Luc Ferry Research Articles

Introduction: 1968 Thought and its Usual Suspects

Conceived 51 years after the global workers’ and student revolt of May 1968, this Focus will break down the theoretical and literary legacy of May into three intervals of 17 years. In 1985, 17 years after 1968, Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut published a book, La pensée 68, in which they canonized the view that the theoretical underpinning of May ’68 was provided by French structuralist thinkers, notably Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Lacan (see Ferry and Renaut 1985; for the English translation, see Ferry and Renaut 1990). Seventeen years later, in 2002, Kristin Ross’s book May ’68 and its Afterlives effectively replaced this canonical image with the notion that French structuralists were all either completely absent or showed at least great reserve during the events of May and that, moreover, the closest theoretical allies of the protesters and strikers were in fact the main philosophical targets of structuralist anti-humanists, namely Jean-Paul Sartre and Herbert Marcuse with their schools of humanist Marxism (see Ross 2002). Seventeen years after Ross’s seminal book, it may be time to negate both the thesis from 1985 and Ross’s antithesis from 2002, and ask the following simple question: why, despite the massive presence of Sartre and Marcuse, and the equally massive absence of Foucault, Derrida, Bourdieu and Lacan, but also Gilles Deleuze and Louis Althusser, has the memory politics of May ’68 during the past half-century included the canonization of structuralism and post-structuralism at the expense of none other than humanism, be it Marxist or non-Marxist?

French Écocritique: Reading Contemporary French Theory and Fiction Ecologically by Stéphanie Posthumus

Reviewed by: French Écocritique: Reading Contemporary French Theory and Fiction Ecologically by Stéphanie Posthumus Keith Moser Posthumus, Stéphanie. French Écocritique: Reading Contemporary French Theory and Fiction Ecologically. UP of Toronto, 2017. ISBN 9781-4875-0145-7. Pp. 264. As the subtitle implies, Posthumus creates a rich theoretical framework from which it is possible to interpret both French theory and fiction through an ecological lens. Given that it is difficult to argue with the assertion that "ecocriticism has had little traction in French and Francophone literary studies" (20), this study is a welcome addition to an area in which research is scant. In four rather lengthy main chapters, Posthumus attempts to begin to fill this gap by encouraging other scholars to contribute to the environmental conversation. Not only does the author highlight the originality and diversity of French ecological thought that is long overdue for recognition in [End Page 236] mainstream circles, but she also demonstrates a formidable grasp of the complex issues that are emblematic of the environmental humanities in many different literary and philosophical traditions. After underscoring the"long-lasting effect" (4) of Luc Ferry's influential essay Le nouvel ordre écologique on French environmental philosophy, Posthumus promotes the work of thinkers such as Félix Guattari, Michel Serres, Bruno Latour, and Jean-Marie Schaeffer who write from a less anthropocentric and reductionistic perspective than Ferry (4). Posthumus takes advantage of the theories developed by these aforementioned philosophers to offer new insights related to the works of four contemporary writers: Marie Darrieussecq, Marie-Helene Lafon, Jean-Christophe Rufin, and Michel Houellebecq. Posthumus's close readings of French environmental theory and fiction revolve around the crucial notions of "ecological subjectivity, ecological dwelling, ecological politics, and ecological ends" (8). Although the controversial and sometimes overtly polemical author Houellebecq is a household name, one of the merits of this book is that it implores more readers to discover Darrieussecq, Lafon, and Rufin, who rarely garner the critical attention they deserve. Similarly, Posthumus convincingly posits that Jean-Marie Schaeffer has yet to receive the accolades that he has earned as one of the foremost voices in the field of French environmental philosophy. The entire book is well written and meticulously documented, but chapters three and four stand out as being indicative of impeccable scholarship. Given that both Rufin's and Houellebecq's protagonists often criticize the environmental movement, it is initially surprising that Posthumus decided to include them in this study. Displaying an uncanny ability to maintain a critical distance as a researcher, Posthumus identifies common threads that exist between Latour and Rufin in chapter three and Schaeffer and Houellebecq in the following section. Specifically, Posthumus asserts that both Latour and Rufin have strong convictions related to the necessity of reintegrating the human into ecological politics. Despite the numerous differences between Schaeffer and Houellebecq, Posthumus notes that they promulgate "a way of rethinking and resituating the human in the larger question of life on this planet" (11). Posthumus's book appears destined to become one of the most important resources for scholars interested in French ecological thought and fiction. It also promises to spark more interest in a field of study that has been relegated to the periphery in French and Francophone Studies. Keith Moser Mississippi State University Copyright © 2018 American Association of Teachers of French

