Emmanuel Mounier
Emmanuel Mounier is a Philosophe French born with Grenoble on May 1st 1905, died with Châtenay-Malabry the March 22nd 1950. He is the founder of the re-examined Esprit and is at the origin of the current personalist.
With beginning of the year 30, this engagement of Mounier and review " Esprit" to face the " crisis of the man to the XXe siècle" , takes seat - beside that of the movement the New Ordre (Robert Aron, Alexandre Marc, Denis de Rougemont) - in the current of reflection and searchs for orientation " personalist gathering those which historiography indicates today under the expression of Non-conformistes of the Thirties. To the Mounier war attempts to look further into the orientations of the revolution " personalist and communautaire" that it wishes to see being carried out to cure the " disorder établi" , without falling into the dead ends from the totalitarian solutions from Fascism or Communism. Interested by some of the first orientations of the Mode of Vichy (political of youth), it makes reappear " Esprit" , but is diverted some as from 1941 and contacts the Combat resistance movement, while the review is prohibited in August 1941. Decree, it is released after one testing hunger strike and takes refuge in Drome where its mental activity continues.
After the war, it multiplies the voyages and the contacts. It takes part in the Franco-German reconciliation, the true starting point of the re-creation of Europe. In 1948, it creates the French committee of exchanges with new Germany . “With the passing, Alfred Grosser, then young general secretary of this committee testifies, one realizes that it is this exchange which created a kind of permanent human infrastructure for the Franco-German reports/ratios and which contributed on the whole giving them specificity without which the European policy of the Sixties as that of the Fifties could not be explained”.
The personalism of Mounier is neither a system nor doctrines. It is a “philosophical matrix”, suggests Jean-Marie Domenach, former director of Esprit (deceased in 1997). It is, proposes Guy Coq, “a space of meetings around some fulcrums, where Christian, Moslem, agnostic, Jewish and incroyants can be found in a reflection on the world which we have to build”. Even if it is well its Christian faith which inspires it, it does not intend to make denominational work. Spirit will thus not be a catholic review, but a review where believers and incroyants are attended, discuss, are expressed. He wants to create a fraternity based on a base of common values and a method which privileges the discussion and the plurality from the points of view.
Emmanuel Mounier dies on March 22nd, 1950 of an heart attack, little before the call of Robert Schuman. It was 44 years old. But thanks to the review and with its books, translated into several languages, the influence of personalism is spread in whole Europe. Esprit continues, a new generation of philosophers (Etienne Borne, Jean Lacroix, Gabriel Madinier, Joseph Vialatoux…) ensure the relay, prolongs and widens the reflection. " The assertion of the inalienable dignity of the human person gains ground, and makes it possible to found the thought of the rights of the homme."
According to Gian Maria Vian, Mounier would have been the first to evoke the “silence” of Pie XII and would have thus contributed to create the black legend on the pope.
He was professor with the Lycée of the Park, with Lyon.
Works
Works, 4 volumes, Paris, ED of the Threshold, 1961-1962 I 1931-1939. II Treaty of the Character (1° ED, Threshold, 1946). III 1945-1950. V Posthumous collections and correspondences.
the engagement of the faith , Threshold, 1968. Texts selected and presented by Paulette Mounier.
Personalism , PUF, coll Which do I Know? , n° 395,1950.