Look war in the face – See beyond. Reims 2017

The 1914-1918 war was a worldwide shock. This destructive chaos is paradoxically at the origin of the development of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s prospective and prophetic vision of the phenomenon of evolution.
On the occasion of the centenary of this event, the Association of Friends of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin organized an international symposium in Reims.
Collapse and generation, such is the regenerating thought of Teilhard who perceives in the upheavals of this time, with what they have of frightening and worrying, the pains of a world in genesis. The visit to Reims in 2017, 100 years later, was an opportunity to pay tribute to the great Jesuit and was an important memorial act. Reims is indeed emblematic, along with Verdun, of the Franco-German reconciliation, during the joint visit of Chancellor Adenauer and General de Gaulle, on July 8, 1962, announcing the signing of a treaty of friendship (Treaty of the Elysée), the following year.
At the heart of groping evolution, the problem of change, torn between the forces of creative union and the forces of disunion, is permanent.
The expression of Teilhard’s thought on evolution and its consequences on the perception of the future, with the anchoring on the couple conflict-cooperation, the constancy of the war but also the geopolitical hopes of convergence in the Noosphere, were developed at length in several conferences. The perspective of the events and conflicts of this Great War shows how Teilhard had well understood the mechanisms at work in this long and still current struggle of the forces of union and disunion.