Their ideas must live on
The question of where the great French thinkers have gone (10 July) can be answered by reminding ourselves that many of them whom we revere, and 10 of whom Sudhir Hazareesingh profiles in his article, are still with us. The creativity and progressive tradition they embodied live on, but only if today’s generation will embrace them as artists and thinkers to imitate, instead of ceaselessly trying to be original, or worse, discarding them and the past altogether as irrelevant.
André Gide, in his journal of 1948, remarked that this imitation, this “gratitude” for works of earlier epochs, can assure their “transmission” and “continuity”, and added that this is how “real culture is made”.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• I do not agree that France or the world is lacking in thinkers and intellectuals, or that ideas that could move the whole of society forward are being depleted. The columns of the Guardian are proof that these intellectuals exist, and are so unpopular with the status quo that we often have to protect the lives of certain authors, everywhere in the world, including in France.
Today’s politicians do not concern themselves with being leaders. Classical thinking is not a desirable feature for them. They rely on opinion polls to find the hottest questions of the moment and the answers that will keep them buoyant for the next election.
Hazareesingh’s point about the depletion of French thinkers should make us think about what we need to do if we want the brilliant ideas out there to be implemented, despite the political puppets.
Herve Thevenon
Wellington, New Zealand
• I agree with Sudhir Hazareesingh: the French intellectual dazzle of the past has dwindled, to speak with euphemism. But as Hegel explained it in Reason in History, when a nation has reached its goals, it is bound to shrink and recede.
Anyway, our preoccupation in recent times has not been different from any other western country: we are obsessed with economic growth and material wellbeing and, to this purpose, ready to sell weapons to emerging countries – and we are quite good at it.
Maybe the renewal will come from the resistance to such projects as global trade partnerships or a new airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, struggles that may see the state eventually thwarted. Otherwise, the big corporations will definitively choke what remains of the French spirit.
Marc Jachym
Les Ulis, France
Giving aid to Greece
Owen Jones rightly points out that Germany’s economic renaissance from the devastation after the second world war owed much to debt relief (10 July). However, the motive for this was cold, hard politics, not altruism. The only member of the Allied cause who could afford such generosity was the United States, for whom the main priority was to create a bulwark against the spread of Soviet communism. German spirit and determination provided a solid base for the US military.
Kitty Monk
Auckland, New Zealand
• Greek citizens and others in Europe who “hoped” for less harsh bailout terms for Greece should have known better. As Thucydides noted in his Melian Dialogue, it was Athens who famously rejected all claims to hope, justice and fairness in dealings between the strong and weak.
In 416BC, Athens told envoys of the small, neutral city of Melos to surrender and pay a tribute or be destroyed. The Melians had hoped for better, but the Athenians rebuffed their pleas, saying:“Hope, danger’s comforter, may be indulged in by those who have abundant resources, if not without loss, but at all events without ruin; but its nature is to be extravagant and those who go so far as to put their all upon the venture see it in its true colours only when they are ruined” (History of the Peloponnesian War). For, as Athens explained, “the strong do as they can and the weak suffer what they must”.
Michael McParland
London, UK
Problem of good and evil
I read Jonathan Freedland’s piece We should not be afraid to call evil by its name (3 July) and feel the same shock at the sadism of Islamic State (Isis) as expressed in his article. But I think that we in the west should pause to take a long, hard look at ourselves.
For example: 1) Western video games and media culture peddle some extremely violent fantasies and reactionary bile that regularly result in deluded individuals running amok. 2) Our ongoing addiction to oil creates economic, political and military pressures that cause misery for those living in the production zones. 3) Our demand for ultra-cheap consumer goods and food products can only be supported through intensive and polluting practices with the west relying on widespread, outsourced exploitation of workers.
So, when it comes to sadism and evil practices, Isis certainly take first place but we should recognise that we in the west are permanently engaging in a type of “sanitised evil”, where crimes are often carried out by proxy and where our patterns of consumption create pressures that, further down the line, result in extreme suffering and hardship. Only when we have considered all this can we really claim the higher ground. If we fail to do this then we are simply hypocrites throwing stones in glass houses.
Alan Mitcham
Cologne, Germany
• In response to the work of Sarhad Rural Support Programme, one elderly Pakistani woman said that it had added 15 years to her life (3 July). I wish she knew that it has added at least 15 minutes to mine, an older woman in the UK. Imagining the immediate and future benefits to her community and reading her personal joy is very uplifting.
A few pages apart in the same issue, Jonathan Freedland rightly urges us to look at evil for what it is. The elderly lady in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, revelling in the new delights of electricity, challenges us to see that there is also good going on steadily even in troubled areas of the world.
Cherry Treagust
Portsmouth, UK
Briefly
• Reading of Denmark’s singular success with wind turbines while the Cameron government is tilting at windfarms makes me consider how strangely close are the Tory majority UK government and the Australian coalition that relies on the support of independents (17 July). Both governments are straining at the leash to decimate the solar and renewable energy sectors and, to play along with Murdoch’s support, emasculate the BBC and ABC. Sad times. Even sadder when you include Stephen Harper’s Canada.
Edward Black
Pauanui, New Zealand
• I’m just starting to let myself dream of a new world (Clinton emails reveal lobbying insights, 10 July). Bernie Sanders at the White House, and Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn as the British PM. Imagine. Two men who have consistently campaigned for peace and equality, who don’t change their mind every time the wind blows, who truly want a good and fair world. There really is another way.
Roz Webb
London, UK
• I was a bit stunned by Rob MacLeod’s assertion (Reply, 26 June) that “one must blame Europeans and especially Brits for continuing perversely to mislabel the US as America”. It is hardly mislabelling, and frankly Europeans and Brits are more likely to mistakenly label Canadians as Americans. The vast majority of Canadians refer to citizens of the US as Americans, as Elizabeth Quance correctly pointed out (Reply, 1 May). I notice also that he did not see fit to share a different monicker for them – unless he is suggesting that Americans be called “Yankees”. Try that in the south and see how far you get.
Jennifer Beer
Toronto, Canada
• Quintana, Contador, Froome and Nibali are contesting in cycling’s Tour de France. We are informed that “the planets have aligned to bring the quartet together and they do so on a route that is perversely designed to throw random elements into the equation” (3 July). It would seem that in addition to having athletic prowess, professional cyclists now need to be polymaths with expertise in astronomy, astrology, musical performance, chemistry, physics and maths.
Anthony Walter
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
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