Bernard-Henri Lévy
Encyclopedia
Bernard-Henri Lévy is a French
public intellectual, philosopher and journalist. Often referred to today, in France, simply as BHL, he was one of the leaders of the "Nouveaux Philosophes
" (New Philosophers) movement in 1976.
, French Algeria
, to a wealthy Algerian Jew
ish family. 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
, Lévy 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 Bangladesh Liberation War
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.
(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, and who articulated a fierce and uncompromising moral critique of Marxist and socialist dogmas. Throughout the 1970s, Lévy taught a course on epistemology at the Université de Strasbourg and he taught 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.
(see his Memoirs).
Lévy was one of the first French intellectuals to call for intervention in the Bosnian War
in the 1990s, and spoke out early about the alleged Serbia
n concentration camps. He referred to the Jewish experience in the Holocaust as providing a lesson that mass murder cannot be ignored by those in other nations.
When his father died in 1995, Lévy became the manager of the Becob company, until it was sold in 1997 for 750 million francs to the French entrepreneur François Pinault
.
At the end of the 1990s, he founded with Benny Lévy
and Alain Finkielkraut
an Institute on Levinassian
Studies at Jerusalem.
He is member of nonprofit advocacy group JCall
.
, who had been beheaded by Islamic extremists the previous year. At the time of Pearl’s death, Lévy 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 (among 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.
Although Levy's books have been translated into the English language since La Barbarie à visage humain, his breakthrough in the English language 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 the United States, interviewing Americans and recording his observations first for magazine and then book publication. The book was met with derision in the United States, and was ridiculed by Garrison Keillor
in a review on the front page of the New York Times.
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
".
With the aid of real Washington political advisers, Italian conceptual artist, Francesco Vezzoli, created two commercials for competing US presidential campaigns – pitting Sharon Stone
against Bernard-Henri Lévy – in a project entitled Democrazy, shown at the 2007 Venice Biennale
.
.
On June 24, 2009, Lévy posted a video on Dailymotion
in support of the Iranian protesters who were being repressed after the contested elections
.
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 a weekly column in the magazine Le Point and chairs the Conseil de Surveillance of La Sept-Arte.
Through the 2000s, Lévy argued that the world must pay more attention to the crisis in Darfur.
In January 2010, he publicly defended Popes Pius XII and Benedict XVI against political attacks directed against them from within the Jewish community.
At the opening of the "Democracy and its Challenges" conference in Tel Aviv (May 2010) Lévy gave a very high estimation of the Israel Defense Forces
, saying "I have never seen such a democratic army, which asks itself so many moral questions. There is something unusually vital about Israeli democracy."
Lévy has reported from troubled zones during wartime, in order to attract the public opinion, in France and abroad, over those political changes. In August 2008, Lévy reported from South Ossetia (Georgia) during the 2008 South Ossetia war
; in that occasion he interviewed the President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili.
In March 2011 he engaged in talks with Libyan insurgents in Benghazi, and publicly promoted the international acknowledgement of the recently formed National Transitional Council
. Later that month, worried about the Libyan uprising, he prompted and then supported Nicolas Sarkozy
's seeking to persuade Washington, and ultimately the United Nations
, to intervene in Libya in order to prevent a massacre in Benghazi.
In May 2011 Levy defended IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn
when Kahn was accused of sexually assaulting a chambermaid in New York City. Levy suggested that the chambermaid had been sent as part of an anti-Kahn conspiracy, stating in The Daily Beast
"It would be nice to know — and without delay — how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a ‘cleaning brigade’ of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet.”
In May 2011 Levy argued for military intervention in Syria
against Bashar al-Assad
after violence against civilians
in response to the 2011 Syrian uprising
.
In September 15 2011, Lévy's personal struggle for freedom and democracy in Libya is broadly acknowledged to be the principal reason why Nicolas Sarkozy (accompanied by Bernard-Henri Lévy) was cheered during his, visit to Libya by thousands of people, holding french flags and shouting “Vive la France!”.
On the 9th of November 2011, his book, "La guerre sans l'aimer" (éditions Grasset) was published, to glowing reviews, knowing great acclaim.
, philosophers Cornelius Castoriadis
, Raymond Aron
and Gilles Deleuze
, who called Lévy's methods "vile". Their most common accusation towards Lévy is of him being one-sided and, ultimately, shallow as a thinker. Vidal-Naquet went as far as saying: "BHL's intellectual dishonesty is properly unfathomable".
More recently, in the essay De la guerre en philosophie (2010), Lévy was embarrassed when he used, as a central point of his refutation of Kant
, the writings of French "philosopher" Jean-Baptiste Botul. Botul's writings are actually well-known spoofs, and Botul himself is the fictional creation of a French living journalist and philosopher, Frédéric Pagès
, as is easily guessed from his thought-system being botulism
.
Another round of criticisms addresses Lévy's reliance on his connections with the French literary and business circles to promote his works. Lévy had for years business ties with billionaire François Pinault
, befriended Jean-Luc Lagardère
, who owned Hachette Livre
, the largest publisher in France, and Hachette Filipacchi Médias
, the largest magazine publisher in the world. Lévy was even briefly related to Jean-Paul Enthoven, publisher of Grasset (a novel and essay division of Hachette Livre), when his daughter Justine Lévy was married to Enthoven's son Raphaël
. Lévy has been chairman of the supervisory board
for French-German cultural TV channel Arte
, was for years a columnist for French newspaper Le Monde
and is currently a columnist for both news magazine Le Point
(owned by François Pinault) and national daily newspaper Libération
, in addition to being a shareholder and member of the supervisory board. In the essay Une imposture française, journalists Nicolas Beau and Olivier Toscer claim that Lévy uses his unique position as an influential member of both the literary and business establishments in France to be the go-between between the two worlds, which helps him to get positive reviews as marks of gratitude, while silencing dissenters.
For instance, Beau and Toscer noted that most of the reviews published in France for Who Killed Daniel Pearl? didn't mention strong denials about the book given by experts and Pearl's own family including wife Marianne Pearl who called Lévy "a man whose intelligence is destroyed by his own ego".
In 2011 he commented in support of his friend of twenty years Dominique Strauss-Kahn
when he was arrested on sexual allegations, referring to the allegations as, "absurd."
. 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.
Lévy is, with his third wife, a regular fixture in Paris Match
magazine, wearing his trademark unbuttoned white shirts and designer suits. Some have attributed to Lévy a reputation for narcissism
. 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 the "pie thrower" Noël Godin
, who describes Lévy as "a vain, pontificating dandy
".
Lévy is proudly Jewish, and he has said that Jews ought to provide a unique Jewish moral voice in world society and world politics.
Lévy has been friends with Nicholas Sarkozy since 1983. Relations between them deteriorated during Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential run in which Lévy backed the Socialist candidate and also described Sarkozy as "A man with a warrior vision of politics". However, they grew closer again after Sarkozy's victory.
-based Islamist militant group in 2008. The list included other Frenchmen such as Josy Eisenberg
. That plot was reportedly foiled after the group's leader, Abdelkader Belliraj
, was arrested based on unrelated murder charges from the 1980s.
Interviews and articles
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
public intellectual, philosopher and journalist. Often referred to today, in France, simply as BHL, he was one of the leaders of the "Nouveaux Philosophes
New Philosophers
The New Philosophers is a term which refers to a generation of French philosophers who broke with Marxism in the early 1970s. They include André Glucksmann, Alain Finkielkraut, Pascal Bruckner, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Jean-Marie Benoist, Christian Jambet, Guy Lardreau and Jean-Paul Dollé...
" (New Philosophers) movement in 1976.
Early life
Lévy was born in Béni SafBéni Saf
Beni Saf is a town in northwestern Algeria, about 80 kilometers southwest of Oran. The town was founded in 1876 as a shipping port for iron ore, which is mined just south of the town. Other products of the town include zinc, marble and onyx, and the fishing industry is extensive.- Sources :...
, French Algeria
French Algeria
French Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest...
, to a wealthy Algerian Jew
History of the Jews in Algeria
History of the Jews in Algeria refers to the history of the Jewish community of Algeria, which goes back to the 1st centuries CE. In the 14th century, many Spanish Jews moved to Algeria...
ish family. His family moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
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
Lycée Louis-le-Grand
The Lycée Louis-le-Grand is a public secondary school located in Paris, widely regarded as one of the most rigorous in France. Formerly known as the Collège de Clermont, it was named in king Louis XIV of France's honor after he visited the school and offered his patronage.It offers both a...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Lévy enrolled in the elite and highly selective École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...
in 1968, from which he graduated with a degree in philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. Some of his professors there included prominent French intellectuals and philosophers Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
and Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
. Lévy is also a pre-eminent journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, having started his career as a war reporter for Combat
Combat (newspaper)
Combat was a French newspaper created during the Second World War. Originally a clandestine newspaper of the Resistance, it was headed by Albert Ollivier, Jean Bloch-Michel, Georges Altschuler and, most of all, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, André Malraux, Emmanuel Mounier, and then Raymond Aron...
, the famous underground newspaper founded by Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
during the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
occupation of France. In 1971, he traveled to the Indian subcontinent
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...
, and was in Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
covering the Bangladesh Liberation War
Bangladesh Liberation War
The Bangladesh Liberation War was an armed conflict pitting East Pakistan and India against West Pakistan. The war resulted in the secession of East Pakistan, which became the independent nation of Bangladesh....
against Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
. 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.
New Philosophers
Returning to Paris, Lévy became famous as the young founder of the New PhilosophersNew Philosophers
The New Philosophers is a term which refers to a generation of French philosophers who broke with Marxism in the early 1970s. They include André Glucksmann, Alain Finkielkraut, Pascal Bruckner, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Jean-Marie Benoist, Christian Jambet, Guy Lardreau and Jean-Paul Dollé...
(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, and who articulated a fierce and uncompromising moral critique of Marxist and socialist dogmas. Throughout the 1970s, Lévy taught a course on epistemology at the Université de Strasbourg and he taught philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...
. It was in 1977, on the television show Apostrophes, that Lévy was presented, alongside André Glucksmann
André Glucksmann
André Glucksmann is a French philosopher and writer, and member of the French new philosophers.-Early years:André Glucksmann was born in 1937, in Boulogne-Billancourt, the son of Ashkenazi Jewish parents from Romania and Czechoslovakia. He studied in Lyon, and later enrolled at École normale...
, 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.
Intellectual involvement
In 1981 Lévy published L'Idéologie française ("The French Ideology"), arguably his most influential work, in which he offers a dark picture of French history. It was strongly criticized for its journalistic character and unbalanced approach to French history by some of the most respected French academics — including Raymond AronRaymond Aron
Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron was a French philosopher, sociologist, journalist and political scientist.He is best known for his 1955 book The Opium of the Intellectuals, the title of which inverts Karl Marx's claim that religion was the opium of the people -- in contrast, Aron argued that in...
(see his Memoirs).
Lévy was one of the first French intellectuals to call for intervention in the Bosnian War
Bosnian War
The Bosnian War or the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between April 1992 and December 1995. The war involved several sides...
in the 1990s, and spoke out early about the alleged Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
n concentration camps. He referred to the Jewish experience in the Holocaust as providing a lesson that mass murder cannot be ignored by those in other nations.
When his father died in 1995, Lévy became the manager of the Becob company, until it was sold in 1997 for 750 million francs to the French entrepreneur François Pinault
François Pinault
François Pinault is a French businessman who runs the retail company PPR. He is a friend of former French President Jacques Chirac....
.
At the end of the 1990s, he founded with Benny Lévy
Benny Lévy
Benny Lévy was a philosopher, political activist and author. A political figure of May 1968 in France, he was the disciple and last personal secretary of Jean-Paul Sartre from 1974 to 1980....
and Alain Finkielkraut
Alain Finkielkraut
Alain Finkielkraut is a French essayist, and son of a Jewish-Polish manufacturer of fine leather goods who had been deported to Auschwitz and survived. He currently teaches at the École polytechnique as professor of the "history of ideas and modernity" in the department of humanities and social...
an Institute on Levinassian
Emmanuel Lévinas
Emmanuel Levinas was a Lithuanian-born French Jewish philosopher and Talmudic commentator.-Life:Emanuelis Levinas received a traditional Jewish education in Lithuania...
Studies at Jerusalem.
He is member of nonprofit advocacy group JCall
JCall
JCall is a nonprofit advocacy group based in Europe to lobby the European parliament on foreign policy issues concerning the Middle East and Israel in particular. They say they are based along the lines of the America group J Street, founded just months before this group...
.
Political positions
In 2003, Lévy wrote an account of his efforts to track the murderer of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel PearlDaniel Pearl
Daniel Pearl was an American journalist who was kidnapped and killed by Al-Qaeda.At the time of his kidnapping, Pearl served as the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, and was based in Mumbai, India. He went to Pakistan as part of an investigation into the alleged links between...
, who had been beheaded by Islamic extremists the previous year. At the time of Pearl’s death, Lévy was visiting Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
as French President Jacques Chirac
Jacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...
's special envoy. He spent the next year in Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
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
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...
, nuclear
Nuclear physics
Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies the building blocks and interactions of atomic nuclei. The most commonly known applications of nuclear physics are nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons technology, but the research has provided application in many fields, including those...
scientists and al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
. 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 (among 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.
Although Levy's books have been translated into the English language since La Barbarie à visage humain, his breakthrough in the English language was with the publication of a series of essays between May and November 2005 for The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...
. In the series, "In the Footsteps of Tocqueville", Levy imitated his compatriot and predecessor in American critique, Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...
, criss-crossing the United States, interviewing Americans and recording his observations first for magazine and then book publication. The book was met with derision in the United States, and was ridiculed by Garrison Keillor
Garrison Keillor
Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio personality. He is known as host of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (born August 7, 1942) is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio...
in a review on the front page of the New York Times.
In March 2006 a letter Lévy co-signed entitled MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism
MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism
MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism is a political statement made in response to the violence surrounding the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. The signatories said they issued the letter to demonstrate that there is a need to fight for secular values and personal freedom...
with eleven other individuals (most notably Salman Rushdie) was published in response to violent and deadly protests in the Muslim world
Muslim world
The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a religious sense, it refers to those who adhere to the teachings of Islam, referred to as Muslims. In a cultural sense, it refers to Islamic civilization, inclusive of non-Muslims living in that civilization...
surrounding the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy began after 12 editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad, were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005...
. When questioned about the Niqab
Niqab
A niqab is a cloth which covers the face, worn by some Muslim women as a part of sartorial hijāb...
face-veil worn by some Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
women, during the United Kingdom debate over veils
United Kingdom debate over veils
The British debate over veils began in October 2006 when the MP and government minister Jack Straw wrote in his local newspaper, the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, that, while he did not want to be "prescriptive", he preferred talking to women who did not wear a niqab as he could see their face,...
, Lévy told the Jewish Chronicle
The Jewish Chronicle
The Jewish Chronicle is a London-based Jewish newspaper. Founded in 1841, it is the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world.-Publication data and readership figures:...
that "the veil is an invitation to rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
".
With the aid of real Washington political advisers, Italian conceptual artist, Francesco Vezzoli, created two commercials for competing US presidential campaigns – pitting Sharon Stone
Sharon Stone
Sharon Vonne Stone is an American actress, film producer, and former fashion model. She achieved international recognition for her role in the erotic thriller Basic Instinct...
against Bernard-Henri Lévy – in a project entitled Democrazy, shown at the 2007 Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
.
Recent activities
In September 2008, Lévy toured the United States to promote his book Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New BarbarismLeft in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism
Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism is a 2008 book by Bernard-Henri Lévy published on September 16, 2008.- Premise :In this book, Lévy argues that in the wake of the failure of communism, the Western left has lost its ideals. It now fails to uphold universal ideas of justice,...
.
On June 24, 2009, Lévy posted a video on Dailymotion
Dailymotion
Dailymotion is a video sharing service website, headquartered in the 18th arrondissement, Paris, France. According to Comscore, Dailymotion is the second largest video site in the world after YouTube....
in support of the Iranian protesters who were being repressed after the contested elections
2009 Iranian election protests
Protests following the 2009 Iranian presidential election against the disputed victory of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and in support of opposition candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi occurred in major cities in Iran and around the world starting June 13, 2009...
.
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 a weekly column in the magazine Le Point and chairs the Conseil de Surveillance of La Sept-Arte.
Through the 2000s, Lévy argued that the world must pay more attention to the crisis in Darfur.
In January 2010, he publicly defended Popes Pius XII and Benedict XVI against political attacks directed against them from within the Jewish community.
At the opening of the "Democracy and its Challenges" conference in Tel Aviv (May 2010) Lévy gave a very high estimation of the Israel Defense Forces
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
, saying "I have never seen such a democratic army, which asks itself so many moral questions. There is something unusually vital about Israeli democracy."
Lévy has reported from troubled zones during wartime, in order to attract the public opinion, in France and abroad, over those political changes. In August 2008, Lévy reported from South Ossetia (Georgia) during the 2008 South Ossetia war
2008 South Ossetia war
The 2008 South Ossetia War or Russo-Georgian War was an armed conflict in August 2008 between Georgia on one side, and Russia and separatist governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia on the other....
; in that occasion he interviewed the President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili.
In March 2011 he engaged in talks with Libyan insurgents in Benghazi, and publicly promoted the international acknowledgement of the recently formed National Transitional Council
National Transitional Council
The National Transitional Council of Libya , sometimes known as the Transitional National Council, the Interim National Council, or the Libyan National Council,...
. Later that month, worried about the Libyan uprising, he prompted and then supported Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....
's seeking to persuade Washington, and ultimately the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, to intervene in Libya in order to prevent a massacre in Benghazi.
In May 2011 Levy defended IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn , often referred to in the media, and by himself, as DSK, is a French economist, lawyer, politician, and member of the French Socialist Party...
when Kahn was accused of sexually assaulting a chambermaid in New York City. Levy suggested that the chambermaid had been sent as part of an anti-Kahn conspiracy, stating in The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast
The Daily Beast is an American news reporting and opinion website founded and published by Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker as well as the short-lived Talk Magazine. The Daily Beast was launched on October 6, 2008, and is owned by IAC...
"It would be nice to know — and without delay — how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a ‘cleaning brigade’ of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet.”
In May 2011 Levy argued for military intervention in Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
against Bashar al-Assad
Bashar al-Assad
Bashar al-Assad is the President of Syria and Regional Secretary of the Ba'ath Party. His father Hafez al-Assad ruled Syria for 29 years until his death in 2000. Al-Assad was elected in 2000, re-elected in 2007, unopposed each time.- Early Life :...
after violence against civilians
Civilian
A civilian under international humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces or other militia. Civilians are distinct from combatants. They are afforded a degree of legal protection from the effects of war and military occupation...
in response to the 2011 Syrian uprising
2011 Syrian uprising
The 2011 Syrian uprising is an ongoing internal conflict occurring in Syria. Protests started on 26 January 2011, and escalated into an uprising by 15 March 2011...
.
In September 15 2011, Lévy's personal struggle for freedom and democracy in Libya is broadly acknowledged to be the principal reason why Nicolas Sarkozy (accompanied by Bernard-Henri Lévy) was cheered during his, visit to Libya by thousands of people, holding french flags and shouting “Vive la France!”.
On the 9th of November 2011, his book, "La guerre sans l'aimer" (éditions Grasset) was published, to glowing reviews, knowing great acclaim.
Criticisms
Early essays, such as Le Testament de Dieu or L'Idéologie française faced strong rebuttals, from noted intellectuals such as historian Pierre Vidal-NaquetPierre Vidal-Naquet
Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in 1969....
, philosophers Cornelius Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis was a Greek philosopher, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, author of The Imaginary Institution of Society, and co-founder of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group.-Early life in Athens:...
, Raymond Aron
Raymond Aron
Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron was a French philosopher, sociologist, journalist and political scientist.He is best known for his 1955 book The Opium of the Intellectuals, the title of which inverts Karl Marx's claim that religion was the opium of the people -- in contrast, Aron argued that in...
and Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
, who called Lévy's methods "vile". Their most common accusation towards Lévy is of him being one-sided and, ultimately, shallow as a thinker. Vidal-Naquet went as far as saying: "BHL's intellectual dishonesty is properly unfathomable".
More recently, in the essay De la guerre en philosophie (2010), Lévy was embarrassed when he used, as a central point of his refutation of Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, the writings of French "philosopher" Jean-Baptiste Botul. Botul's writings are actually well-known spoofs, and Botul himself is the fictional creation of a French living journalist and philosopher, Frédéric Pagès
Frédéric Pagès
Frédéric Pagès is a French journalist noted for his work with the satirical weekly, Le Canard enchaîné.Pagès studied philosophy at University and worked as a high school teacher until 1985....
, as is easily guessed from his thought-system being botulism
Botulism
Botulism also known as botulinus intoxication is a rare but serious paralytic illness caused by botulinum toxin which is metabolic waste produced under anaerobic conditions by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, and affecting a wide range of mammals, birds and fish...
.
Another round of criticisms addresses Lévy's reliance on his connections with the French literary and business circles to promote his works. Lévy had for years business ties with billionaire François Pinault
François Pinault
François Pinault is a French businessman who runs the retail company PPR. He is a friend of former French President Jacques Chirac....
, befriended Jean-Luc Lagardère
Jean-Luc Lagardère
Jean-Luc Lagardère was a major French businessman, CEO of the Lagardere Group, one of the largest French conglomerates....
, who owned Hachette Livre
Hachette Livre
-France:*Calmann-Lévy*Deux Coqs d'Or*Disney Hachette Edition*EDICEF*Editions 1*Editions du Chêne**E.P.A*Éditions Dunod*Editions Foucher*Editions Stock*Fayard**Editions Mille et Une Nuits**Editions Mazarine**Pauvert*Gautier-Languereau*Grasset...
, the largest publisher in France, and Hachette Filipacchi Médias
Hachette Filipacchi Médias
Hachette Filipacchi Médias, S.A. is a magazine publisher. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lagardère Media of France.- History :Hachette Filipacchi was founded by Louis Hachette in 1826 when he purchased the Librarie Brédif. Hachette was purchased by Matra in 1980, a firm associated with Ténot &...
, the largest magazine publisher in the world. Lévy was even briefly related to Jean-Paul Enthoven, publisher of Grasset (a novel and essay division of Hachette Livre), when his daughter Justine Lévy was married to Enthoven's son Raphaël
Raphaël Enthoven
Raphael Enthoven is a professor of French philosophy. Son of the publisher Jean-Paul Enthoven, he is the former husband of Justine Lévy and former companion of Carla Bruni , with whom he had a son born July 21, 2001...
. Lévy has been chairman of the supervisory board
Supervisory board
A supervisory board or supervisory committee, often called board of directors, is a group of individuals chosen by the stockholders of a company to promote their interests through the governance of the company and to hire and supervise the executive directors and CEO.Corporate governance varies...
for French-German cultural TV channel Arte
Arte
Arte is a Franco-German TV network. It is a European culture channel and aims to promote quality programming especially in areas of culture and the arts...
, was for years a columnist for French newspaper Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
and is currently a columnist for both news magazine Le Point
Le Point
Le Point is a French weekly news magazine. It was founded in 1972 by a group of journalists who had, one year earlier, left the editorial team of L'Express, which was then owned by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, a député of the Parti Radical...
(owned by François Pinault) and national daily newspaper Libération
Libération
Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...
, in addition to being a shareholder and member of the supervisory board. In the essay Une imposture française, journalists Nicolas Beau and Olivier Toscer claim that Lévy uses his unique position as an influential member of both the literary and business establishments in France to be the go-between between the two worlds, which helps him to get positive reviews as marks of gratitude, while silencing dissenters.
For instance, Beau and Toscer noted that most of the reviews published in France for Who Killed Daniel Pearl? didn't mention strong denials about the book given by experts and Pearl's own family including wife Marianne Pearl who called Lévy "a man whose intelligence is destroyed by his own ego".
In 2011 he commented in support of his friend of twenty years Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn , often referred to in the media, and by himself, as DSK, is a French economist, lawyer, politician, and member of the French Socialist Party...
when he was arrested on sexual allegations, referring to the allegations as, "absurd."
Personal life
Lévy is married to French actress and singer Arielle DombasleArielle Dombasle
Arielle Dombasle is a French-American singer, actress, director and model. Her breakthrough roles were in Éric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach and Alain Robbe-Grillet's The Blue Villa...
. His eldest daughter by his first marriage to Isabelle Doutreluigne, Justine Lévy
Justine Lévy
Justine-Juliette Lévy is a French is a book editor and author.Lévy is the eldest daughter of Isabelle Doutreluigne and French philosopher, writer, and intellectual, Bernard-Henri Lévy...
, is a bestselling
Bestseller
A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and...
novelist. He also has a son, Antonin-Balthazar Lévy, by his second wife, Sylvie Bouscasse.
Lévy is, with his third wife, a regular fixture in Paris Match
Paris Match
Paris Match is a French weekly magazine. It covers major national and international news along with celebrity lifestyle features. It was founded in 1949 by the industrialist Jean Prouvost....
magazine, wearing his trademark unbuttoned white shirts and designer suits. Some have attributed to Lévy a reputation for narcissism
Narcissism
Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...
. One article about him coined the dictum, "God is dead
God is dead
"God is dead" is a widely-quoted statement by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It first appears in The Gay Science , in sections 108 , 125 , and for a third time in section 343...
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 the "pie thrower" Noël Godin
Noël Godin
Noël Godin is a Belgian writer, critic, actor and notorious cream pie flinger or entarteur. Godin gained global attention in 1998 when his group ambushed Microsoft CEO Bill Gates in Brussels, pelting the software magnate with cream pies...
, who describes Lévy as "a vain, pontificating dandy
Dandy
A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self...
".
Lévy is proudly Jewish, and he has said that Jews ought to provide a unique Jewish moral voice in world society and world politics.
Lévy has been friends with Nicholas Sarkozy since 1983. Relations between them deteriorated during Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential run in which Lévy backed the Socialist candidate and also described Sarkozy as "A man with a warrior vision of politics". However, they grew closer again after Sarkozy's victory.
Threats
Lévy was one of six prominent European public figures of Jewish ancestry targeted for assassination by a BelgiumBelgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
-based Islamist militant group in 2008. The list included other Frenchmen such as Josy Eisenberg
Josy Eisenberg
Josy Eisenberg is a French television producer. A hasidic Jew of Polish origin , he produces an animated TV show, À bible ouverte, which has been running on France 2 since the early 1960s. He is also the co-scenarist of the movie The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob.-References:...
. That plot was reportedly foiled after the group's leader, Abdelkader Belliraj
Abdelkader Belliraj
Abdelkader Belliraj is a Moroccan-Belgian citizen who was found guilty in 2009 of arms smuggling and planning terrorist attacks in Morocco.-Petty criminal in the 1980s:...
, was arrested based on unrelated murder charges from the 1980s.
Works
Lévy's works have been translated into many different languages; below is an offering of works available in either French or English.- , 1973.
- , 1977.
- “Response to the Master Censors”. Telos 33 (Fall 1977). New York: Telos Press.
- , 1978.
- , 1981.
- , 1984.
- , 1987.
- , 1988.
- , 1991.
- , 1992
- , 1992
- , 1994.
- ,1994.
- , 1994.
- Adventures on the Freedom Road, Harvill Press, 1995, hardcover, ISBN 1860460356
- What Good Are Intellectuals: 44 Writers Share Their Thoughts, Algora Publishing, 2000, paperback, 276 pages, ISBN 1892941104
- , 1997.
- , 2000.
- , 2002.
- Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century, translated by Andrew Brown, Polity Press, July 2003, hardcover, 456 pages, ISBN 074563009X
- , 2003, in English as Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, (Melville House PublishingMelville House PublishingMelville House Publishing is an independent publisher of literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The company was founded in 2001 by the husband and wife team of Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians in Hoboken, New Jersey, a location Johnson jokingly called "the Left Bank" of New York City...
), September 2003, hardcover, 454 pages, ISBN 0971865949 - War, Evil and End of History, Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd [UK], (Melville House PublishingMelville House PublishingMelville House Publishing is an independent publisher of literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The company was founded in 2001 by the husband and wife team of Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians in Hoboken, New Jersey, a location Johnson jokingly called "the Left Bank" of New York City...
) [US], October 2004, hardcover, 400 pages, ISBN 0715633368; paperback, ISBN 978-0-971865-95-2 - , 2004.
- American Vertigo : Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville, Random House, January 2006, hardcover, 320 pages, ISBN 1400064341
- Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New BarbarismLeft in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New BarbarismLeft in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism is a 2008 book by Bernard-Henri Lévy published on September 16, 2008.- Premise :In this book, Lévy argues that in the wake of the failure of communism, the Western left has lost its ideals. It now fails to uphold universal ideas of justice,...
, translated by Benjamin Moser, Random House Publishing Group, 2009, 256 pages, ISBN 0812974727; paperback, ISBN 9780812974720 - Bernard-Henri Lévy, Michel HouellebecqMichel HouellebecqMichel Houellebecq , born Michel Thomas, 26 February 1958—or 1956 —on the French island of Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French author, filmmaker and poet. To admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire;...
, Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World, Random House, 2011, paperback, 320 pages, ISBN 0812980786
Further reading
- Note: Some of the content of this article comes from the equivalent French-language wikipedia article.
- Dominique Lecourt, Mediocracy : French Philosophy Since the Mid-1970s (2001), new ed. Verso, London, 2002.
- Craig Owens, "Sects and Language," in Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture, Scott Bryson, et al., eds. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1992), 243–52.
External links
- Official website Bernard-Henri Lévy
- Official facebook Bernard-Henri Lévy
- Biography, bibliography, news, and more than 400 press clips written by or about Bernard-Henri Lévy
- Institute for Levinassian Studies, co-founded by Bernard-Henri Lévy, Benny Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut
Interviews and articles
- A one-on-one Live interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy @ Leadel.NET
- Interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy A November 2008 interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy in Guernica MagazineGuernica MagazineGuernica / A Magazine of Art and Politics is a biweekly online site that publishes art and photography, fiction, and poetry, from around the world, along with nonfiction such as letters from abroad, investigative pieces and opinion pieces on international affairs and U.S. domestic policy...
- Crisis Darfur: Bernard-Henri Lévy at PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature — as published in Guernica MagazineGuernica MagazineGuernica / A Magazine of Art and Politics is a biweekly online site that publishes art and photography, fiction, and poetry, from around the world, along with nonfiction such as letters from abroad, investigative pieces and opinion pieces on international affairs and U.S. domestic policy...
. - "In the Footsteps of Tocqueville" — An article in the Atlantic Monthly.
- "On the Road Avec M. Lévy" — A review of American Vertigo in the New York Times Book Review by Garrison KeillorGarrison KeillorGary Edward "Garrison" Keillor is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio personality. He is known as host of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (born August 7, 1942) is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio...
. - "Mediocracy in America" — A review of American Vertigo in the literary magazine, n+1N+1n+1 is a New York–based American literary magazine that publishes social criticism, political commentary, essays, art, poetry, book reviews, and short fiction. It is published three times each year, and content is published on several times each week...
by Sam Stark. - "The Lies of Bernard Henri Lévy" Critical Doug IrelandDoug IrelandDoug Ireland is an American journalist and blogger who writes about politics, power, media, and also about gay issues. He is the U.S...
article in In These TimesIn These TimesIn These Times is a politically progressive monthly magazine of news and opinion published by the Institute for Public Affairs in Chicago...
. - Profile: Bernard Henry Lévy
- Big Ideas @ TVO Lévy discusses his book "Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism".