On March 24, 2025, La Poste issues a stamp bearing the image of the philosopher Emmanuel MOUNIER on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of his birth.
Emmanuel Mounier was born in Grenoble on April 1, 1905 to modest parents of peasant descent.
He studied philosophy there, marked by the teaching and friendship of Jacques Chevalier, author in particular of Entretiens avec Bergson.
He continued his preparation for the agrégation in philosophy in Paris, which he obtained in 1928, at the age of 23.
The discovery of Charles Péguy's thought led him to give up a predetermined academic career and led him to found, with a few friends, the journal Esprit in 1932, an international journal and think tank.
"A few men, in this troubled world, come to us like children with eyes full of miracles. » This portrait of Péguy that Mounier gives us actually draws his own portrait.
A man of conversation and meditation, he nevertheless embarks, at the age of 27, on an adventure that he knows has no return and accepts, for himself and his family, the risks of a precarious life. Spurred on by a keen sense of his vocation, he wants to contribute through his testimony and his actions to making the world more human: "Remaking the Renaissance", such is the flamboyant title of his first article in his young magazine.
Mounier analyzes, in fact, the economic and social disorders of the 1930s as being the result of a crisis of civilization, born of an error about man. He renews, following the German philosopher Max Scheler, the notion of personalism and makes it the foundation of his action.
Also, Mounier participated until his death on March 22, 1950, in all the commitments that marked France and the European continent: the denunciation of the Munich agreements, the defense of the Spanish Republic, the Resistance, the condemnation of colonial oppression, participation in European construction. According to his friend the philosopher Paul Ricœur, Emmanuel Mounier possessed a very rare virtue, combining strength and generosity, which made him a man who was both irreducible and devoted.
