Lévy, Bernard Henri 1949–

(Bernard Henri Levy, Bernard-Henri Levy)

PERSONAL: Born May 11, 1949, in Beni Saf, Algeria; son of Andre and Ginett Lévy; children: Justine, Antonin.

ADDRESSES: Home—Paris, France. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random House Publishing Group, 1745 Broadway, 18th Fl., New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Writer, philosopher. Combat, war reporter; Grasset & Fasquelle (publishers), Paris, France, editor. Former adviser to government of Bangladesh and French diplomat under President François Mitterand. Cofounder of SOS Racism (antiracist group). Executive producer of Serbie, année zéro (film; also known as Serbia, Year Zero), 2001; producer of Ma mère (film), 2004; appeared on French television and on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

AWARDS, HONORS: Prix d'Honneur, 1977, for La barbarie visage humain; Prix Medicis, 1984, for Le diable en tête.

WRITINGS:

Bangladesh: Nationalisme dans le révolution, F. Maspero (Paris, France), 1973.

La barbarie visage humain, Grasset (Paris, France), 1977, translation by George Holoch published as Barbarism with a Human Face, Harper (New York, NY), 1979.

La testament de Dieu, Grasset (Paris, France), 1979, translation by George Holoch published as The Testament of God, Harper (New York, NY), 1980.

L'idéologie française, Grasset (Paris, France), 1981.

Questions de principe, Denoel (Paris, France), 1983.

Le diable en tête, Grasset (Paris, France), 1984.

Impressions d'Asie, photographs by Guy Bouchet, Grasset (Paris, France), 1985.

Les indes rouges, L.G.F., 1985.

Eloge des intellectuels, Grasset (Paris, France), 1987.

Les derniers jours de Charles Baudelaire, Grasset (Paris, France), 1988.

Frank Stella, les années 80, Editions de la Difference (Paris, France), 1990.

César: Les bronzes, Editions de la Difference (Paris, France), 1991.

Les aventures de la liberté: Une histoire, Grasset (Paris, France), 1991, translation by Richard Veasey published as Adventures on the Freedom Road: The French Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century, Harvill (London, England), 1995.

Le judgement dernier: Théâtre, Grasset (Paris, France), 1992.

Piet Mondrian, Editions de la Difference (Paris, France), 1992.

Piero della Francesca, Editions de la Difference (Paris, France), 1992.

(With Françoise Giroud) Les hommes et les femmes, Olivier Orban (Paris, France), 1993, translation by Richard Miller published as Women and Men: A Philosophical Conversation, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1995.

Le pureté dangereuse, Grasset (Paris, France), 1994.

Le lys et la cendre, Grasset (Paris, France), 1996.

Comédie, Grasset (Paris, France), 1997.

(Editor) The Rules of the Game, [Paris, France], 1998, reprinted as What Good Are Intellectuals?: 44 Writers Share Their Thoughts, Algora (New York, NY), 2000.

Le siècle de Sartre: Enquête philosophique, Grasset (Paris, France), 2000, translation by Andrew Brown published as Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century, Polity Press (Cambridge, England), 2004.

Reflexions sur la guerre, le mal et la fin de l'histoire, Grasset (Paris, France), 2001, translation by Charlotte Mandell published as War, Evil, and the End of History, Melville House (Hoboken, NJ), 2004.

Rapport au Président de la République et au Premier Ministre sur la contribution de la France à la reconstruction de l'Afghanistan, Grasset (Paris, France), 2002.

Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, Melville House (Hoboken, NJ), 2003.

(With others) Paix: Clara Halter, Jean-Michel Wilmotte, Cercle d'art (Paris, France), 2005.

American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville, Random House (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Le Nouvel Observateur, L'Express, and Atlantic Monthly, and to compilations, including Antishemiyut ha-yom, 1984; writer of documentary films, including (and director) Bosna!, 1994; Le jour et la nuit (also known as Day and Night), 1997; and A Day in the Death of Sarajevo.

