Jean-François Revel

J.-F. Revel, French Philosopher, Is Dead at 82 – http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/world/europe/02revel.html
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/140686/the-monk-and-the-philosopher-by-jean-francois-revel-and-matthieu-ricard/9780805211030/?view=excerpt
Catégories: Biography, English, Ressources inclassables [fr]
Biography of Jean-François Revel

On Anti-Americanism – Revel

Jean-Francois Revel was born in 1924 in Marseilles.
He was a French politician, journalist, author, prolific philosopher and member of the Académie française since June 1998.

Jean-Francis-Revel

He was born Jean-François Ricard, but adopted his pseudonym Revel as his legal surname in 1958 after the success of his first essay, Pourquoi des philosophes.

He studied in Marseilles then at the Lycée du Parc in Lyon, and finally was accepted at the prestigious École normale supérieure in Paris where he studied philosophy.

During the German occupation of France in WWII, Revel participated in the French Resistance.
He began his career as a philosophy professor, and taught in French Algeria, Mexico and Italy, before settling in Lille.
He stopped teaching in 1963 and embarked on his career as an essayist and writer, as well as directing various publications.

At the end of the 70′s, he became the editor for many years of the influential political weekly L’Express.

A socialist until the end of the 1960′s, (he ran as a socialist candidate in parliamentary elections in 1967 but lost), he was known during the Cold War as a champion of the western version of values such as liberty and democracy at a time when the majority of European intellectuals praised Communism or Maoism. The publication of his 1970 book, Without Marx or Jesus signalled the transition of his views to liberal “philosopher of freedom in the tradition of Raymond Aron.”

He was best known for his books Without Marx or Jesus, The Totalitarian Temptation, The Flight from Truth and his 2002 book Anti-Americanism.

He is survived by his second wife, Claude Sarraute, a journalist, and has 3 sons from two marriages. His first marriage to painter Yahne le Toumelin ended in divorce.

One of his sons, Matthieu Ricard, is a well known Buddhist monk who studied molecular biology at the Pasteur Institute before converting to Tibetan Buddhism. Father and son jointly authored a book Le moine et le philosophe (The Monk and the Philosopher) about the son’s conversion and Buddhism.

(Source : Wikipedia)

Dans le même genre :
The monk and the philosopher…
Review of “Pour Jean-François Revel”…
Review of “Histoire de la philosophie occidentale”…
Anti-Americanism: Why Do They Hate Us?…
Cunning like a hedgehog….
Décès de Jean-François Revel…
Jean-François Revel, écrivain…
Review of “La Grande Parade”…
La Casa vacía de Jean-François Revel…
Réception à l’Académie de Jean-François Revel par Marc Fumaroli…

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jean-François Revel (Marseille, France, 19 January 1924 – 30 April 2006 in Kremlin-Bicêtre) was a French politician, journalist, author, prolific philosopher and member of the Académie française from June 1998. A socialist in his youth, Revel later became a prominent European proponent of classical liberalism and free

Jean-Francis-Revel

market economics.
Contents [hide]
1 Life and career
2 Work
2.1 Partial booklist
3 Quotations
4 References
5 External links
Life and career

Portrait taken in 1999
He was born Jean-François Ricard, but later adopted his pseudonym Revel as his legal surname.[1] During the German occupation of France in WWII, Revel participated in the French Resistance and later noted that the officious but disgraceful manner of French collaborators influenced his writings.[2]
He studied at the Lycée du Parc in Lyon and was accepted at the prestigious École normale supérieure where he studied philosophy. He began his career as a philosophy professor, and taught in French Algeria, Italy and Mexico, before settling in Lille. He stopped teaching in 1963 and embarked on his career as an essayist and writer, as well as directing various publications. From 1998 to 2006, he was president of the Institut d’Histoire Sociale. His successor is Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. In 1986 Revel was honored with an honorary doctorate degree[3] for his commitment to individual freedom.
A socialist until the late 1960’s, Revel was a speechwriter for socialist President François Mitterrand and ran as a socialist candidate in parliamentary elections in 1967 but lost. During the Cold War, Revel was known as a champion of classical liberal values such as liberty and democracy at a time when many preeminent European intellectuals praised Communism or Maoism.[4] The publication of his 1970 book, Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Begun signalled the transition of his views to liberal «philosopher of freedom in the tradition of Raymond Aron.» (D. Martin, NYT, p.B7)
He is survived by his second wife, Claude Sarraute, a journalist, and has three sons from two marriages. His first marriage to painter Yahne le Toumelin ended in divorce.
One of his sons, Matthieu Ricard, is a well known Buddhist monk who studied molecular biology at the Pasteur Institute before converting to Tibetan Buddhism. Father and son jointly authored a book Le moine et le philosophe (The Monk and the Philosopher) about the son’s conversion and Buddhism.
Work

Revel was best known for his books Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Begun, The Flight from Truth : The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information and his 2002 book Anti-Americanism, one year after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. [1] In the last of these books, Revel criticised those Europeans who argued that the United States had brought the terrorist attacks upon itself through misguided foreign policies. He wrote thus: «Obsessed by their hatred and floundering in illogicality, these dupes forget that the United States, acting in its own self-interest, is also acting in the interest of us Europeans and in the interests of many other countries which are threatened, or have already been subverted and ruined, by terrorism.» In 1975 he delivered the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden, The Netherlands, under the title: La tentation totalitaire (The Totalitarian Temptation).
Partial booklist
Without Marx or Jesus (1972) ISBN 0440597293
The Totalitarian Temptation (1976)
How Democracies Perish (1983)
The Flight from Truth : The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information (1992) ISBN 0394576438
Democracy Against Itself: The Future of the Democratic Impulse/Regain démocratique (1993) ISBN 0029263875
The Monk and the Philosopher : A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life (1999) ISBN 0805211039
The Anti-American Obsession: Its Functioning, Its Causes, Its Inconsequentialness/La obsesión antiamericana (2003) ISBN 1893554856
Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era/Le Grande Parade (2009) ISBN 1594032645
Quotations

This section is a candidate to be copied to Wikiquote using the Transwiki process.
«… anarchy leads to despotism … despotism leads to anarchy …»
«Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.»
«It is unlikely that we will ever be capable of building a world that is qualitatively better than we ourselves are.»
Democracy against Itself
«Strangely, it is always America that is described as degenerate and ‘fascist,’ while it is solely in Europe that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up.» From Europe’s Anti-American Obsession. A similar statement can be found in his book Anti-Americanism, Encounter Books, 2004, p. 156 (paperback).
«A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence»
References

^ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/world/europe/02revel.html
^ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/world/europe/02revel.html
^ Honorary Doctoral Degrees at Universidad Francisco Marroquín
^ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/world/europe/02revel.html
External links

Honorary Doctoral Degrees, Universidad Francisco Marroquín
http://chezrevel.net/
http://chezrevel.net/cat/english/
http://www.souvarine.fr/institut.php
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-2163713,00.html
(French) L’Académie française
Douglas Martin, «J-F Revel, French Philosopher, is dead at 82,» May 2, 2006, Section B, Page 7, The New York Times
Cultural offices
Preceded by
Étienne Wolff Seat 24
Académie française
1997-2006 Succeeded by
Max Gallo
Categories: 1924 births | 2006 deaths | People from Marseille | Alumni of the École Normale Supérieure | French journalists | French atheists | French anti-communists | French philosophers | French writers | French columnists | Members of the Académie française