How Can We Talk about Humanism Today?

Starting from an anthropological reading of Montaigne, the meeting will focus on the way Montaigne speaks to us of others – Amerindians, Turks, Africans – and not of the other. Diversity without alterity, but a single humanity: conceiving and judging make humanity a single species. The humanity of others is that of all those who, in their own way, have resisted slavery, forced conversion, colonialism and the Inquisition. By rejecting the concepts of “savage”, “primitive” and “barbarian”, Montaigne honors the common sense of all, a common sense that is always at work, sometimes stifled by dictatorships, colonialism and hegemonic powers, but never annihilated. It lies at the heart of every act of resistance, in other words, of every act of freedom.