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Penser l'Europe
Afin de penser l'Europe, Edgar Morin nous invite à abandonner les discours rhétoriques et les idées fragmentaires qui produisent des Europe imaginaires, idéales ou mutilées. Son essai, qui est en même temps un voyage interrogatif dans l'histoire et la culture européennes, conçoit l'Europe comme une unité multiple et complexe, unissant les contraires de façon inséparable. Pour la première fois dans les Temps modernes, l'Europe vit un destin commun. Il nous faut en prendre conscience si nous voulons élaborer un dessein commun.
- GenresPhilosophy
228 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
About the author
Edgar Morin
347 books402 followersEdgar Morin (born Edgar Nahoum, 1921-2026) was a French philosopher and sociologist of the theory of information who has been recognised for his work on complexity and "complex thought" (pensée complexe), and for his scholarly contributions to such diverse fields as media studies, politics, sociology, visual anthropology, ecology, education, and systems biology. He held two bachelors, one in history and geography and one in law, and never did a Ph.D.
During his academic career, Morin was primarily associated with the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Although less well known in the Anglophone world due to the limited availability of English translations of his over 60 books, Morin is renowned in the French-speaking world, Europe, and Latin America.
During his academic career, Morin was primarily associated with the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Although less well known in the Anglophone world due to the limited availability of English translations of his over 60 books, Morin is renowned in the French-speaking world, Europe, and Latin America.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 3, 2023
In the May 2022 preface to this book written in 1987, Morin shows himself quite pessimistic about Europe. Like in the rest of the world, there is much regression. Does Europe still have a future perspective? Morin thinks that the chance that Europe will be an oasis, yes, a beacon of liberty and ecological sanity is quite small in comparison to the probability of remaining an American protectorate under NATO umbrella or even becoming a prey to Putin’s imperialism. The 37 year old text has interesting things to say about Europe and the EU. It shows were Morin comes from. And in spite of his pessimism, it contains hopeful insights nevertheless.
Morin sees Europe through his ‘complexity glass’ as something that is best seen and interpreted in a complex way, e.g. ‘L’Europe n’a d’unité que dans et par sa complexité’. A typical Morin sentence, where he combines two opposites in a meaningful way.
He interprets the history of the continent by chronologically describing major developments as the perpetual wars between kingdoms, the birth of the ‘État-Nation’, the colonisation of the world, the growth of democratic institutions, cosmopolitism, the emancipation of minorities, internationalism. He says that he was initially sceptical about a EU, for reasons of historical violence and colonialism, but since the abolishment of colonialism and prevalent piece on the continent, he had to change his mind.
Morin takes the historical plurality of European nations and cultures as the exceptional condition for the typical plurality of European humanism with its profound intrinsic antagonisms, between faith in universal values and openness for all individual and cultural deviancies. Due to all rivalries and antagonisms between kings and countries throughout European history, this culture had to be practiced for centuries and is now the central thing Europe has to offer to the world. And it has in the meantime indeed been spread all over the world. Though it needs to be protected against decay from the inside, with a continuous awareness of its central value.
He describes the culture and civilization of the continent. European thought is enlightenment, romanticism, rationalism, science and technology.
‘C’est l’exercice de la rationalité qui nous permet de critiquer la raison européenne et de reconnaître le valeur des cultures non-européenne. Cette rationalité née en Europe est en cours d’universalisation. Mais elle est très fragile. Elle doit sans cesse être protégée, non seulement de ses ennemis extérieures qui l’empêchent de s’implanter mais aussi du délire logique et du demon mythologique qui les travaillent de l’intérieur. C’est elle que nous pouvons defendre, nourrir, fortifier: c’est ce fruit ultime, le plus précieux, que l’Europe en son déclin peut apporter à l’Univers. C’est notre oiseau de Minèrve, qui s’envole au crepuscule.’ (p.121)
Thus, the good cause of sane modern thinking is laid out thoroughly and eloquently.
