Edgar Morin: denizen of unpredictable times

His method: a way of being, of existing, of relating to Others, of observing and knowing, in other words, of inhabiting (hyper)complexity, all of which has been funneled with perfect coherence into his studies, his scientific research, into the knowledge of knowledge, the search for common meaning and for a new collective “imaginary”. Paths of research and thinking carried out with profound awareness of the related epistemological and ethical implications, which are not only at the heart of common meaning and scientific knowledge, but above all, of our very existence. Even from the perspective of analysis and discourse, Edgar Morin, Edgar, has never kept these things apart: life and the knowledge of life, life and the search for knowledge, method and encounter (the establishment of a method and the encounter with the Other), emotions and rationality, knowledge and a (rare) awareness of our limits and inadequacies as human beings. Among Morin’s many works, we can find themes ranging from an analysis of cultural phenomena to the founding of a sociology of culture and complexity — as in L’esprit du temps – (The spirit of the times) — from an epistemology of human and social sciences — see, in particular, La Méthode (The Method) , his most fundamental and monumental work — to a methodology for research and treatise on the challenges of (hyper)complexity and of the new paradigms – expressed for the first time in Le paradigme perdu (The Lost Paradigm), from a vast production of works on the need for reforming education and thinking, such as Les Sept Savoirs nécessaires á l’èducation du futur (Seven complex lessons in education for the future) to that of reforming politics for the achievement of “terrestrial citizenship”; from his considerations on cognitive democracy, found in many of his writings, to his proposal for “planetary humanism”, for example in Terre Patrie (Homeland Earth—a manifesto for the new millennium), demonstrating great versatility and an extremely rare capacity for delving in depth into questions and phenomena in order to reveal their intrinsically complex, ambiguous and multidimensional nature, without ever running the risk of oversimplifying, trivializing or taking shortcuts.