Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, “king of troublemakers”, assesses the pandemic
BHL, as he’s known, is an enfant terrible. He’s a handsome 71-year-old multimillionaire who affects open-necked designer shirts; a Jewish atheist philosopher who claims he can tell whether you are fascist, religious or “of the old left wing” – he means Marxist – by which of his (many) books you dislike. He’s a film-maker, a bon vivant, whose critics call him “narcissistic …
The Virus in the Age of Madness
BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY
(YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 128 pp, £10.99)
Tablet bookshop price £9.90 • Tel 020 7799 4064
BHL, as he’s known, is an enfant terrible. He’s a handsome 71-year-old multimillionaire who affects open-necked designer shirts; a Jewish atheist philosopher who claims he can tell whether you are fascist, religious or “of the old left wing” – he means Marxist – by which of his (many) books you dislike. He’s a film-maker, a bon vivant, whose critics call him “narcissistic … a king of troublemakers, a total egocentric”. He revels in the strong reactions he provokes; they’ve made him the most widely-read intellectual in France. So of course he had to write about coronavirus. Quickly.
The resulting essay is “my assessment – not a statistical one, but one much more difficult to prepare of the blows dealt to our innermost metaphysics during this strange crisis”.
This quote from the Prologue is instructive because it encapsulates neatly the problems you may find as you read further. Statistics are briskly sidelined in favour of “astonishment”. But whose? Is it our astonishment? Is astonishment the right way to describe our response to Covid-19? Is it BHL’s personal response? “Innermost metaphysics?”, what are those?
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