Françoise d’Eaubonne, éco-féminisme et anarchie

Although Luc Ferry contrasted eco-feminism with the feminism of Simone de Beauvoir, the concept was coined by one of her close friends, Françoise d’Eaubonne, who, admittedly, is not well known. This is why the author presents an outline of her thinking and her early feminism and how the latter came to be combined with environmentalism to result in a theory which is as much eco-feminist as it is anarcha-feminist.

All You Need is Love

This essay sets out some key qualities of love according to the philosophy of critical realism, together with Roy Bhaskar's arguments for them. It then considers how Bhaskar's claims stack up with the findings of modern physics, indicates how the category of love unifies the philosophical system of critical realism and critiques Luc Ferry's view that the reign of love has already begun in the West, before briefly discussing the practical application of Bhaskar's philosophy of love in the work of feminist critical realist social theorist Lena Gunnarsson.

On Love: A philosophy for the Twenty-First Century by Luc Ferry

On Love: A philosophy for the Twenty-First Century by Luc Ferry

Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

Review of Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought

The Intellectual and ‘La Nation’ in Jean Guéhenno’s Journal des années noires

This article explores Jean Guéhenno’s perspectives on the role and function of the intellectual both in the context of the Occupation, and in relation to ‘la nation’, understood in the original revolutionary sense of the people constituted into the body politic. Clandestinely written, Guéhenno’s Journal des années noires seems at first blush a solitary exercise in thought and observation. Closer analysis reveals, however, that although Guéhenno takes pains to distance himself from the ambient confusion and propaganda, he understood both his writing and his career as a professor at the Lycée Henry IV to derive their full significance only as acts of a citizen in ‘la nation’. Contrasting sharply with the model of the ‘maître à penser’ or institutional iconoclast, Guéhenno’s conception of the intellectual proves to be consonant the contemporary reality of the French intellectual as observed by Michel Winock, Luc Ferry, Pierre Nora and Jacques Julliard.

Affective Dissonance and Literary Mediation: Emotion Processing, Ethical Signification, and Aesthetic Autonomy in Cervantes’s Art of the Novel

En Don Quijote, el movimiento del texto va hacia una insistente interiorización de la autoridad o la autonomía estética que se desprende de su significación ética de la liberación de dogmatismos ideológicos y metafísicos. La comunicación estética de Cervantes y su significación ética pone de relieve una tensión fundamental que da forma a cómo los seres humanos interpretan lo que es importante y bueno. Por un lado, los procesos afectivos y de evaluación cognitiva presuponen privilegiar al propio grupo floreciente, pero en otros, la capacidad de respuesta somática para imaginar el sufrimiento humano real o imaginario suspenden las distinciones el grupo propio y el ajeno, con lo que la legitimidad y la justicia de todo privilegio queda en tela de juicio. El texto de Cervantes se mueve hacia el arte de la novela en la medida que la significación ética derivada de la afectividad somática ofrece una autonomía estética “legalidad interna” que se convierte en cultura reformista.

Religiosität als erwünschte Anregung in der Hermeneutik

Paul Ricoeur insists on some kind of philosophical agnosticism although in everyday practice he is consciously bound to Christianity. That said, his poetical approach in Biblical hermeneutics when he confronts his position with his no believing contemporaries, very clearly shows that religious dimension of man, especially in its openness to new meanings, makes the understanding more proli fi c. This opens the way for new attempts of repeated search for human need for religious dimension also at Luc Ferry and Gianni Vattimo. It is not necessary that there is a very certain form of religiosity; the important thing is openness for these questions. In this way we liberate the science, to seriously confront with religious dimension of man. This is especially important in a globalized world where religiosity on one hand can be a cause for the clash of civilizations and on the other it can be a possibility of a common search for a world ethos.

