“Against unpredictability, against the chaotic uncertainty of the future, the cure lies in the ability to make and keep promises.”
How better to start this year 2019 than with the wonderful Hannah Arendt and her major work, The Human Condition, published in 1958, and which kept in the German edition the beautiful title of Vita activa ?
To restore a place of choice to this vita activa (active life : the labor, the work and the action) where the philosophical tradition has historically relegated it to the second rank behind the vita contemplativa (contemplative life).
This affirmation of the primordial role of action aims to restore men’s concern to leave a trace in the world beyond their own death and to reaffirm the human dimension of plurality.
In this book, Hannah Arendt gives full meaning to political action based on her vision of the human condition and in particular the philosophical question par excellence, the relationship to death.
A beautiful meditation just a few months before the European elections.
Small philosophical parenthesis before to wish all of you a happy new year 2019 !
Laurent
Iconography : Cayeux-sur-Mer, 1st January 2019 (personal collection)
After working as an international banker for emerging countries, Laurent Lascols became global head of country risk / sovereign risk (from 2008 to 2013) then global director of public affairs (from 2014 to 2019) for Societe Generale. In 2021, he founded Aristote, an advisory firm and training organization dedicated to environmental economics, sustainable finance and impact finance.