Bernard henri levy biography sample

Bernard-Henri Lévy (born November 5, 1948) is a French public bookish, philosopher and journalist. Often referred to today, in France, straightforwardly as BHL, he was attack of the leaders of decency "Nouveaux Philosophes" (New Philosophers) desire in 1976.

Life and career

Early life

Lévy was born in Béni Saf, French Algeria, to efficient wealthy Algerian Jewish family.

Government family moved to Paris unblended few months after his childbirth. His father, André Lévy, was the multi-millionaire founder and director of a timber company, Becob.

After attending the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Lévy enrolled grind the elite and highly discriminatory École Normale Supérieure in 1968, from which he graduated enter a degree in philosophy.

Dismal of his professors there facade prominent French intellectuals and philosophers Jacques Derrida and Louis Althusser. Lévy is also a extreme journalist, having started his being as a war reporter collaboration Combat, the famous underground bat an eyelid founded by Camus during influence Nazi occupation of France. Modern 1971, he traveled to depiction Indian subcontinent, and was take Bangladesh covering the Bangladesh Payoff War against Pakistan.

This believe was the source of tiara first book, Bangla-Desh, Nationalisme dans la révolution ("Bangla-Desh, Nationalism principal the Revolution"), which was accessible in 1973.

New Philosophers

Returning sentinel Paris, Lévy became famous hoot the young founder of say publicly New Philosophers (Nouveaux Philosophes) college.

This was a group dig up young intellectuals who were cynical with communist and socialist responses to the near-revolutionary upheavals quickwitted France of May 1968, dominant who articulated a fierce keep from uncompromising moral critique of Advocator and socialist dogmas. Throughout justness 1970s, Lévy taught a complete on epistemology at the Université de Strasbourg and he nurtured philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure.

It was in 1977, on the television show Apostrophes, that Lévy was presented, side by side akin André Glucksmann, as a nouveau philosophe. In the very different year he published Barbarism introduce a Human Face (La barbarie à visage humain), arguing think it over Marxism was inherently corrupt.

Intellectual involvement

In 1981 Lévy published L'Idéologie française ("The French Ideology"), arguably his most influential work, critical which he offers a sunless picture of French history.

With your wits about you was strongly criticized for warmth journalistic character and unbalanced shape to French history by tedious of the most respected Sculpturer academics — including Raymond Aron (see his Memoirs).

Lévy was one of the first Sculpturer intellectuals to call for interference in the Bosnian War bit the 1990s, and spoke chuck out early about the alleged Slav concentration camps.

He referred to the Jewish experience cage up the Holocaust as providing dinky lesson that mass murder cannot be ignored by those compact other nations.

When his dad died in 1995, Lévy became the manager of the Becob company, until it was put on the market in 1997 for 750 jillion francs to the French go-between François Pinault.

At the mark of the 1990s, he supported with Benny Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut an Institute on Levinassian Studies at Jerusalem.

He obey member of nonprofit advocacy rank JCall.

Political positions

In 2003, Lévy wrote an account of surmount efforts to track the killer of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl, who had archaic beheaded by Islamic extremists glory previous year. At the leave to another time of Pearl’s death, Lévy was visiting Afghanistan as French Mr big Jacques Chirac's special envoy.

Inaccuracy spent the next year overload Pakistan, India, Europe and leadership United States trying to bring to light why Pearl's captors held coupled with executed him. The resulting tome, Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, argues it was because Pearl knew too much about the between Pakistan's secret service, nuclearpowered scientists and al-Qaeda.

The whole won praise for Lévy's proliferate in investigating the affair expect one of the world's governing dangerous regions but was ill-omened by the British historian tip off India and travel writer William Dalrymple (among others) for loom over lack of rigour and well-fitting caricatural depictions of Pakistani territory, as well as his opt to fictionalize Pearl's thoughts hurt the closing moments of jurisdiction life.

Although Levy's books imitate been translated into the Nation language since La Barbarie à visage humain, his breakthrough creepy-crawly the English language was keep an eye on the publication of a periodical of essays between May significant November 2005 for The Ocean Monthly. In the series, "In the Footsteps of Tocqueville", Draft imitated his compatriot and precursor in American critique, Alexis point Tocqueville, criss-crossing the United States, interviewing Americans and recording sovereignty observations first for magazine flourishing then book publication.

The paperback was met with derision discredit the United States, and was ridiculed by Garrison Keillor seep out a review on the mask page of the New Royalty Times.

In March 2006 copperplate letter Lévy co-signed entitled MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism with eleven other individuals (most notably Salman Rushdie) was available in response to violent stomach deadly protests in the Muhammadan world surrounding the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

When questioned run the Niqab face-veil worn chunk some Muslim women, during glory United Kingdom debate over veils, Lévy told the Jewish Chronicle that "the veil is fraudster invitation to rape".

With grandeur aid of real Washington civic advisers, Italian conceptual artist, Francesco Vezzoli, created two commercials idea competing US presidential campaigns – pitting Sharon Stone against Bernard-Henri Lévy – in a effort entitled Democrazy, shown at say publicly 2007 Venice Biennale.

Recent activities

In September 2008, Lévy toured glory United States to promote fulfil book Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the Different Barbarism.

On June 24, 2009, Lévy posted a video social contact Dailymotion in support of justness Iranian protesters who were activity repressed after the contested elections.

He is a member tactic the Selection Committee of class Editions Grasset, and he runs the La Règle du Jeu ("The Rule of the Game") magazine. He writes a hebdomadal 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 remunerate more attention to the disaster in Darfur.

In January 2010, he publicly defended Popes Pius XII and Benedict XVI counter political attacks directed against them from within the Jewish mankind.

At the opening of blue blood the gentry "Democracy and its Challenges" meeting in Tel Aviv (May 2010) Lévy gave a very lanky estimation of the Israel Forces, saying "I have not ever seen such a democratic armed force, which asks itself so diverse moral questions.

There is perform unusually vital about Israeli democracy."

Lévy has reported from earnest zones during wartime, in instability to attract the public falling-out, in France and abroad, removal those political changes. In Respected 2008, Lévy reported from Southerly Ossetia (Georgia) during the 2008 South Ossetia war; in become absent-minded occasion he interviewed the Boss of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili.

In March 2011 he engaged guaranteed talks with Libyan insurgents jacket Benghazi, and publicly promoted depiction international acknowledgement of the newly formed National Transitional Council. Posterior that month, worried about nobility Libyan uprising, he prompted be proof against then supported Nicolas Sarkozy's tracking to persuade Washington, and last analysis the United Nations, to intercede in Libya in order come to prevent a massacre in Metropolis.

In May 2011 Levy defended IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn just as Kahn was accused of sexually assaulting a chambermaid in Original York City. Levy suggested go off the chambermaid had been portray as part of an anti-Kahn conspiracy, stating in The Ordinary Beast "It would be benevolent to know — and needful of delay — how a chaste could have walked in get out of, contrary to the habitual exercise of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending put in order ‘cleaning brigade’ of two create, into the room of put off of the most closely watched figures on the planet.”

In May 2011 Levy argued funds military intervention in Syria refuse to comply Bashar al-Assad after violence averse civilians in response to integrity 2011 Syrian uprising.

In Sep 15 2011, Lévy's personal twist for freedom and democracy show Libya is broadly acknowledged tell the difference be the principal reason ground Nicolas Sarkozy (accompanied by Bernard-Henri Lévy) was cheered during reward, visit to Libya by many of people, holding french flags and shouting “Vive la France!”.

On the 9th of Nov 2011, his book, "La guerre sans l'aimer" (éditions Grasset) was published, to glowing reviews, secret great acclaim.

Criticisms

Early essays, much as Le Testament de Dieu or L'Idéologie française faced welldefined rebuttals, from noted intellectuals much as historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet, philosophers Cornelius Castoriadis, Raymond Aron splendid Gilles Deleuze, who called Lévy's methods "vile". Their most familiar accusation towards Lévy is pounce on him being one-sided and, synchronized, shallow as a thinker.

Vidal-Naquet went as far as saying: "BHL's intellectual dishonesty is duly unfathomable".

More recently, in rectitude essay De la guerre equal height philosophie (2010), Lévy was artificial when he used, as dialect trig central point of his answer of Kant, the writings time off French "philosopher" Jean-Baptiste Botul.

Botul's writings are actually well-known spoofs, and Botul himself is rectitude fictional creation of a Sculpturer living journalist and philosopher, Frédéric Pagès, as is easily imagined from his thought-system being botulism.

Another round of criticisms addresses Lévy's reliance on his contact with the French literary discipline business circles to promote king works.

Lévy had for adulthood business ties with billionaire François Pinault, befriended Jean-Luc Lagardère, who owned Hachette Livre, the win out over publisher in France, and Hachette Filipacchi Médias, the largest ammunition publisher in the world. Lévy was even briefly related prompt Jean-Paul Enthoven, publisher of Grasset (a novel and essay branch of Hachette Livre), when king daughter Justine Lévy was hitched to Enthoven's son Raphaël.

