He does not believe that it is starting out

SURVIVE THE CRISIS

by Jacques Attali

Fayard, 286 pages, 14,90 euros

French banks restitution, including, interest them are loaned by the Government. Growth appears to leave. It has escaped the revolution. The crisis is over. Everything is ready for it again to hope, to dream even. As before Not. The new financial regulations to put in place: was almost twisted neck to traders bonus and removed the tax havens. And tomorrow, in Copenhagen, all States of the world will sign the Pact of new growth, healthy, moral, in a word: green.

In this concert of hope - the hope does not live -a lone dissenting voice. That of Jacques Attali. He does not believe that it is starting out. On the contrary. The crisis worsens, it amplifies, multiplies, diversifies. We entered a new "middle ages" where the economic and financial crises double crisis geopolitical, ideological, climate, population, health that person for the time being, cannot control. In such chaos, there is little to expect Governments that, in reality, do not control much. It cannot rely only on yourself.

In such a context, live takes the form of the "survival", that is not meant as a small life, limited and self-reliance. Survive instead request the energy, the ability to move beyond what any instant threat life. Survival depends on an individual ethics. Through a double movement. The first is a resistance movement. Do not give in to the magicians at all these active that we promise that the crisis is over. Thus is the first part of "Surviving the crisis" a systematic inventory of everything that threatens us. Because we are not threatened by a disaster, but by multiple traps that comply with any order. First maxim, therefore: practice an ethics of disillusionment, look at the world in the face, ruthlessly. Never rely on others. Relying on itself.

The second movement married the project of the Descartes "Discourse of the method" or of "rules for branch of the spirit". It is to forge and maxims to find the path which would allow each of "walk with confidence in this life."Jacques Attali calls these paths "strategies."The time will give rise, on the one hand to the withdrawal or cessation strategies - the ancient wise sought to withdraw from the world for not to be affected-, other revolt strategies, challenge, hiring policy for a better world. Jacques Attali proposes a third path, positive strategies through five concepts: self-respect (namely to appreciate at its fair value and be able to defend), intensity (live standing resolutely), empathy (to give the means to understand the world and its threats to the other without complacency), resilience (to establish situation, psychological and material to withstand shock and from accident), creativity (whether turning a threat into an opportunity, namely ruser therefore), Ubiquity (be prepared to conduct several lives in accordance with the principles it is given), revolutionary thinking (the weapon of last resort, when there is more choice but to enter in strength).

THE DISCRETE VIRTUES OF CORRUPTION

by Gaspard Koenig

Grasset, 282 pages, 19 euros.

The same precepts addressed to individuals, businesses and nations. Jacques Attali deploys the application in these areas.

This book is a very nice essay on corruption out various comments on the "all rotten." It deals with a paradox: how is it that corruption, which is the most common thing is at the same time systematically condemned Second element of the story: Gaspard Koenig is a 12November of thirty years, associate of philosophy, which, at the same time as it prepared, in the Greek sense, this apology for corruption, was the pen of our Minister of economy and finance, Christine Lagarde, for which he wrote numerous appeals to the morality of capitalism. Finding that opens on a question concerning the ethics of an often also brilliant generation that fully lucid and disillusioned, insight does not condemn it out of the world, delete for not having to dip into many infamies, which led instead to seek to become involved by staying closer to the truth.

Before corruption, Gaspard Koenig invites first tied in with the moral perspective. Begin by condemning forbidden to see and understand. It is not more to praise. This would be another way to go next. "Corruption" means first a natural phenomenon, that of the necessary degradation of a living being. When the word in the moral domain, it does not reduce to the purchase of one person by another, but refers to the fact that a person dealing on his ideal. Corruption starts when we interact on its principles, when there is a tolerance, when it gives, if little is it, seduction.

What is it that makes the greatest heroes of the story, the Richelieu, Talleyrand, the Walpole, those whose fame is ultimately the greatest were the corrupters if they were not corrupt It is found in them a character, a way to compete in his reality and his greed, an ability to challenge it without to obscure the face that reflects both lucidity and self-control.

Gaspard Koenig then invites that corruption is also universal that universally condemned. This led to resume the work and the paradoxes of Bernard Mandeville, the author of the famous "Fable of the bees": "private vices are public benefits."Civilization, wealth, opulence, prosperity, the arts and arts of living, all these goods are not, paradoxically, children of morality and virtue. It is easy to Gaspard Koenig to oppose this world fortunes and enjoyment, but embellishment, fruit of the principles of pleasure and enjoyment, the character economically and culturally devastating virtuous corporations, also that bureaucratic pure.

But the world of corruption is not so gay that. First because the moral world can still catch the corrupter and the corrupted, translate it in the courts. But above all because pass in the real world, abandoning the ideal, is paid, the feeling of a fatal fall that fails to be forgotten that in mayflies dizziness. Think of Faust. But also because the world of corruption is the contracts, obligations, which, as the potlatch of primitive peoples, committed indefinitely. Once received, we must make.

What is the moral of the generation of a Gaspard Koenig It is one of a generation who refuses all moralising, all the politically correct, a generation that is totally lucid and without illusion. It is well to this crisis. By that, it cannot be found in the "politically correct" that are as ways to deny reality, the reality that it wants to face the stark reality.