SIDELIGHTS: Bernard Henri Lévy is probably the most celebrated of the several "New Philosophers" who moved to the forefront of radical French thought in the mid-1970s. Lévy's philosophy, a combination of romanticized pessimism and quasi-biblical monotheism, has sparked controversy in intellectual circles and endeared him to a generation disillusioned by the failings of Marxist socialism. His popularity, however, is also largely dependent on his charisma and photogenic appearance, which have gained him constant attention from the French press. Some critics, noting Lévy's penchant for publicity, claim that his aims are essentially self-serving, but even these detractors concede that he has been instrumental in sustaining French intellectualism as a provocative force in Western thought.

Lévy first received extensive media attention in 1979 as the author of La barbarie visage humain, published in English as Barbarism with a Human Face, a vehement denunciation of Marxist tenets. During his college years Lévy had been active in leftist politics and had participated in the student/proletariat strike that paralyzed Paris in May, 1968. But in the ensuing years, as the promise of a workers' revolution faded and he perceived weaknesses in practiced socialism, Lévy began to doubt Marxism's viability as a panacea for society's ills. A reading of The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's harrowing account of Stalinist repression and his own experiences in the grueling Soviet labor camps, confirmed Lévy's growing belief that Marxism was not only ineffective but destructive, and in Barbarism with a Human Face, he produced an incendiary condemnation of his own previously held principles.

"I am the bastard child of an unholy union between fascism and Stalinism," Lévy proclaimed in Barbarism with a Human Face. In the book he recalls his earlier faith in Marxism and notes how that faith has since been replaced by informed disillusion. He writes: "Like everyone else I believed in a new and joyful 'liberation'; now … I live with the shadows of my past hopes." Lévy added that his book was intended for those leftists who maintained faith in Marxism despite its history as a repressive tool: "To my sorrow, I am addressing the left here," he declared; "my target is the left in its passion for delusion and ignorance."

Much of Barbarism with a Human Face is devoted to an explication of Marxism's allegedly intrinsic corruption. Lévy describes theoretical Marxism—which hypothesizes that capitalism leads to a workers' revolution which, in turn, results in a classless society—as the opiate of the naive intellectual, and he calls applied Marxism a barbaric system that inevitably spawns a massive "reactionary machine" for destroying all opposition to itself. According to Lévy, theoretical Marxism's notion of progress—which culminates in a classless society and the end of the state—is applied Marxism's greatest weapon, for it justifies the repression and eradication of anyone deemed subversive and thus regressive. Lévy believes that applied Marxism can never actually result in the end of the state, for Marxists—like the rest of humanity—are motivated by power and material gain, not by the promise of a classless society that would ultimately undermine their own authority. For this reason Lévy claims that Marxism and capitalism are similar, not opposite, and that both are futile, devastating systems. Individuals must therefore derive self-worth by opposing Marxist—and capitalist—systems. He advocates resistance through ethical pessimism, which calls for individuals to write ethical treatises even though such works will ultimately fail to effect social change. For Lévy—as for his compatriot predecessor Albert Camus—resistance is hopeless, but it is also the only ethical response to repression.

Upon publication, Barbarism with a Human Face proved surprisingly popular with the French public, and the book eventually sold more than one hundred thousand copies. Lévy became a prominent figure in the French press and on television, where his rock-star visage and intensity made him particularly appealing on talk shows. Reaction from the left was predictably negative: Lévy was branded a brash apostate and his book was deemed propaganda. More often, however, the book was considered enlightening, though controversial, and Lévy was acclaimed as a rejuvenating force in French philosophy.

When an English translation was published in 1979, American and British critics were sharply divided on the merits of Barbarism with a Human Face. Some reviewers hailed it as a masterful polemic and praised Lévy as a refreshing voice in Western philosophy, while others decried the work as derivative sophistry and dismissed Lévy as a fraud. Among the most praiseworthy assessments was that of Martin Peretz, who wrote in the New Republic that Lévy's arguments "exposed the callousness of [leftist] politics and the superficiality of the philosophical rationalizations that underpin that philosophy." Peretz commended Lévy as a polemicist and lauded Barbarism with a Human Face as "one of those rare works which changes the mind of an entire generation." Also impressed was Commentary reviewer Roger Kaplan, who cited the "cold and lucid elegance" of Lévy's prose and acknowledged the book as a necessary and provocative argument against Marxism. Kaplan described Barbarism with a Human Face as "brilliantly suggestive," and he credited Lévy for "saying out loud what was rapidly becoming a widespread rumor."

