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Camus would weep. (Photo by Kurt Hutton/Getty Images)
There must be some lesson to be drawn from the fact that today’s woke crowd insults France and the French while name-dropping French totems from a great height. As the country is repeatedly condemned, Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Derrida, Bourdieu and Deleuze are all invoked to legitimise today’s angry deconstructivist word salad.
There’s no business like intello-business, and for centuries it came from Paris: Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo, Zola, Sartre, Camus and de Beauvoir once defined both public engagement and intellectual glamour — the ultimate in intersectional cool.
As far back as the 18th century, Diderot famously boarded with Catherine the Great while Voltaire, a steadfast correspondent of Catherine’s for decades, visited Frederick the Great at his Sanssouci for two years. Victor Hugo, somewhat unfairly, destroyed Napoleon III’s reputation in posterity for good (he dismissed him as “Napoléon le Petit”). Jules Verne predicted the future; Proust and Céline, at opposite ends of the spectrum, illuminated the precipices opened by the Great War.
Marc Bloch opened up historical studies to social sciences and painstaking assessment of primary sources in context, while Fernand Braudel mapped out mentalities and trends over centuries in the Mediterranean. Sartre and de Beauvoir travelled across Russia, China and America, sprinkling intellectual pixie dust at universities from Cornell to Smith and Wellesley — or endorsing Communist dictators from Mao Zedong to János Kádár.
When the young André Glucksmann, one of the bright stars of the Nouveaux Philosophes, organised the public reconciliation between Raymond Aron and Jean-Paul Sartre in 1979, the encounter took place in the office of President Giscard d’Estaing at the Élysée. Le Président looked on benignly from the sidelines, obviously enjoying a validation that in everyone’s mind bested the popular vote he’d won five years earlier.
Glucksmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy, for all their Left Bank rich boys swagger, had rightly called the end of the French intelligentsia’s love affair with the radical Left: no more fellow-travellers, no more Odes to Stalin (from France’s greatest 20th century poet, Paul Éluard, no less); no more apologias for Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Even staged, it was momentous.
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SubscribeSartre, Camus, Beauvoir, glad to see the end of those, what great evil they wrought on the world. The most pernicious kind of Marxism, apologists for Mao and Stalin, (Sartre was called the ideological father of the Khmer Rouge) but much worse because all sane people see past that and see the Evil of the 1900s Communism in practice, but the Existentialist Marxist is what is still wrecking the world today – Epitomized by the Frankfurt School, which brings us ‘Critical Theory (now with race) and the wish to destroy capitalism and Western Traditional values, family, by rotting it from within through its hold on the education industries.
A great sickness of soul haunted Europe in the 1930s, The Wiemar Republic, the French Marxist intellectuals were deep in it, the names you list spread an intellectual poison which still is killing decency, hope, and goodness.
So now France has the degenerate Charlie Hebdo kind of creepiness remaining in its tradition – I am against Islam growing in Europe, but at least find them a moral base now that Europe has lost Christianity to Secular Humanism/Nihilism.
My favourite defence of Stalin was Sartre explaining that we ought to ignore the evidence about the Gulag, even if it was true….because otherwise the French proletariat might be throw into despair.
Good shout, but my favourite remains Eric Hobsbawm.
Yes, Sartre and co were apologists for the horrors of the USSR, while Celine was a Nazi sympathiser and anti-semite, and locked up as such in Denmark after the war. Meanwhile, Foucalt, Derrida and co have inflicted so much damage on the western mind that there is probably no way back.
I note that Anne-Elizabeth doesn’t cover people such as Guy Debord or Jean-Luc Godard. Of course, for all his random talent Godard is another bloody leftie but I think Guy Debord made a huge contribution by defining the Society of the Spectacle, and Situationism occasionally delivered some interesting work. And Agnes Varda was, I would suggest, a serious intellectual in many respects.
In the football sphere they have given us some great players, not intellectually none of them matched Cruyff or Guardiola. Well, Wenger perhaps, but his philosophy has taken Arsenal down a blind alley for the last 15 years.
Thus it it to wine and the likes of Jean Michel Stefan, Louis Barroul, Marie Courtin, Ganevat and so many others that one turns to for intellectual stimulation from France these days.
