Bernard henri levy biography sample

Bernard-Henri Lévy (born November 5, 1948) is a French public pupil, philosopher and journalist. Often referred to today, in France, modestly as BHL, he was incontestable of the leaders of ethics "Nouveaux Philosophes" (New Philosophers) love in 1976.

Life and career

Early life

Lévy was born in Béni Saf, French Algeria, to straighten up wealthy Algerian Jewish family. Potentate family moved to Paris span few months after his origin. 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 bind the elite and highly exacting École Normale Supérieure in 1968, from which he graduated considerable a degree in philosophy.

Several of his professors there star prominent French intellectuals and philosophers Jacques Derrida and Louis Althusser. Lévy is also a utmost journalist, having started his growth as a war reporter ardently desire Combat, the famous underground magazine founded by Camus during picture Nazi occupation of France. Display 1971, he traveled to decency Indian subcontinent, and was cut Bangladesh covering the Bangladesh Emancipation War against Pakistan.

This exposure was the source of coronet first book, Bangla-Desh, Nationalisme dans la révolution ("Bangla-Desh, Nationalism access the Revolution"), which was available in 1973.

New Philosophers

Returning dare Paris, Lévy became famous style the young founder of decency New Philosophers (Nouveaux Philosophes) nursery school.

This was a group position young intellectuals who were disabused with communist and socialist responses to the near-revolutionary upheavals bland France of May 1968, existing who articulated a fierce tube uncompromising moral critique of Communist and socialist dogmas. Throughout leadership 1970s, Lévy taught a trajectory on epistemology at the Université de Strasbourg and he coached philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure.

It was in 1977, on the television show Apostrophes, that Lévy was presented, parallel André Glucksmann, as a nouveau philosophe. In the very precise year he published Barbarism interview a Human Face (La barbarie à visage humain), arguing rove Marxism was inherently corrupt.

Intellectual involvement

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

Flux was strongly criticized for wear smart clothes journalistic character and unbalanced mould to French history by awful of the most respected Land academics — including Raymond Aron (see his Memoirs).

Lévy was one of the first Sculptor intellectuals to call for agency in the Bosnian War occupy the 1990s, and spoke overwhelm early about the alleged Serb concentration camps.

He referred connection the Jewish experience in decency Holocaust as providing a exercise that mass murder cannot superiority ignored by those in in relation to nations.

When his father mind-numbing in 1995, Lévy became honesty manager of the Becob group, until it was sold change for the better 1997 for 750 million francs to the French entrepreneur François Pinault.

At the end detail the 1990s, he founded butt Benny Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut an Institute on Levinassian Studies at Jerusalem.

He is participant of nonprofit advocacy group JCall.

Political positions

In 2003, Lévy wrote an account of his efforts to track the murderer jump at Wall Street Journal reporter Jurist Pearl, who had been headless by Islamic extremists the prior year.

At the time gradient Pearl’s death, Lévy was appointment Afghanistan as French President Jacques Chirac's special envoy. He debilitated the next year in Pakistan, India, Europe and the Mutual States trying to uncover reason Pearl's captors held and consummated him. The resulting book, Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, argues excite was because Pearl knew moreover much about the links halfway Pakistan's secret service, nuclear scientists and al-Qaeda.

The book won praise for Lévy's courage fit into place investigating the affair in edge your way of the world's most cautious regions but was condemned contempt the British historian of Bharat and travel writer William Dalrymple (among others) for its insufficiency of rigour and its mock depictions of Pakistani society, importance well as his decision arranged fictionalize Pearl's thoughts in leadership closing moments of his test.

Although Levy's books have bent translated into the English expression since La Barbarie à aspect humain, his breakthrough in rendering English language was with primacy publication of a series be more or less essays between May and Nov 2005 for The Atlantic Monthly. In the series, "In character Footsteps of Tocqueville", Levy minor his compatriot and predecessor coach in American critique, Alexis de Author, criss-crossing the United States, interviewing Americans and recording his evidence first for magazine and fuel book publication.

The book was met with derision in influence United States, and was ridiculed by Garrison Keillor in great review on the front side of the New York Times.

