2023-07-30 15:24:00
It was in 1990 that Florence Braunstein and Jean-François Pépin, pioneers of the genre, published their first General Culture Guide. Twenty years later, they signed General Culture for Dummies. In 2013 appeared 1 kilo of general culture, the major work of this couple in the city who will have devoted five years of uninterrupted work to it. This volume was then added to about twenty titles written with four hands, and nearly one hundred notices for the CD edition of the Encyclopedia Universalis. Florence Braunstein having died at the start of 2022, Jean-François Pépin completed alone A summer of G culture for all life, which has just been published.
Common knowledge ? It’s no use !
They had decided that this volume devoted to general culture would be their last. Therefore, instead of a chronological presentation chosen previously, they preferred a thematic unfolding, which allowed them more subjectivity and freedom. “We wrote it to make us happy, trusting each other,” explains Jean-François Pépin from Courtrai, where the couple once settled. “In a conversation between friends, if you want to talk about something that is important to you, you don’t know if it will be liked or not, you go for it. This book does so, to start the debate.” The first part is interested in the World of Man, his physical environment, the organization of it as well as its religious and spiritual dimension, while the second addresses the artistic dimension of this world, through literature and the arts. All this while varying the formats – quotes, markers, boxes, illustrations and… spaces for notes to lighten the text.
quote
The best for the turbulence of the mind is to learn. It’s the one thing that never fails.
Marguerite YOURCENAR
For the young retiree, graduate in history and Doctor of Letters, senior professor in preparatory classes for the Grandes Ecoles until recently, general knowledge is still a battle to be fought. “We saw it with the recent riots in France, which are the absolute counterexample: you cannot civilize a human being, give him all the cards in hand, if you do not allow him to have the culture widest possible.” The one who pleads at the end of the book for “no one to be excluded”, adds: “Having access to as much cultural content as possible is the only way to make you a complete human being. I am very attached to Greek civilization, and the Greeks called children who had not completed their education téknon, which means small animal. It was affectionate, but they didn’t consider you a complete human being until you had acquired the culture that allowed you to interact with other men. Culture is fundamental. Without culture, there is no society. Unfortunately, this is and will never be a bulwark against barbarism”.
Sense of humor
According to the Dictionary of the French Academy (1934), general culture includes “all the subjects necessary for an honest man”. What does this mean today? “The main thing is to be able to address others, to replace fists with words, to be able to accept the other’s point of view without acrimony or aggression.” General culture has this advantage that it “allows you to reconcile with yourself, to distract you, especially from your bad inclinations, such as the idea that you are superior to others. It helps you to take a step back, to keep a certain sense of humor in relation to yourselves”.
quote
Culture is close to a certain way of being, to love at first sight, to an ever-unfinished party, to happiness.
John D’ORMESSON
Compile, digest, popularize: the mission of the duo (Florence Braunstein was, she, doctor of letters, lecturer at the National Museums and taught general culture in preparatory class for the grandes écoles for 25 years) had limits. “We never wanted to take our readers for cretins. Since we had been trained in lasers, we in turn wanted to present as many elements as possible to those who were not so lucky. But we refused to simplify to the point that it no longer made sense. Our desire was for readers to ask themselves questions, to say to themselves: with this book, I don’t have enough, so I’m going to talk about it or consult other works. We hoped they would start their own intellectual mechanics.”
Acquire a method
If yesterday we could fear the excesses of Wikipedia, today the threat is called ChatGPT. “When I was teaching, I would sometimes doubt the spelling of a proper name or a date, so I would ask my students to check Wikipedia, insisting that they formulate a specific question. ChatGPT, which I don’t know, produces something that won’t set the student’s intellectual engine in motion. Giving all the summaries in the world is useless, you have to acquire a research method yourself. ChatGPT will never feed you intellectually.” Invitation to forage at will and to open up one’s own horizons, their work is the opposite.
— > Florence Braunstein and Jean-François Pépin | A summer of G culture for life | The Beautiful Letters | 416 pp., €23.50, digital €17
1690774342
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