believe that our hope undoubtedly lies in the setting-up of a world confederation that would itself be a confederation of confederations at the level of the continents, of which Europe could be a model and an example. I believe we need to set up a number of world bodies to regulate vital problems such as the environment, nuclear power and economic development, which, given its socio-cultural consequences, would have to be under political control.
But the essence of the politics of civilisation would have to be implemented at the level of each individual country. What would be its ultimate aims and its broad outlines?
If there is a crisis of civilisation, it's because the fundamental problems are generally considered as individual and private problems by politics, which fails to see the way in which they are related with collective and general problems. The politics of civilisation aims to place man at the centre of politics, as both a means and an end, and to promote a good way of life rather than well-being. The politics of civilisation would have to revolve around two main axes, applicable to France but also to Europe: making towns and cities more human, which would require huge investments, and preventing the rural mass exodus.
Your critics would then raise the problem of financing these huge projects in times of crisis...
Of course, but only because they are working on the basis of separate budgets. It would be necessary to create an accounting system that quantifies the ecological and health repercussions of our society's malaise.
It seems you believe that, millions of years after he first appeared, homo sapiens is still in prehistoric times when it comes to spirit and behaviour. To what extent is our way of thinking and grasping reality a handicap to overcoming our current problems?
Pertinent knowledge exists only if one is capable of placing one's information within a context, globalising it and situating it within an overall framework. Our thought system, which permeates education from primary schools to universities, is a system that breaks down reality and renders our minds incapable of linking up the knowledge we are made to pigeonhole into disciplines. This hyper-specialisation of knowledge, which consists of carving out a single aspect from reality, can have considerable human and practical consequences in the case, for example, of infrastructure policies, which all too often neglect the social and human dimension. It also contributes towards dispossessing citizens of the right to take political decisions and transferring that privilege to experts.
The reforming of thought teaches us to tackle complexity with the aid of concepts capable of re-establishing the links between the different types of knowledge available to us as we reach the end of the 20th century. Such a reform is crucial in the planetary age where it has become impossible, and artificial, to isolate an important problem at the national level. This reform of our way of thinking, which itself requires a reforming of education, is not happening anywhere even though it is needed everywhere.
In the 17th century, the philosopher Pascal already understood how everything is linked, realising that "all things aid and are aided, cause and are caused" he even had an understanding of retroaction, which was admirable for his time, "and everything being linked by an invisible link that binds the parts most distant from one another, I hold it to be impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole just as it is impossible to know the whole without knowing the parts". That is the crux of the matter, the direction of learning in which education ought to be heading.
But, unfortunately, we have followed the model of Descartes, his contemporary, who for his part advocated breaking down reality and problems into constituent parts. And yet, the whole produces qualities that are not extant in the individual parts. The whole is never just the sum of its parts but always something more.
You propose overcoming the traditional antagonism that exists between the particular and the universal. Why is it not contradictory to "want to safeguard the diversity of cultures and develop the cultural unity of humanity"?
It is essential to be able to consider the unity of the many and the multiplicity of the unit. We tend too much to overlook the unity of mankind when we see the diversity of cultures and customs and to dismiss the diversity when we see the unity. The real problem is being able to see one in the other; after all, the nature of mankind lies precisely in this potential for diversity, which cannot call into question the unity of mankind from an anatomical, genetic, cerebral, intellectual and affective point of view.
It is easy to see, then, that the general and the particular are not conflicting since the general itself is singular. The human race is singular compared with other species yet it produces multiple singularities. Our universe itself is singular yet produces diversity. One must always be able to think of the unit and the multiple; if not, minds incapable of considering the unity of the many and the multiplicity of the unit will inevitably promote a unity that standardises and multiplicities that withdraw into themselves.
To regenerate democracy, you advocate drawing new strength from the values of the Republican trinity, namely "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". How should we re-examine the way in which those values relate?
What is interesting is that the formula itself is a complex one: the three terms are both complementary and antagonistic. Liberty on its own quashes equality and even fraternity. Once imposed, equality destroys liberty without achieving fraternity. As for fraternity, which cannot be decreed, it must regulate liberty and reduce inequality. It is a value which, in fact, is based on one's own relationship with the general interest, in other words citizenship in its deepest sense. As soon as the spirit of citizenship crumbles, as soon as we cease to feel responsible for - and united with - those around us, fraternity is done for. These three notions are therefore very important. There are historic moments in which the crucial matter is that of liberty, especially in conflicts of oppression such as under the Occupation in France, and those where the main issue is that of solidarity, as is the case today.
At the European level, you favour a federalist model. What might France's role be?
France could play a pioneering role because its culture has a legacy of universalism, of civic faith, both Republican and patriotic; but also because France is the only European country which, since the 19th century, has been a country of immigration while all the others are countries of emigration. It has inherited a tradition of integration of foreign nationals, through school and naturalisation, which, since the Third Republic (1870), has been automatic for children born in France. While never euphoric at the outset, this integration continues to work in spite of the particular difficulties in times of crisis; it explains why one quarter of France's population today has foreign forebears. Finally, due to its colonial past, France has been able to recognise as French citizens people from the Martinique and Vietnam, in other words people with a different colour of skin.
In the French model, national identity has always been transmitted through the Republican school and the teaching of the history of France. Schoolchildren have been taught about Vercingétorix, Rome and Clovis, in other words a very rich and eventful history. Indeed, on the one hand, French mythology glorifies the likes of Vercingétorix, a hero of independence, but does not, on the other, treat as collaborators the Gauls who were themselves Romanised. Thus, from its very beginnings, France accepted the blending of races with the Romans and, later, the Teutons. Made up, initially, of a tiny kingdom, the Ile-de-France, which expanded throughout the centuries by assimilating dissimilar regions, France is in fact characterised by a process of permanent Francisation.
The conclusion of your analysis is that the situation is "logically hopeless". Nonetheless, what is it that gives you hope?
I believe we need to open ourselves up to exchange. Just as Asia opened itself up to Western technology, we need to embrace the contributions of Asian, Buddhist and Hindu civilisations in particular, for the part they have played in the relation between oneself and one's inner self, between one's spirit, soul and body, aspects which our productivist and activist civilisation has totally neglected. We have much to learn from other cultures. Just as the Renaissance came about after mediaeval Europe returned to its Greek sources, we now need to find a new renaissance by drawing from the many sources of the universe.
There is also hope in the fact that we are still in the prehistoric age of the human spirit, that mankind's mental capacities are still not being used to full capacity, especially where our relations with others are concerned. We are still barbarians in our relations with others, not only between different religions and peoples but within our own families, between parents, where there is a lack of understanding.
Also, history tells us that we have to reckon with the improbable. Historically speaking, I have twice lived through the victory of the improbable. First, with the defeat of Nazism in 1945, even though Germany's victory was probable in Europe in 1941; then, with the collapse of the Communist system in 1989-90. The worst is never certain; in the words of Hölderlin, "wherever danger grows, salvation grows too", reminding us that danger will help us perhaps to find a way out, providing we become aware of it.
Interview conducted by Anne Rapin
*In which he presents his analyses alongside those of the political analyst and philosopher Sami Naïr.
Bibliographic milestones
Edgar Morin is one of France's leading contemporary philosophers, an emeritus research director at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). His large body of work is characterised by a concern for knowledge that is neither hampered nor pigeonholed, capable of grasping the complexity of reality, of observing the singular while placing it within the whole. In this spirit:
· he has conducted research into contemporary sociology (L'Esprit du temps, published by Grasset, 1962-1976...)
· he has sought to understand anthropo-social complexity by incorporating the biological dimension and the imaginary dimension (L'Homme et la mort, Seuil, 1951, Le Cinéma ou l'Homme imaginaire, Minuit, 1956, Le Paradigme perdu: la nature humaine, Seuil, 1973...)
· he has set out a diagnostic analysis and an ethic for the fundamental problems of our age (Pour sortir du XXe siècle, Nathan, 1981, Penser l'Europe, Gallimard, 1987, Terre-Patrie, Seuil, 1993, Une politique de civilisation, with Sami Naïr, Arléa, 1997)
· finally, over a period of twenty years (1977-1991), he has worked on a Method (Seuil) that would enable a reform of our way of thinking.
La Complexité humaine (Flammarion, 1994) combines key concepts from the work of Edgar Morin (excerpts from his main works), for an introduction to his "complex thought".
Most of these works have been translated (or are being translated) into Chinese, English, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish...
© Ministry of Foreign Affairs / Label France, magazine
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