INTERVIEW
"I do not want to give up this freedom for which millions of people have died in the world in the name of a virus which has killed 20,000 people in France", denounced at the microphone of Europe 1 the philosopher André Comte Sponville, Sunday. The author of the Small Treaty of Great Virtues (Threshold) warns of the need, according to him, to ensure respect for freedoms, threatened by confinement. Words which made react the director of the ethical area of Ile-de-France and professor of medical ethics at the Paris-Saclay university, Emmanuel Hirsch, also on our antenna.
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"When we can say: freedom is more important than health, it's good to say it when we are in good health", he quips as a response in It happened tomorrow . Emmanuel Hirsh points to "contempt" for the words of André Comte Sponville about the Ehpad. "When you know what the Ehpad are, what a sadder place than that (...) As far as I'm concerned and I only speak in my own name, I prefer to catch the Covid-19 and even die of the Covid- 19, that spending 10 or 15 years in an Ehpad, "he said, when interviewed by Bernard Poirette.
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"It's too easy to make exegeses, as a philosopher"
"There are 7,900 Ehpad in France, can we reduce them to caricature when we see how the people of Ehpad are invested, with quality?", Indignant the professor of medical ethics. "When he says that freedom is more important than health, in ethics, we are talking about personal autonomy. Do you think that we are independent when we are threatened by a pandemic?" , before declaring, amused, hope that "Edouard Philippe does not take into account the words of André Comte Sponville in his decisions, at least for what he will announce shortly". The Prime Minister must indeed speak at a press conference at 5.30pm this Sunday.
"I like philosophy, but in terms of political responsibility, if it had been André Comte Sponville who had to make the decisions, I am not sure that we are very reassured today", adds Emmanuel Hirsch . For him, the time is not to examine the action of the government. "It is too easy to make exegeses like that, as a philosopher. Today, we are still in the middle of a battle and we are not going to start making controversy", he retorts, at the address d 'André Comte Sponville. "Our strength, the strength of the state, has been to take into account the most vulnerable people, the most exposed to the pandemic. This is democracy," he said.
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"The politicians have taken their responsibilities"
Emmanuel Hirsch for his part wishes to salute "the good decisions" taken by political leaders since the beginning of the epidemic and which have led, according to him, to "an improvement of the general situation". "They maximized the consideration of all the risks which were very uncertain". "Maximizing the gravity of the possibility of impact of the Covid as we did, it was a responsible decision", he analyzes, returning to the criticisms that had been made to Roselyne Bachelot, Minister of Health at time of the H1N1 epidemic.
"People who had been vigilant, cautious, have been blamed for excess, and I think it's very easy to judge a posteriori, but there, we are not yet in a posteriori, we is in the middle of a crisis. There is a mobilization of the State, professionals. Unfortunately, all was not perfect insofar as one could not accompany everything ", he judges. "In any case, the politicians have taken their responsibilities, I pay tribute to them."