This Saturday March 26, we received on franceinfo* the sociologist and thinker Edgar Morin, soon to be 101 years old, who is releasing a manifesto book: Let’s wake up! Edgar Morin is one of the peers and mentors of sociologist Jean Viard who every weekend helps us reflect on social issues.
Edgar Morin, upset by the return of war in Europe, this war in Ukraine, by modern anxieties too, in the face of climate change, identity resurgences. Hence the importance, according to him, of thinking of the world as a whole, which has become too rare, according to him.
“We are in a world of experts and specialists who each see only a small part of the problems, isolated from each other, whereas the characteristic of the intellectual is to pose the fundamental problems and that arise at a moment in history. And in this case, possibly, to take sides.”
Edgar Morin, sociologist and philosopherat franceinfo
franceinfo: Gain height, take time in a world that is spinning at full speed and in fits and starts, often violent. Why is this so important?
John Viard: Edgar Morin, indeed I have known him for a very long time. I have worked with him for 40 years. I was his student, I did my thesis with him, I edited about fifteen of his books and I meet him from time to time. I think that’s one of the most interesting thoughts in the world today because we’ve both been trained to keep things separate. Well then, there is the economy. The economy is numbers, it does not take into account symbols, feelings.
Take Ukraine, it is clear that there are very paradoxical issues. We have decreed that the market, trade could regulate the world, for 50 years, we have done like that, and we say: and politics, and power relations, and identity crises, and the traumatic memory of communism, everything that, we remove, we trade. It’s not possible because the world is both trade, war, love, memory, violence. And it’s a prime example of the weakening of thought under the weight of merchants. And so we arrive at an unmanageable situation. Everything was complex. We didn’t think so. Life is complexity. And that’s what’s exciting.
In Edgar Morin, there are two researchers, there is someone who is basically a field sociologist, who worked on Germany in 1946, The Rumor of Orleans, (book by Egard Morin on a political and media affair in 1969, editor’s note) etc. He takes hot topics and tries to pick them out to see what’s behind them. This is the heart of his sociology.
But little by little, since the 1970s, he embarked on his great book on The method(major work of Edgar Morin, made up of six volumes, described by its author as an encyclopaedic in the etymological sense, editor’s note), a book on this complex thought to try to fight against a world that we cut up. It’s very clear at Sciences Po, for example, you have students, they have one hour on agriculture, one hour on hunting, etc., but we don’t try to get them to do theses, or a synthetic thought. We give them knowledge that they can use, but no more than that.
So that’s Edgar Morin’s big issue. How do you want to think about global warming if you haven’t integrated the war? We can clearly see that everything is linked: our car brands, our energy, our techniques, all of a sudden everything is disorganized on the planet at the moment, because we have built a totally interconnected world. I would say that waging war in that world is becoming almost impossible, or else it will cause explosions, that is what is happening not only for the unfortunate Ukrainians, but for the whole of planet.
How do you explain that the place of intellectuals has been reduced in recent years and how, quite concretely, does this influence the conduct of our world?
The place of the intellectuals has been reduced, but moreover, as has been the place of the left because historically, the left was the alliance of intellectuals and circles who own nothing, as we often say , that is to say the working world, the small farmers. And then the right was those who own: the owners, the financiers, the priests, the institutions. Of course, I schematize a lot. And so basically, the debate of ideas, little by little, politics separated from it. There’s just a figure, but when I started publishing 40 years ago, essays sold an average of 1,600 copies. Today, it is estimated that it is 700 copies. That means that we actually read less. Politicians consult us less.
Basically, the intellectual movement continues on one side, and then, politics has become a politics of opinion polls, a politics of numbers. We measure, they know how to measure, but how do they lead society, how do they create desire? I would say that we have somewhat lost the sense of political desire, which makes people abstain and somewhere, I understand them very well.
* The interview with Edgar Morin of March 26, 2022 on franceinfo by Jules de Kiss