France is one of the countries which, for centuries, has often had intellectuals and organisations that have set standards. Its geopolitical position, its academic institutions, its media, its sense of excellence are some of the aspects that explain why it is a reference outside its borders. A Latin and Mediterranean country in the global decision-making orbit of Germany and the Anglo-Saxon world. To list the key factors that make France, for better or worse, an interesting nation would take too much time. So much so that it would take us too long to explain why it is worthwhile to read Robert Redeker (1954), professor of philosophy and author of titles such as Egobody (2014), o Dare to live! (2008). In 2006 he published in Le Figaro a piece highly critical of Islam, a religion that is widespread in France, which earned him a copious number of death threats. Since then, he has been living in hiding and under police protection.
At The sentinels of humanity (Homo Legens, 2021), Redeker transfers his analysis of today's society by vindicating the two great types of leadership: the saint and the hero. According to Redeker, the present times denigrate saints and heroes because they are the true guides of the human. The leadership, individual or collective, of saints and heroes is based on something that is always, but today in a very special way, a scandal: the absolute capacity for sacrifice. And it is this capacity to sacrifice for others, for the nation, for society, for God, that brings the rest of humanity out of its numbness, its brutality. To explain this dullness, Redeker does not apply hot air; he says that "the existence of our contemporaries is lunaparkified", that we are becoming "a prosthesis" for our mobile phones, that transhumanism aims to reduce us to "an Ikea body". Indeed, to read Redeker is to be reconciled with humanism, in the face of the Harari tidal wave.
As he points out in the foreword Esperanza Ruiza contributor to El EspañolToday's civilisation is in the process of transforming man through anthropotechnical mechanisms; heroes and saints, as sentinels of humanity, are there to tell us that we must avoid overstepping the boundaries.
The sentinels of humanityby Robert Redeker. Editorial Homo Legens (Madrid, 2021). Originally published as Les sentinelles d'humanité (Éditions Desclée de Brouwer; Paris, 2019). ISBN: 978-84-18162-50-3.
Token: https://homolegens.com/libro/los-centinelas-de-la-humanidad/
José María Sánchez Galera
Writer, marketing and communication consultant