The AXA Foundation for Human Progress and École normale supérieure announce the launch of Re-Contract

The AXA Foundation for Human Progress and École normale supérieure (ENS-PLS) are continuing their partnership through a new transdisciplinary research project: Re-Contract, a research program on the renewal of the social contract.

This project aims to fundamentally re-examine the social contract and explore how to rethink trust, solidarity, and prevention in the face of contemporary challenges that undermine our collective capacity to project ourselves into the future.

By linking reflection on the social contract and on risks, Re-Contract fits directly into the mission of the AXA Foundation for Human Progress: supporting academic and field actors working for a more cohesive, more inclusive, and more resilient society, today and for future generations.

Adopting a transdisciplinary approach, the Re-Contract project is based on a state-of-the-art overview that includes philosophy, social sciences, economics, law, and opens up an innovative collaboration hypothesis with mathematics. It innovates by placing at the heart of its analysis systemic risks, the phenomenon of polycrisis, and the role of insurance—dimensions that have so far been largely absent from classical analyses.

This program, whose scientific leadership will be provided by Marie Gaille, Director of Research at CNRS and affiliated professor at École Normale Supérieure, will analyze:

• how geopolitical instability, environmental crises, rising inequalities, distrust of institutions, manipulation of information, and the multiplication of global risks are undermining the foundations of living together and trust between citizens and institutions;
• the principle of prevention, the best ways of conveying knowledge about risks to a non-specialist audience, and the different scales of action (local, national, global) at which they should be considered, in order to strengthen trust, solidarity, and collective resilience;
• the role of private and public actors in guaranteeing the safety of individuals, in a context where risks are increasingly complex and interdependent.

Ultimately, the project aims to foster the emergence of a shared culture of risk, which is essential for developing prevention strategies and renewed capacities for collective action in the present and for a shared future on planet Earth. This culture, which remains largely absent, requires the dissemination of accessible knowledge, including on diffuse risks, with cumulative or low-noise effects, which are often difficult to perceive but have significant long-term consequences.

AXA’s scientific philanthropy has been supporting ENS-PSL since 2018. Their major joint project was the Chaire de Geopolitique du Risque, directed by Professor J. Peter Burgess for 10 years , and carried by the Fondation de l’ENS.

About The AXA Foundation for Human Progress

The AXA Foundation for Human Progress brings together the main philanthropic actions of the AXA Group and AXA Mutual Insurance Companies, in France and in 50 countries around the world. With a budget of €60 million per year, this endowment fund aims to amplify support for impact projects in AXA's four historical areas of philanthropy: health and science; the protection of the planet; solidarity, inclusion and education; arts, culture and heritage. The AXA Fund for Human Progress is fully in line with our mission: Acting for human progress by protecting what matters. Through this Fund, AXA is implementing its broader vision of protection, which extends to resilient societies and reducing inequalities, now and for future generations. Visit the website.

About ENS-PSL

At once a grande école, a university, and a research institution, École normale supérieure (ENS-PSL) provides in Paris, in the heart of the Latin Quarter, excellence in education through research, leading to various professions in teaching and research, and contributes to research-based training for senior managers in public administrations and French and European companies. École normale supérieure promotes cutting-edge scientific and technological research to anticipate and accompany the most recent developments, and to support multidisciplinary initiatives.

About the Fondation de l’ENS

The Fondation de l’École normale supérieure, recognized as serving the public interest, aims to support and develop the research and training activities of ENS-PSL and its partners. It strengthens their relations with businesses and contributes to their international influence.

Biography of Marie Gaille

Marie Gaille is a philosopher, director of research at CNRS and a professor affiliated with the département de philosophie of the école normale supérieure (https://philosophie.ens.fr/CV-de-Marie-Gaille.html). Her research focuses on the relationships between medicine, anthropology and philosophy and on the experience of illness, medical decision-making at the thresholds of life, and the relationship between pathologies and living environments. She also works on conflicts of norms in democratic contexts, relating to the body and health, and on the articulation between ethics, law and political decision-making.