“We arrive in the midst of a conversation begun before us”, wrote Ricoeur, whose pupil and friend Olivier Abel was. Birth throws us both into history and into the vagaries of chance. The splendor of incarnation, which presents the newborn with the possibility of playing his or her own part, sometimes turns into the anguish of incarceration, of being trapped within oneself and doomed to death. But the desolation of our finitude finds consolation in the marvel of the plurality of existences and forms of life. Each of us is obliged to be born, and through our existence transforms raw chance into consented chance.
By making birth the perpetually renewed root of democracy, Olivier Abel offers us a superb existential and political meditation in which every birth changes something, not only for oneself (obviously!) but also for the world.
In the company of Olivier Abel, professor of philosophy and ethics at the Protestant theology faculty in Montpellier, and author of “La Naissance, qu’est ce que ça change?”, we’ll take a closer look at the term to understand its meanings, uses and imaginations.
Following the approach of the Qu’est ce que ça change? collection, which invites us to reflect freely on a vast subject that concerns us all, the idea is to share the philosopher’s viewpoint and to explore together what this notion evokes.
In collaboration with Labor et Fides Philo aux Bains invites you to question a simple yet complex notion: birth.