‘La culture Européenne ne subit pas seulement ces oppositions, conflits et crises, elle les vit. Ceux-ci sont eux aussi, autant ses producteurs que ses produits. (…) Le genie européen n’est pas seulement dans la pluralité et dans le changement, il est dans le dialogue des pluralités qui produit le changement. (…) C’est le dialogique qui est au coeur de l’identité culturelle européenne’. (p.149-150)
These are insights that I know so well from other texts of Morin, but applied now to Europe they become extra telling.
Part III, about ‘La nouvelle conscience’, I found most interesting. History makes possible ‘la dispération des menaces inter-européennes et l’accroissement des menaces extra-européennes’, and subsequently, ‘un destin commun’. (P.166) Progressive values become determinants for future development. ‘Mais si les facteurs négatifs s’atténuent considérablement, les forces positives manquent.’ (P.169) Progress may turn into regression easily, if not for continuous vigilance.
In response to the Americanisation (i.e., commercialization) of European culture, when technical, bureaucratic, chronometric, atomizing constraints to old cultural traditions have become ubiquitous, new developments since the sixties are promising: neo-archaism, neo-ruralism, neo-naturalism constitute a force of resistance against cultural degradation. Here I find a concrete way to overcome contemporary polarization, by combining regionalism with ecologism: ‘sauvegarder et ressusciter des nourritures traditionelles, les fêtes, le bagad’ (p.174).
Chapter 4 of this Part III, ‘Fragilité’, is then extremely interesting, for the USSR presented as the big menace for European existence could in our age be taken for Putin’s Russia, as well as for the existential threat of climate change. Morin’s depiction of this menace is strangely clairvoyant. ‘Le danger n’est pas dans l’éventuel prédateur, il est dans la proie qui s’offre. La désunion des États fait de l‘Europe une proie’ (p.187), and ‘La nouvelle conscience européenne ne comporte donc pas d’une énorme menace. C’est aussi la conscience de la complexité, de l’incertitude et de l’intériorité de la menace’(p.188). There is, first, this enormous threat of war and eventual nuclear extermination; second that of ‘(…) l’asservissement. Nous sommes à la fois menacés par exterminationnisme et par totalitarisme’ (p.189).
It all culminates in Part IV, ‘La communauté du destin’. We need a common destiny in the face of danger.
‘Nous devons (…) apprendre ce qui il y avait de commun, non seulement malgré, mais aussi et surtout dans nos divisions et dans nos antagonisms, et donner à ce qui a pu sembler secondaire ou inessentiel une importance ou une vertu principales pour nous’ (p.198). But, our awareness of the danger paralyses us: ‘Tout ce qui nous rend conscients de notre impuissance accroît cette impuissance. C’est pourquoi nous voulons détourner notre esprit de la Menace, nous cherchons à nous rassurer à tout prix en nous persuadant [qu’il n’y a pas de danger] (…) et nous essayons d’oublier l‘avenir en vivant au jour le jour. D’où le second cercle vicieux qui se double d’une paradoxe: Tout ce qui nous rend conscients nous fait fuir la conscience. Ainsi il s’est noué, dans la situation actuelle, un complexe de réalisme lucide (conscience de notre impuissance), de pseudo-sécurité aveugle et de somnambulisme haggard (vivre au jour le jour). C’est le réalisme qui conduit au somnambulisme, lequel nous fait oublier la réalité qui l’alimente.’ (p.204-205).
Can it be said more eloquently how people also feel paralysed in the face of the current Russian atrocities or, more importantly, in the face of climate change? He concludes:
‘L’ennemi principal s’est inscrit en nous, il est en nous, et c’est le seul ennemi avec qui nous pouvons nous battre directement et de front. (…) Il est dans notre incapacité de penser notre destin et d’assumer notre communauté de destin.’ (p.207)
This book is a manifesto: we have to fight the danger by fighting our denial of it. In these years (end eighties), Morin was still hopeful that we put our minds and hearts together, as in the spirit of true European thought, and be ready for the challenge. He thought politicians should lead it, and intellectuals should inspire it, by reminding us of our common destiny. Though he wondered whether both groups be capable of it, he thought that the European Community could play a part in it.
