A national tribute will be paid on Wednesday at Les Invalides to the sociologist and philosopher Edgar Morin, who died on May 29 at the age of 104, the Élysée announced on Monday June 1.
“This national tribute salutes the journey of a philosopher, writer, resistance fighter and sociologist of the present time,” underlined the French presidency. Edgar Morin “embodied for millions of French people the ideal of the humanist intellectual, committed to peace, dialogue between peoples, the defense of international law, the European ideal, or the ecological cause,” it was added.
The ceremony will take place from 11:00 a.m. in the courtyard of the Dôme and not in the paved main courtyard of Les Invalides, as tradition dictates, due to work. A major figure in French intellectual and media life and a respected voice on the left, Edgar Morin has written around forty works, widely translated.
An honored humanist intellectual
Among them, “Autocritique” (1959), which relates his exclusion from the PCF and his own blindness in the face of Stalinism, “La Rumeur d’Orléans” (1969), on an anti-Semitic rumor, “The Method” (1977-2004), his major work in six volumes, and several books on ecology, a theme close to his heart.
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. His real name Edgar Nahoum, he was born into a Jewish family from Salonika in Greece, who emigrated to Paris. In 1941, he joined the Communist Party and entered the Resistance under the pseudonym Morin. Despite his great age, Edgar Morin was always present and listened to in the intellectual debate, and the media were fond of his words.