Glad you mention Varda – she was indeed a major artist and a very thoughtful person. Another filmmaker of the New Wave generation whose values are congenial to me was Eric Rohmer, who was committed to the good life both in a sensual fashion and in an intellectual one. Unlike Godard, he kept producing major films into old age.
To be honest I find Rohmer virtually unwatchable these days, although I enjoyed them when I was younger.
Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I really like the later Rohmers – the Tales of the Four Seasons; I prefer those to the more famous Moral Tales.
Not to forget the great Ooh-Ah (Eric) Cantona.
It is unfair and inaccurate to lump Camus with Sartre and Beauvoir, at least after 1951 when Camus denounced the Soviet Union in his L’homme revolte(translated in English as The Rebel). He quarrelled with Sartre in public over that and they no longer spoke to each other when they happened to be in the same cafe. There were further disagreements with them over the Algerian war where Camus;s feelings were especially personal since he had spent his childhood and youth in French ‘Algeria and he could not endorse attacks on his friends and family there because they were French Algerians and therefore in danger. “I love justice,” he wrote, “but I love my mother more.” It would have been interesting to see how he might have developed had he not perished in a car crash in 1960.
What you wrote here was very sensible until you make your claim about the influence of Islam and creeping Islamism – “[I] at least find them a moral base…” Are you serious? The Koran and Shariah a viable “moral base” for contemporary Europe? That’s insane.
I am an odd conservative in I respect Islam, having been around it enough to see how the reality of normal Muslims of faith are. No Islam is not a moral Base for Europe, excepting when Europe has lost its Christian Moral base, and into that vacuum will come great evil, so best some morality enters.
The sickness of Nihilism (Nietzsche, ‘God is Dead’, existentialism, and all that zeitgeist of relative morality and situational ethics) has permeated our society through the Secular/Humanism, which I think is best demonstrated by the Wiemar republic ‘Frankfurt School’ (which moved to Columbia University in the 1950s and so took over USA academic thinking) The Sartre/Nietzsche/Marx/Freud school is the death of soul (watch Prime and Netflix to see what our popular culture is now), and I feel an atheist society will fall to the dark side without some ultimate moral compass, and Islam is a deeply moral religion, although as you say, not Western, But the West has killed its own religion and morals.
Camus Was A Socialist NOT Communist,he was Primarily fairly Conservative Nationalist,and opposed Algeria War ..He was Also An International goalkeeper,and humanist .He does not deserve opprobium on this blog.1957 Nobel prize for literature..
Not sure why you include Camus in this list .
It’s not just the language barrier that has protected ‘us’ from the excesses of identity politics, but a robust resistance from cultural actors, mainstream journalists and academics who hold to the values of the republic.
Two first rate intellectuals who have addressed the question are:
Laurent Dubrueil, La dictature des identités (2019) and Pierre-André Taguieff, L’imposture décoloniale (2020).
Give me de Saint-Exupéry every time. The Little Prince is almost perfection. I think it was ‘Flight to Arras’ where he boards the government city bus to the airport – to pilot his first mail flight across the Mediterranean to Algeria and on, and says (parphrased) how ‘the bus smelled of the dust of government offices, into which a mans soul can sink as surely as blood into the sand of the Sahara.’
The below post is AWAITING FOR APPROVAL! It was just praise for ‘The Little Prince’ and its amazing writer! I dare not repeat his name as it would appear to be on the list of forbidden phrases as nothing else was problematic..
The French gave us absolutism, post-modernism, the EEC, crypto-communism, violent progressive revolutions, modern republicanism, fanatical eurocentrism, and no end of left-wing people that make tasteless jokes about the monarchy on the guaridan.
Even Michael Foot, with his love of ancient english dissent, stands head and shoulders above a good many French “philosophes”.
If I want a philosopher of morality, I will look to Jesus or Ghandi. If I want an intelligent commentator on modern society, I will look to Scruton, Powell, or Peterson. If I want an understanding of the role of Western civilisation, then I will look to Lord Salisbury’s writing or Dr Alexander Clarke. If I want an understanding of other cultures, then Amartya Sen, or Taye Salasi, or Shashi Tharoor (yes, even Mr “I hate Churchill” Tharoor is better than the French).