“O religioso após a religião”: um debate entre Marcel Gauchet e Luc Ferry (“The religious after religion”: an debate between Marcel Gauchet and Luc Ferry) - DOI: 10.5752/P.2175-5841.2010v8n19p71

A riqueza do debate ocorrido entre os filosofos Luc Ferry e Marcel Gauchet, em janeiro de 1999, deu origem a este artigo, em que os autores exploram os temas e as questoes discutidas naquela ocasiao. O artigo apresenta as diferentes posicoes dos dois pensadores franceses, cuja preocupacao maior e pensar as condicoes de possibilidade da religiao e do religioso nos tempos atuais. Tempos em que, segundo os debatedores, predomina a individualizacao da crenca e nos quais a presenca de uma religiosidade sempre mais inquieta, difusa e incerta convive com o enfraquecimento institucional das religioes. Longe de desaparecer num universo cada vez mais laicizado, o religioso, como indagacao sobre o sentido ultimo da vida ou como aspiracao ao absoluto, tende a permanecer como um substrato insuperavel. Como, entao, pensar o religioso apos a religiao? O texto apresenta as diferentes e divergentes posicoes de Ferry e Gauchet acerca da pertinencia do uso de termos classicos como sagrado, divino, transcendente, dentre outros, para tratar os constituintes dessa religiosidade contemporânea e inquieta, propria de uma epoca na qual se torna impossivel a edificacao de um mundo de parte a parte estruturado pela religiao e na qual o religioso impregnaria todos os setores da vida publica e privada. Palavras-chave: Religiao; Religiosidade; Secularizacao; Autonomia; Heteronomia. Abstract This paper analyses the questions and problems that was discussed during an important debate between the French philosophers Marcel Gauchet and Luc Ferry, which take place at Paris on January, 1999. The paper discusses the different conceptions of these thinkers about the status of religion and the religious in nowadays. Days that witnesses the individualization of religious belief and the presence of a restless, uncertain and spread religiosity which however, lives side by side with an institutional weakening of the historical religions. Far from disappearing in a more and more laicized world, the religious as an inquiring about searching on ultimate sense for our lives seems to remain as a permanent individual issue. Nevertheless, how is it possible to conceive the religious after the deregulation of historical religions? Classical terms like sacred, divine, transcendent and absolute are sufficient to qualify and analyze the elements of this restless and uncertain religiosity, which seems to be constitutive of societies that do not need religious legitimacy anymore. Keywords: Religion; religious; secularization; autonomy; heteronomy .

Hermeneutik und Religiosität

Hermeneutical circle needs encouragement. Could that be religiosity? Paul Ricoeur insists on some kind of philosophical agnosticism, although in everyday practice he is consciously bound to Christianity. His poetical approach in Biblical hermeneutics when he confronts his position with his non-believing contemporaries, very clearly shows that religious dimension of man, especially in its openness to new meanings, makes the understanding more prolific. This opens the way for new attempts of repeated search for the human need for religious dimension at Luc Ferry and Gianni Vattimo as well. It is not necessary there to be a very certain form of religiosity; the important thing is openness towards these questions. In such a way we liberate the science to seriously confront with religious dimension of a man. This is especially important in a globalized world where religiosity, on the one hand, can be a cause for the clash of civilizations and, on the other, it can be a possibility of a common search for a world ethos.

