Freedom, dignity, livability

The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man begins as follows: “All men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” However, it does not specify where we are born and live, nor under what conditions.

While in the 20th century, Nazi atrocities and the Nuremberg trials helped establish dignity as a shared human value and define crimes against that dignity, our era of accelerated ecosystem destruction, against a backdrop of climate change, still lacks this cardinal value.

To stop “looking the other way while our house burns,” legal scholar Laurent Neyret and philosopher Baptiste Morizot propose in their book Liberté, dignité, habitabilité (Tracts, Gallimard) propose approaches drawn from their respective work to ensure that the latter serves as the “guiding value” in law for decades to come.

Baptiste Morizot is a philosopher and lecturer at the University of Aix-Marseille.

His work is enriched by numerous immersions in natural environments and focuses on the major challenges of responsibility and the environment, as well as on living beings.

Among his seminal works are Les diplomates: cohabiter avec les loups sur une autre carte du vivant (Wildproject) and Le regard perdu: à l'origine de l'art pariétal animal (Actes Sud).

He has notably collaborated with the legal scholar Laurent Neyret.