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30-477: They include Alain Finkielkraut , André Glucksmann , Pascal Bruckner , Bernard-Henri Lévy , Jean-Marie Benoist, Christian Jambet , Guy Lardreau , Claude Gandelman, Jean-Paul Dollé and Gilles Susong. The term was created by Bernard-Henri Lévy in 1976. Most of the philosophers he included in that description had a previous history of Marxism with which they had recently broken. Several had been members of

60-715: A duty of memory  [ fr ] , Finkielkraut also published The Future of a Negation: Reflexion on the Genocide Issue ( Avenir d'une négation : réflexion sur la question du génocide , 1982) and later his comments on the Klaus Barbie trial, Remembering in Vain ( La Mémoire vaine , 1989). Finkielkraut feels particularly indebted to Emmanuel Levinas . In The Wisdom of Love ( La Sagesse de l'amour ), Finkielkraut discusses this debt in terms of modernity and its mirages. Finkielkraut continues his reflection on

90-658: A "colonial project in his article. Emmanuel Todd wrote in 2008 that "never in France would rioters have been characterized by the color of their skin, if this anti-republican blasphemy had not been the work of an intellectual of Jewish origin, to whom the sacralization of the Shoah guarantees a surer protection than the colonial past to the young people of the suburbs". Finkielkraut later apologized, claiming bad translation of his article by Haaretz . Anti-Zionist filmmaker Eyal Sivan took legal action against Finkielkraut after

120-768: A book on the West's endless self-criticism, translated as "The Tyranny of Guilt" (2010). From 1992 to 1999, Bruckner was a supporter of the Croatian , Bosniak and Albanian causes in the Yugoslav Wars , and endorsed the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. In 2003, he supported the Iraq War , but later criticized the mistakes of the U.S. military and the use of torture in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo . In 2009, he signed

150-491: A broad attack on the Enlightenment, claiming that "all the evils of our epoch were spawned by this philosophical and literary episode: capitalism, colonialism, totalitarianism." Bruckner agrees that the history of the twentieth century attests to the potential of modernity for fanaticism, but argues that the modern thought that issued from the Enlightenment proved capable of criticizing its own errors, and that "Denouncing

180-457: A commentator. Pascal Bruckner Defunct Defunct Pascal Bruckner ( French: [bʁyknɛʁ] ; born 15 December 1948, in Paris) is a French writer, one of the " New Philosophers " who came to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. Much of his work has been devoted to critiques of French society and culture. Bruckner attended Jesuit schools in his youth. After studies at

210-557: A film by Roman Polanski ) and Les voleurs de beauté (The Beauty Stealers) ( Prix Renaudot in 1997). Among his essays are La tentation de l'innocence ("The Temptation of Innocence," Prix Médicis in 1995) and, famously, Le Sanglot de l'homme blanc ( The Tears of the White Man ), an attack on narcissistic and destructive policies intended to benefit the Third World, and more recently La Tyrannie de la pénitence (2006),

240-555: A personal diary, he expresses his thoughts about various events in the world, especially the events of 11 September 2001 . In 1995, Finkielkraut denounced the Cannes Film Festival 's jury award, saying: "In recognizing 'Underground', the Cannes jury thought it was honouring a creator with a thriving imagination. In fact, it has honoured a servile and flashy illustrator of criminal clichés. The Cannes jury ... praised

270-570: A petition in support of Roman Polanski, calling for his release after Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in relation to his 1977 charge for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. Le Sanglot de l'homme blanc ( The White Man's Tears ), published by the Éditions le Seuil in May 1983, was a controversial opus. The author describes the anti-Western and pro- Third-World sentimentalism of the Left in

300-522: A version of the most hackneyed and deceitful Serb propaganda. The devil himself could not have conceived so cruel an outrage against Bosnia, nor such a grotesque epilogue to Western incompetence and frivolity." It was later revealed that Finkielkraut had not seen the film before writing his criticism. His interview published in the Haaretz magazine in November 2005 in which he gave his opinion about

