Abstract

This essay is an investigation into the role aesthetics plays in Edgar Morin’s thinking on complexity. As his thinking developed, he gave more and more importance to aesthetics. Reading Le cinéma ou l’Homme imaginaire, for example, we can see how Edgar Morin had, in effect, written a study in which he conceived of understanding in the sense of hermeneutics, thus leading up to the wide-ranging reflections contained in his La Méthode 3. La connaissance de la connaissance. We can identify several of the paradigms of the first and second degrees of understanding in his work on the cinema, paradigms whose implications are not only epistemological but also ethical. A good example of this is the transference between anthropos and cosmos as well as that between anthropos and anthropos, which we can see clearly in his references to the cinema in his La Méthode 6. Éthique.