Lévy's detractors, however, complained that his style was excessively rhetorical and that his criticisms of Marxism were too often uncompelling and even wrongheaded. In the Village Voice, Richard Yeselson decried the "vacuous petulance" of Lévy's perspective and accused him of being illogical and ignorant. "Lévy's formulations … make no sense," Yeselson charged. "Lévy's understanding of the dynamics of class struggle is confused as well." Yeselson added that Lévy's moralism resulted in inaccurate appraisals of both Marxism and human nature, and he claimed that Lévy's credibility was severely undermined by such devastating blunders. Equally vehement was Norman Birnbaum, who wrote in Nation that Lévy's arguments were sabotaged by ambition that exceeded knowledge. "Lévy wants to think big," Birnbaum alleged. He accused Lévy of posturing instead of offering credible arguments, and denigrated Lévy's philosophical method as embarrassing. Among the more balanced appraisals of Barbarism with a Human Face was that provided by philosophy scholar William Barrett, who was a founder of the Marxist organ, Partisan Review. In the New York Times Book Review, Barrett contended that Lévy's work was more provocative than profound. "Read … as a serious essay on politics and political philosophy," wrote Barrett, "it is disappointing." He added, however, that Lévy's book might be better appreciated as a "personal manifesto," and he acknowledged Lévy as a dazzling stylist. "There is no doubt of Lévy's brilliance, nor of the power of his eloquence," Barrett declared. But he lamented Lévy's slapdash method and complained that the work was impressive but rarely persuasive. "The ideas are too sweeping and unqualified," Barrett charged, "and they are dealt with more rhetorically than analytically."

Lévy courted further critical controversy with La testament de Dieu, published in English as The Testament of God, in which he advocated an "atheistic spirituality." Monotheism, Lévy claimed, was humanity's only viable, hopeful alternative to totalitarianism, and ethics derived from the Judaic tradition, particularly as evidenced in the Old Testament, afforded humanity a code of conduct—or system of belief—that allowed for constructive living in an age of terror and despair. Lévy called monotheism "the thought of resistance of our age," and he termed the Bible the "book of resistance." God, or at least the notion of a deity, has been "rehabilitated," Lévy pronounced.

American and British reviewers accorded The Testament of God mixed notices. Dismayed readers cited Lévy's largely rhetorical method, and some critics even questioned his intelligence. Thomas Sheehan, for instance, wrote in the New York Review of Books that "little can be said about Lévy's position because so little of it is ever argued." Sheehan noted errors regarding the origins of The Iliad and The Odyssey, both of which Lévy was unaware had been written centuries after the events recounted, and the setting of Antigone, which Lévy mistakenly placed in fifth-century Athens instead of second millennium Thebes. But critics also observed that The Testament of God was compelling and important. In Theology Today, Gabriel Vahanian described Lévy's book as "blunt, pithy, and iconoclastic," and he found Lévy's biblical exegesis admirable. Vahanian contended that if you read The Testament of God, "you will not relegate the Bible to its specialists." Kaplan found Lévy's work more problematic, decrying his seeming reluctance to pursue themes but praising his efforts to avoid the blunders of the French left. "The enemies of bourgeois order almost completely dominated the Parisian intellectual and cultural scene for many years," Kaplan explained in the Wall Street Journal. "It is from the morass which they created that Mr. Lévy and others are now painfully extricating themselves."

Lévy followed The Testament of God with L'idéologie française, a harsh indictment of French society as inevitably fascist and bigoted. Lévy explores incidents of notorious anti-Semitism, including the Dreyfus affair, in which a Jewish officer was framed for treason, and the entire Vichy period, in which a puppet government persecuted Jews during the German occupation in World War II. These events, Lévy argues, were not examples of aberrant behavior but were manifestations of a perpetual bigotry still thriving in contemporary France.

Since its publication in 1981, L'idéologie française has received criticism in English publications despite the absence of an English-language edition. Like some readers of Lévy's previous volumes, critics of L'idéologie française decried its allegedly reckless arguments and sweeping generalizations. In the Times Literary Supplement, Douglas Johnson noted that an awareness of Lévy's flaws, or idiosyncrasies, should not obscure the validity of his polemic. "Things are never so simple as Lévy claims," Johnson acknowledged. "And yet when all his mistakes are pointed out, and all the defects of his reasoning allowed for, one wonders whether there is not something in his argument after all. It remains true that France has shown enthusiasm for racial persecution, and this cannot always be explained away in terms of foolishness."

