Bound for Doomsday? On Jean-Pierre Dupuy's Book, La Marque du sacré [The Mark of the Sacred]

Jean-Pierre Dupuy has for many years been alerting us to the dangers inherent in modern societies, which are, in his view, being led to destruction by their own developmental model. In his latest work, La Marque du sacré (Paris: Carnets Nord, 2009), he takes forward the thinking, begun some years ago, on the imminence of (ecological, nuclear or technology-convergence) disasters and, in order to avoid these apocalyptic prospects, proposes that we restore the world’s sacredness as a way of equipping humanity to avoid the worst possible fate. He aims, in this book, to seek out the mark of the sacred in contemporary writings and other rational reflections on the present world, and to show that sacredness is needed to contain violence and that it is not necessarily the enemy of reason. Gérard Donnadieu, a specialist in religious matters, has read this book for Futuribles and points up the main lessons to be drawn from it.