France claims to be the world’s thinker, but you can find any number of superior philosophers anywhere in the world. Indeed, its culture is not the influencer it thinks it is- and the best cultures around the world have generated their own ideas without France’s help. They had Monet, we had Turner. Their republican secular schools are no match for our faith and grammar schools, or the Christian missionaries of the 19th century, or the Keralan model of education, let alone the vast sums of money put in to education by Ghanaian tribal chiefs. How much help did independent Botswana or Singapore get from France in their rise to statehood?
France lost every war it fought with Britain (even 1776-1784). Its vaunted industry produced the worst pre-dreadnought battleships ever designed, worse than even China’s efforts. Its philosophers have been arrogant, nihilistic, and authoritarian.
France has been the jaded washout of Europe for the past 200 years and it is finally discovering the cold reality of its own self-delusions.
(their navy did fight very valiantly though and I will happily acknowledge that their admirals were better than many people might think)
Yes, but do you rate the French or not?
1776-1784?
They also won the 100 Years War, the War of the Austrian Succession and arguably the War of the Spanish Succession as well,
despite BROM 4689.
I’m also surprised you didn’t mention the sinking of their dreadnought “France” in Quiberon Bay back in 1922.
1776-1784 must be the War of American Indepedence which Britain would probably had suppressed but for the help France gave to the colonists. A few years. some of the same gallant Frenchmen were obliged to return to America as emigrants when France had her own revolution (others went to England which was closer).
Yes, I agree, however Mr Hicking needs to brush up on his dates which in this case are 1779-83 for France.
I do! I was in polemic mode.
British didn’t leave USA until 1814 ,headed to Canada, in 1812 iroquois ,Canadanians,British defeated Americans ex settlers &burnt down The White house
The American Revolutionary War was won handily by America, but France did very badly in terms of expenditure. It’s quite horrible seeing how the loss of money in that war crippled the monarchy.
“They also won the 100 Years War”
Ah, I class that as “France versus England”. They won that one handily, and they deserved to as well.
“The War of the Spanish Succession as well,”
Spain wasn’t a colony of France after that. Very much an ally, but it could bow out when it wanted. Don’t forget that the Dutch wanted France exhausted as insurance against further aggression, and they got that in spades. From a Williamite perspective, I’d class that as a victory.
“The War of the Austrian Succession”
Hmm. I guess I need to brush up on that one more.
After the War of the Spanish Succession the Dutch were also financial exhausted. In fact from that date they faded as a Great Power, and were easily overwhelmed by the Royal Navy in 1780-3, and quickly hoovered up by the French Revolutionary Armies in the 1790’s.
So much for the fabled Dutch Republic, it became a monarchy post 1815, some sell out!
.
Louis Philippe’s invasion of England in 1215 very arguably met its objectives too.
What’s ‘the guaridan’ please?
I guessed The Guardian, the left wing “news” paper.
The Guardian. Its spell-checking is atrocious. It’s a common joke in Britain that its title has to be mis-spelt whenever the paper gets mentioned in anything.
That was a misspelling. It should read “The Grauniad”.
“France lost every war it fought with Britain (even 1776-1784). Its vaunted industry produced the worst pre-dreadnought battleships ever designed, worse than even China’s efforts. Its philosophers have been arrogant, nihilistic, and authoritarian.”
You have no idea of what you are talking about with this one.
Satre? Nihilism and arrogance. I will admit that I exaggerated, and Marc Bloch had some useful things to say with Annales, along with Fernand Braudel. That said, name the most influential French thinkers of the 20th century. Name how many have been Marxist or post-modernist.
French pre-dreadnoughts? Multiple flawed classes of battleship as an experiment- Masséna, Bouvet, Carnot, Charles Martel, and Jauréguiberry, whilst the British pumped out Majestic and Canopus class battleships. Even without the battleships, the Jeune Ecole school failed. W/T communications and Jackie Fisher’s naval intelligence measures drastically reduced the potency of their pro-cruiser strategy, and torpedo boats were proven to be incompatible with trans-oceanic operations. Even when applied to semi-submersible torpedo boats, the strategy couldn’t work in the face of massed battleships unless pursuing a commerce war strategy…. that nonetheless failed twice in the 20th century.
