France’s favourite intellectual, Edgar Morin, a World War II Resistance member who dedicated his life to promoting critical thinking and combatting intolerance, has died at the age of 104, his wife said on Saturday.
“He is the grandfather of all French people and the memory of the last (20th) century,” the left-wing Liberation newspaper wrote in a 2021 profile of the dapper philosopher who had a fondness for hats and silk cravats.
The son of secular Jewish immigrants, he trained as a sociologist but preferred to think of himself as a “humanologist” who fused elements of philosophy, psychology, ethnography and biology to try to understand the nature of humanity.
Outside of France he was best known as the inventor of “cinema verite” for his 1961 documentary with film-maker Jean Rouch “Chronique d’un ete” (“Chronicle of a Summer”) about the lives of ordinary young Parisians.
The unscripted discussions about class, race, colonialism and other weighty topics elicited by the simple question “Are you happy?” revolutionised documentary-making.
