René Descartes

at shape their lives. Indeed, such participation defines the very existence of people; I participate, therefore I am. But it is tantamount to putting Descartes before the horse if we do not recognize that people cannot participate effectively if they do not have access to education, to knowledge, to informat

le, which fully understood that an independent Algeria was the best guarantee of sound and durable relations between the two countries; The France of Descartes, Diderot, Rousseau, Victor Hugo and others, the France of the French Revolution, has won an undisputed victory over the false and odious image which

ting to be outdone, established as a postulate that “the Negro mentality is primitive and pre-logical”. Various Governments of France, the country of Descartes and the humanists, have neither shuddered nor recoiled before the exploitation of such theories which tended to retard to the utmost the emancipation

ind is still useful and even necessary. By good luck, the hospitable invitation extended by France has enabled us to meet in a spot where the mind of Descartes, the mind of Pascal, is still alive. Nowhere else is clear thinking so much at home as here in France. That is why I, in turn, shall attempt to take

rse of centuries had often been raised in defence of mankind’s attempts to uphold peace based on justice, could now claim attention in the capital of Descartes and Montesquieu with the authority conferred by the consciousness of having never betrayed the principles underlying the Charter of the United Nation