Abstract

This essay aims to highlight some of the themes found in Emmanuel Mounier’s Entretiens, recently edited by Bernard Comte, which contextualise his meetings and thoughts within the framework of the debates, events and choices made by the French Church and the intellectual world from the condemnation of the Action française to the end of the Vichy regime (1926- 1944). The topics addressed are the studies on mysticism in Paris in the early 1930s, the debate on the church-world relationship, the conduct of the French Church towards National Socialism and the Révolution nationale, and the problem, deeply felt by Mounier, of the possible extinction of Christianity in the aftermath of the Second World War. A separate note is devoted to the reading Mounier offers of Henri Bergson’s death.