Humanism and Cosmopolitanism after '68

I In this essay, I should like to offer some reflections on the implications of what I have called postmetaphysical humanism and situated cosmopolitanism for some of the themes highlighted in this special issue. (1) I hasten to add that any conception of humanism or of cosmopolitanism that will be politically viable at this juncture must be a critical conception. As it exhorts us to inclusiveness, to expand the circle of the 'we,' it must also have the resources to exclude those practices and social formations that thwart or undermine human flourishing. Accordingly, the conceptions of humanism and of cosmopolitanism that I develop emerge from what can be characterised as a critical-hermeneutic analysis and deployment of those ideas, an analysis and deployment offered as an explicit counter to currently influential discourses of modernity and postmodernity and, in particular, to those theoretical regimes perhaps most closely linked in our symbolic unconscious to the 'idea of '68.' Prominent among the theoretical regimes associated with the 'idea of '68' are the philosophical movements known as poststructuralism and postmodernism. Poststructuralism can be characterised as the result of a radicalisation of Ferdinand de Saussure's structuralist insight that linguistic or symbolic meaning is determined by the context or by the field of differences in which a semiotic token plays a role. Poststructuralists aver that such contexts always lack closure, that they are porous and unstable, that the relevant field of differences is never given once and for all. They thus maintain that meaning itself is indefinitely deferred, that it is never definitively given. The destabilisation of systems of difference demands the suspension of interpretive closure, of determinate interpretation. The related movement of postmodernism regards with incredulity any privileging of a context-transcendent framework from which judgments can be issued or definitive meanings ascertained. It regards with suspicion any metaphysical or transcontextual certainties, any claims to have discerned objective essences or common matrices that would guarantee neutral or objective thought. Neither self, as subject, nor world, as object, can be said to have any privileged essential being. The names of few philosophers are as resonant with the 'idea of 1968' as is Michel Foucault's. It was he who perhaps most starkly proclaimed the 'death of man' thesis, though it was Althusser who first used the term 'anti-humanism' in this context (and Althusser admits to the influence of Heidegger's 'Letter on Humanism' on his antihumanism (2)). Moreover, Foucault's emphasis upon the heterogeneity and incommensurability of subjects produced by differential regimes of power/knowledge made his writing uniquely influential in providing theoretical grounding for identity politics in the US. (3) (As I shall suggest later in this essay, as I write in June 2008, the response to the candidacy of Barack Obama for the US presidency can be interpreted to be, at least in part, reflective of a self-conscious grappling with the legacy of the politics of identity among progressive actors.) If Foucault was and, to some extent, remains emblematic of the 'thinkers of '68' in the US, there were political philosophers on the French scene who were vigorously challenging his brand of anti-humanist poststructuralism by the time of his death in 1984. In their attempts to reconstruct humanism in the wake of the postmodernist critique of subjectivity, the project of Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut is especially noteworthy. (4) Like Jurgen Habermas, they are committed to an internal critique of modernity, rejecting Heidegger's anti-modernism, Foucault's postmodernism and Theodor Adorno's 'negative dialectics'. (5) However, in their strongly anti-structuralist tendency to suggest that the rejection or transcendence of conventions or social codes by itself gives sufficient content to humanism, they fail to do justice to the ways in which we are always already encoded, to the extent to which that encoding is an enabling and not only a privative condition. …

Reply: solidarity

In April of 2003, on a lonely road where apples grow in south-eastern France, Guilhermino Armando Dos Santos, a seasonal worker from Portugal, was run over by a car and killed while heading home. Le Monde Diplomatique reported that earlier in the day, four men had been drinking in a nearby village bar. Allegedly, one of them said: "The Portuguese, they breathe too much of our air. I'd like to kill them." These men were charged with murder. ("France: Apples of Discord", Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2003, p. 15). In the same month, the Guardian Weekly printed an excerpt from Abd Samad Moussaoui's 2003 biography of his brother, Zacarias, who was convicted in 2006 of launching the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City. The excerpt in the newspaper focused on the humiliations suffered by the Moussaoui siblings, who grew up on a housing estate near Narbonne in the southern province of Languedoc. Samad wrote that being cast as "Arab" had often caught the young Moussaoui boys by surprise, as they were born in France, did not speak Arabic, and were non-practising Muslims. Although the Moussaoui children considered themselves French, they endured racial taunts, slurs, and violent assaults and all the other petty, day to day aggravations (or what Samad called "aggros") of being seen as "visibly" different from other French children {Guardian Weekend April 19th, 2003). A month later, supporters of Le Pen's National Front rallied on May Day. They paraded down the rue de Rivoli in Paris, chanting "La France aux fran^ais! Immigres dehors!" (France for the French! Immigrants out!) {Le Monde May 10, 2003). These items appeared in the European Press just as Luc Ferry, France's minister of education, initiated a new school program aimed at eliminating racism. The press reported that workshops were held, lectures were delivered, and

