Edgar Morin Interview | Alex Gilbert #280

Edgar Morin is a French philosopher. He published Y a-t-il des leçons de l’histoire ? (Denoël), in 2025

You met Martin Heidegger in 1946.
Edgar Morin: Well, at the time, I was with the general staff of the First French Army. I’d read a translation of Heidegger’s What is Metaphysics? —some fragments of his work that interested me. When I learned he was in Freiburg, living under restrictions because of his past, I went to see him. He and his wife were frightened, you see, thinking a French officer was there to impose new prohibitions. They were surprised when I said, “Listen, I’d like to talk with you.” We had an awkward dialogue since I barely spoke German, and he didn’t know French.

How did that meeting evolve?
Edgar Morin: He was reassured. We talked about his philosophy, though I don’t recall the details exactly. That meeting led Max-Pol Fouchet, the director of the journal Fontaine, to suggest I ask Heidegger for an article, which I did. (Editor’s note: n° 54, Revue Fontaine: L’hymne « Tel qu’en un jour de fête », sur un poème d’Hölderlin) I kept in touch with him, even visited his cabin in the Black Forest, where he lived very simply with his wife. As long as I was in Germany, I maintained that connection.

What was your introduction to philosophy ?
Edgar Morin: Well, my introduction to philosophy came naturally. It started in high school, and though I didn’t take exams at university, I attended philosophy courses at the Sorbonne, Lyon, and Toulouse. I built my own philosophy through readings that enlightened me. Karl Marx was very important to me then, but not exclusively. There were the great dialecticians—Hegel, and especially Heraclitus—who tackled contradiction. The core of my philosophical inquiry is the problem of contradictions that rationality can’t avoid.

You revived interest in Heidegger.
Edgar Morin: Yes, maybe I was a precursor in his return, but others, like Jean Beaufret and a few more whose names I forget, were the real exegetes and disciples of Heidegger. I wasn’t his disciple. Some of his ideas struck me, especially later on technology, but I don’t see myself as his follower.

You talked about Anselm Kiefer, who considers himself a disciple of Heidegger.
Edgar Morin: Yes, Kiefer, true. (Editor’s note: As part of the Louvre’s 2007 lecture series on “Borders” with Anselm Kiefer, he explored the link between microcosm and macrocosm, drawing on Kabbalah and theosophy) His work with Heidegger’s thought, especially around Van Gogh and the origin of the work of art, is interesting. But, you know, my memory isn’t as sharp—it’s been a long time, and I’m 95. I have some lapses.

Pope Francis cited your work on complex thought before Pope Leo XIV‘s election and Ricoeur’s themes influenced Emmanuel Macron.
Edgar Morin: I knew of Ricoeur’s influence on him. We’ve talked about culture and humanism, but he never mentioned his philosophical sources to me. So, I can’t say much there. I never discussed my philosophy with him, so I don’t know if he’s read me. Some say his “at the same time” (en même temps) phrasing suggests complex thought, the simultaneity of seemingly separate ideas. But whether my work influenced him? I can’t say.

In the 1970s, you talked a lot about cybernetics. It was a trendy term then, right?
Edgar Morin: Cybernetics? Yes, it was a big word in the ‘70s. But I was more influenced by Adorno, the Frankfurt School. Adorno, who said you can’t write poetry after Auschwitz and talked about the culture industry, was closer to me. He rejected Heidegger, but I didn’t. I’m able to connect antagonistic thinkers. I’m very Hegelian, with a sense of dialectics, but also drawn to Kierkegaard’s existentialism, his opposite. My singularity is uniting these conflicting influences.

That’s classic Heideggerian negativity neither dialectic nor nihilistic. Don’t you see yourself, even if not his disciple, as his successor?
Edgar Morin: No, not at all. I’m not in his line. I see myself as a distant successor of Heraclitus. Heidegger was stimulating, but I was closer to the Frankfurt School, especially Adorno. Unlike Adorno, who dismissed Heidegger entirely, I think you can’t reduce Heidegger to his National Socialism. Yes, he supported it, but his thought—Dasein, his work on technology—isn’t about Aryan superiority. It’s a deep inquiry into humanity and the modern world.

What about Carl Schmitt ?
Edgar Morin: Schmitt, yes, he’s a thinker of the state’s legitimate violence. He’s not central to me, but I’ve taken ideas from him, like a bee gathering from different flowers. Schmitt’s not my favorite, but I’ve drawn from his concept of the state.

And his land-sea distinction?
Edgar Morin: The land and sea? I feel Mediterranean—a land bathed by the sea. It’s part of my identity, but I don’t quite see it as a Sloterdijk “amphibian” life.

Who’s your favorite contemporary philosopher?
Edgar Morin: Living ones? I don’t know many. But from my time, late 20th century, I’d say Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis, my companions. Their thought influenced me greatly. Ricoeur is important too. I wasn’t interested in Althusser’s Marxism, with its science-philosophy split. Marx mattered to me because his philosophy and science are continuous. Henri Lefebvre’s Marxism was more interesting. Like Lefort and Castoriadis, I integrated and moved beyond Marx.

Are there post-Marxist thinkers today you admire?
Edgar Morin: I’m post-Marxist myself, but I don’t know new ones well. Marx’s ideas still have vitality, though.

Let’s talk geopolitics. Are Ukraine and Gaza’s land-sea status, per Schmitt, key to their conflicts?
Edgar Morin: For Ukraine, I haven’t thought of it that way. I see it as an identity issue, tied to Russian roots, not land-sea dynamics. For Gaza and Palestine, the tragedy of the Palestinian people is what strikes me most, not a geopolitical frame. I’ve always felt close to their cause. I admired the palestinian philosopher Edward Said, a friend of Daniel Barenboïm, who taught in America—but I admire also figures like Mahmoud Darwish.

Heidegger’s thought reached Iran, and the Arab world engaged with his metaphysics and its deconstruction. Has that interested you?
Edgar Morin: The Arab world, you know, it’s not as foreign as people think. All through its history, it’s been a crossroads of ideas—Greek philosophy, Persian thought—all mixing with Islamic traditions. Islam is Jewish at its core, even Judeo-Christian in some ways. It’s built directly on the Jewish Bible, keeping many of Judaism’s prohibitions and even some food taboos. And it includes Jesus as a prophet, among others. I don’t know the verses of the Quran myself, the ones my friend Jacques Berque so admired.

In the 1970s, you were deeply interested in biology and joined your friend Jacques Monod in what some called a cybernetics-inspired revolution—right?
Edgar Morin: The most important influences were Heinz von Foerster, John von Neumann, and W. Ross Ashby. Without von Foerster, complex systems thinking wouldn’t exist. Monod had given me the manuscript of Le Hasard et la Nécessité, which sparked a revolution in biology. But its impact didn’t extend much to our present thinking, especially regarding concepts like self-organization.

You were attacked at the start of May ’68 by Guy Debord, the Situationists, and philosophers critical of science. Do you remember that?
Edgar Morin: I remember, but what Monod challenged was the idea of man’s solitude in the universe. He believed that life was something absolutely unique to Earth, that no other life existed elsewhere in the cosmos. It was this radical solitude that made people so uncomfortable—they had believed we were part of something larger. Even I don’t fully agree with Monod’s point of view. While life may very well be unique in the universe, it is still deeply connected to the physical world. All its constituent elements are physico-chemical, yet within it lies a creative organizational power that transcends even the universe’s own creativity—the same creativity that gave rise to atoms and stars.