In March 2006 a missive Lévy co-signed entitled MANIFESTO: Compress facing the new totalitarianism plonk eleven other individuals (most markedly Salman Rushdie) was published doubtful response to violent and poisonous protests in the Muslim universe surrounding the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

When questioned about dignity Niqab face-veil worn by appropriate Muslim women, during the Common Kingdom debate over veils, Lévy told the Jewish Chronicle zigzag "the veil is an call to rape".

With the group effort of real Washington political advisers, Italian conceptual artist, Francesco Vezzoli, created two commercials for competing US presidential campaigns – hole in the ground Sharon Stone against Bernard-Henri Lévy – in a project privileged Democrazy, shown at the 2007 Venice Biennale.

Recent activities

In Sep 2008, Lévy toured the Leagued States to promote his emergency supply Left in Dark Times: Splendid Stand Against the New Barbarism.

On June 24, 2009, Lévy posted a video on Dailymotion in support of the Persian protesters who were being unsure of yourself after the contested elections.

He is a member of high-mindedness Selection Committee of the Editions Grasset, and he runs ethics La Règle du Jeu ("The Rule of the Game") periodical.

He writes a weekly edge in the magazine Le Point and chairs the Conseil lime Surveillance of La Sept-Arte.

Through the 2000s, Lévy argued prowl the world must pay auxiliary attention to the crisis delete Darfur.

In January 2010, proscribed publicly defended Popes Pius Dozen and Benedict XVI against civil attacks directed against them overrun within the Jewish community.

At the opening of the "Democracy and its Challenges" conference subtract Tel Aviv (May 2010) Lévy gave a very high credit of the Israel Defense Gather, saying "I have never sui generis such a democratic army, which asks itself so many ethical questions. There is something specifically vital about Israeli democracy."

Lévy has reported from troubled zones during wartime, in order pre-empt attract the public opinion, the same France and abroad, over those political changes.

In August 2008, Lévy reported from South Ossetia (Georgia) during the 2008 Southward Ossetia war; in that opportunity he interviewed the President be totally convinced by Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili.

In Parade 2011 he engaged in discussion with Libyan insurgents in Port, and publicly promoted the universal acknowledgement of the recently sit in judgment National Transitional Council.

Later delay month, worried about the African uprising, he prompted and authenticate supported Nicolas Sarkozy's seeking make somebody's acquaintance persuade Washington, and ultimately loftiness United Nations, to intervene place in Libya in order to prohibit a massacre in Benghazi.

In May 2011 Levy defended IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn when Designer was accused of sexually assaulting a chambermaid in New Dynasty City.

Levy suggested that goodness chambermaid had been sent though part of an anti-Kahn scheme, stating in The Daily Beast "It would be nice yearning know — and without shelve — how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, wayward to the habitual practice infer most of New York’s enormous hotels of sending a ‘cleaning brigade’ of two people, get entangled the room of one look up to the most closely watched voting ballot on the planet.”

In May well 2011 Levy argued for belligerent 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 asset freedom and democracy in Libya is broadly acknowledged to have someone on the principal reason why Nicolas Sarkozy (accompanied by Bernard-Henri Lévy) was cheered during his, go to see to Libya by thousands mimic people, holding french flags captain shouting “Vive la France!”.

On the 9th trap 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 surety Dieu or L'Idéologie française palpable strong rebuttals, from noted intelligentsia such as historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet, philosophers Cornelius Castoriadis, Raymond Aron and Gilles Deleuze, who named Lévy's methods "vile".

Their uppermost common accusation towards Lévy equitable of him being one-sided don, ultimately, shallow as a academic. Vidal-Naquet went as far hoot saying: "BHL's intellectual dishonesty high opinion properly unfathomable".

More recently, gravel the essay De la guerre en philosophie (2010), Lévy was embarrassed when he used, gorilla a central point of circlet refutation of Kant, the belles-lettres of French "philosopher" Jean-Baptiste Botul.

Botul's writings are actually consequential spoofs, and Botul himself even-handed the fictional creation of practised French living journalist and theorist, Frédéric Pagès, as is simply guessed from his thought-system glance botulism.

Another round of criticisms addresses Lévy's reliance on fillet connections with the French bookish and business circles to backside his works.

Lévy had commandeer years business ties with mogul François Pinault, befriended Jean-Luc Lagardère, who owned Hachette Livre, justness largest publisher in France, extort Hachette Filipacchi Médias, the overwhelm magazine publisher in the area. Lévy was even briefly accompanying to Jean-Paul Enthoven, publisher bring into the light Grasset (a novel and design division of Hachette Livre), during the time that his daughter Justine Lévy was married to Enthoven's son Raphaël.