Interview with Luc Ferry

Interview with Luc Ferry Richard J. Golsan Richard J. Golsan (R.G.): How do you see the role of the intellectual—and writer—in contemporary France? How has that role changed over the last twenty years? Luc Ferry (L.F.): Generally speaking, the twentieth century was the century of all deconstructions: deconstruction of tonality in music, of figuration in painting, of chronology and psychology of characters in the novel, but also deconstruction of traditional values in the fields of ethics, religion and politics. Intellectuals have always been or tried to be in the forefront of this avant-garde. Nietzsche invited us to "philosophize with a hammer" and, indeed, we have experienced what he called the "twilight of the idols," that is to say the end or, at the very least, the undermining of most transcendent ideals. This enormous work of deconstruction—the term does not come at all from Derrida as so many students think, but from his master, Heidegger, who assigns explicitly to philosophy the task of the "Abbau der Métaphysik," of the "deconstruction of metaphysics"—was the work of the main currents of avant-gardism. In this perspective, deconstruction was meant to be situated in the "margins" rather than in the mainstream. It was linked to the "bohemian life" rather than the philistine one, was subversive rather than bourgeois, was revolutionary or rebellious rather than established in institutions, etc. This general cultural context obviously had a great influence on the practice of philosophy, which became terribly elitist when avant-gardism reached its high point, that is to say in the 1960's. Why this elitism? In his book entitled On the Spiritual in Art, Kandinski already says it very well; he compares cultural, artistic and intellectual life to a big triangle that moves and rises over time. At the apex of the triangle, there are the geniuses, who are inevitably solitary: as he sees it, Schönberg and Picasso. At the base of the triangle, there is the people, which he calls the "mindless mass," which obviously understands nothing about the avant-garde's subversions. But as the triangle moves higher over time, one day or another the base meets up with the point that the top used to occupy . . . and Picasso is then understood, widely acclaimed, museified! [End Page 40] As seen in this metaphor, according to avant-garde ideology, the genius is necessarily a solitary being! Moreover, that is the title of an essay by Schönberg, who revives one of Nietzsche's aphorisms. By definition, he who is at the high point of the triangle cannot be understood by his era. What we have been experiencing for twenty years is the death of avant-gardes, their terminal dialectical inversions: innovation has become our tradition, and as a result, intellectuals are unashamedly agreeing to reconcile with the general public. What characterizes the intellectuals of my generation in France—beginning with Pascal Bruckner—is that after the death of the avant-gardes, they are getting back in touch with the cultivated public, even the public at large. The writing is clear, the desire to speak to others is present. We are reviving a certain Enlightenment ideal in which the intellectual was someone who participated in public debate, who did not scorn his role as "scout", or even as teacher, because he believed in the virtues of democracy rather than in the triangular elitism of the "inspired guide." That is what has changed. If Bruckner's books get such a response, it is because they are also interventions in the public sphere. This in no way means that the critical spirit is being renounced, quite the contrary, but only that the hatred of democracy that dominated the twentieth century and found its apogee in totalitarian ideologies is over and done with. R.G.: For an American audience, the distinction between "right" and "left" in French politics and culture has become increasingly difficult to understand, especially in the wake of 1989 and the fall of communism. In your opinion, what would be the defining distinctions between "left" and "right" in France today? Do you believe those distinctions are substantial? L.F.: Alain, a philosopher who influenced France in...

