The Graph : Cyril Hanouna, in a column published this week in Libération, you denounce the ravages of entertainment society, what do you think they are?
Cyril Hanouna : I am not fundamentally opposed to either pantaloons or gauloiseries and I sometimes use them more than my turn but truculence should not prevent analysis and I regret that sarcasm too often gives way to reflection. The entertainment society is killing all depth, I invite all readers to reread Guy Debord.
LG : Are there too many entertainment programs in France?
CH : Entertainment is not bad in itself. As Pascal recalled, in Les Pensées, which is one of my bedside books, “Leave a king all alone, without any satisfaction of the senses (and we will see that a king without entertainment is a man full of misery”). However, this entertainment can make us lose sight of the essential. Divertir comes from the Latin divertere, which means “to turn away, to turn away, to separate from “. It is certainly not useless to escape for a few moments from the memento mori, provided that this does not exempt us from exercising our critical mind because we are above all thinking subjects.
LG : What measures are you taking to combat this harmful trend?
CH : I am wary of injunctions of all kinds which are often nothing more than slogans preventing us from thinking. We cannot ward off the absence of reflection through simplism. It’s all a question of balance. We must reconcile the conatus of the soul and that of the body. I am both a disciple of Spinoza and Jean-Marc Morandini.
LG : You have sometimes been criticized for going too far and humiliating your columnists. Do these criticisms seem well-founded to you?
CH : Like any researcher, my scientific approach was sometimes misunderstood by my contemporaries, like Galileo. People might have thought that I was taking the easy route, just as people might have denied the epistemological approach of noodles in their underwear. However, I only aspire to be a catalyst for our vilest affects to trigger cathartic laughter.
LG : Are you condemned to remain eternally misunderstood?
CH : This is unfortunately the lot of all those who are ahead of their time. In truth, and in all humility, between the great minds who have marked history and myself, there is as little difference as between the Cartesian cogito and the Kantian “I think”. I am simply a rationalist who does not want to part with empiricism.
LG : What is missing in our current era to help individuals rise?
CH : The characteristic of metaphysics is that it never offers a recipe. However, we would benefit from discarding the ready-made formulas for personal development which urge everyone to reveal the best version of themselves. Philosophy invites us rather to take inspiration from Pindar not to be but to become what we are. Nietzsche recalled in Aurore: “Everyone is free to have the good fortune to find the conception of life which allows them to achieve the highest degree of happiness at their convenience; However, his life may remain pitiful.” And yet he did not know Gilles Verdez.
Interview published in the Gorafi newspaper n°2 May 2026 which you could have read before anyone else if you had subscribed. Loser.
Photo Getty
