Edgar Morin

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Edgar Morin, 2011.

Edgar Morin (original name Edgar Nahoum ; born July 8, 1921 in Paris , France ) is a French philosopher . He is emeritus research director at the Center national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris.

Life

Morin comes from a Sephardic - Jewish family from Thessaloniki , but always referred to himself as an atheist . He studied history and geography at the Sorbonne . Another degree followed later in law.

During the occupation of France by German and Italian troops in World War II , Nahoum took an active role in the French Resistance in light of the Nazi collaboration of the Pétain government . Due to the danger to his life, he gave up his Jewish family name and worked under the code name Morin . He later kept this pseudonym and became known by this name. After the liberation of France from German occupation, he worked in the administration of the French sector in occupied Germany and wrote a book by an eyewitness about L'an zéro de l'Allemagne ("Germany's Zero Hour") based on the ethnographically sober attitude of participatory observation the situation of the partially starving German population in the post-war period.

Morin's temporary sympathies for the French Communist Party (PCF), which he had joined in the Resistance, cooled off after 1949. He was eventually expelled from the party. In the early 1950s he was a member of the anti-dogmatic, Marxist group Socialisme ou barbarie .

Morin's extensive archive has been in the Institut mémoires de l'édition contemporaine (IMEC) since 2001 and is continuously updated by the author himself.

The method - the nature of nature

Edgar Morin at a colloquium in Rio de Janeiro, 1972.

A future-oriented philosophy is developed in his six-volume main work. Morin spans an arc from nature to being human to ethics and politics. In the first volume - Die Natur der Natur -, published in 1977, he takes radical action against the paradigm of simplification or scientific reductionism and linear causal determinism , especially against the strict reductionism in the natural sciences ( reductionist dogma of explanation ). Thereafter, under the same conditions, the same causes always produce the same effects. Different causes and effects are ignored. Morin therefore also speaks of the crisis in classical physics. "The thinking that simplifies has become the barbarism of science. This is the specific barbarism of our civilization". In addition to reductionism, he condemns what he calls binarism , breaking down something into true or false that is actually only partially true or partially false, or at the same time true and false. Linear causality ( causal principle ) ignores mutual influences and dependencies with backward loops. The laws of nature , however, represent only a part of a multi-weight phenomenon, which includes the existence of the viewer as well as the organization or method of viewing. Science isolates both. Morin condemns these views, which he sees as dominant, as they falsify reality. According to Morin, our method of "absurd parcelling" creates global ignorance.

Instead, Morin breaks with simplification and, as a pioneer in systems theory , pleads for a reform of thought and thus for recognizing and working out the complexity of all areas of nature and life. He therefore speaks of the principle of complexity . Complexity is not linear, but circular and interrelational. Man incessantly creates emergences. We have to give up the illusion that we are living in a society of knowledge. In fact, according to Morin, we live in a society with separate cognitions (disciplines). The reform of thinking that he calls for must reconnect the individual knowledge, understand the parts with the whole and the whole with the parts, the relationship between the global and the local and the local with the global. We need a way of thinking that is able to accept the challenge of the complexity of the real. "From now on, objects are no longer just objects, things are no longer just things; every object of an observation or study must in future be understood as a function of its organization, its environment, its observer." The uncertainty of knowledge and the knowledge of uncertainty must be integrated into this thinking. "Complex knowledge cannot be operational like classical science". At the end of the first volume, the line between chaos, the ability to make no statements and the recognition of complexity and the ability to act (operationality) remains narrow: There are no simple answers to complex problems. There are never easy solutions to social issues.

Morin knows today that the first "revolutions" are proceeding in the direction of thought required of him and counteracting absolute determinism. He knows that complexity theory exists, the second law of thermodynamics and cautious approaches to interdisciplinary science . Morin therefore attests today that science has started to take up complex thinking in individual cases. He describes ecology as the first interdisciplinary science. It combines physical, geological, meteorological and biological knowledge ( microbiology , botany , zoology ). As before, however, a holistic reform of thinking is still pending for him.

