Faut-il désespérer de la culture ?

"We civilizations now know that we are mortal," wrote Paul Valéry after the disaster of the First World War. Why doesn't culture protect us from barbarism, which we see relentlessly reappearing, despite the sophistication of our systems of thought and the refinement of the arts? Is the fact that even the homeland of Goethe and Bach has sunk so low in the negation of the human a definitive sign of the "defeat of thought", or do we still have reason to believe that culture is the only bulwark against the dehumanization of man? In an age of artificial intelligence and killer drones, should we despair of culture?

Lecture by Agnès Cugno, philosophy teacher (CPGE Lycée Cassin Bayonne).

Part of Christophe Lamoure's philosophy lecture series.