The good combination between representative democracy and participatory democracy. When we mean participatory democracy, it is of course an access to decision making and not only audits, not only consultations, and...

That means that we don’t want intermittent democracy. They don’t want just a representative of the democracy, which is felt too delegative and confiscatory. This is the point. We have to invent. We have to create the tools that will permit us to articulate a representative democracy, which is what ...

I hope it’s not just communicational. I hope. I’m not sure of that because instrumentalization is always possible. I think he’s now aware that people in France, as I think in Taiwan, they want what we call continuous democracy.

You saw that, and with 600 mayors and at the beginning he said, "I’m not here to talk." He said, "But, I’m OK to answer some questions." He stayed there seven hours, and with a huge technical and political mastering of the subject.

Yeah because...I think you followed the performance. I don’t know how to call that of the president because he launched the grand debate two days ago.

...unheard of.

Exactly. This is the sociology. After now, for the solution of the proposition of the government, actually, the national debate, I think it’s a premiere... It’s...

The sociology is quite diverse but the sociology is common on the fact that it is the periphery kind of way of life that is in and the periphery, the rural persons and older persons that are left on the side and the public services has left, maternity, the post, ...

...white, single mothers. We have persons that are really attached to transform the institution, and we have persons that are totally attached just about the economical problems.

...far-right people and far-left people both. There is some persons who have a big past on the militancy and there is persons who are totally political. There is a lot of mono parental families. At the beginning, the women were...

Yeah. You know that we had this big movement of the yellow vest. The sociology of the yellow vest, I think you already know, because there is some...

But kind of. It’s very interesting. It is a little bit related, though.

[laughs]

OK, and there is a lot of persons?

Of course.

OK. Right now, you continue that?

No, it’s divisive.

It’s emotional.

That is very interesting.

I will tell you everything.

Of course.

What do you do specifically regarding democratic regulation, and what is for you the main issues?

Totally.

Exactly.

Oh really? Great. I will tell him, because he’s a great, great person.

I will tell him. He will be very honored to know that you are...

He is talking about the neganthropene. The neganthropene is how you fight anthropocene. We are totally matched.

We did a lot of things together. He’s also attracted to the same question, the entropic question.

Yeah, Bernard. I did several things with him, because we have the same approach about what is technology. We are not in the illusion of the neutrality of technology, but our focus is to have a technology who is going to empower citizens and not to reduce or to place ...

It’s a colleague of mine and a friend of mine.

Oh yeah, I know it. It’s...

It’s terrible.

Exactly. I’m really working on that, how we can prevent individuals to go psychotic behaviors, because we do that today. I can tell you that in analytic sessions today, there is less neurosis than psychosis.

Because when you are feeling depressed, replaceable, not in your identity, despised, or not recognized, etc., how do you not? Or you are going on the side, and you don’t want to commit yourself into public affairs because you are too tired to do that, and too depressed. Or you ...

For me, the construction of the self is absolutely necessary to protect the mental health. The construction of the self is the protection of mental health. After, it is the protection of, I think, the health of the democracy.

Because I have patients, of course, who have an adventure with their identity, or who are questioning themselves a lot about that, sometimes with suffering, sometimes without no suffering because there is absolutely no story written already with that kind of thing.

For me, it’s also related to the construct of singularity.

Oh, yeah, I totally agree. I’m working about the principle of individuation and not the question of individualism.

I think so. There is the same matrix.

You see, I do this thing. The main topic of my philosophy is to say that the concern for the self is not antagonistic with the concern of public commitment.

That means that this person who thinks that she’s replaceable, and this is why I wrote a book called, "The Irreplaceable" and why this person who thinks she’s replaceable feels sick. At that time, she’s no longer in the possibility to protect the democracy.

Reification is the term, yeah, because...It is reification. This is the term related to Adorno, to Axel Honneth... I’m working on that, on that suffering process. I’m also working on the contrary.

Yeah.

OK, very interesting. Just to say, the link between my practice of psychoanalysis and my teaching in the political philosophy, I’m working about the purpose effect of new liberal democracies and the impacts on the subject, the question of a subject, and how this subject is feeling sick because there ...

So you know perfectly what I’m talking about. You did that, because, me, I have a lot of patients that are in China, in Morocco, Tunisia, Greece, El Salvador...

Oh, great.

Yes. I have patients every day, even here with a portal called Skype.

Aging people, sorry, and the place of aging people in the society and how democracy treats aging people. That’s it. I’m a political philosopher and moral philosopher and a psychoanalyst.

Yeah, and something about the political aspect of artificial intelligence, of course, and things also related to the place of oldness.

Not only that. I think we try to have an holistic approach of what is health and what is care. That’s what I do. I’m also a member of the National French Committee of Ethics, and in that committee I did several reports as a co-rapporteur, as co-writer -- a ...