![\"TODOROVYUSTE\"](\"https:\/\/www.fundacionyuste.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/TODOROVYUSTE-300x200.jpg\")
He took his chair in 2008 together with seven other renowned intellectual<\/em>s<\/p>\nTzvetan Todorov, philosopher, historian, sociologist, and philologist, and member of the European Academy of Yuste, died in Paris aged 77. Todorov was a member of the European Academy of Yuste from 2008, when he took the Rousseau Chair during a Carlos V European Award ceremony for the French politician Simone Veil, the European Parliament\u2019s first female president.<\/p>\n
On the day of the ceremony in which Tzvetan Todorov was awarded his medal for being appointed a member of the European Academy of Yuste, he was also told that he had been awarded the Pr\u00edncipe de Asturias Social Sciences Award for representing \u201cthe spirit of European unity of the east and the west, and a commitment to the ideals of equality, integration, and justice\u201d. Todorov gave a speech at Yuste on behalf of the academics appointed that year. He talked about European unity and identity, arguing that European unity \u201clies in the way it manages the different regional, national, religious and cultural identities that make it up, giving them new status, and making the most of that very pluralism\u201d. Of identity, the philosopher said he saw it as \u201cbased on the renunciation of violence\u201d, adding that \u201cthe proximity of \u2018the others\u2019 becomes a source of positives\u201d. In his speech he said that although all countries do not carry the same weight within the Union \u201call yield to the same law\u201d, which means the more powerful states \u201care obliged to help the weaker states, because rights are not dependent on force\u201d. Todorov closed his speech, which is still relevant eight years later, by recalling how \u201cpluralism of origins and openness to others has become the hallmark of Europe\u201d. To this effect he remembered the Greek historian Herodotus\u2019 account of the birth of Europa: a woman marginal twice over. She was not only a foreigner, but an involuntary immigrant, living on an island far from the mainland: the Cretans made her queen, and the Europeans, their symbol.<\/p>\n