Les aventures de la liberté: Une histoire, published in English as Adventures on the Freedom Road: The French Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century, is based on a television series. Lévy expanded on available footage and interviews in writing the book. Paul Ryan noted in New Statesman & Society that this "is not a detailed analysis of 20th-century French thought but a wickedly entertaining summary of actions, errors, and quarrels among the (predominantly male) high echelons of France's classes bavardes…. Very few reputations emerge unscathed in this catalogue of great writers seduced by the totalitarian temptations of communism and fascism." Ryan wrote that this work "features a dazzling cast of characters—from [Antonin] Artaud and [André] Breton to Jean-Paul Sartre and Camus and beyond—who laid creative writing aside and took up their pens to write 'for the good of the cause.'" According to Stephen Goode in Insight on the News, "Adventures on the Freedom Road is a powerful book, written in a seductive, personal style and skillfully translated and edited by Richard Veasey." Goode continued: "There may be too many French writers discussed whose names mean little to contemporary readers, but the cautionary tale about the mischief intellectuals can do will come across to readers of any nationality."

Lévy wrote Les hommes et les femmes, which appeared in English as Women and Men: A Philosophical Conversation, with Françoise Giroud, a feminist journalist and former government minister. The original, in French, was a bestseller, with 80,000 copies sold in the first week. It is written as a conversation in which the authors discuss sex, love, failed love, sexual behavior, and the impact of AIDS. They strengthen their arguments with quotes from politicians, philosophers, and literary figures, such as Anaïs Nin, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, James Joyce, Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust, and Sartre. Giroud feels men are suffering as women have grown stronger, and that the situation is worse in the United States than in France. Lévy makes the point that men are really only interested in the difference between women and men. He believes in fidelity, and doubts that a sexual revolution even occurred. "And on and on they circle each other," wrote Booklist reviewer Bonnie Smothers, who called the authors "two appealing, extremely well-read people who punctuate their ideas with a wide variety of intriguing references." A Publishers Weekly contributor said "sparks fly…. Alternately insightful and pretentious, their witty talks sparkle."

Times Literary Supplement reviewer George Steiner said the structure of Lévy's Le siécle de Sartre: Enquete philosophique "is anti-systematic, counter-chronological. What we have is a garland, often winding back on itself, of essays on cardinal aspects of Sartre's kaleidoscopic life and genius. Within this labyrinth, there are excursions, at times voluminous, on ancillary topics…. The prose is breathless; names and allusions cascade down the page." Lévy elaborates on the role of women in Sartre's life, including Simone de Beauvoir, who had a primary influence on Sartre's creativity. "Lévy speculates on the masturbatory, voyeuristic tenor of Sartre's sexuality," commented Steiner, who felt that Lévy argues the merits of Sartre's Chemins de la liberte but gives little attention to Sartre as a dramatist. Steiner wrote that "there are father figures to be slain. Lévy probes more deeply than any previous recorder into Sartre's debts to [André] Gide and to [Henri] Bergson…. [Louis Ferdinand] Celine is seminal." Steiner called Le siécle de Sartre "a tyrannosaurus of a book. It breathes proud fire, challenges all comers, maps a vast polemic terrain, yet, at the same time, manoeuvres with darting lightness and even elegance."

Published in English as War, Evil, and the End of History, Reflexions sur la guerre, le mal et la fin de l'histoire provides first-person accounts of five war zones that have received less than complete coverage. They include Angola, Burundi, Sri Lanka, Colombia, and the Sudan. Lévy provides an in-depth description of each and then studies their histories, particularly the occurrences of terrorism and genocide against their people. He travels blindfolded into a Colombian jungle to interview a guerilla drug lord who fancies himself a modern-day Che Guevara. On one of his three African visits, he witnessed the labor of slaves who were working in the Angolan diamond mines to fund that country's civil war, and he interviewed a Sri Lankan woman who was trained as a suicide bomber. He does not hesitate in his description of atrocities, including the two million Sudanese who have been slain. The history is interspersed with the author's own philosophy on war, and he draws on the fiction and nonfiction writings of Ernest Hemingway, Proust, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Sartre, Michel Foucault, and others, as well as on films that depict war. A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that, "a lyrical yet disciplined commentator, Levy teases out the underlying logic and cultural specificity of each site of devastation."

