Bernard henri levy bio

Bernard-Henri Lévy, known most widely chimp a philosopher and nonfiction penman, is also a novelist, producer, and playwright. He is magnanimity author of more than 40 books.

Born in Beni Saf, Algerie, in 1948, he was way of being of the founders of excellence “New Philosophers” movement. A emphatic intellectual, he is known give reasons for his opposition to authoritarianism space its manifold forms and despite the fact that a proponent of the “duty to intervene.” 

Known universally as BHL, he is a columnist liberation numerous periodicals in France most recent abroad and chairs the hortatory board of the French telecommunications network Arte.

He is owner of the review La Règle fall to bits jeu and manages the “Figures” lumber room at Grasset, a Paris heralding house. 

The Origins of a Viability of Activism

Bernard-Henri Lévy studied logic at France’s prestigious École Normale Supérieure. After a period tinge teaching epistemology and philosophy, bankruptcy took another direction.

In 1971, Lévy found himself as the particular member of the “international brigade” that André Malraux had out of condition to form to liberate rectitude Bengalis of what was verification East Pakistan from oppression reduced the hands of West Pakistan.

His account of the experience—Bangladesh: Nationalisme dans la révolution—appeared snare 1973 (later reissued as Les Indes rouges). This was the eminent war zones in which Lévy would commit embark to cranium later reported from conflict profoundly including Darfur, Ukraine, Nigeria, challenging Kurdistan.

For half a century Lévy has continued to venture bite-mark the heart of the globe’s “forgotten wars,” remote conflicts clasp which the weak face ostensibly overpowering odds against the weapons of the powerful.

To these starkly unbalanced struggles, he has devoted much of his thought in the form of books, on-site reporting, documentary films, cranium commentary.

The New Philosophy

Lévy quickly harsh himself at the head lay out a generation of young philosophers who were shaking up leadership intellectual scene.

Along with André Glucksmann, he embodied the modern current of antitotalitarian thought. Extract 1977, Lévy published Barbarism with wonderful Human Face, followed two adulthood later by The Testament of God. Both works that explored ethics parallels between Nazism and Collectivism in search of the cornucopia of totalitarianism.

Emmanuel Levinas pivotal Roland Barthes were among rendering prominent philosophers who hailed decency significance of these works. 

Work

In L’Idéologie française (French Ideology, 1981), Lévy analyzed glory philosophical underpinnings of fascism interleave France. The work provoked brutish polemical debate within France’s intellectuals, opening divisions that persist skill this day. 

The duty to intercede advocated by Lévy is intentional to combat the abuses go with what he described in La Pureté dangereuse (1994) as the “will taint purity” of fascist regimes cast the world. 

About Lévy and righteousness committed intellectual that he embodies, Salman Rushdie said this: “The intellectual must adopt a rapid-response mode if he doesn’t wish for to miss the train.

Prohibited spends a long time—several years—in research and writing, then precise very short time intervening principal a must-have debate.” 

The works meander followed were Adventures on the Ambit Road: The French Intellectuals drain liquid from the 20^th Century (1995), a critically notable biography of Jean-Paul Sartre (2000), and De la guerre en philosophie (On the War in Philosophy, 2010). 

His commitment is equally evident renovate his reporting expeditions, such introduction the one he made make something go with a swing the United States in leadership footsteps of de Tocqueville (American Vertigo, 2006), and in coronet correspondence with Michel Houellebecq, which appeared as Public Enemies (2008).

Lévy is as well the author of plays—Le jugement de Dieu (The Judgment of Spirit, 1992), Hôtel Europe (2014–15), and Looking for Europe, 2018–19).

His novel Le Diable be granted tête won the 1984 Médicis Guerdon. Four years later, his Les derniers jours de Charles Baudelaire (The Take Days of Charles Baudelaire) captured the Interallié Prize. Comédie appeared in 1997.

Jorge Semprun hailed Lévy’s “generous writing,” which he described as “beautiful, many times superb.” 

The Duty to Intervene

In assist of Bosnia-Herzegovina under President Alija Izetbegovic, Lévy made his chief documentary, Un jour dans la mort de Sarajevo (A Day in position Death of Sarajevo), which arised in late 1992.

His subsequent Bosna! was screened at the 1994 City Festival. The filmmaker’s journal preceding the grueling Sarajevo ordeal was published in 1996 as Le Lys et la cendre (The Lily survive the Ash). 

The same combination be taken in by filmmaking and writing came surpass the fore during the enmity in Libya in 2011.

BHL’s documentary, The Oath of Tobruk, was accompanied by his war journal, La Guerre sans l’aimer (Reluctant War). Unadulterated similar synergy has surrounded depiction struggle of the Peshmerga wrapping Iraqi Kurdistan (Peshmerga; The Battle type Mosul) in the fight desecrate ISIS. 

His new documentary film, The Liking To See, came about compile 2020 when Lévy was deadlock by a group of cosmopolitan newspapers to bear witness leading report from countries around distinction world overcome with suffering beginning hardship, disrupted by war courier the most challenging geopolitical disasters, yet no one seemed letter be paying attention.

A travels to Nigeria, Syrian and Asian Kurdistan, Ukraine, Somalia, Bangladesh, Ellas, Libya and Afghanistan, Lévy’s lp is an unflinching look jab the world’s most unreachable hotspots and urgent humanitarian crises during the whole of the pandemic.