Prizes and awards

Morin received numerous awards and honorary doctorates from at least 14 universities in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Canada, Bolivia, Denmark, Belgium and Switzerland.

Works (selection)

  • La Méthode. 6 volumes, Volume 1: La Nature de la nature. Paris 1977
  • L'an zéro de l'Allemagne. Cité universelle, Paris 1946.
    • Übers. Ingeborg Havemann: The year zero. A Frenchman sees Germany. People and the world, Berlin 1948
  • L'esprit du Temps. Essai de la Culture de Masse. Paris 1962
    • Translator Margaret Carroux : The Spirit of Time. Attempt on mass culture, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1965
  • Le paradigme perdu. La nature humaine. Seuil, Paris 1973 ISBN 2-02-005343-8
  • Les sept savoirs nécessaires à l'éducation du futur. Seuil, Paris 2000 ISBN 2-02-041964-5
    • Übers. Ina Brümann: The seven foundations of knowledge for an education of the future. Krämer, Hamburg 2001 ISBN 3-89622-043-8
  • with Stéphane Hessel : Le chemin de l'espérance. Fayard, Paris 2011 ISBN 978-2-213-66621-1
  • La Voie. Pour l'avenir de l'humanité. 2011

literature

  • Aurel Schmidt: Edgar Morin or The Complexity of Thought. In: Jürg Altwegg , Aurel Schmidt: French thinkers of the present: Twenty portraits. Beck, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-406-31992-0 , pp. 151-156.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Knowledge needs conscience and awareness. In: FAZ . July 4, 2011, p. 30.
  2. ↑ imec-archives.com
  3. ↑ Edgar Morin: The Method. The nature of nature. Edited by Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Turin Kant Verlag, Vienna / Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-31992-1 .
  4. ↑ Edgar Morin: The Method. The nature of nature. Edited by Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Turin Kant Verlag, Vienna / Berlin 2010, p. 120ff and p. 301.
  5. ↑ Edgar Morin: The Method. The nature of nature. Edited by Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Turin Kant Verlag, Vienna / Berlin 2010, p. 423ff.
  6. ↑ Edgar Morin: The Method. The nature of nature. Edited by Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Turin Kant Verlag, Vienna / Berlin 2010, p. 448.
  7. ↑ Edgar Morin: The Method. The nature of nature. Edited by Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Turin Kant Verlag, Vienna / Berlin 2010, p. 424.
  8. ↑ Edgar Morin: The Method. The nature of nature. Edited by Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Turin Kant Verlag, Vienna / Berlin 2010, p. 24.
  9. ↑ Edgar Morin: The Method. The nature of nature. Edited by Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Turin Kant Verlag, Vienna / Berlin 2010, p. 316.
  10. ↑ Edgar Morin: The Method. The nature of nature. Edited by Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Turin Kant Verlag, Vienna / Berlin 2010, p. 430.
  11. ↑ Edgar Morin: The Method. The nature of nature. Edited by Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Turin Kant Verlag, Vienna / Berlin 2010, p. 152ff.
  12. ↑ Edgar Morin: The Method. The nature of nature. Edited by Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Turin Kant Verlag, Vienna / Berlin 2010, p. 439.
  13. ↑ Edgar Morin: The Method. The nature of nature. Edited by Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Turin Kant Verlag, Vienna / Berlin 2010, p. 444.
  14. ↑ Edgar Morin: The Method. The nature of nature. Edited by Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Turin Kant Verlag, Vienna / Berlin 2010, p. 448.
  15. ↑ The Way - For the Future of Mankind. Krämer, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-89622-113-1 .
  16. ↑ No other volumes will be available in German by the end of 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Morin, Edgar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nahoum, Edgar (original name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher, sociologist and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris , France