The economist Thomas Piketty refused Thursday 1 January the Legion of Honour. An attitude that Jean-Paul Sartre to Georges Brassens, was shared by many others.
“I just learned that I ‘ was proposed for the Legion of Honour. I refuse this appointment. ” After cartoonist Jacques Tardi in 2013, it was the turn of the French economist Thomas Piketty refuse this distinction created by Napoleon in the early nineteenth century. The author of the book Capital in the Twenty-First Century , which is experiencing a huge international said not to receive this decoration already awarded to more than 92,000 people. “I do not think it is the role of government to decide who is honorable,” he justified. “They would do well to focus on reviving growth in France and Europe.”
Many celebrities have already refused the institutional distinction, some in the name of “freedom”, some modesty . In 1864, the composer Hector Berlioz shout loudly disinterest to this award, purely symbolic to him. That which the penniless state wants to pay a Requiem Mass with the red ribbon instead of paying him 3,000 francs promised, exclaims: “I do not care your cross. Give me my money “
The researcher Pierre Curie , he was sober when he refused the Legion of Honor,” I do not see the necessity ” . The Curie refuse to be the center of attention. “In science, we need to look to things, not people,” says Marie Curie .
The novelist George Sand , it takes the distinction with much humor. She writes mischievously to the Minister, who offered him the cross, “Do not do that dear friend, I do not want to look like an old canteen!”
This design award since its origins the “outstanding merit” military or civilian rendered to the Nation .
In 1945, the philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre in turn dismisses the name of freedom. In 1964, after having refused the Nobel Prize for literature, he explains the director of the Swedish Academy, “I have always declined official honors. When, after the war I was offered the Legion of Honor, I refused [...]. Also, I never wanted to join the College of France as I have suggested a few my friends [...]. The writer must refuse to be transformed into institution even if it takes place in the most honorable form as it is. “
It is for similar reasons that the writer and playwright Marcel Ayme in 1949 so scathing replies to the Ministry of Education, who offered him the insignia “For not find me in the case of having to refuse favors as desirable which necessarily causes me great pain, I would ask that they voulussent well, their Legion of Honour is the carrer in the train, as also their Elysian pleasures. “
The singer Georges Brassens does not want more of the prestigious award, as it is, he said, an inhibiting factor. He wrote a satirical song in which he denounced “the fatal badge that does not forgive.” “This little rattle in his buttonhole. You condemned to good manners. Because it fucks wrong with the rosette, from feel, flatter, girls … the charms, “he sings.
Others use the media coverage that gives them this award to raise awareness public opinion and government issues that are important to them heart. In August 2012, the researcher Annie Thébaud-Mony , occupational cancer specialist, refused the Legion of Honour to denounce the “indifference” which affects the health at work and the impunity of the “industrial crimes “according to a letter to the current Housing Minister Cécile Duflot.
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