Search by tag: #humanism
Feb 04, 2026
Sustainability, a new humanism? (round 7)
The XVIIIth centruy gave rise to the inspiring ideal of human perfectibility and of continuous progress of mankind: technical progress at the service of moral progress. However, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries challenged this ideal, and the world wars revealed how a technically advanced civilization could use its technology without moral control. Starting from 1950 intellectural streams quesitoned whether our efforts to master and transform our environment may threaten the very survival of humanity. Are we stuck in an impossible choice between progress and conservation?
Dec 13, 2025
Let's play!
From an early age, our children learn to distinguish between study time and play time. The time for learning, homework, and work, and the time for fun, which is essential for "breathing " but not for progress. As young adults, when they have to choose their studies and make life choices, the society they are preparing to enter confronts them with a similar and essentially utilitarian scale of values. But what if play were an essential source of humanity, one that we no longer appreciate at its true value, absorbed as we are by the injunction to be ever more useful, more efficient, more productive?
What have our legislators gained by selecting a hundred thousand species and particular cases and attaching a hundred thousand laws to them? That number bears no proportion to the infinite diversity of human actions. […] In France we have more laws than all the rest of the world together, and more than would be needed to regulate all the worlds of Epicurus.
Si nos valeurs n’étaient pas régulièrement réinventées par des êtres d’exception, elles deviendraient des conventions figées et vides de sens.
Car enfin qu’est-ce que l’homme dans la nature ? Un néant à l’égard de l’infini, un tout à l’égard du néant, un milieu entre rien et tout.
L’homme n’est qu’un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c’est un roseau pensant.
La science restera toujours la satisfaction du plus haut désir de notre nature, la curiosité ; elle fournira à l'homme le seul moyen qu'il ait pour améliorer son sort.
Mar 15, 2025
For an ecological ethics: moral of action or ethics of abstention?
The second half of the 20th century saw a growing awareness of ecological danger, the idea of a destructive imbalance that had established itself between nature and man. We are rediscovering the fragility of the natural interdependencies of "ecosystems", and at the same time our powerlessness to predict or control the impact of human action on these interdependencies. The dream of Modernity to "ender ourselves masters and possessors of nature" seems to be slowly disappearing. This article explores to potential foundations for an ecological ethics of our time.
Si le progrès élimine l'effort sur soi-même, il détruit lui-même la civilisation du progrès qui lui a donné naissance.
Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
La technologie seule, sans humanité, n’est qu’un instrument de domination et non pas de civilisation
Faut-il opposer brutalement à une idéologie accusée d'avoir soumis la nature à l'homme une idéologie qui soumet l'homme à la nature et subordonne l'éthique à l'ontologie?
Sep 11, 2024
The Pineapple syndrom: welcome to the Age of Impatience
Within a lifetime, we have seen a dramatic shift in how goods and experiences are available to us. Things that were scarce and precious became ubiquitous, and access became quite easy. Without a doubt, this shift from scarcity to abundance improved the quality of life in many respects, yet it also rewrote basic human behaviors and expectations. We have little patience for whatever does not amuse us instantly. How to keep the power of concentration, of perseverance, of working hard for long stretches of time toward a goal, defining characteristics of humankind?
Jul 03, 2024
Euro 2024: la performance fait-elle la valeur?
Les dernières semaines de la compétition de l’Euro 2024 ont été un rappel à la fois merveilleux et surprenant de ce qui fait l’esprit, l’inspiration et la richesse d’une équipe unie dans une vision porteuse de sens. Et tout particulièrement pour le spectateur franco-suisse que je suis, à qui s’offre l’occasion de contempler deux équipes ô combien différentes - sur le terrain, et symboliquement. Quel contraste dans le spectacle que nous ont donné ces deux formations jusqu’ici!
Jun 15, 2024
Ecologie: comment concilier urgence et désir d'agir?
Le nouvel exemplaire de la revue de Up4Hu, "Pour un monde plus humain" est sorti! Nous sommes en 2024: tout le monde est écolo… Tout le monde? Non! Un petit nombre d’irrésistibles climato-sceptiques résiste encore et toujours à l’alerte globale. Il faut dire que le message ne donne pas envie d’être entendu, parfois culpabilisant, si vertigineux qu’il conduit souvent au sentiment d’impuissance et à l’immobilisme. Alors, comment donner à chacun l’envie d’agir pour la planète ? Comment envisager une écologie de l’émerveillement, humaine, non punitive?