Morin is, for the sake of human destiny, in favor of multilateral institutions and the growth of them. He regards this as an absolute necessity. His hopes for the European project have left him in the recent years, as I just read in his 2021 book ‘Leçons d’une siècle de vie’.
Morin sees Europe through his ‘complexity glass’ as something that is best seen and interpreted in a complex way, e.g. ‘L’Europe n’a d’unité que dans et par sa complexité’. A typical Morin sentence, where he combines two opposites in a meaningful way.
He interprets the history of the continent by chronologically describing major developments as the perpetual wars between kingdoms, the birth of the ‘État-Nation’, the colonisation of the world, the growth of democratic institutions, cosmopolitism, the emancipation of minorities, internationalism. He says that he was initially sceptical about a EU, for reasons of historical violence and colonialism, but since the abolishment of colonialism and prevalent piece on the continent, he had to change his mind.
Morin takes the historical plurality of European nations and cultures as the exceptional condition for the typical plurality of European humanism with its profound intrinsic antagonisms, between faith in universal values and openness for all individual and cultural deviancies. Due to all rivalries and antagonisms between kings and countries throughout European history, this culture had to be practiced for centuries and is now the central thing Europe has to offer to the world. And it has in the meantime indeed been spread all over the world. Though it needs to be protected against decay from the inside, with a continuous awareness of its central value.
He describes the culture and civilization of the continent. European thought is enlightenment, romanticism, rationalism, science and technology.
‘C’est l’exercice de la rationalité qui nous permet de critiquer la raison européenne et de reconnaître le valeur des cultures non-européenne. Cette rationalité née en Europe est en cours d’universalisation. Mais elle est très fragile. Elle doit sans cesse être protégée, non seulement de ses ennemis extérieures qui l’empêchent de s’implanter mais aussi du délire logique et du demon mythologique qui les travaillent de l’intérieur. C’est elle que nous pouvons defendre, nourrir, fortifier: c’est ce fruit ultime, le plus précieux, que l’Europe en son déclin peut apporter à l’Univers. C’est notre oiseau de Minèrve, qui s’envole au crepuscule.’ (p.121)
Thus, the good cause of sane modern thinking is laid out thoroughly and eloquently.
‘La culture Européenne ne subit pas seulement ces oppositions, conflits et crises, elle les vit. Ceux-ci sont eux aussi, autant ses producteurs que ses produits. (…) Le genie européen n’est pas seulement dans la pluralité et dans le changement, il est dans le dialogue des pluralités qui produit le changement. (…) C’est le dialogique qui est au coeur de l’identité culturelle européenne’. (p.149-150)
These are insights that I know so well from other texts of Morin, but applied now to Europe they become extra telling.
Part III, about ‘La nouvelle conscience’, I found most interesting. History makes possible ‘la dispération des menaces inter-européennes et l’accroissement des menaces extra-européennes’, and subsequently, ‘un destin commun’. (P.166) Progressive values become determinants for future development. ‘Mais si les facteurs négatifs s’atténuent considérablement, les forces positives manquent.’ (P.169) Progress may turn into regression easily, if not for continuous vigilance.
In response to the Americanisation (i.e., commercialization) of European culture, when technical, bureaucratic, chronometric, atomizing constraints to old cultural traditions have become ubiquitous, new developments since the sixties are promising: neo-archaism, neo-ruralism, neo-naturalism constitute a force of resistance against cultural degradation. Here I find a concrete way to overcome contemporary polarization, by combining regionalism with ecologism: ‘sauvegarder et ressusciter des nourritures traditionelles, les fêtes, le bagad’ (p.174).