330-580: Is a French essayist, radio producer, and public intellectual. Since 1986, he has been the host of Répliques , a talk show broadcast weekly on France Culture . He was elected a Fellow of the Académie Française in 2014. Finkielkraut is the son of a Polish Jewish manufacturer of fine leather goods who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp . Finkielkraut studied modern literature at the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud . He joined

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360-589: Is his father, a virulent anti-Semite, who voluntarily went to work in Germany during the Second World War. He is a violent man who beats his wife. The young Bruckner soon reacts against his father and his revenge is to become his polar opposite, even to the point of being happy to be called a ‘Jewish thinker’, which he is not. ‘My father helped me to think better by thinking against him. I am his defeat.’ Despite this opposition, he remains tied to his father to

390-511: The 2005 French riots stirred up much controversy. Finkielkraut's remarked that the France national football team was "black, black, black, which causes sneers all over Europe" (as opposed to the expression " black-blanc-beur "—meaning "Black, White, Arab"—coined after France's win in the 1998 FIFA World Cup final to honour the African and Afro Caribbean, European, and North African origins of

420-583: The Maoist party Gauche prolétarienne . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 's writings on The Gulag Archipelago had a profound effect upon many of these former Marxists. Besides the content of the book, French Communist Party’s attack on the book further incited discontent with Marxism. International events, such as massacre in Cambodia and Vietnamese refugee crisis, also inspired criticism and reflections regarding communism. The New Philosophers rejected what they saw as

450-697: The Corner of the Street ( Au Coin de la rue , 1978), as well as The Adventure ( L'aventure , 1979). Finkielkraut then began publishing singly authored works on the public's betrayal of memory and our intransigence in the presence of events that, he argued, should move the public. This reflection led Finkielkraut to address post-Holocaust Jewish identity in Europe, such as in The Imaginary Jew ( Le Juif imaginaire , 1983). Seeking to promote what he calls

480-516: The Department of French Literature in the University of California, Berkeley as an assistant professor in 1976 and the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in the École Polytechnique as a professor in 1989. At the end of the 1990s, Finkielkraut founded with Benny Lévy and Bernard-Henri Lévy an Institute on Levinassian Studies  [ fr ] at Jerusalem. In 2010, he

510-514: The French TV channel La Chaîne Info , he commented on the Duhamel scandal involving incest committed by Olivier Duhamel on his 14-year old stepson. Finkielkraut speculated that there may have been "consent" between the two parties and claimed that a 14-year-old is "not the same thing" as a "child". Within days, he was summarily fired from the French TV news network for which he was working as

540-607: The Frenchman said Sivan "is, if you will, one of the actors in this particularly painful, particularly alarming reality, the Jewish anti-Semitism that rages today." In 2009, Finkielkraut was criticized for his comment on the Roman Polanski sexual abuse case . Finkielkraut claimed that the 13-years-old victim was a "teenager", "not a child". He was criticized for his close friendship with Croatian president Franjo Tuđman , and

570-470: The West. The essay had an influence on a whole trend of thought, especially on Maurice Dantec and Michel Houellebecq . The title is a variation on Kipling 's " White Man's Burden ". Bruckner's 2006 work La Tyrannie de la pénitence: Essai sur le masochisme Occidental ( The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism ) focuses on the origin and political impact of the contemporary political culture of Western guilt. Bruckner's polemic stance against

600-495: The ethnocentric nature of some discourses of multiculturalism has kindled an international debate. In an article titled "Enlightenment Fundamentalism or Racism of the Anti-Racists?", he defended Ayaan Hirsi Ali in particular against the criticisms from Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash . According to Bruckner, modern philosophers from Heidegger to Gadamer , Derrida , Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno have mounted

630-514: The excesses of the Enlightenment in the concepts that it forged means being true to its spirit." Bruckner's book, Un bon fils , was translated and published in English in 2016, under the title A Dutiful Son. It was first published in France in 2014. The memoir "charts his journey from pious Catholic child to leading philosopher and writer on French culture. The key figure in Bruckner's life