In 2004 the editor of the Atlantic Monthly invited Lévy to tour the United States in the style of Alexis de Tocqueville and comment on contemporary America. His book, American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville, and a five-part series of articles were the result. Like Tocqueville, who was twenty-nine years old when he came to America, Lévy visited prisoners, in his case on Rikers Island. He met with coal miners in West Virginia, retirees in gated communities, parents in New York's Spanish Harlem, border patrolmen, and students at the University of Texas who study the words written by Tocqueville in the two volumes of his Democracy in America, published in 1835 and 1840. He also visited a bed and breakfast in Cooperstown, New York, and met with President George W. Bush. Lévy comments on America's huge shopping malls, megachurches, and uncontrolled consumerism. He notes that he was extended courtesy wherever he went and criticizes the anti-Americanism displayed in his own country.

Roger Scruton noted in National Review that "as the story unfolds the reader is repeatedly struck by Levy's awed recognition of Tocqueville's powers of foresight and analysis…. Levy attempts no theory of his own, but does what writers about America are so easily tempted to do, which is to offer vignettes of the crazy things that happen in a true democracy—things that ordinary people do, when provided with the freedom to do them and the money to pay." Booklist reviewer Jay Freeman also found the work interesting, drawing an "engaging" though "often-disturbing portrait of our nation from an eloquent, brutally honest foreigner who wishes our country well."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Issues Criticism, Volume 1, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1982.

Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd edition, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Lévy, Bernard Henri, La barbarie visage humain, Grasset (Paris, France), 1977, translation by George Holoch published as Barbarism with a Human Face, Harper (New York, NY), 1979.

Lévy, Bernard Henri, La testament de Dieu, Grasset (Paris, France), 1979, translation by George Ho-loch published as The Testament of God, Harper (New York, NY), 1980.

PERIODICALS

Advertising Age, April 18, 2005, James Brady, "Brady's Bunch; U.S. through French Eyes," p. 40.

African Business, March, 2005, review of War, Evil, and the End of History, p. 65.

Booklist, January 15, 1995, Bonnie Smothers, review of Women and Men: A Philosophical Conversation, p. 876; January 1, 2006, Jay Freeman, review of American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville, p. 48.

Commentary, February, 1978, Roger Kaplan, review of Barbarism with a Human Face.

Economist, August 30, 2003, review of Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century, p. 61.

Entertainment Weekly, Gilbert Cruz, review of American Vertigo, p. 88.

Insight on the News, January 29, 1996, Stephen Goode, review of Adventures on the Freedom Road: The French Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century, p. 30.

Nation, June 2, 1979, Norman Birnbaum, review of Barbarism with a Human Face.

National Review, February 13, 2006, Roger Scruton, review of American Vertigo, p. 49.

New Republic, April 7, 1979, Martin Peretz, review of Barbarism with a Human Face.

New Statesman & Society, November 10, 1995, Paul Ryan, review of Adventures on the Freedom Road, p. 38.

New Yorker, February 6, 2006, review of American Vertigo, p. 83.

New York Review of Books, January 24, 1980, Thomas Sheehan, review of The Testament of God, p. 13.

New York Times Book Review, February 11, 1979, William Barrett, review of Barbarism with a Human Face.

Publishers Weekly, November 28, 1994, review of Women and Men, p. 48; April 5, 2004, review of War, Evil, and the End of History, p. 56.

Spectator, July 12, 2003, Philip Hensher, review of Sartre, p. 35.

Theology Today, April, 1981, Gabriel Vahanian, review of The Testament of God.

Times Literary Supplement, July 31, 1981, Douglas Johnson, review of L'idéologie franéaise; May 19, 2000, George Steiner, review of Le siècle de Sartre: Enquête philosophique, p. 3.

Village Voice, February 26, 1979, Richard Yeselson, review of Barbarism with a Human Face.

Wall Street Journal (Western edition), October 1, 1980, Roger Kaplan, review of The Testament of God, p. 32.

Random House Web site, http://www.randomhouse.com/ (March 18, 2006), brief biography of Lévy.