‘Man is a cultural being by nature because he is a natural being by culture’

Edgar Morin

                                                                                     

Edgar Morin was born Edgar Nahoum, of Sephardic Jewish parents, in Salonica (now Thessaloniki), Greece, on 8 July 1921. He died, at the very grand age of 104, at Neuilly-sur-Seine on 29 May 2026. In the 1950s, supported by philosophers, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Vladimir Jankélévitch he joined, as a director of research, the French scientific organisation, CNRS, where he was, at the time of his death, emeritus director of research.  Such became Morin’s world-wide prestige as a thinker and researcher that he was awarded the title of doctor honoris causa from more than 30 universities throughout the world and, in 2021, he was promoted to the highest level of the French Légion d’honneur: the Knight Grand Cross.  He was educated at the universities of Toulouse, the Sorbonne and the École des Sciences Politiques in law, history, sociology and political science, but with an interest in philosophy.[i]

Morin was renowned for having served in the French Resistance and, during that time, in 1941, he joined the French communist party from which he was expelled in 1951, the same year as the publication of his much-cited book on death: L’Homme et la mort (Man and Death).

From his negative experience of communism, Morin nevertheless believed he could forge a genuinely humanistic approach to culture and politics. In fact, it could be argued that Morin was a pioneer in turning an unthinking communism into a sensitive and thinking humanism, a position revealed in his nuanced opposition to the Algerian war. He was also a dedicated opponent of the Vietnam War, and, subsequently, of the injustice of the plight of the Palestinian people.  

Avid lover of the early cinema in Berlin, and also of the city that gave rise to it, our intrepid researcher took the opportunity at the end of the WWII to take a flight to Berlin. There, he witnessed the complete devastation that the war had brought to the once vibrant cosmopolis. The experience inspired Morin’s first major essay, L’An zéro de l’Allemagne (Germany Year Zero), published in 1946 when Morin was just 24 years old. The theme was taken up by the renowned Italian film director, Roberto Rossolini who, in 1948, released Germany, Year Zero – the seminal, neo-realist film that showed dramatic scenes of bombed out Berlin.  

Edgar Morin was a pioneer in so many ways and a serene voice in times of madness. Thus, as a precursor to cultural and media studies, Morin published, in 1957, a book called Stars (English translation, The Stars (2005a)), which aimed to reveal the secrets behind the myth of stardom. And in 1958, his book, Le cinéma ou l’homme imaginaire: Essai d’anthropologie (translated as Cinema or the Imaginary Man (2005b)),offered the first truly anthropological study of cinema. Morin was, in his own right, both a filmmaker and a poet, as well as an academic researcher and combative intellectual.

With the famous anthropological filmmaker, Jean Rusch, Morin made, in 1960, Chronique d’un été (1961) (Chronicle of a Summer), thought to be the first cinema-vérité film.

With what many consider to be his masterpiece, called La Méthode, eventually published in six volumes (see Morin 1977 [volume 1]); Morin 2004 [volume 6]), Morin advocates for an integrated approach to knowledge and to the problems faced by humanity, such as globalisation and climate change. The parcelisation of knowledge into separate disciplines becomes the death-knell of insight, justice, and wisdom. The notion of method is developed with a view to engaging successfully with the complexity of life as a totality where the human figures in in what is called its ‘trinity’: for each person is simultaneously an individual, a social being, and part of humanity as a whole.

Moreover, a method is crucial if the unexpected (which is deemed to be inevitable) is to be dealt with. Method, then, also contributes to informing actions in a plurality of concrete situations. It has given rise to Morin’s reputation as a ‘transdisciplinarian’ and enlightened activist, one who was never averse to assuming the public stage in debates on the issues of the day and in discussions of policy initiatives.  

Famously, Morin was quoted as saying, ‘I don’t have a career, I have a life’. Again, this signifies that all aspects of life – including academic life – are related. Thus, in his persona as researcher and thinker, Morin was a writer and poet. At each stage of his life, he wrote poetry and kept a journal, the results of which were published in 2018 as Poésies du metropolitan. 

There are many themes that one can point to in the life and work of Edgar Morin: his concern to introduce education according to the principle that the improbable – the unexpected – can well happen, so that the uncertain comes to take priority over certainty; his idea that science must have a conscience; the principle that intellectual work cannot be separated from the life that gives rise to it; the notion that increased knowledge brings an awareness of a residual ignorance. However, the theme that I would like to focus on in conclusion is Morin’s opposition to hate. Thus, in 2024, a book of dialogues was published entitled, Mon Ennemie C’est la haine (My Enemy is Hate) Dialogues avec Véronique Châtel & Jean-Claude Perrier (2024). It is a text in which Morin thus proclaims that the enemy is hatred.

Hate can of course be conceived as a specific human emotion, vested in the individual, its almost clichéd counterpoint being love. I want to suggest, though, that hate in fact transcends the individual and gives rise to a contagion of violence and scapegoating, as René Girard’s and, before him, Georges Bataille’s work on the sacred has shown. What is profoundly disturbing about the rise of populism is that within its province there is an inextricable zone of hate, so that with populism comes the likelihood of scapegoating and a penchant for violence. Opposition to immigration by the extreme right is but one manifestation of the rise of hate.

Consequently, to take full cognizance of the profundity of Edgar Morin’s life and work entails taking full heed of his warning about the danger of hate. In the name of humanity, Morin urged us to oppose hate and promote the ‘poetry’ of life.   

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[i] Key aspects of Morin’s biography as outlined in what follows, derive in part from the rich obituary published in the French weekly, Le Nouvel Obs, number 3221, 6 June 2026, 48-54, and from Morin’s history of his father (Vidal) and the Nahoum family in Vidal and his Family (Morin 2009), as well as my own reading.  

References

Morin, E (1946) L’An zéro de l’Allemagne. Paris: Éditions de la Cité Universelle.

Morin, E (1948) L’Homme et la Mort. Paris: Éditions Corrêa.

Morin, E and Rouch, J (1961) Chronique d’un été (documentary film).

Morin, E (1977) La Méthode, 1. Paris: Seuil.

Morin, E (2009) Vidal and his Family: From Salonica to Paris. The Story of a Sephardic Family in the Twentieth Century, trans. Deborah Cowell. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.

Morin, E (2018) Poésies du metropolitan. Paris: éditions Descartes & Co

Morin, E (2004) La Méthode, 6. Paris: Seuil.

Morin, E (2005a) The Stars, trans. Richard Howard. Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota Press.

Morin, E (2005b) The Cinema or the Imaginary Man, trans. Lorraine Mortimer. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Morin, E (2024) Mon Ennemie C’est la haine: Dialogues avec Véronique Châtel & Jean-Claude Perrier. Paris: Éditions de l’Aube.