Almost exactly a year ago, the Second Manifesto of Convivialism appeared in bookstores, signed by 300 intellectuals from 33 different countries. Among them the sociologist Alain Caillé, and also Edgar Morin, Noam Chomsky, Bruno Latour, Hartmut Rosa, and Philippe Descola. In these times of Covid when we have to reinvent spaces of conviviality, I want to talk to you about conviviality which develops a thought and a concern for concrete commitments in the sense of conviviality, otherwise of an art of living together, taking care of others and of nature.
Is conviviality a form of humanism?
Yes, if humanism is thinking and acting in coherence with humanity as the value of values, the one that indicates what is beyond all values. Humanism has its roots in Antiquity, in the Bible in particular, and it has been deployed in modernity up to today, not without difficulty. It could even be broken down today (Rémi Brague, Le propre de l'homme, Flammarion, 2013).
Moreover, humanism is part of the history of ideas and sciences which allows us to consider humanity as a single man, of whom Pascal said that " he is constantly learning and remembering"; humanism thus takes on specific features in each era.
So what characterizes conviviality?
Convivialism could be one of its contemporary expressions, according to the five principles it puts forward: the interdependence of all living beings, including humans with Nature; respect for humanity in the diversity of each of its members; the greatest wealth is that which humans maintain in their relationships with each other; the legitimate policy which allows the development of capacities, of the power to be and to act of the human person without harming those of others, in the perspective of equal freedom.
Through its fundamentals, convivialism also echoes great centuries-old wisdoms or religious traditions: " whoever kills a person is as if he had killed all of humanity and whoever saves one is as if he had saved all of humanity" (Declaration on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Coexistence by Pope Francis and Ahmad al-Tayyeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, February 4, 2019).
Against the desire for omnipotence that fuels the withdrawal of individuals and societies, convivialism would be an alterhumanism that seeks concrete proposals to fight against hubris, the excess of unbridled hypermodernity. Convivialism questions the way to "encourage individuals to cooperate in order to develop and give the best of themselves while allowing them, as Mauss wrote, to "oppose without massacring each other and to give of themselves without sacrificing themselves", in other words, to choose life together. Such a fight is also that of humanist ecology.
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