euro|topics - Roger-Pol Droit

22/11/2008

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Droit, Roger-Pol

3 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.

Le Soir - Belgium | 05/02/2007

Roger-Pol Droit defends the daily use of philosophy

In an interview with William Bourton, The French thinker Roger-Pol Droit ponders the place of philosophy in everyday life. "Of course it can help one to live, but never by decreeing rules to follow like monastic rules or the precepts of a sect! To think about what we are, what the world is, or power, or indeed, good, bad, justice, freedom and death, this all has a bearing on how we lead one's existence! In antiquity, to adopt a philosophy -becoming a stoic, an epicurean, a cynic, a sceptic ... -, was also to adopt a way of life, and even a choice of clothes and eating habits. All of this is behind us now, but we have rediscovered that to think about one's existence is not to cut one's self off from daily life, from concrete action and decisions. Socrates already said so: 'A life unexamined is not worth living'".

Le Monde - France | 15/12/2006

Reflecting on anti-Semitism and Jewish identity

The chronicler Roger-Pol Droit has read the book by the French philosopher and linguist Jean-Claude Milner 'Le Juif de Savoir' ['The wise Jew'], a meditation on Jewish identity and the return of anti-Semitism. "Around the Jewish name, around Israel, we are once again hearing these days, unless we decide to be deaf, an immense clamour of hatred. It is being shouted throughout most of the East, taken up through Latin America, echoed here and there throughout Europe. It is strident in Russia and less and less muffled elsewhere. It can be found as in our gentle provinces, just like in the good old days. Many are plugging up the ears. Others are shocked, outraged and panicked. A man (Jean-Claude Milner] is trying to understand... His exercise of tragic lucidity is terrible and brilliant, radical and enthralling. With 'Le Juif de Savoir' Milner pulls off a real tour de force: making three centuries intelligible in two hundred limpid pages".

Le Monde - France | 04/10/2006

Defending freedom of expression

The daily has published an appeal in support of Robert Redeker signed by a score of public figures. "A handful of fanatics is currently brandishing so-called religious laws in order to call into question our country's most fundamental freedoms. This threat comes in addition to the mutterings here and there in Europe that provocation should be avoided to spare supposed foreign sensibilities ... Times are once again hard in Europe. This is no time for cowardice. We therefore solemnly appeal to the authorities not only to continue to protect, as they already are doing, Robert Redeker and his family, but, in a strong political gesture, to pledge to meet his material needs as long as he is danger, just as the British authorities did throughout the duration of the Rushdie affair."