France's strange, wonderful love affair with philosophy
France loves its philosophers — and America should too
Few things about France strike foreigners as so endearingly strange as the country's enduring love affair with philosophy.
France is the country whose Revolution was driven by Enlightenment philosophy; more recently, it was the country of Sartre and Camus (and their lesser-known conservative antagonist Raymond Aron).
The phenomenon is real. It's obviously not the case that every single Frenchman can lecture about the finer points of Plato and Descartes, but it's also the case that philosophy enjoys serious prestige, at both the elite and popular level. Books are best-sellers. Philosophers are invited on TV and even given their own talk-shows. It's not unusual for a mass market magazine to make an interview with a philosopher its cover story. Philosophy is a mandatory part of the high school curriculum. Senior politicians often tap top philosophy graduates as speechwriters, the first step on a political career, which explains why there probably hasn't been a French cabinet in the past 50 years that didn't have at least one minister with a graduate degree in philosophy.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
This has obvious upside. Civilizations ultimately run on ideas, and societies that want to prosper should, so to speak, work out them out, manipulating their intellectual muscles regularly. France takes seriously the notion that a democracy is impossible without an informed citizenry, and that this requires thinking seriously about issues — to philosophize.
But it also has a downside. If any figure enjoys equivalent prestige to the philosopher in America, it's the economist, as befits America's reputation for pragmatism. America has avoided the trap of having its intellectual circles manned by crusty old Marxists who, as late as the 1990s, seemed to have missed the fact that Marxism doesn't actually, you know, work. Rousseau famously opened his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality with, "Let us begin by laying facts aside," a piece of advice that too many French philosophers have taken a smidge too literally. While France has produced much valuable philosophy in the 20th century, the joke about the post-post-post-structuralist spouting off literal nonsense from his tenured perch has some validity.
Now, economics is not nearly as pragmatic as is usually thought and America's worship of the economist has also led it into some hot water. Perhaps some happy middle might be pursued. Perhaps America should tone down its economists a little bit and France should keep in mind that a philosopher is not the same thing as an expert on every topic. Give Paul Krugman's New York Times column to David Bentley Hart!
But what the popular economist in America and the popular philosopher in France have in common is the pitfalls of what happens to any profession that confers status, fame, and money — a deluge of oleaginous scam artists. The most prominent of those, of course, being the shameless Bernard-Henri Lévy, whose academic scandals fill several paragraphs of his French-language Wikipedia entry. The most famous involved his citing a book of philosophical satire written by a fake philosopher with a punny name as if it were a legitimate work by a legitimate author (whose body of work BHL knew very well).
The simple fact of the matter is that France's most prominent philosophers have not produced quality work for many decades, with a few exceptions (mainly to be found in the subculture of Catholic philosophers, but even then...). And this is partly driven by the popular appeal of philosophy. As a young grad student, what would you like to do more: Write pop histories of Plato and get invited on TV shows, or trudge away in anonymity on a study of Plato that will be read by 12 people? Partly it's driven by France's cultural exhaustion and malaise. But partly it's also a phenomenon of the fact that post-post-modern philosophy, all across the West, suffers from a kind of total exhaustion.
But for all that, I wouldn't trade away my country's love affair with philosophy. Like all love affairs, it can be messy, but it's still wonderful in its own way.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry is a writer and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His writing has appeared at Forbes, The Atlantic, First Things, Commentary Magazine, The Daily Beast, The Federalist, Quartz, and other places. He lives in Paris with his beloved wife and daughter.
-
'Make legal immigration a more plausible option'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
LA-to-Las Vegas high-speed rail line breaks ground
Speed Read The railway will be ready as soon as 2028
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Israel's military intelligence chief resigns
Speed Read Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva is the first leader to quit for failing to prevent the Hamas attack in October
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
The Master and Margarita: the new adaptation causing consternation at the Kremlin
Why Everyone's Talking About Pro-Putin groups have called for the film's director to be charged as a terrorist
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published
-
The new 'boom' in Latin American fiction
Why everyone's talking about Almost a quarter of International Booker Prize longlist comes from South America, a region in turmoil
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
Poonam Pandey: the Indian model who faked her own death
Why Everyone's Talking About The Bollywood star has a reputation for outlandish stunts
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published
-
Unsung heroes of the year 2023
Under the radar The Week salutes those whose remarkable achievements deserve greater recognition
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published
-
Miss Universe 2023: win for inclusion or nothing to celebrate?
Talking Point Beauty pageant included mothers, plus-sized models and trans women – but fails to distract from global conflict
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
Bad Bunny joins in criticism of AI music
Speed Read Concern growing in music industry over generative learning, unauthorised impersonations and copyright issues
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
A reckoning over looted art
The Explainer Thousands of artifacts in U.S. and European collections were stolen from their countries of origin. Should they be sent back?
By The Week Staff Published
-
Fernando Botero obituary: artist of 'whimsical rotundity'
Obituary Colombian painter and sculptor was known for his 'exuberant style'
By The Week Staff Published