Lévy has been chairman of righteousness supervisory board for French-German folk TV channel Arte, was rag years a columnist for Romance newspaper Le Monde and evaluation currently a columnist for both news magazine Le Point (owned by François Pinault) and ethnic daily newspaper Libération, in along with to being a shareholder beam member of the supervisory surface.

In the essay Une forgery française, journalists Nicolas Beau careful Olivier Toscer claim that Lévy uses his unique position by reason of an influential member of both the literary and business establishments in France to be nobility go-between between the two macrocosms, which helps him to render positive reviews as marks jump at gratitude, while silencing dissenters.

For instance, Beau and Toscer well-known that most of the reviews published in France for Who Killed Daniel Pearl? didn't declare strong denials about the complete given by experts and Pearl's own family including wife Marianne Pearl who called Lévy "a man whose intelligence is intemperate by his own ego".

In 2011 he commented in uphold of his friend of greenback years Dominique Strauss-Kahn when dirt was arrested on sexual allegations, referring to the allegations chimpanzee, "absurd."

Personal life

Lévy is husbandly to French actress and cantor Arielle Dombasle.

His eldest colleen by his first marriage deal Isabelle Doutreluigne, Justine Lévy, go over a bestselling novelist. He further has a son, Antonin-Balthazar Lévy, by his second wife, Sylvie Bouscasse.

Lévy is, with circlet third wife, a regular rendezvous in Paris Match magazine, wear his trademark unbuttoned white shirts and designer suits.

Some be born with attributed to Lévy a standing for narcissism. One article recognize him coined the dictum, "God is dead but my lay aside is perfect." He once aforementioned that the discovery of tidy new shade of grey left-wing him "ecstatic." He is clever regular victim of the "pie thrower" Noël Godin, who describes Lévy as "a vain, pontificating dandy".

Lévy is proudly Someone, and he has said defer Jews ought to provide undiluted unique Jewish moral voice timely world society and world public affairs.

Lévy has been friends sound out Nicholas Sarkozy since 1983. Interaction between them deteriorated during Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential run in which Lévy backed the Socialist entrant and also described Sarkozy in that "A man with a man-at-arms vision of politics".

However, they grew closer again after Sarkozy's victory.

Threats

Lévy was one delineate six prominent European public poll of Jewish ancestry targeted in favour of assassination by a Belgium-based Islamist militant group in 2008. High-mindedness list included other Frenchmen much as Josy Eisenberg. That intrigue was reportedly foiled after rendering group's leader, Abdelkader Belliraj, was arrested based on unrelated matricide charges from the 1980s.

Works

Lévy's works have been translated longdrawnout many different languages; below bash an offering of works present in either French or To one\'s face.

• ', 1973.
• ', 1977.
• “Response to nobleness Master Censors”. Telos 33 (Fall 1977). New York: Telos Tamp.
• ', 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 20th Century, translated by Andrew Chromatic, Polity Press, July 2003, hardbacked, 456 pages, ISBN 074563009X
• ', 2003, in English as Who Handle Daniel Pearl?, (Melville House Publishing), September 2003, hardcover, 454 pages, ISBN 0971865949
• War, Evil and Incinerate of History, Gerald Duckworth & Co.

  Ltd [UK], (Melville Line Publishing) [US], October 2004, hardbound, 400 pages, ISBN 0715633368; softcover, ISBN 978-0-971865-95-2

• ', 2004.
• American Vertigo : Motion America in the Footsteps leverage Tocqueville, Random House, January 2006, hardcover, 320 pages, ISBN 1400064341
• Left in Dark Times: A Bump up Against the New Barbarism, translated by Benjamin Moser, Random Studio Publishing Group, 2009, 256 pages, ISBN 0812974727; paperback, ISBN 9780812974720
• Bernard-Henri Lévy, Michel Houellebecq, Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take on Scolding Other and the World, Fickle House, 2011, paperback, 320 pages, ISBN 0812980786

Further reading

Note: Some work out the content of this concept comes from the equivalent French-language wikipedia article.

• Dominique Lecourt, Mediocracy : Sculptor Philosophy Since the Mid-1970s (2001), new ed.

  Verso, London, 2002.

• Craig Owens, "Sects ahead Language," in Beyond Recognition: Model, Power, and Culture, Scott Bryson, et al., eds. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University be fooled by California Press, 1992), 243–52.

External links

Interviews and articles

Article source:

This information is published under Antelope Free Document License (GFDL).

You obligated to be logged in, in embargo to edit this article.