Bernard-Henri Lévy
Biography of Bernard-Henri Lévy
One of the best European philosophers of our time
Lévy was born to a Jewish family in Béni Saf, Algeria on 5 November 1948. His family moved to Paris a few months after his birth. His father, André Lévy, was the multi-millionaire founder and manager of a timber company, Becob.
After attending the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Levy enrolled in the elite and highly selective École Normale Supérieure in 1968, from which he graduated with a degree in philosophy. Some of his professors there included prominent French intellectuals and philosophers Jacques Derrida and Louis Althusser. Lévy is also a pre-eminent journalist, having started his career as a war reporter for 'Combat', the famous underground newspaper founded by Camus during the Nazi occupation of France. In 1971, he traveled to the Indian subcontinent, and was in Bangladesh covering the war of independence against Pakistan. This experience was the source of his first book, 'Bangla-Desh, Nationalisme dans la révolution' ('Bangla-Desh, Nationalism in the Revolution'), which was published in 1973.
Returning to Paris, Levy became famous as the young founder of the New Philosophers (Nouveaux Philosophes) school. This was a group of young intellectuals who were disenchanted with communist and socialist responses to the near-revolutionary upheavals in France of May 1968, which articulated a fierce and uncompromising moral critique of Marxist and socialist dogmas years prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Throughout the 1970s, Levy taught a course on epistemology at the Université de Strasbourg and philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure. It was in 1977, on the television show 'Apostrophes', that Lévy was presented, alongside André Glucksmann, as a nouveau philosophe. In the very same year he published 'Barbarism with a Human Face' ('La barbarie à visage humain'), arguing that Marxism was inherently corrupt.
In 1981 Levy published 'L'Idéologie française' ('The French Ideology'), arguably his most influential work.
Levy is married to French actress Arielle Dombasle. His eldest daughter by his first marriage to Isabelle Doutreluigne, Justine Lévy, is a bestselling novelist. He also has a son, Antonin-Balthazar Lévy, by his second wife, Sylvie Bouscasse. He is a member of the Selection Committee of the Editions Grasset, and he runs the 'La Règle du Jeu' ('The Rule of the Game') magazine. He writes weekly a column in the magazine 'Le Point' and chairs the Conseil de Surveillance of La Sept-Arte.
Lévy was one of the first French intellectuals to call for intervention in Bosnia in the 1990s, and spoke out early about Serbian concentration camps. At the end of the 1990s, he founded with Benny Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut an Institute on Levinassian Studies at Jerusalem.
In 2003, Levy wrote an account of his efforts to track the murderers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who had been beheaded by Islamic extremists the previous year. At the time of Pearl's death, he was visiting Afghanistan as French President Jacques Chirac's special envoy. He spent the next year in Pakistan, India, Europe and the United States trying to uncover why Pearl's captors held and executed him. The resulting book, 'Who Killed Daniel Pearl?', argues it was because Pearl knew too much about the links between Pakistan's secret service, nuclear scientists and al-Qaeda. The book won praise for Lévy's courage in investigating the affair in one of the world's most dangerous regions but was condemned by the British historian of India and travel writer, William Dalrymple (amongst others), for its lack of rigour and its caricatural depictions of Pakistani society, as well as his decision to fictionalize Pearl's thoughts in the closing moments of his life. The book was also criticized, in common with his other works, for being neither journalism nor philosophy, but attempting to be both.
Lévy is, with his third wife, actress Arielle Dombasle, a regular fixture in Paris Match magazine, wearing his trademark unbuttoned white shirts and designer suits. Lévy's reputation for narcissism is legendary. One article about him coined the dictum, "God is dead but my hair is perfect." He once said that the discovery of a new shade of grey left him "ecstatic." He is a regular victim of Noël Godin, who describes Lévy as a vain, pontificating dandy.
In March 2006 a letter Lévy co-signed entitled MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism with eleven other individuals (most notably Salman Rushdie) was published in response to violent and deadly protests in the Muslim world surrounding the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. When questioned about the Niqab face-veil worn by some Muslim women, during the United Kingdom debate over veils, Lévy told the Jewish Chronicle that "the veil is an invitation to rape".
Critics of Lévy are not limited to pie-throwers, however; French journalists Jade Lindgaard and Xavier de la Porte, in a biography of the philosopher, claimed that "In all his works and articles, there is not a single philosophical proposition." The book is contested, however, and Lévy sought legal action against the authors.
Other critics of Levy attack his support of the Mitterrand doctrine that allows Italian terrorists members of Brigate Rosse to live in France as free men and women despite the fact that the Italian courts have sentenced them to long imprisonment or Life sentence. Levy argues that during the late 1970s and 1980s basic human rights were not respected in Italy.
Although Levy's books have been translated into the English language since La Barbarie à visage humain, his breakthrough was with the publication of a series of essays between May and November 2005 for The Atlantic Monthly. In the series, 'In the Footsteps of Tocqueville', Levy imitated his compatriot and predecessor in American critique, Alexis de Tocqueville, criss-crossing America, interviewing Americans and recording his observations first for magazine and then book publication.
Topics
- Philosophy
- Society
- Politics
Photos of Bernard-Henri Lévy
Books of Bernard-Henri Lévy
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Title:Left In Dark TimesSubtitle:A Stand Against the New BarbarismAuthor:Bernard-Henri LévyPublisher:Random HouseBook:Hardcover, 256 pagesISBN:978-14-000-6435-9Order this book? Click here!In this unprecedented critique, Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of the world’s leading intellectuals revisits his political roots, scrutinizes the totalitarianisms of the past as well as those on the horizon, and argues powerfully for a new political and moral vision for our times. Are human rights Western or universal? Does anti-Semitism have a future, and, if so, what will it look like? And how is it that progressives themselves–those who in the past defended individual rights and fought fascism–have now become the breeding ground for new kinds of dangerous attitudes: an unthinking loathing of Israel; an obsessive anti-Americanism; an idea of 'tolerance' that, in its justification of Islamic fanaticism, for example, could become the 'cemetery of democracies'; and an indifference, masked by relativism, to the greatest human tragedies facing the world today? Illuminating these and other questions, Lévy also brings to life his own autobiography, highlighting the thinkers he has known and scrutinized and the ideological battles he has fought over thirty years–revealing their bearing on the present.
Above all, Lévy offers a powerful new vision for progressives everywhere, one based neither on the failed idealisms of the past neither nor on their current misguided, bigoted, and dangerously sentimental attachments but on an absolute commitment to combat evil in all its guises. The 'new barbarism' Levy compellingly diagnoses is real and must be confronted. At a time of ideological and political transition in America, 'Left in Dark Times' is a polemical, incendiary articulation of the threats we all face–in many cases without our even being aware of it–and a riveting, cogent stand against those threats. Surprising and sure to be controversial, wise and free of cynicism, it is one of the most important books yet written by one of the crucial voices of our time. -
Title:Adventures on the Freedom RoadSubtitle:The French Intellectuals in the 20th CenturyAuthor:Bernard-Henri LévyPublisher:Harvill PrBook:Hardcover, 433 pagesISBN:978-18-604-6035-7The title is descriptive — these are adventures, not investigations. Levy writes about encounters he has had with the many characters of French high-culture, he met so-and-so at a book signing, or in a cafe, this is what they said to each other, and how it was surprising, or disappointing. These encounters are entry-points for meditations on the larger political involvements of these thinkers. This is in no way a comprehensive history, but rather a series of snapshots, mostly embarrassing for those pictured. A good read, but almost gossipy in tone; this book is intended only for those who already have opinions about the people and ideas being discussed.
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Title:What Good Are Intellectuals?Subtitle:44 Writers Share Their ThoughtsAuthor:Bernard-Henri LévyPublisher:Algora PublishingBook:Paperback, 276 pagesISBN:978-18-929-4110-7'What Good Are Intellectuals' was originally published in Paris as the 1998 edition of an annual series entitled The Rules of the Game: Literature, Philosophy, Art, and Politics, under the direction of Bernard-Henri Lévy.
The first half of the book offers essays by and about Paul Bowles, Marc Lambron, Michel Onfray, Gilles Hertzog, Wietske Venema, Cécile Guilbert, Yann Moix and William Styron.
In an intimate dialogue with some of the world's best minds, 44 of the world's most respected authors reflect on life, death and meaning through of essays, interviews and responses to the question, "What good are intellectuals?"
Essays include remarks by Wietske Venema on the eve of his suicide, and excerpts from Marc Lambron's journal detailing cultural pre-occupations in Paris from Egyptomania to astrology and gender issues. In the second half of the book writers from around the world ponder the role of the intellectual in society, whether a thinker and writer has specific responsibilities and what those might be, what effect such a person can hope to achieve and at what cost.
Compelling, stimulating ideas are presented in individual segments; this is a book that can be put down and picked up again like a conversation with a lifelong friend.
Paul Bowles is asked about Camus's observation that American writers were the only writers in the world who don t feel the need to be intellectuals as well.
"That s funny," he says.
"Do you agree with that definition?"
"Yes, yes, I do, because the Americans aren t capable of becoming intellectuals..." Nothing comfortable here!
They talk about drug use, death, anti-European sentiment in Algeria, and other conflicts, leading to Bowles' proposition that a monthly newspaper would be more than sufficient to keep abreast of what's important.
"This monthly, that would spare us all the details, what would it be? A summary of major events? What would be the ideal newspaper?"
"You read the newspaper to find out who is winning the war. There s always a war going on, and you have to keep track of it."
Finally, he observes: "If you are aware that life is absurd, you can tolerate it, because that which is absurd is tolerable." -
Title:SartreAuthor:Bernard-Henri LévyPublisher:PolityBook:Hardcover, 544 pagesISBN:978-07-456-3009-0Order this book? Click here!In this impenetrable rhapsody to the apotheosis of French intellectualism, Sartre emerges as a force of nature: a novelist comparable to Faulkner and Joyce; a thinker whose existentialism rivalled Marxism and Freudianism for sway over the modern mind; a political activist whose mistakes are grander than others' successes; a great (though technically lousy) lover whose countless betrayals of Simone de Beauvoir only cemented their soul bond; "a tremor, a torrent, a tidal wave." Levy, a French philosopher and writer, assumes readers are as steeped in Sartriana as he is and so dispenses with biographical context and narrative thread in favour of a hop-scotching thematic treatment, full of obscure references. He avoids any systematic development of Sartre's philosophy, indulging instead in vapid colour-commentary (Sartre's philosophical writings were "a series of raids, offensives, commando operations") and opaque ruminations ("Truth is a very long and complex movement in which a 'true' which is no longer 'subject' but 'substance' emerges from itself..."). His denunciations of Sartre's "Stalinist cretinism" are more coherent, but his insights into Sartre's politics ("there were two Sartre's...almost at war") remain banal. Essentially a 450-page love letter, the book overflows with fawning endearments, petulant reproaches and intimate allusions to epiphanies and quarrels that outsiders will not be able to grasp. Unfortunately, in the haze of grandiloquent verbiage with which Levy surrounds every facet of Sartre's life ("it was in order to have big ideas, to create huge colossal things, that...he had to drug himself") the man and his ideas are lost.
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Title:Who Killed Daniel Pearl?Author:Bernard-Henri LévyPublisher:Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd.Book:Paperback, 480 pagesISBN:978-07-156-3322-9Order this book? Click here!Bernard-Henri Levy's Who Killed Daniel Pearl? offers a harrowing look at Pearl's life and tragic death wrought with a unique blending of journalism, novelist's imagination, and autobiography. Levy — an acclaimed French philosopher and bestselling author in Europe — in 2002 launched a one-year journey to understand Wall Street Journal reporter Pearl and the circumstances that led to his murder in Pakistan; the briskly paced result traces a thread from Pearl's killers through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and, possibly, to Al-Qaeda. In building his case, Levy takes none of the news stories on face value. At great personal risk, he follows the same steps that Pearl walked to the very farm house where the journalist was killed. He seems to question everything and provides bearing witness as the truth-telling reportage required in a nation like Pakistan that "has lost even the very idea of what a free press could be."
But Levy does not let his interrogative mind crush the emotional weight of his subject. He questions himself frequently, undermines his own assumptions, and continually returns to the man, Pearl: "a man who was ordinary and exemplary, normal and admirable." Ultimately, the book is a powerful work of compassion as much as a valuable bit of detective work. It is about a good man who died too soon as well as the terrible alliances that could perform such an act against him. Levy does not want Pearl's lessons to be lost to the world. He, like Pearl, seeks a "gentle Islam" that will resist the ring of blood and hate in what Levy calls "the beginning of the grand struggle of the century." -
Title:War, Evil and the End of HistoryAuthor:Bernard-Henri LévyPublisher:Melville HouseBook:Hardcover, 374 pagesISBN:978-07-156-3336-6Order this book? Click here!Based upon original reporting and theorizing about the world's 'forgotten war zones', this book features essays by novelist-philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who is given the kind of adulation in France comparable to pop celebrities in other countries. Included are Levy's reflections on massacres in Burundi and Angola, female suicide bombers in Sri Lanka, and death and destruction in Algeria and Sudan. In the spirit of Émile Zola, Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir, Lévy analyzes contemporary conflicts from a European perspective. First world-third world relations are shrewdly assessed in these clear-sighted and accessible pieces
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Title:American VertigoSubtitle:Traveling America in the Footsteps of TocquevilleAuthor:Bernard-Henri LévyPublisher:Random House Trade PaperbacksBook:Paperback, 320 pagesISBN:978-08-129-7471-3Order this book? Click here!Lévy's journey through this "magnificent, mad country" is indeed vertiginous as he loops from coast to coast and back, mounting to the heights of wealth and power—interviewing the likes of Barry Diller and John Kerry—and plunging into the depths of poverty and powerlessness, in urban ghettoes and prisons. (In this last, he truly follows Tocqueville, whose assignment in the young America was to visit prisons.) Each scene is quite short, which is frustrating at first, but soon the quick succession of images creates a jostling, animated portrait of America, full of resonances and contradictions. Sharon Stone in her luxurious home, railing about the misery of the poor, is quickly followed by Lévy's chat with a waitress in a Colorado town struggling to make ends meet. A gated retirement community in Arizona seems to the author like a prison, while Angola, a prison in Louisiana, has lush grounds that resemble a retirement community's. Lévy (Who Killed Daniel Pearl), the celebrated French thinker and journalist, is a master of the vignette and the miniature, whether explaining why he could feel at home in Seattle or pondering whether Diller's apparent amorality is "too flaunted to be completely sincere." In France, where anti-Americanism has been so popular, Lévy has been an anti-anti-Americanist, and while he finds serious fissures in this country's social landscape, in the end he is an optimist about the future of a country he admires for the richness of its culture and its political vision.
References of Bernard-Henri Lévy
Publications of Bernard-Henri Lévy
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Article ACADEMY® Magazine autumn 2008
There shall be light in the darkness...
Video's of' Bernard-Henri Lévy
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