France’s favourite intellectual Edgar Morin, a World War II Resistance member who dedicated his life to promoting critical thinking and combatting intolerance, has died at the age of 104, his wife said Saturday.

“He is the grandfather of all French people and the memory of the last (20th) century,” the left-wing Liberation newspaper wrote in a 2021 profile of the dapper philosopher who had a fondness for hats and silk cravats.

The son of secular Jewish immigrants, he trained as a sociologist but preferred to think of himself as a “humanologist” who fused elements of philosophy, psychology, ethnography, and biology to try to understand the nature of humanity.

Outside of France, he was best known as the inventor of “cinema verite” for his 1961 documentary with film-maker Jean Rouch, “Chronique d’un ete” (“Chronicle of a Summer”) about the lives of ordinary young Parisians.

The unscripted discussions about class, race, colonialism, and other weighty topics elicited by the simple question “Are you happy?” revolutionised documentary-making.

“It’s one of the greatest, most audacious, most original documentaries ever made,” a rapt New Yorker magazine declared in 2013.

For the French, Morin was above all an intellectual guide who developed a holistic transdisciplinary approach to the big questions of our time.

“What does it mean to be human? What is globalisation? What is life? These questions require us to connect knowledge that is currently scattered across fields of research,” he told TV5 Monde channel in 2020, explaining his approach.

Well past his hundredth birthday, he continued to weigh in on current events, regaling his 220,000 followers on X with his thoughts on issues ranging from the 2022 heatwaves when he posted “Paris, 6 pm, 40 degrees Celsius: Rise up, longed-for storm!” to the war in Ukraine when he wrote, “war is a lesson in hatred”.

“Until his final days, Edgar Morin remained attentive to the world, to others, and to the great human issues that nourished his thinking,” his wife, Sabah Abouessalam Morin, said in a statement sent to AFP on Saturday.

“Today, the void he leaves behind is immense. But his courage, his loyalty to people and to ideas, his moral rigor and his hope continue to accompany us.”