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Realism and Utopia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Edgar Morin
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Abstract

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The real, thought of as human reality, that is, a mixture of the imaginary, mythology, emotions, flesh, passions, suffering, love, is always surprising, full of possibilities and hard to grasp. A thinking adapted to the complex reality of our earthly homeland cannot be a trivial realism content with the established order and accepting the victory of the victorious. On the contrary, understanding of reality, lucidity are often the result of an ethical revolt against the fait accompli, against certainty. The thinking suggested by Morin attempts to move beyond the alternatives between, on the one hand, the worst option: the utopia that thinks it is realistic, and on the other the utopia that knows it is utopia, and is therefore harmless, outside the real. The hope is to introduce the poetry of intensity into reality, to resist the oppressive forces of pseudo-realism by cultivating the garden of our earthly homeland.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , February 2006 , pp. 135 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2006

References

Notes

1. An initial version of this text was published under the title ‘Pour une utopie réaliste’ in Rencontres de Chateauvallon autour d’Edgar Morin, Paris, Arléa, 1996. The present revised version is from 2005.

2. François Furet, Le Passé d’une illusion, Paris, éd. Robert Laffont & Calmann-Lévy, 1995, translated into English as The Passing of an Illusion: The idea of communism in the twentieth century, trans. Deborah Furet, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999.

3. With the onset of Glasnost, Afanasev contributed actively to ‘restoring their past’ to the Soviet people, particularly that of the Stalinist period. He abandoned politics to devote himself entirely to the Russian State University of Human Sciences which he established and of which he became rector. Works: That Great Light in the East (1989, written in collaboration with Jean Daniel); My Russia of Ill Fate (1992); Russia, the Crucial Issues of Today (2002) (Editor's note). (None of these appear to have been translated into English as of 2005: trans.)

4. Born in 1946, Michnik was one of the leading protestors against the Communist regime, firstly within the precursor movement of 1970, then in 1980 during the demonstrations which brought the Solidarity trade union and its leader, Lech Walesa, to the world's attention. Michnik's opposition activities cost him six years in prison. Today he is editor in chief of the first independent Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza [The Electoral Gazette] which he founded in 1989. (Editor's note)

5. See, on this subject: Diogenes No. 176 (Winter) 1996, Tolerance between Intolerance and the Intolerable, edited by Paul Ricæur. (Editor's note)

6. Austrian social-democratic politician (1882-1938). Theoretician and spokesperson for Austrian Marxism before the First World War. Works: Nationalitätenfrage und Sozialdemokratie (1907), published in English as The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy, trans. Joseph O’Donnell, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2000; Der Weg zum Sozialismus [The Way to Socialism] (1917), Bolschewismus oder Sozialdemokratie? [Bolshevism or Social-Democracy?] (1920); Sozialdemokratie, Religion und Kirche [Social-Democracy, Religion and the Church] (1927) (Editor's note). (The latter three works do not appear to be available in any English translation: trans.)

7. Francesco Alberoni, Falling in Love, trans. Lawrence Venuti, New York, Random House, 1983.