“To be fiercely opposed to any leveling down.”
Our friend is indulging himself today, venturing into the philosophical realms he so loves, by evoking and sharing with us the reflections of Alexandra David-Néel… who, known as Alexandra, was actually named Alexandrine. A writer and explorer, a renowned orientalist, this woman led an absolutely extraordinary life. Born in Saint-Mandé, she died in Digne, but between these two cities she traveled extensively throughout the Far East, where she was a leading authority. What an extraordinary destiny for someone who, initially, was named Alexandrine… a sort of verse with two sets of six syllables… in the feminine form…
Antoine Marquet

By Christian Morisot
Alexandra David-Néel said: “The greatest service one could render to a human being was to make them intelligent. Helping people rise up didn't mean giving them money, but culture, a well-formed mind. Giving money to a fool is useless; they don't know how to spend it. The rich shouldn't fall down the social ladder, but it was the poor who should rise. One must be fiercely opposed to any leveling down.”
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Reflections following the CEMA's remarks: Seventy years ago, the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who fled Nazi Germany, warned us. Her warning was not that lies would prevail, but that people would become too exhausted to care about what is true.
Hannah Arendt didn't study totalitarianism from books. She fled from it.
Born in 1906 in Germany, in a world of ideas and debates, she studied philosophy under some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers. Then the Nazis came to power.
In 1933, this Jewish intellectual was briefly arrested by the Gestapo. Released after a week, she understood what was coming. She fled Germany illegally, passing through Czechoslovakia and then France. When France fell in 1940, she was interned in a camp. She escaped during the chaos of the French collapse. With emergency visas, forged documents, and desperate courage, she crossed borders as Europe burned. She reached Portugal, and finally New York in 1941.
She survived. But she never forgot what she had seen. Read more...