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Uniting Men: jean Monnet
English
133
About the Author
This particular monograph pays homage to a hero of our times, a Frenchman named Jean Monnet. He is mainly known for his role in the creation of what was to become the European Union but, in reality, Jean Monnet has been much more than "the father of Europe".
He has been an instrument at the service of a vision. That vision was the future unity of it was a world that would not be divided by borders. As for the instrument, he spent his whole life trying to perfect it, to make it more supple, more efficient, more transparent. He probably never in his life used the word "yoga" and he would have been quite surprised if he had been told that someyogis spentyears in front of a wall. Practical as he was he would have asked, "Tell me, did the wall collapse in the end?" As for the wall that separates men, at the darkest moments of the 20th century Jean Monnet had measured its thickness and its resistance, and having done so he could not rest until he had understood how he could open a breach into it. He did not know Sri Aurobindo, yet his whole life was dedicated to the ideal of human unity. What interested him, and even obsessed him, was not the ideal per se, but the construction, stone after stone, of this edifice. For a deep transformation of the relation between men and between countries, Monnet worked tirelessly, putting aside all personal ambitions. He viewed men without illusion but without pessimism. He was convinced that union was ineluctable and that we only had the choice "between changes towards which we will be forcibly dragged and changes which we will know how to prepare and realize". The world has worshipped war heroes for a long time now. Perhaps it is time to learn that there is a heroism of another kind.
Preface
<
133
About the Author
This particular monograph pays homage to a hero of our times, a Frenchman named Jean Monnet. He is mainly known for his role in the creation of what was to become the European Union but, in reality, Jean Monnet has been much more than "the father of Europe".
He has been an instrument at the service of a vision. That vision was the future unity of it was a world that would not be divided by borders. As for the instrument, he spent his whole life trying to perfect it, to make it more supple, more efficient, more transparent. He probably never in his life used the word "yoga" and he would have been quite surprised if he had been told that someyogis spentyears in front of a wall. Practical as he was he would have asked, "Tell me, did the wall collapse in the end?" As for the wall that separates men, at the darkest moments of the 20th century Jean Monnet had measured its thickness and its resistance, and having done so he could not rest until he had understood how he could open a breach into it. He did not know Sri Aurobindo, yet his whole life was dedicated to the ideal of human unity. What interested him, and even obsessed him, was not the ideal per se, but the construction, stone after stone, of this edifice. For a deep transformation of the relation between men and between countries, Monnet worked tirelessly, putting aside all personal ambitions. He viewed men without illusion but without pessimism. He was convinced that union was ineluctable and that we only had the choice "between changes towards which we will be forcibly dragged and changes which we will know how to prepare and realize". The world has worshipped war heroes for a long time now. Perhaps it is time to learn that there is a heroism of another kind.
Preface
<
Paperback
Published April 1, 2005
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