The terrible wildfires currently ravaging the world—and France in particular—are a manifestation of today’s generation’s lack of respect for the past, the present, and the future. For the past, because these fires are the result of excessive human interference with…
When asked a few days ago on France Culture by journalist Guillaume Erner about the modern resurgence of antisemitism—at the very moment that Marc Bloch, a French Jewish historian executed by the Nazis for his resistance activities, was being laid…
What connection is there between a contemporary French environmental activist and a great Italian novel written seventy years ago? In *The Baron in the Trees*, Italian novelist Italo Calvino tells the story of Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, a twelve-year-old aristocrat…
As populist parties are set to come to power everywhere, we must return to the fundamentals: I have often pointed out (particularly in *The Nomadic Man*, published in 2003) the fundamental distinction between two ways of life: nomadic and sedentary….
There is a temptation as old as nations themselves: that of owing nothing to anyone, of closing one’s borders to create a self-sufficient territory, sheltered from shifting alliances and supplier blackmail. This temptation has resurfaced with a vengeance since the…
At a time when the world is undergoing a multifaceted crisis whose scope and depth few people are willing to acknowledge, and when the most astonishing technologies are severing our connection to reality and work, in most democratic countries, political…
While forty (at least…) candidates, ranging from Socialists to Republicans, vie for the votes of all the most reasonable voters, France is preparing for a runoff in the second round of the 2027 presidential election between the candidate from La…
Today’s conflicts have a characteristic not seen since World War II: no belligerent can yield without disappearing. After 1945, it was the fascists and the Nazis who disappeared. In the conflicts that followed, the survival of the major powers was…
Europe is not in decline. It is tired. This is not the same thing: decline is a fate; fatigue is a state. Medicine distinguishes between two forms of fatigue: Physical fatigue, which results from the depletion of energy reserves: mitochondria…