Chapter 4 of this Part III, ‘Fragilité’, is then extremely interesting, for the USSR presented as the big menace for European existence could in our age be taken for Putin’s Russia, as well as for the existential threat of climate change. Morin’s depiction of this menace is strangely clairvoyant. ‘Le danger n’est pas dans l’éventuel prédateur, il est dans la proie qui s’offre. La désunion des États fait de l‘Europe une proie’ (p.187), and ‘La nouvelle conscience européenne ne comporte donc pas d’une énorme menace. C’est aussi la conscience de la complexité, de l’incertitude et de l’intériorité de la menace’(p.188). There is, first, this enormous threat of war and eventual nuclear extermination; second that of ‘(…) l’asservissement. Nous sommes à la fois menacés par exterminationnisme et par totalitarisme’ (p.189).
It all culminates in Part IV, ‘La communauté du destin’. We need a common destiny in the face of danger.
‘Nous devons (…) apprendre ce qui il y avait de commun, non seulement malgré, mais aussi et surtout dans nos divisions et dans nos antagonisms, et donner à ce qui a pu sembler secondaire ou inessentiel une importance ou une vertu principales pour nous’ (p.198). But, our awareness of the danger paralyses us: ‘Tout ce qui nous rend conscients de notre impuissance accroît cette impuissance. C’est pourquoi nous voulons détourner notre esprit de la Menace, nous cherchons à nous rassurer à tout prix en nous persuadant [qu’il n’y a pas de danger] (…) et nous essayons d’oublier l‘avenir en vivant au jour le jour. D’où le second cercle vicieux qui se double d’une paradoxe: Tout ce qui nous rend conscients nous fait fuir la conscience. Ainsi il s’est noué, dans la situation actuelle, un complexe de réalisme lucide (conscience de notre impuissance), de pseudo-sécurité aveugle et de somnambulisme haggard (vivre au jour le jour). C’est le réalisme qui conduit au somnambulisme, lequel nous fait oublier la réalité qui l’alimente.’ (p.204-205).
Can it be said more eloquently how people also feel paralysed in the face of the current Russian atrocities or, more importantly, in the face of climate change? He concludes:
‘L’ennemi principal s’est inscrit en nous, il est en nous, et c’est le seul ennemi avec qui nous pouvons nous battre directement et de front. (…) Il est dans notre incapacité de penser notre destin et d’assumer notre communauté de destin.’ (p.207)
This book is a manifesto: we have to fight the danger by fighting our denial of it. In these years (end eighties), Morin was still hopeful that we put our minds and hearts together, as in the spirit of true European thought, and be ready for the challenge. He thought politicians should lead it, and intellectuals should inspire it, by reminding us of our common destiny. Though he wondered whether both groups be capable of it, he thought that the European Community could play a part in it.
Morin is, for the sake of human destiny, in favor of multilateral institutions and the growth of them. He regards this as an absolute necessity. His hopes for the European project have left him in the recent years, as I just read in his 2021 book ‘Leçons d’une siècle de vie’.
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August 8, 2026J’ai dnf j’imaginais pas ça comme ça enft
September 14, 2013
A bit outdated and idealistic, but nevertheless a good read.
The author presents the idea of Europe in a very interesting and intelligent way. He clearly maps out the flow of European thought from its shared Greek, Roman, Judaic and Christian roots to contemporary nihilism, laying out advantages and disadvantages of the dominant belief systems of a particular time. There appears to be some Hegelian influence in his writing, although he never explicitly points that out.
Morin is a well-educated and versatile author. His observations and ideas are derived through a synthesis of various fields - philosophy, theology, art, literature, politics and history. They are also influenced by his personal experiences, of which he talks in detail in the foreword. Even without reading the foreword, one can clearly sense Morin's ideological transformation from a Marxist into a liberal, so typical of late 20th-century leftist philosophers. Of course, this sentiment was brought about by his disappointment with the political and humanitarian disaster that was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. For him, the disillusionment came relatively early, in late 1940s and early 1950s, contrasting the more unscrupulous Western intellectuals who supported the USSR all the way until the end of the Prague Spring, or even beyond that.
