Philippe Bouvard:
(Born 6 December 1929).
French television and radio presenter. From 1977 to 2014 he hosted the French radio program Les Grosses Têtes on Radio Luxemburg RTL, from 1982 to 1986 he hosted the television program Le Petit Théâtre de Bouvard, and since 2014 he has hosted the radio program Allo Bouvard on RTL.
Freedom is the right to do anything that does not remind others that they themselves are not free.
The sentence diverts, in an ironic tone, the classic definition of freedom inherited from the Enlightenment and the Declaration of Human Rights of 1789 (article 4: “Freedom consists of being able to do everything which does not harm others”). Bouvard replaces “harming others” with “reminding others that they themselves are not free”.
The idea is this: in a society, my freedom is not only limited by not causing material harm to others — it is also limited by a more subtle and psychological constraint: I must avoid exhibiting my own freedom in a way that emphasizes, by contrast, the absence of freedom (real or felt) in others. In other words, we tolerate an individual being free as long as this freedom remains discreet and does not become a provocation or a humiliating reminder of the constraints that others are subject to — whether through jealousy, envy, or simple social unease.
It is a typical reflection of the Bouvardian aphorism: cynical, social, with a touch of bitterness on collective hypocrisy – the idea that the freedom of an individual comes up against less formal laws than a form of invisible social pressure, made up of jealousy and conformism.
The author and origin:
Philippe Bouvard (born in 1929) is a French journalist, radio host (“Les Grosses Têtes”) and columnist, known for his abundant production of aphorisms and thoughts with often scathing humor, published in a long series of collections (“Le Petit Bouvard illustrated”, “Les Pensées”, “Maximes au minimum”, etc.). This formula comes from his book “Et si je dit tout”, published in 1977.
In the vocabulary of the union, we take action by ceasing all activities.