France versus Britain? Maybe some successes in the War of Austrian succession, but even the “victory” of the American Revolutionary War bankrupted France and lost her yet more ships and men after the disaster of the Seven Years’ War. The War of the Grand Alliance, the War of Spanish Succession, the Seven Years’ War, the Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars- each one saw crushing naval losses for France time and again. By the end, blockades of French ports turned Russia against France, and Borodino beckoned.
If I may interject on the France v Britain which. I think I initiated.
Starting in reverse order, the War of the Grand Alliance only justifies as a draw in England’s case.
The War of the Spanish Succession resulted in the French achieving their primary objective, placing a Bourbon on the Spanish throne. Despite our victories at BROM 4689, our army in the Peninsula was disastrously defeated, twice! True we picked up a few trinkets, Arcadia, Gibraltar and most importantly Minorca, but failed in our attempt to discipline the ambition of Louis XIV.
The War of the Quadruple Alliance (1721 ) we were on the same side in this clear victory over Spain.
The War of the Austrian Succession a clear French victory thanks to Marshall Saxe.
The Seven Years War, an outstanding British victory.
The American War, a clear French victory, although it did prove a financial catalyst for the subsequent Revolution as you say.
Again as you say a clear British victory in both the Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars.
Since then we have in the same side , bar for little bother with Vichy in 1940-2.
Your assessment of France vs Britain is a catch-22. When France wins like in the War of Austrian succession or in 1783, it ruined itself and gains eventually fizzled out. When Britain does, it’s crushing and necessarily a net benefit. The reality is more a shade of grey. Yes Britain was dominant at sea and victories such as Quiberon Bay or Trafalgar were absolutely decisive, but the most iconic British victories of the pre-industrial era, the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic Wars (it would be more accurate to speak about the 6th and 7th coalitions because France was on the winning side before) would never have seen Britain winning if the heavy lifting on land had not been done by Frederick the Great, Russia et al. I’m fair so I would be the first to defend Britain’s record if I saw it unfairly diminished by keyboard historians, but at the other end of the spectrum some of you guys should give us a god damn break with Britannia the Invincible haha
If I may interrupt?
Yes you are correct, it is all too easy to see victory or even defeat at the wrong end of the telescope.
As I have said before the War of the Spanish Succession was a clear cut French victory, they even won the last (and most important) battle Denain in 1711. OK we got Gib’ Minorca etc, but fundamentally the Habsburg ring had finally been broken, had it not?
Conversely although we triumphed in the Seven Years War, (1756-63) should we really have kept Canada; As our ‘Sugar Barons’ demanded? Without the French threat in North America why would our greedy American colonists behave themselves? And they very soon didn’t.
Additionally while we were farting around in Canada, in India by the victory at Buxar, 1764 & the subsequent Treaty of Allahabad 1765, we suddenly had 30-40 million Indians under command and much plunder and profit was the result. Plassey (1757) had only been the beginning.
As to the Wars of the 6th & 7th Coalitions, yes it was German and Russian blood that flowed but paid for by British Golden Guineas was it not?
In conclusion perhaps the expression “sweet enemy “ really is appropriate?
Which particular French Admirals are you referring to may I ask?
Tourville. Maybe Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse, and the Comte de Grasse.
Yes agreed, but no Pierre Andre de Suffren?
Whoops! One of the last truly great French Admirals! Absolutely correct sir.
Duguay-Trouin also gave us a ‘good run for our money’.
We even had a Trafalgar Prize named after him until 1948.
This is why jokes about the French navy are actually a bit tasteless.
I must say I haven’t heard of any. The Italian Army yes, but not the French Navy.
Well, there is that one about the motto of the French Navy being “To the water, it is the hour.”
I agree that French pre Dreadnoughts were a disaster but by the late 30’s they had more than caught up with the Richelieu class, both of which were superior to our KGV’s, the Bismarck class, and probably the Italian Littorio class.
Whether they were superior to the North Carolina or South Dakota class is a mute point.
I may not be able to answer to everything at once, so apologies if it comes across that I am ignoring you. I’m not, and I need to consider some replies.
French naval technical history can get a bit odd. Excellent ships of the line, albeit a bit fragile. Then ironclads, but that stutters a bit. Jeune Ecole stunts battleship growth. Terrible pre-dreadnoughts, decent dreadnoughts. Very good WW2 battleships (Richelieu class is very good), minimal carrier aviation, then a resurgence, but eventually culminating in overreliance on one nuclear carrier. Terrible SSNs from the 1980s onwards, only now are they catching up (bravo to them on Australian orders). Not brilliant carrier wing.
