On 13 October 2016 at the Institut de France, the Prix François Guizot-Institut de France was awarded to Alain Besançon for his book:
Problèmes religieux contemporains, Editions de Fallois.
«The resurgence of religious concerns is reported everywhere. This is unquestionably true of Judaism and Islam, which are asserting themselves more clearly in France every year. Under the terms of the Concordat signed by Napoleon Bonaparte, Christianity was «the religion of the majority of French people». Seen from the outside, it is in free fall. Do these religions still know what they are? What meaning do they give to their orthodoxy? By this word I mean the central point, guaranteed by the sacred texts and the opinion of the doctors, where each religion manifests itself in its coherence and its particular originality. My intention is not to deviate from orthodoxy, even when I am most critical. Do religions still have the capacity to grasp reality? In other books I have dealt with Russian Orthodoxy and Protestantism. In this one I look at Catholicism. How has it understood major contemporary events, such as communism and Islam?
On the porches of cathedrals, the Synagogue is represented by a woman wearing a blindfold. We shall see that the Church has often worn the same blindfold, or a different one. These questions are among the most serious, the most honourable, the most indispensable that contemporary man can and must ask himself. I have tried to deal with them as a historian».»
Born on 25 April 1932 in Paris, Alain Besançon is a French historian, member of the Institut, director of studies at the EHESS, the Institut d'histoire sociale and formerly at the Nouvelle Initiative Atlantique. A graduate of the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, with an agrégation in history and a doctorate in history and humanities, Alain Besançon was a secondary school teacher at the Lycée de Montpellier, the Lycée Carnot in Tunis and the Lycée Pasteur in Neuilly sur Seine.
In addition to his French academic career at the CNRS and the EHESS, he has taught at numerous foreign academic institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom. Alain Besançon has also been a member of the editorial board of Cahiers du monde russe since 1961 and of the journal Commentaires since 1986. He was an editorial writer for L'Express from 1983 to 1988 and regularly publishes articles in Le Figaro.
A Communist at the end of the Stalinist era, he moved on to a position of critical analysis of Communist ideology and, more generally, of the question of totalitarianism. Alain Besançon is also a specialist in the history of Christianity. Having returned to Catholicism after several years in the Communist Party, he studies the resurgence of ancient heresies in the contemporary Church, as well as the influence exerted on the Catholic faith by socialism and Islam.
Stéphane Coste, Jean-Claude Casanova, Alain Besançon and Gabriel de Broglie.