Although essentially Eurocentric by the very nature of its topic, "Concept of Europe" successfully avoids many typical Eurocentric misconceptions, and does not see Europe as the current center of world affairs. His critique of Europe is motivated by a great love for European culture and civilization and everything they stand. Eventually he does offer some ideas for the future of the European project and the construction (and preservation) European identity. Most of those ideas are quite interesting and thought-provoking, but some are unconvincing and full of lukewarm liberal cliches.
The "outdated" bit from my opening sentence refers to the fact that the book was written in the Cold War era and that it is burdened with worry of Soviet totalitarianism taking over Europe and thus effectively bringing about its downfall. Accordingly, he is worried about the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, but I don't believe that is something we should stop worrying about since the end of the Soviet Union. The "idealistic" bit refers to the exaggerated and unjustified belief that Western European societies are democratic, although in contrast to the Soviet bloc countries he is comparing them to, they certainly were. After all, at the time he was writing, a united Europe was more of a socialist/social-democratic project than a neoliberal one.
Finally, Morin makes a great point about the need of Europe to open up towards other cultures. This idea seems even more relevant today, with the influx of immigrants from the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia, than it was 20 years ago. Either way, it would be extremely interesting to read Morin's thoughts on the topic 25 years later.
The author presents the idea of Europe in a very interesting and intelligent way. He clearly maps out the flow of European thought from its shared Greek, Roman, Judaic and Christian roots to contemporary nihilism, laying out advantages and disadvantages of the dominant belief systems of a particular time. There appears to be some Hegelian influence in his writing, although he never explicitly points that out.
Morin is a well-educated and versatile author. His observations and ideas are derived through a synthesis of various fields - philosophy, theology, art, literature, politics and history. They are also influenced by his personal experiences, of which he talks in detail in the foreword. Even without reading the foreword, one can clearly sense Morin's ideological transformation from a Marxist into a liberal, so typical of late 20th-century leftist philosophers. Of course, this sentiment was brought about by his disappointment with the political and humanitarian disaster that was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. For him, the disillusionment came relatively early, in late 1940s and early 1950s, contrasting the more unscrupulous Western intellectuals who supported the USSR all the way until the end of the Prague Spring, or even beyond that.
Although essentially Eurocentric by the very nature of its topic, "Concept of Europe" successfully avoids many typical Eurocentric misconceptions, and does not see Europe as the current center of world affairs. His critique of Europe is motivated by a great love for European culture and civilization and everything they stand. Eventually he does offer some ideas for the future of the European project and the construction (and preservation) European identity. Most of those ideas are quite interesting and thought-provoking, but some are unconvincing and full of lukewarm liberal cliches.
The "outdated" bit from my opening sentence refers to the fact that the book was written in the Cold War era and that it is burdened with worry of Soviet totalitarianism taking over Europe and thus effectively bringing about its downfall. Accordingly, he is worried about the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, but I don't believe that is something we should stop worrying about since the end of the Soviet Union. The "idealistic" bit refers to the exaggerated and unjustified belief that Western European societies are democratic, although in contrast to the Soviet bloc countries he is comparing them to, they certainly were. After all, at the time he was writing, a united Europe was more of a socialist/social-democratic project than a neoliberal one.
Finally, Morin makes a great point about the need of Europe to open up towards other cultures. This idea seems even more relevant today, with the influx of immigrants from the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia, than it was 20 years ago. Either way, it would be extremely interesting to read Morin's thoughts on the topic 25 years later.
June 8, 2024
Pros: Interesting analysis about the origin and further developments of European history: convergence of civilizations; cultural differences…
My favorite chapter was in the last part, when Edgar talks about democracies and totalitarian regimes.
Another interesting idea is his analysis about the two paths that Europe could take (take into account this book was written in the 1990s): being under US rules or establishing himself as a peaceful actor in the international order.
Cons: messy approach
My favorite chapter was in the last part, when Edgar talks about democracies and totalitarian regimes.
Another interesting idea is his analysis about the two paths that Europe could take (take into account this book was written in the 1990s): being under US rules or establishing himself as a peaceful actor in the international order.
Cons: messy approach
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews