Jean-François Revel
Encyclopedia
Jean-François Revel was a French
politician, journalist, author, prolific philosopher
and member of the Académie française
from June 1998. A socialist in his youth, Revel later became a prominent European proponent of classical liberalism
and free market
economics.
He was born Jean-François Ricard, but later adopted his pseudonym Revel as his legal surname. During the German occupation of France in WWII, Revel participated in the French Resistance
and later noted that the officious but disgraceful manner of French collaborators influenced his writings.
He studied at the Lycée du Parc
in Lyon
and was accepted at the prestigious École normale supérieure
where he studied philosophy. He began his career as a philosophy professor, and taught in French Algeria
, Italy
and Mexico
, before settling in Lille
. He stopped teaching in 1963 and embarked on his career as an essayist and writer, as well as directing various publications. From 1998 to 2006, he was president of the Institut d'Histoire Sociale. His successor is Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
. In 1986 Revel was honored with an honorary doctorate degree for his commitment to individual freedom.
A socialist until the late 1960s, Revel was a speechwriter for socialist President François Mitterrand
and ran as a socialist candidate in parliamentary elections in 1967 but lost. During the Cold War
, Revel was known as a champion of classical liberal values such as liberty and democracy at a time when many preeminent European intellectuals praised Communism
or Maoism
. The publication of his 1970 book, Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Begun signalled the transition of his views to liberal "philosopher of freedom in the tradition of Raymond Aron
." (D. Martin, NYT, p.B7)
He is survived by his second wife, Claude Sarraute, a journalist, and has three sons from two marriages. His first marriage to painter Yahne le Toumelin ended in divorce.
One of his sons, Matthieu Ricard
, is a well known Buddhist monk who studied molecular biology at the Pasteur Institute
before converting to Tibetan Buddhism
. Father and son jointly authored a book Le moine et le philosophe (The Monk and the Philosopher) about the son's conversion and Buddhism.
in Leiden, The Netherlands, under the title: La tentation totalitaire (The Totalitarian Temptation).
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
politician, journalist, author, prolific philosopher
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...
and member of the Académie française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
from June 1998. A socialist in his youth, Revel later became a prominent European proponent of classical liberalism
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....
and free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
economics.
Life and career
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
and later noted that the officious but disgraceful manner of French collaborators influenced his writings.
He studied at the Lycée du Parc
Lycée du Parc
The Lycée du Parc is a public secondary school located in the sixth arrondissement of Lyon, France. Its name comes from the Parc de la Tête d'Or, one of Europe's largest urban parks, which is situated nearby....
in Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
and was accepted at the prestigious École normale supérieure
École normale supérieure
An école normale supérieure or ENS is a type of publicly funded higher education in France. A portion of the student body who are French civil servants are called Normaliens....
where he studied philosophy. He began his career as a philosophy professor, and taught in 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...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, before settling in Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...
. He stopped teaching in 1963 and embarked on his career as an essayist and writer, as well as directing various publications. From 1998 to 2006, he was president of the Institut d'Histoire Sociale. His successor is Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie is a French historian whose work is mainly focused upon Languedoc in the ancien regime, particularly the history of the peasantry.-Early life and career:...
. In 1986 Revel was honored with an honorary doctorate degree for his commitment to individual freedom.
A socialist until the late 1960s, Revel was a speechwriter for socialist President François Mitterrand
François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
and ran as a socialist candidate in parliamentary elections in 1967 but lost. During the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, Revel was known as a champion of classical liberal values such as liberty and democracy at a time when many preeminent European intellectuals praised Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
or Maoism
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
. The publication of his 1970 book, Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Begun signalled the transition of his views to liberal "philosopher of freedom in the tradition of 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...
." (D. Martin, NYT, p.B7)
He is survived by his second wife, Claude Sarraute, a journalist, and has three sons from two marriages. His first marriage to painter Yahne le Toumelin ended in divorce.
One of his sons, Matthieu Ricard
Matthieu Ricard
Matthieu Ricard is a French Buddhist monk who resides at Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal.Born in Aix-les-Bains, Savoie, France, he is the son of the late Jean-François Revel , a renowned French philosopher, and grew up among the personalities and ideas of French intellectual circles...
, is a well known Buddhist monk who studied molecular biology at the Pasteur Institute
Pasteur Institute
The Pasteur Institute is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who made some of the greatest breakthroughs in modern medicine at the time, including pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax...
before converting to Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...
. Father and son jointly authored a book Le moine et le philosophe (The Monk and the Philosopher) about the son's conversion and Buddhism.
Work
Revel was best known for his books Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Begun, The Flight from Truth : The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information and his 2002 book Anti-Americanism, one year after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/02/AR2006050201708.html In the last of these books, Revel criticised those Europeans who argued that the United States had brought the terrorist attacks upon itself through misguided foreign policies. He wrote thus: "Obsessed by their hatred and floundering in illogicality, these dupes forget that the United States, acting in its own self-interest, is also acting in the interest of us Europeans and in the interests of many other countries which are threatened, or have already been subverted and ruined, by terrorism." In 1975 he delivered the Huizinga LectureHuizinga Lecture
The Huizinga Lecture is a prestigious annual lecture in the Netherlands about a subject in the domains of cultural history or philosophy. The lecture is in honour of Johan Huizinga, a distinguished Dutch historian who worked in the first half of the 20th century...
in Leiden, The Netherlands, under the title: La tentation totalitaire (The Totalitarian Temptation).
Partial booklist
- Without Marx or Jesus (1972) ISBN 0440597293
- The Totalitarian Temptation (1976)
- How Democracies Perish (1983)
- The Flight from Truth : The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information (1992) ISBN 0394576438
- Democracy Against Itself: The Future of the Democratic Impulse/Regain démocratique (1993) ISBN 0029263875
- The Monk and the Philosopher : A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life (1999) ISBN 0805211039
- The Anti-American Obsession: Its Functioning, Its Causes, Its Inconsequentialness/La obsesión antiamericana (2003) ISBN 1893554856
- Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era/Le Grande Parade (2009) ISBN 1594032645
Quotations
- "... anarchy leads to despotism ... despotism leads to anarchy ..."
- "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."
- "It is unlikely that we will ever be capable of building a world that is qualitatively better than we ourselves are."
- Democracy against Itself
- "Strangely, it is always America that is described as degenerate and 'fascist,' while it is solely in Europe that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up." From Europe's Anti-American Obsession. A similar statement can be found in his book Anti-Americanism, Encounter Books, 2004, p. 156 (paperback).
- "A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence"
External links
- https://www.ufm.edu/cms/es/honorary-doctoral-degreesHonorary Doctoral Degrees, Universidad Francisco MarroquínUniversidad Francisco MarroquínUniversidad Francisco Marroquín is a private, secular, university in Guatemala City, Guatemala. According to the school's website, "the mission of Universidad Francisco Marroquín is to teach and disseminate the ethical, legal and economic principles of a sociey of free and responsible persons."...
] - http://chezrevel.net/
- http://chezrevel.net/cat/english/
- http://www.souvarine.fr/institut.php
- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-2163713,00.html L'Académie française
- Douglas Martin, "J-F Revel, French Philosopher, is dead at 82," May 2, 2006, Section B, Page 7, The New York Times