Two top-level researchers – a French geophysicist and a Chinese philosopher – talking about death: quite daunting for a reader unaccustomed to academic language. Not to fear. Professor Tang Yijie, president of the Academy of Chinese Culture, and Xavier Le Pichon, professor at the Collège de France, talk about their fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, about their beliefs and their faith. Above all, about life.
Tang Yijie and Xavier Le Pichon have met several times to discuss the essential issues of existence. These two texts thus do not present a simple comparison. They respond to each other, with a nearly pedagogical concern for addressing the other’s culture and for presenting – and questioning – the most representative features of their own civilizations.
Although he considers the place of Christian culture within European culture to be “no doubt excessive,” Xavier Le Pichon chooses to approach the mystery of death from his personal perspective as a Catholic. In the European context, he lucidly shows the extent to which death – formerly incorporated into life and a reminder that “the fate of man is eternal happiness” – has become, through the centuries and with the advance of medicine, an event that is increasingly tied to the pain of living. A passage toward the light, yes, but at so high a cost! Impressive, for example, are these words written by his father on the approach of death: “Death is the most important act of life; it is like the seal affixed to a letter written with so many tears, so much blood and suffering. It is the crowning achievement of life.”
Year of publication: 1999