Damien Le Guay is a philosopher and president of the National Funeral Ethics Committee. He has written several essays on death, including Le Fin Mot de la vie (Le Cerf, 2014).
LE FIGARO - In the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, death has become an omnipresent subject. Is this the end of a taboo?
Damien Le Guay - Every day, we are given a mortuary count of the new victims of the virus. We are witnessing the return of an arbitrary death that can strike at any time, closer to the great grim of yesteryear than to this sweet death, controlled by medicine and sanitized by the sedation to which we were used. But if death has returned in the news, the dead have disappeared. They are only mentioned in the form of a macabre count, made each evening, at a fixed time, in a liturgy presided over by the "high priest" Jérôme Salomon, director general of Health. Except for a few celebrities, we don't know their faces or their backgrounds. They are counted to better disappear in anonymity
This article is for subscribers only. You still have 68% to discover.
Subscribe: € 1 the first month
cancellable at any time
Enter your emailAlready subscribed? Log in