Introduction: On Pascal Bruckner

Introduction:On Pascal Bruckner Richard J. Golsan Abstract Pascal Bruckner is one of France’s leading “public intellectuals” and novelists, whose work has elicited praise and stirred controversy for almost three decades. This issue of South Central Review includes two essays by Pascal Bruckner, as well as appreciations of is work and contributions by the French “New Philospher” Andre Glucksmann, Luc Ferry, a philosopher and former Minister of Eduction under Jacques Chirac, the French novelist Serge Koster, and Paul Berman, Writer in Residence at New York University and regular contributor to the New Republic, the Village Voice, and other publications. It also includes scholarly contributions dealing with Bruckner’s essays and fiction by two American scholars, Ralph Schoolcraft, Nathan Bracher, and one by the South American scholar and poet Eduardo Espina. Bruckner’s contributions to the issue examine two controversial topics, European Anti-Americanism and the concept of vulgarity. From Bruckner’s perspective, European anti-Americanism constitutes first and foremost a kind of Girardian scapegoating, where all the ills of modernity as well as other flaws—both of which Europe shares—are blamed on the “other”. The reasons are several in Bruckner’s diagnosis. The most obvious is a resentment and envy of American power and influence. More central is a deep seated European self-loathing that manifests itself in a misguided idealization of formerly colonized people and an overwhelming sense of guilt over the horrors and abuses of Europe’s recent past. Bruckner’s second contribution, again following a Girardian logic, examines “vulgarity” as a consequence of a “loss of degree” a failure of a legitimate and legitimizing cultural hierarchy that defines social and cultural virtues and makes them broadly acceptable. When cultural hierarchy is absent or in a state of dissolution “vulgarity” extends its reach, and traditional notions of “good” and “bad” become inoperable, and are even subject to inversion. In an oft-cited passage in André Malraux's great philosophical novel of the Spanish Civil War, L'Espoir (Man's Hope), the Italian aviator Scali asks the Spanish Republican leader Garcia during a lull in the fighting what, in the latter's opinion, is the best thing a man can do with his life. Garcia responds: "Transformer en conscience une expérience aussi large que possible"—"Render into consciousness as broad a range of experience [of life] as possible" (898). Malraux himself certainly aspired to that ideal, being, during the course of his life, a novelist, an art critic, a filmmaker, but also a self-styled revolutionary in French Indochina, a volunteer aviator and fund-raiser for the Spanish Republic, a Resistance fighter against the Nazis during World War II, and finally a Minister of Information and later Minister of Culture under Charles de Gaulle. Since Malraux's time many French intellectuals have sought to live up to Garcia's ideal, in one form or another. Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus certainly come to mind as examples as essayists, novelists (and playwrights) and intellectuels engagés, although neither ever served—or would ever serve—in an official capacity in the French government. More recently, the list includes most visibly—and flamboyantly—the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, the leader of the "New Philosophers" who emerged in the wake of the French student revolts of 1968. More "public intellectual" than "philosopher" properly speaking (he holds no academic post) Lévy is also a novelist, essayist, filmmaker, director of the publishing house Grasset, political activist—and media darling. Lévy's most recent work, American Verigo, published last year, garnered a good deal of media attention in this country ("BHL," as he is known in France, appeared on the Daily Show, among other spots)—as well as mixed reviews. Another French intellectual who in many ways appears to fulfill Garcia's ideal is Luc Ferry, a distinguished political philosopher (with academic credentials), public intellectual, and, very recently, Minister of Education under Jacques Chirac. Ferry is interviewed in this issue of South Central Review. But perhaps more than either Lévy or Ferry, the figure who in many ways best exemplifies the ideal proposed in Malraux's novel three quarters [End Page 1] of a century ago is Pascal...