The French oscillate wildly between very good and very bad with each generation of ship.
Well put! I
I have been too active tonight due to the absence of my Chief of Staff of Operations!
I like most of your comment, except with the following qualifications.
“If I want a philosopher of morality, I will look to Jesus or Ghandi.”
Kant, Mill, Bentham, Sidgwick, Phillipa Foot, R.M.Hare.
“France claims to be the world’s thinker, but you can find any number of superior philosophers anywhere in the world.”
Actually, outside the showbiz b0110cks of so-called public intellectualism, French academia took an analytical turn in the 1990’s, which was well entrenched by the time of my own Left Bank philosophical institute research fellowship in 2009-2010, where proceedings were really quite drily formal-methods-heavy even for my tastes as a logician.
Add up all these names and weigh them against the anti-intellectual George Orwell. Orwell wins because his ideas are both profound and unpretentious and because he writes with clarity. I’d be interested to know how he’s viewed in France. Obvously 1984 is influential, but what about the essays?
Frankly, having tried to read Derrida and Foucault recently, I for one won’t mourn the death of French intellectualism.
Whether they are misunderstood or not and it seems moot whether they can be understood, their legacy has been one of confusion and despair.
Did you read them in French? The translations into English are cringingly awful to read, ironically because both men were more important in the US and UK than in France. They have been packaged for easy consumption by students in ways which are often a travesty of their work. This is in particular the case with Derrida who is associated with an idea of ‘deconstruction’ that assimilates it to destruction which is not his idea at all. His writing does not read like philosophy, it has a sinuosity like Proust’s and plays with words. That’s what I enjoyed when I read him (some time ago). I don’t have space to comment on Foucault but I think both he and Derrida would be perplexed by the idea that their legacy is ‘confusion and despair’. I am!
Sadly no. My French is terrible.
Maybe the confusion and despair is my own.
Perhaps they would be perplexed. And maybe if they had been less ( deliberately? ) obscure in their prose they would be less perplexed by their reader’s perplexion.
I chose the word despair with, for me, surprising care. My work with depression over the decades has convinced me of the existence existential depression. The absence of any metaphysical foundation, in my experience, can lead to profound despair, independent of any other aetiology. And It seems to my albeit amateur and limited reading of the commonly cited thinkers above that their main legacy has been to undermine trust in pretty much anything. I am not qualified or clever enough to argue beyond generalisations. So I may be wrong. I could however find nothing in the cringeworthy translations of Derrida or Foucault to help my meaningless patients find meaning.
I did sort of warm to Derrida. Understand him? No. Like him, possibly.
This lack of any therapeutic use, that I can find anyway, is perhaps intellectually irrelevant, but to me points to a lack of truth and a propensity to confuse, which is unhelpful and leaves me wondering who and what, in the end, Derrida and the like are actually for.
Perhaps it’s not so ironic that the English translations are so bad if what you say about “confusion and despair” is true. More accurate translations might not have given Anglo-American academics the ammunition for pot shots against today’s society that they so desperately craved.
I doubt accuracy is the problem. Derrida takes a hundred pages to say what could be said in one page, if accuracy were important. He is playing, trying to find different beautiful ways of saying the same thing. I think what’s probably happening is that, a translation that strips away the beauty and leaves only the logic, leaves little. I can’t be sure, since I can’t read French. But this is the opinion that I’ve formed from reading commentaries by people who read him in French and love his works. They seem to love it for its aesthetics, not for its ideas. Though there is a sense in which they love the aesthetics of his ideas–that is, they fit together in a pretty worldview, if you don’t care whether that worldview makes much sense.
That’s the problem with Derrida, and many French intellectuals–they’re just playing. Even before their Revolution, French philosophy had degenerated, in the salons of Paris, to a form of entertainment (for the audience) and a way to get laid (for the philosophers). Rousseau never even tried to be self-consistent or logical; his famous writings are rhetorically polished, yet, as arguments, all seem to be first drafts. You can see it in the videos of Lacan, lecturing to uncomprehending but fascinated audiences with wild, histrionic gestures. You can see it in Derrida’s writings, which are indeed playful, but are based on a poetic epistemology–the belief that anything that sounds beautiful must be true.
