Pascal Bruckner: “Greece is the embodiment of beauty and light”

He is one of the world’s most popular French philosophers and writers, known, among others, for the novel “Evil Angels”, adapted for silver screen by Roman Polanski, as well as for essays “Perpetual Euphoria” , “The Tyranny of Guilt”, “The temptation of innocence” and the more recent “An imaginary Racism: Islamophobia and Guilt”. He was in Greece participating at the event “Democracy and Books” organized by the New York Times Athens  Democracy Forum.

To the question about the key characteristic of Greek thought, he noticed:

“Greek thinking gave rise to the very notion of thinking! And this happened via philosophy, as a constant process of examining oneself"

"Plato said that an “unexamined life is not worth living”. The Greeks took life out of its natural dimension and put it in the realm od reasoning. Western critical thinking, as well as modern democracies, have their roots in Greek thought. The Greek legacy is made up of both mythology and philosophy. Its mythology, this narrative of divine and human passions, of even the vilest of these, haw been a perpetual source of inspiration for Western thought for more than 2,000 years.The philosophy, on the other hand, tries to bring a balance to this theater of hubris with a sense of moderation and the search for wisdom.The Greeks intellectually conquered their Roman conquerors by civilizing them, and this is a miracle, an event that is unique in the history of humanity”.