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660-667: The matter in The Defeat of the Mind ( La Défaite de la pensée , 1987) and The Ingratitude: Talks About Our Times ( Ingratitude : conversation sur notre temps , 1999). Since the 2000s, Finkielkraut has given his opinion on a variety of topics in society, such as the Internet in The Internet, The Troubling Ecstasy ( Internet, l'inquiétante extase , 2001). In the book Present Imperfect ( L'Imparfait du présent , 2002), akin to

690-447: The players), adding that "if you point this out in France, you are thrown in jail". He also denounced African-American Muslims , claiming that there is an "Islamization of the blacks" happening in both America and France. Strong polemics followed the article: MRAP and L'Humanité accused Finkielkraut of racism and many of his colleagues at the École polytechnique published a petition led by Gilles Dowek against what they described as

720-423: The power-worship of the Left, a tradition which they traced back to at least Hegel and Karl Marx in the 1700s and 1800s. They argued that these and other various "master thinkers" who sought to create comprehensive systems of thought had actually created the foundations for systems of oppression. More recently Pascal Bruckner has targeted multiculturalism . Because they are defined by a negative quality (i.e.,

750-1050: The rejection of systems of authoritarian power) the New Philosophers are very disparate. In 1978, Michael Ryan argued that they exist in name only; their "homogeneity derives from their espousal of heterogeneity." They have been described as "a brand name" for an "extremely heterogeneous group of about ten intellectuals who are held together more from without than from within... they do not serve as representatives of any clearly defined political movement or force." They were attacked as superficial and ideological by critics such as Gilles Deleuze , Pierre Vidal-Naquet , Pierre Bourdieu , Alain Badiou , Jean-François Lyotard , and Cornelius Castoriadis . Alain Finkielkraut Alain Luc Finkielkraut ( French: [alɛ̃ finkɛlkʁot] ; Yiddish: [fɪŋkiːlˈkʁaʊ̯t] ; born 30 June 1949)

780-500: The street." In April 2019, Sciences Po announced the cancellation of a forum where Finkielkraut was to be a speaker due to threats by " antifa " protesters. Eugénie Bastié of Le Figaro denounced the cancellation as a "gangrenous" symptom of the Americanisation of French university life. The announcement was intended to mislead the protesters, and the lecture went on in a different location. In 2022, while appearing on

810-536: The universities of Paris I and Paris VII Diderot , and then at the École Pratique des Hautes Études , Bruckner became maître de conférences at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris and a contributor to the Nouvel Observateur . Bruckner began writing in the vein of the nouveaux philosophes or New Philosophers. He published Parias ( Parias ), Lunes de fiel ( Evil Angels ) (adapted as

840-571: Was accosted on the street by a group of yellow vest protesters in Paris when they chanced on him in Boulevard du Montparnasse . A 36-year-old French convert to Islam was indicted after saying that Finkelkraut was "going to die". Finkelkraut had previously expressed his sympathy for the yellow vest movement. In April 2019, Finkelkraut stated that he had been repeatedly accosted by street protestors and told reporters: "I can no longer show my face on

870-476: Was accused by David Bruce MacDonald of supporting "a nation whose leader was a Holocaust revisionist, at the helm of an authoritarian government". In August 2018, Finkielkraut expressed in an interview with The Times of Israel his worries for French Jews and the future of France. He stated: "The anti-Semitism we're now experiencing in France is the worst I've ever seen in my lifetime, and I'm convinced it's going to get worse". On 16 February 2019, Finkielkraut

900-606: Was involved in founding JCall , a left-wing advocacy group based in Europe to lobby the European Parliament on foreign policy issues concerning the Middle East and Israel in particular. Finkielkraut first came to public attention when he and Pascal Bruckner co-authored a number of short but controversial essays intended to question the idea that a new emancipation was underway; these included The New Love Disorder ( Le Nouveau Désordre amoureux , 1977) and At

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