In lieu of Sartre and Raymond Aron, future historians of French intellectuals in the Eighties and Nineties may well be condemned to structuring their narratives around the post-Marx brothers of French intellectual life, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Alain Finkielkraut. This is not a case simply of contemporary thinkers being dwarfed by the giants of the past - the familiar lament about the decline of French intellectuals is rather unfair. The problem is that Lévy and Finkielkraut play the venerable role of intellectual to perfection - that they imitate their noble ancestors to a fault.

LRB 31 October 1996 | PDF Download