On ne peut comprendre la position de cette œuvre, annoncée dès 1840 comme devant être tout à la fois 'ironique et polémique', sans savoir précisément ce à quoi elle s'oppose. On ne peut saisir le sens de cette opposition si on ne découvre ce qui en constitue le 'point archimédique'. Pour avoir compris cette triple exigence, l'auteur de cet essai fait découvrir dans le monde intellectuel danois du XIXe siècle, qu'il ressuscite, un monde si proche du nôtre qu'on s'en reconnaît (...) presque contemporain, jusqu'à souhaiter apprendre de Kierkegaard le secret d'une exemplaire résistance à la malhonnêteté et à l'irresponsabilité des 'brigands semi-cultivés' qui font de notre époque, comme de la sienne, une 'époque de désagrégation' et de notre société, plus encore que de la sienne, une société du 'nivellement'. Mais il avertit aussi bien que ce n'est pas en cherchant à tout savoir sur Kierkegaard qu'on apprendra quoi que ce soit de Kierkegaard. (shrink)

The basic principles of scientific research from the great French physiologist whose contributions in the 19th century included the discovery of vasomotor nerves; nature of curare and other poisons in human body; more.

'A whole man, made of all men, worth all of them, and any one of them worth him.' This was how Jean-Paul Sartre characterized himself at the end of his autobiographical study, Words. And Bernard-Henri Levy shows how Sartre cannot be understood without taking into account his relations with the intellectual forebears and contemporaries, the lovers and friends, with whom he conducted a lifelong debate. His thinking was essentially a tumultuous dialogue with his whole age and himself. He (...) learned from Gide the art of freedom, and how to experiment with inherited fictional forms. He was a fellow-traveller of communism, and yet his relations with the Party were deeply ambiguous. He was fascinated by Freud but trenchantly critical of psychoanalysis. Beneath Sartre's complex and ever-mutating political commitments, Levy detects a polarity between anarchic individualism on the one hand, and a longing for absolute community that brought him close to totalitarianism on the other. Levy depicts Sartre as a man who could succumb to the twentieth century's catastrophic attraction to violence and the false messianism of its total political solutions, while also being one of the fiercest critics of its illusions and shortcomings. (shrink)

Offers an exploration of what it means to be a Jew, rooted in the Talmudic tradition of argument and conflict.

L humanisme juif. La modalite d universalisme qui s en deduit. Ce qu il nous dit de l ethique. De la question politique et de celle de la souverainete. La question d Israel. Sa place dans l economie du monde et de l Etre. L antisemitisme aujourd'hui. La facon dont le theme de la concurrence des victimes lui donne une actualite tragiquement nouvelle. Les juifs et la France. S il faut rester ou partir. Si l on vit, ou non, un (...) remake des annees 30. La tentation de Ninive ou, mieux, de Jonas et la facon dont l auteur, a Kiev ou a Tripoli, a pu lui-meme lui surtout? - y ceder. Telles sont quelques-unes des questions posees dans ce livre de reflexion qui est aussi un livre de combat.". (shrink)

_A trenchant look at how the coronavirus reveals the dangerous fault lines of contemporary society As seen on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS: “A stirring alarm addressed to an unsettled world.” _(Kirkus Reviews_)__ Forget the world that came before. The author of _American Vertigo_ serves up an incisive look at how COVID-19 reveals the dangerous fault lines of contemporary society._ With medical mysteries, rising death tolls, and conspiracy theories beamed minute by minute through the vast web universe, the coronavirus pandemic has (...) irrevocably altered societies around the world. In this sharp essay, world-renowned philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy interrogates the many meanings and metaphors we have assigned to the pandemic—and what they tell us about ourselves. Drawing on the philosophical tradition from Plato and Aristotle to Lacan and Foucault, Lévy asks uncomfortable questions about reality and mythology: he rejects the idea that the virus is a warning from nature, the inevitable result of global capitalism; he questions the heroic status of doctors, asking us to think critically about the loci of authority and power; he challenges the panicked polarization that dominates online discourse. Lucid, incisive, and always original, Lévy takes a bird’s-eye view of the most consequential historical event of our time and proposes a way to defend human society from threats to our collective future. A portion of the author’s proceeds will be donated to Binc (The Book Industry Charitable Foundation). (shrink)

JEFFREY ANDREW BARASH. — Ce qui m’a beaucoup intéressé dans vos écrits récents et notamment dans votre livre Le siècle de Sartre, c’est la manière dont vous abordez le phénomène du totalitarisme, phénomène central pour comprendre le XXe siècle. Or, s’agissant du phénomène totalitaire, nous avons assisté à l’émergence d’un nouveau..