(The philosophes like Voltaire were fine, but French philosophers have spent the past century renouncing the Enlightenment, science, and materialism; and instead trying to turn us back to Rousseau and the spiritualist metaphysics of medieval Christendom and of antiquity.)
The most significant mind of our age is the one that survives between Jordan Peterson’s ears. And he is no leftist, although he has a morbid fascination for them.
Professor Peterson has done more to dismantle intellectual leftism than anyone in living memory. His emphasis on the ancient biblical narrative has jerked the attentions of young thinkers from left to right in a forthright manner that is unprecedented in my 70-year lifetime. William Buckley–who I once introduced to a college audience many moons ago– was comparable to JP, but his home base was the high-brow New York set.
Jordan, on the other hand, goes all the way back to Genesis to ground his arguments in broad-based world-scope human endeavor, not merely cerebral constructs.
It will be a long time, if ever, before a 21st-century Sartre-wannabe or Camus-clone will budge the intellectual fortress for common sense and classical thinking that Jordan Peterson has set in motion.
I haven’t read it, but Icarus Fallen: The Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World by Chantal Delsol might have been the most important intellectual contribution by a French thinker/writer for many decades. Apparently she identified as early as the mid-90s that instead of building something meaningful after seeing off Communism, the west had decided instead to give itself to easy pleasures.
Gunter Grass said something similar after the Berlin Wall fall: dipoles such as West/Communism have mutually supporting dancers, with the fall of one tripping the other (ie no sure end to ‘history’)
I share this feeling. The West has succumbed to a selfish, destructive, and hedonistic grotesquerie. The decadent culture is especially apparent among the upper-class, both conservative and progressive who have come to worship fake idols such as the markets and the Gods of post-modernity.
Like winning ridiculously ‘easy peasy’ little wars against military pygmies for example?
No, please . . . leave French intellectuals in their present obscurity. That’s the best thing they can do to improve the world.
Awaiting approval for describing Jean Luc Godard as a ‘b****y leftie’ and Celine as a ‘Nazi sympathiser and anti-semite’, both of which are non-controversial facts.
While we’re on the subject, I suppose somebody could write a play called ‘Waiting for Approval’. Actually, it has occurred to me that over the last 75 years, most of France’s leading intellectuals or more intellectual artists were not necessarily French. Beckett, of course, is an obvious example, but one could add Kieslowski, Boltanski, Kundera, Berger, Tarkovsky and many others.
“I suppose somebody could write a play called ‘Waiting for Approval’.”
“Awaiting For Approval” as it is here, a phrase I have come to know very well. I wonder if some French guy had a hand in its phraseology as it does not sound English….. of ring true to English freedom of expression
“Following Pozzo’s command: “Think!”, Lucky performs a dance and a sudden monologue: a torrent of academic-sounding phrases mixed with sounds such as “quaquaquaqua”. Lucky’s speech, in a cryptic manner, seems to reference the underlying themes of the play.[8] Pozzo and Lucky soon depart, leaving Estragon and Vladimir to continue their wait for the elusive Godot.” (Beckett)
‘Think! Think!, Freddy commands the BTL posters, who break out into dance…. crying out ‘Quaquaqua’…. waiting for the elusive ‘Approval’.’
It’s illiterate cr*p! Frog or no Frog.
It’s that damned N word that causes the Censor to wet his/her pants/knickers, every time!
Any country where Bernard Henri-Levy can pass for an intellectual is simply a joke.
Be fair – lots of English people (I say English, not British) think Stephen Fry is an intellectual!
No, he is an obese buffoon, but can be quiet amusing when it suits him.
And, of course, he insired the wonderful statement “He is a stupid person’s idea of what an intelligent person is like.”
Sartre and Camus at least wrote some good novels. And the Myth of Sisyphus – while not especially rigorous philosophy – was at least a decent read.
Foucault, Derrida, Bourdieu and Deleuze – to borrow from Beecham, you don’t have to bother reading it when it is so easy to go for a walk and step in some.
It is worth reading Scruton (Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left) on these people.