The Paradoxes of Anti-Americanism

Pascal Bruckner is one of France's leading "public intellectuals" and novelists, whose work has elicited praise and stirred controversy for almost three decades. This issue of South Central Review includes two essays by Pascal Bruckner, as well as appreciations of is work and contributions by the French "New Philospher" Andre Glucksmann, Luc Ferry, a philosopher and former Minister of Eduction under Jacques Chirac, the French novelist Serge Koster, and Paul Berman, Writer in Residence at New York University and regular contributor to the New Republic, the Village Voice, and other publications. It also includes scholarly contributions dealing with Bruckner's essays and fiction by two American scholars, Ralph Schoolcraft, Nathan Bracher, and one by the South American scholar and poet Eduardo Espina. Bruckner's contributions to the issue examine two controversial topics, European Anti-Americanism and the concept of vulgarity. From Bruckner's perspective, European anti-Americanism constitutes first and foremost a kind of Girardian scapegoating, where all the ills of modernity as well as other flaws—both of which Europe shares—are blamed on the "other". The reasons are several in Bruckner's diagnosis. The most obvious is a resentment and envy of American power and influence. More central is a deep seated European self-loathing that manifests itself in a misguided idealization of formerly colonized people and an overwhelming sense of guilt over the horrors and abuses of Europe's recent past. Bruckner's second contribution, again following a Girardian logic, examines "vulgarity" as a consequence of a "loss of degree" a failure of a legitimate and legitimizing cultural hierarchy that defines social and cultural virtues and makes them broadly acceptable. When cultural hierarchy is absent or in a state of dissolution "vulgarity" extends its reach, and traditional notions of "good" and "bad" become inoperable, and are even subject to inversion.

The Ambivalences of Vulgarity

Pascal Bruckner is one of France's leading "public intellectuals" and novelists, whose work has elicited praise and stirred controversy for almost three decades. This issue of South Central Review includes two essays by Pascal Bruckner, as well as appreciations of is work and contributions by the French "New Philospher" Andre Glucksmann, Luc Ferry, a philosopher and former Minister of Eduction under Jacques Chirac, the French novelist Serge Koster, and Paul Berman, Writer in Residence at New York University and regular contributor to the New Republic, the Village Voice, and other publications. It also includes scholarly contributions dealing with Bruckner's essays and fiction by two American scholars, Ralph Schoolcraft, Nathan Bracher, and one by the South American scholar and poet Eduardo Espina. Bruckner's contributions to the issue examine two controversial topics, European Anti-Americanism and the concept of vulgarity. From Bruckner's perspective, European anti-Americanism constitutes first and foremost a kind of Girardian scapegoating, where all the ills of modernity as well as other flaws—both of which Europe shares—are blamed on the "other". The reasons are several in Bruckner's diagnosis. The most obvious is a resentment and envy of American power and influence. More central is a deep seated European self-loathing that manifests itself in a misguided idealization of formerly colonized people and an overwhelming sense of guilt over the horrors and abuses of Europe's recent past. Bruckner's second contribution, again following a Girardian logic, examines "vulgarity" as a consequence of a "loss of degree" a failure of a legitimate and legitimizing cultural hierarchy that defines social and cultural virtues and makes them broadly acceptable. When cultural hierarchy is absent or in a state of dissolution "vulgarity" extends its reach, and traditional notions of "good" and "bad" become inoperable, and are even subject to inversion.

Luc Ferry, . What Is the Good Life? Translated by Lydia Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 320 pp. $45.00 (cloth).

Luc Ferry, . <i>What Is the Good Life?</i> Translated by Lydia Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 320 pp. $45.00 (cloth).

Pigscripts The Indignities of Species in Marie Darrieussecq's Pig Tales

The humanist discovery of man is the discovery that he lacks himself, the discovery of his irremediable lack of dignitas. Giorgio Agamben, The Open 1 It is facile, virtually meaningless, to demand ...

The greening of white pride

At first glance, it is surprising that contemporary racist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan advertise a pro‐environmental stance. This fact, however, might be expected by Luc Ferry, who argues for a connection between the racism and nature protection laws of the Third Reich. Ferry argues that a non‐anthropocentric approach to nature makes it easier to dehumanize humans so that a non‐anthropocentric environmental ethic can transform into racist environmentalism. Does this contemporary case vindicate Ferry? We argue that it does not. When the underlying theoretical foundations and historical conditions that gave rise to the racist environmentalist movements and the contemporary non‐anthropocentric environmental left are analyzed, quite different pictures emerge: one type of non‐anthropocentric environmentalism is racist, one type of anthropocentric environmentalism is racist, and one type of non‐anthropocentric environmentalism is not racist, meaning that any relation between a non‐anthropocentric approa...