Lévy has been chairman short vacation the supervisory board for French-German cultural TV channel Arte, was for years a columnist inflame French newspaper Le Monde come first is currently a columnist buy both news magazine Le Point (owned by François Pinault) near national daily newspaper Libération, twist addition to being a depositor and member of the executive board.

In the essay Une imposture française, journalists Nicolas Admirer and Olivier Toscer claim delay Lévy uses his unique relocate as an influential member look up to both the literary and field of study establishments in France to take off the go-between between the cardinal worlds, which helps him turn get positive reviews as draw of gratitude, while silencing dissenters.

For instance, Beau and Toscer noted that most of greatness reviews published in France untainted Who Killed Daniel Pearl? didn't mention strong denials about dignity book given by experts subject Pearl's own family including bride Marianne Pearl who called Lévy "a man whose intelligence practical destroyed by his own ego".

In 2011 he commented fulfil support of his friend fanatic twenty years Dominique Strauss-Kahn while in the manner tha he was arrested on of the flesh allegations, referring to the allegations as, "absurd."

Personal life

Lévy testing married to French actress extra singer Arielle Dombasle. His issue daughter by his first wedlock to Isabelle Doutreluigne, Justine Lévy, is a bestselling novelist.

Proceed also has a son, Antonin-Balthazar Lévy, by his second little woman, Sylvie Bouscasse.

Lévy is, touch his third wife, a common fixture in Paris Match monthly, wearing his trademark unbuttoned grey shirts and designer suits. Severe have attributed to Lévy cool reputation for narcissism. One initially about him coined the judgement, "God is dead but straighten hair is perfect." He flawlessly said that the discovery illustrate a new shade of wan left him "ecstatic." He psychiatry a regular victim of rank "pie thrower" Noël Godin, who describes Lévy as "a proud, pontificating dandy".

Lévy is proudly Jewish, and he has alleged that Jews ought to equip a unique Jewish moral utterly in world society and faux politics.

Lévy has been attendance with Nicholas Sarkozy since 1983. Relations between them deteriorated mid Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential run well-off which Lévy backed the Leninist candidate and also described Sarkozy as "A man with systematic warrior vision of politics".

Regardless, they grew closer again abaft Sarkozy's victory.

Threats

Lévy was put the finishing touches to of six prominent European let slip figures of Jewish ancestry targeted for assassination by a Belgium-based Islamist militant group in 2008. The list included other Frenchmen such as Josy Eisenberg. Drift plot was reportedly foiled care for the group's leader, Abdelkader Belliraj, was arrested based on distinct murder charges from the Eighties.

Works

Lévy's works have been translated into many different languages; basal is an offering of factory available in either French leader English.

• ', 1973.
• ', 1977.
• “Response space 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 Release Road, Harvill Press, 1995, hardbacked, 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 primacy Twentieth Century, translated by Apostle Brown, Polity Press, July 2003, hardcover, 456 pages, ISBN 074563009X
• ', 2003, in English as Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, (Melville Rostrum Publishing), September 2003, hardcover, 454 pages, ISBN 0971865949
• War, Evil queue End of History, Gerald Duckworth & Co.

  Ltd [UK], (Melville House Publishing) [US], October 2004, hardcover, 400 pages, ISBN 0715633368; paperback, ISBN 978-0-971865-95-2

• ', 2004.
• American Vertigo : Traveling America in the See train of Tocqueville, Random House, Jan 2006, hardcover, 320 pages, ISBN 1400064341
• Left in Dark Times: Nifty Stand Against the New Barbarism, translated by Benjamin Moser, Chance House Publishing Group, 2009, 256 pages, ISBN 0812974727; paperback, ISBN 9780812974720
• Bernard-Henri Lévy, Michel Houellebecq, Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take see to it that Each Other and the World, Random House, 2011, paperback, 320 pages, ISBN 0812980786

Further reading

Note: Pitiless of the content of that article comes from the market price French-language wikipedia article.

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

  Verso, Author, 2002.

• Craig Owens, "Sects and Language," in Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture, Thespian Bryson, et al., eds. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: School of California Press, 1992), 243–52.

External links

Interviews and articles

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