The so-calling intellectuals reside in the heart of a heavily gentrified capital crowned as the world’s fifth city with the most ultra-rich residents. This spatial concentration of power forms a microcosm with its own horizon, one very much disconnected from the social reality experienced by much of the French population. The tight bubble that is downtown Paris represents the perfect breeding ground for a self-replicating ruling class described by French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu as a Noblesse d’État (State Nobility).
Bourdieu realized that wrapped in the cloak of republicanism, French elites had been able to hold onto their privilege and position through an intricate system of codes, networking, and filtering mechanisms. Even more, he described how incestuous the world of French elites —political, economic, and cultural — really is. Due to the assortative nature inherent in ruling classes, they move in the same circles and their children attend the same schools. They then pass on those advantages to their children, cementing the system and rendering social mobility near impossible.
The veneer of meritocratic republicanism hides a much darker reality. The overwhelming majority of those who attend the Grandes Ecoles — France’s elite schools — are from privileged backgrounds, while the working and lower-middle classes are largely underrepresented.
This system produces an isolated upper-class falling victim to group thinking bias. In turn, conformity undermines a country’s ability to adapt to changing conditions. Many French citizens complain about politicians sounding the same, and that is because they share the same background. This peculiar system fosters the kind of group thinking that is not conducive to the rise of ingenious minds.
The quality of French academia and journalism has reached an all-time low. These two fields are fortresses of the bourgeoise, both left and right.
The real question is who gave birth to that world? The Gaullistes? Not really. The leftists who only truly ruled France from 1981 to 1983 before giving way to the liberals? Hardly. This new era of intellectual grotesquerie was ushered in by the Right, precisely the liberal Right.
The political demise of De Gaulle paved the way for the rise of new generations of politicians first led by Pompidou and then Giscard. Pompidou opened the door to a new generation of policy-makers mostly made of business people. These market-worshipper neoliberal goons sought to transform a nation of citizens into a congregation of acculturated consumers and God knows they succeeded in their devilish enterprise.
Patrick Le Lay, the former of TF1, France’s largest TV channel famously said that “TF1’s goal is to sell advertisers available brain time — meaning to cheer up and clear the minds of consumer-spectators, instead of nourishing their insight on the state of the world or putting forward new ideas.
Only 9 ultra-wealthy billionaires own more than 90% of the French press. The editorial line of the French intelligentsia broadly falls into two categories: On the one side, the Pro-EU, pro-migrant, postmodernist progressive press. On the other side, the pro-EU, pro-market conservative press. To people like myself who fall outside of that narrow spectrum, the only alternative is to write on substack (like I do) but it’s mostly an English-speaking audience. Unfortunately, there is no French equivalent to Unherd.
To this day, it is painfully obvious that the French corporate Lords are working really hard to make sure to foster a culture of lies, frauds, and hoaxes that perfectly suits an utterly corrupt and morally dubious Republican nobility.
It is no surprise that the downfall of French intellectuals coincides with the rise of the Liberal Right and the increasing influence of French billionaires over the public debate.
France is back to where it was in 1788. The country is sick of its Republican Nobility and given its revolutionary past, interesting times are coming.
If you wanna more, you can check an article I wrote on the subject
https://noahsdiri.substack.com/p/france-is-turning-against-its-republican-nobility-a1e18a0ee249
A most interesting essay, thank you.
Wow! You’ve captured post-war France’s trajectory utterly brilliantly and pithily. Mes sentiments les plus distingués.
“[Y]ou can probably take Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century to the barricades, but it’s a dry read at 976 pages.”
At 976 pages you can use it to build the barricades.
Is it any wonder that the late Alfred North Whitehead* wrote:
, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato”?
* (Process and Reality, p. 39, Free Press, 1979).
Blue is the Warmest Colour, that three-hour exploration of a young lesbian relationship, featured interminable family conversations taking in art, literature and philosophy. In my experience (having had a second home in France for seventeen years) most French people do not do this. They are more likely to discuss their mortgages or football.
How on earth have you managed to write a whole article like this without mentioning Eric Zemmour?
He is a fearless intellectual tour de force. From the right.
And says things every night that would never be allowed on UK TV.
