Edgar Morin

Edgar Morin (original name Edgar Nahoum, born July 8, 1921 in Paris, France ) is a French philosopher. He was director of the Research Centre Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS ).

Life

Morin comes from a Sephardic Jewish family from Thessaloniki, but described himself as an atheist always. He studied at the Sorbonne history and geography. Another conclusion was made later in the Jura.

During the occupation of France by German and Italian troops in World War II Nahoum took an active role in the French resistance in the face of Nazi collaboration of the Pétain government. The account associated mortal danger, he took off his Jewish family names and worked under the pseudonym Morin. This pseudonym he maintained later and became known under this name. After the liberation of France from German occupation he worked in the administration of the French sector of occupied Germany and wrote from the ethnographic sober attitude participant observation L'an zéro de l' Allemagne ( " Zero Hour Germany "), a book by an eyewitness on the location of the partially starving German population in the postwar period.

Morin temporary sympathy for the French Communist Party (PCF ), which he had joined in the Résistance, cooled off after 1949. He was eventually expelled from the party. He was in his early 50s member of Socialisme ou Barbarie, a group of left-wing, anti-communist scouts.

Works

• L'an zéro de l' Allemagne. Cité universelle, Paris, 1946. Translation: Year Zero. A Frenchman sees Germany. Folk and World, Berlin 1948.

• Translation: The mystery of the human. Basic questions of a new anthropology. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1974, ISBN 3-492-02093-3.

• Translation: paths of hope. Ullsteinhaus, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-550-08006-7.