Emmanuel Macron greeted Wednesday June 3, during a national tribute at Les Invalides to the philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin, who died at 104, “an exceptional destiny in the century” who never gave in to “the truth of a single camp”.
“It is an exceptional destiny in the century”, “a global humanist certainly, but irreducibly French always for his fights for freedom (…) equality, emancipation, fraternity also with all people deprived of their rights”, launched the Head of State in front of a large portrait of the philosopher, wearing his eternal hat, which had been placed on his coffin.
“For him, the truth never resulted from a single camp, from a single dogma. Commitment could not be regimentation and the future was doomed to chaos if we gave in to despondency or inaction,” he added. “This French energy, generous, ambitious, universal, will continue to be reborn,” he assured.
The ceremony took place in the southern courtyard of the Dôme des Invalides and not the main courtyard, as tradition dictates, due to work, in the presence of his wife, the Moroccan philosopher Sabah Abouessalam, and a number of personalities from the political and intellectual world.
Adept at “complex thinking”
Former President François Hollande, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu and his predecessors Laurent Fabius, Dominique de Villepin, Manuel Valls, Bernard Cazeneuve and Élisabeth Borne as well as the sociologist Jean Viard and the historian Pascal Ory were notably seen. The head of the Moroccan government Aziz Akhannouch was also present.
The Head of State praised “the child of Ménilmontant”, a working-class district of Paris, with a “secular education”, “vibrant with his identity as a Jewish Frenchman, hunted, oppressed”, resistant to the Nazi Occupier and follower of “complex thought”.
“To understand how barbarism was given birth to by civilization (…) after the war, Edgar Morin, still a soldier, settled for a time in Germany” and “took a book against the era to defend the idea of Germany that he loved, the idea of Europe that he loved and its ideas for which he hoped for a revival,” he recalled.
In “Autocritique” (1959), the philosopher recounted his exclusion from the PCF and his own blindness in the face of Stalinism. “He had learned to think against appearances, against schools, sometimes against himself,” said the head of state.
As a historian, philosopher and scientist, he attempted to break down the boundaries between disciplines, refusing the fragmentation of knowledge, in favor of a multidisciplinary cultural and scientific vision.
