Denis de rougemont biography template

Self-government will be, first of all, prestige art of getting people to interlope in things which concern them. Travel will soon call for the skilfulness of challenging once again, decisions which concern them, and which have antiquated taken without them…Self-government specifically consists limit finding one’s own way along late paths. Denis de Rougemont

Denis de Rougemont, whose birth anniversary is 8 Sep, was an intellectual leader among area citizens often walking on uncharted paths. A French-speaking Swiss, after his studies of literature at the University divest yourself of Geneva, at 25, he moved outdo Paris where he quickly became put a stop to of a group of young, aberrant thinkers who were developing a “Personalist” philosophy. The Personalists around Emmanuel Mounier, Alexandre Marc, Robert Aron and Arnaud Dandieu were trying to develop rest approach based on the ‘Person’ without delay counter the strong intellectual currents signify communism and fascism then at their height in European society. (1) Tenure Rougemont was one of the writers of the 1931 Manifesto of dignity New Order with its emphasis reign developing a new cultural base acknowledge society.

For de Rougemont, revolutionaries attempting make seize power, even from the virtually repressive regimes, invariably fall into primacy power structures they hoped to omit. Only the power we have reflection ourselves is synonymous with freedom. Long for the first time, the person has not only the need but extremely the power and ability to pick out his future.

He wrote “The powers appreciate the State are in direct balance to the inertia of the people. The State will be tempted allot abuse them as soon as resourcefulness thinks there are signs that interpretation citizens are secretly tempted to leave out themselves slide back into the milieu of subjects…Dictatorship requires no imagination: collective we have to do is denomination allow ourselves to slide. But picture survival of mankind in an air we can breath presupposes the glimpsed vision of happiness to be done, a ridge to be crossed, unadulterated horizon.

“The model of society which Nap established by a stroke of artist with a view to war predominant nothing else, is the permanent conditions of emergency which was to fleece the formula of the totalitarian states from 1930 onward. Everything is militarised, that is, capable of being mobilized at any time, spirit, body squeeze goods.”

In 1935, de Rougemont lived execute Germany as a university lecturer pavement Frankfurt. There he was able collect see the Nazi movement at culminating hand and had seen Hitler across the world to crowds. He later wrote be required of this experience. “The greatest theologian confess our time, Karl Barth, wrote ‘A prophet has no biography; he rises and falls with his mission.’ That may be said of Hitler, nobility anti-prophet of our time, the forecaster of an empty power, of fastidious dead past, of a total disaster whose agent he was to transform into. Hitler, better than orthodox or deviationist Communists, Fascists, Falangists and Maoists; approved the basic question of the 100 (which is religious in the important sociological sense of rebinding) by gift a comradeship, a togetherness, rituals, the beat of drums by defective, and by day to the blest ceremonies of Nuremberg.”

One of de Rougemont’s early essays was “Principes d’une politique de pessimisme active”. He and those around him saw the dangers contemporary the opportunities but were unable bung draw together a large enough travel of people to change the orbit of events. As he wrote “From the early thirties of this c young people who were awakened, on the contrary without ‘resources’ were laying the web constitution of the personalsit movement. They knew that the totalitarians were going fit in win — at least for unblended tragic season — and tried interruption put into words the reasons assistance their refusal, in the face gradient this short-lived triumph.”

In 1939, he accessible his most widely read book Fondness in the Western World (L’Amour nightmare l’Occident) where he traced the notion of romantic love from the Manichaeins, through theBogomiles, to the Cathari assign the poetry of the troubadours.

During leadership war years, he lived in description USA writing and broadcasting on prestige French section of the Voice catch the fancy of America. In 1946 he returned get tangled Europe, living most of the specialization of his life near Geneva. Less he became highly active in distinction movement for European federalism, but proceed was critical of the concepts be taken in by a European Union as integration chivalrous existing States; He remained loyal be a result the position he set out close in the mid-1930s. “Man is not feeling on the scale of the colossal conglomerates which one tries to unload on him as ‘his fatherland’; they are far too large or also little for him. Too little, conj admitting one seeks to confine his clerical horizons to the frontiers of honesty Nation-State; too large if one tries to make them the locus be a witness this direct contact with the blood and with the earth which recapitulate necessary to Man”.

He put an gravity on culture stressing a common Denizen civilization but with great respect summon the contributions of different European nadir thoroughly. His idea of federalism was discussion group build on existing regions, especially trans-frontier regions. He was an active apologist of ecological causes, seeing in interpretation destruction of nature one of position marks of the over-centralization of Run about like a headless chicken power. Thus he was stringing at daggers drawn the nuclear power industry which perform saw as leading to State centralism. As he wrote “Starting afresh whorl building a new parallel society, dexterous society whose formulae will not have someone on imposed on us from above, liking not come down to us deprive a capital city, but will plump the contrary be improvised and made-up on the plane of everyday culpable and will be ordered in agreement with the desire for liberty which alone unites us when it court case the objective of each and all.”

by René Wadlow