Watch Face a L’Info every night, without constant interruptions…. from 6-7pm. And he’s be railing against woke, pro-immigration, feminist, LGBTist, globalist stupidity for years. He used to be 1/2 of Zemmour & Nauleau. Was part of On N’est pas couche and so on.
http://www.cnews.fr
Check out their REPLAY link if you have missed the live. You can also find reocrdings on youtube if you search his name, or face a l#info
I rate him as the #1 political analysis intellectual in the world. It is thrillikng to listen. He is a master of world history, geopolitics and just about everything else.
As a right wing French/Algerian/Jew of Berber origin what chance does he have?
He is acting ‘out of type’, and that is unforgivable in today’s toxic climate.
Thank you for resurrecting him for this discussion.
Pauvre France, est les pauvres francaises. Trapped in a bubble of discord until they leave the EU. And they can’t see it.
The discord may be even greater if and when they leave the EU, which probably acts as a kind of restraining influence on the political/cultural/religious/intellectual schisms.
That’s probably true but it will provide an opportunity for clarity.
France’s departure from the EU would mark the end of that organization’s raison d’etre. It was founded to prevent further wars between Germany and France.
I agree. But that doesn’t mean that France’s departure wouldn’t take the lid off various forces in France. Of course, the opposite might occur, and the French might come together and start to take more control over their own destiny.
Plenty of people in France would agree though,as you suggest, opening the box could unleash all kinds of things. Brexit made sense since Britain’s membership defied British history, geography and the way the country things the world in a different way than countries on the continent does. It would have been better for Britain to have had a relationship similar to Switzerland’s. The relaxation of border controls added to the pleasure of travelling from France to Belgium.
How on earth were France & Germany supposed to have another War post 1945?
Both were completely bankrupt and only rescued by the largesse of US, Marshall Aid.
Additionally West Germany had a large NATO Army sitting on it, whilst East Germany had a similarly large Soviet Army sitting on it.
By time of reunification in 1992 the Germans had not only been denaz****d, but military emasculated.
Thus this is Euro Myth, which completely ignores the facts.
Agreed that the two countries were not ready for another bash at each other in the immediate years after 1945. The idea was more long-term. A problem now is that Germany’s sense that she always knows best is difficult to restrain even, in the EU.
Funny to see where living in your parallel Brexiter’s world can bring you and your fantasies… and by the way keep your pity for Britain and the path it chose.
On verra….
ET, not est. For goodness’ sake is anyone ever going to bother to check their French on here !!!
And why ‘francaises’? Only the women?
General Piquemal has the answer.
Unherd, this is an admirable discussion! I have learnt a lot
DO NOT underestimate the mediatic influence of people like Finkelkraut (or Pascal Bruckner; or Bernard Henry Levy)
What does ‘mediatic influence’ mean?
And who are Finkelkraut, Pascal Bruckner, and Bernard Henry Levy?
Reply censored I’m afraid. It happens frequently on UnHerd these days.
Interesting and timely article ahead of French elections heralded by retired generals invoking civil war (in France, quite apart from violence in its former colonies Algeria and Mali). Clearly there is scope for a more balanced discussion of past, present and future.
In fact ther remain French writers as interesting as anywhere in the world and better equipped to avoid the political correctness that has proved such a straitjacket almost as much in Britain as in the USA. I have a personal interest in Ghislain de Diesbach since I have translated a book of his short stories into English and am trying to find a publisher for it in the Anglosphere. Of course, he is more of a man of letters and historian than an intellectual as such and has written a number of excellent biographies of Chateaubriand, Proust, Madame de Stael and the Princesse Bibesco among others and a “Jules Verne politicalment incorrect”.
Agreed – there is no shortage of writers and the the sterner edicts of past French thinkers seem more rooted abroad (inc US). Beyond that, times change – perhaps with the market in France for public intellos and towering blueprints for a very uncertain and complex future now smaller than in the past (for good or bad)?
The degradation of France is a tragedy for everyone has who loves her. Nothing sums it up better for me that the Sarah Halimi case. I realise in this case it was just a Jewess who was murdered by an Islamist, but I am pretty sure the same fate awaits secular France. And maybe France deserves what’s coming.
Please Note
Thierry Henry was offside most of his career.
And he had no left foot , nor use his head.
Was he another intellectual ?
Cantona was the philosopher …
Ah yes, Sartre and de Beauvoir. The Epstein and Ghislaine of the French left.