Alain Finkielkraut

Alain Finkielkraut is a Philosophe, writer and Essayiste French born with Paris the June 30th 1949.

Biography

Former student of the National university of Saint-Cloud (where it entered in 1969), aggregate of modern Letters and holder of a control in philosophy, he is the only son of an off-set Polish Jewish leather dealer with Auschwitz.

In the imaginary Jew (1981), it questions the identity of the Jews of his generation, atheists and born after the War, as well as the history of this memory which always implies to keep a distance, without indifference nor identification.

Publication of the Defeat of the thought in 1987 mark a turning in its work and the beginning of a major criticism of the “cruelty of the modern world”, which fits in the right wire of Hannah Arendt to which it does not cease referring.

He intervened at the time of many contemporary events. It of the first to be opposed to the rebirth of the dream of Large a Serbia on the ruins of the ex- Yugoslavia ( Comment can one was one be Croatian? , 1992) and this in a rather hostile climate, the official position of the France and its president François Mitterrand being at the time definitely pro-Serb.

He is the author of many works on the memory, modernity or the contemporary culture where it defends the concept of identity, the idea of transmission and the spirit of humanities.

He teaches the general culture and the “History of the ideas” to the Polytechnic school, where he is professor at the Humanités department and social sciences (HSS).

He is founding member, with Benny Levy and Bernard-Henri Levy, of the Institut of Studies Lévinassiennes to Jerusalem.

He presents a weekly radio broadcast of talks, Répliques , on France culture since 1987. He also animated a time an emission of opinion, Which Lives , on the Radio of the Jewish community (RCJ) until June 2006.

In 1994, it was made knight of the Légion of honor.

Work

The criticism of modernity is the wire which traverses its work.

Alain Finkielkraut defines his work thus: “I initially seek to draw with light the Métaphysique, i.e. the fundamental report/ratio with the being which appears in the sensitivity, ways of acting, of making, manners, practices characteristic of our time. ”

New disorder in love

the work which returned it celebrates the New disorder in love writes in 1977 with Pascal Bruckner attacks the “myth of the sexual Révolution” which would result from May 1968 and the theories of Gilles Deleuze and Guattari, of Debord and of the Situationnistes. Against Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, which according to the reading of Finkielkraut and Bruckner, denies the love or, in any case, affirm that the love, as an abstracted value, would be a “wretched” thing (in the New disorder in love), Finkielkraut and Bruckner affirm a contrario the existence of the love and its impossible reform: “the love does not lend itself to the revolution”. They see the women like the victims of this ideology.

In the wisdom of the love (1984), it takes as a starting point the work of Emmanuel Lévinas and questions the collective experiments of our time and the report/ratio with the Other in the individual life.

Rehabilitation of Péguy

Mécontemporain, Charles Péguy, reader of the modern world (1992) wants to be a rehabilitation of Péguy, whose work according to Finkielkraut is too often considered to be useless because preserving. “The hour came, if we want to include/understand our time, to raise forty, of reading Péguy, reinstating in the intellectual city the great poetic and critical thought which announces " a panmuflery without limites" and sees stinging " a world not only which makes jokes, but which makes only jokes, and which makes all the jokes, which makes joke of tout." ” (the author). Indeed Péguy, contrary to this “easy universalism” about which Jean-Claude Milner speaks, written “I do not want that the other is the same one, I want that the other is different. It is in Babel that was confusion, known as God, this time that the man wanted to make the malignant one”.

Critical of modernity

the Defeat of the thought (1987): After Sigmund Freud under the auspices of which is written this book, it is a question of analyzing it Malayan in the culture, which is growing. “Because the culture, it is the life associated with the thought But today it is current to name cultural activities from where the thought is absent. ” Whereas Freud saw in contradictions of civilization the causes of this inevitable faintness which falls down on the men, Finkielkraut, denounces the dead end of the “cultural whole to him” which confuses according to him any activity with a fact of culture and the policy of the “cultural whole” of the Minister for the culture of the time (Jack Lang). In correspondence he considers that “the School follows this same slope which destroys it”.

Ingratitude, conversation over our time (1999), dialog with Antoine Robitaille. “To untie the being of the heritage, is one, as believes it our time, more lucid, more open and off? Here is the question which this quiet conversation endeavors to answer. ” Topics of the book: “small nations, the destiny of the languages, transmission, love of the world, multiculturalism, the death of admiration - and its subject: art to inherit or what it remains about it at the awkward age of the radical democracy. ” (extracted the presentation of the author)

In one time of ingratitude as ours where “What characterizes our time, it is, like noted it deeply Hans Jonas, the almost compulsive nature of progress. ”, Alain Finkielkraut considers that, obnubilated by the ideology of the change, the movement, and animated by the phantasm of a finally free and autonomous modernity because removed from the burden of his deaths cumbersome, the contemporaries would have lost any report/ratio with the tradition, any concept of heritage.

“For twenty years, Alain Finkielkraut, has not ceased looking further into the same question, philosophical and political, of the memory and the relationship between tradition and modernity. Between the impossible lapse of memory and the injunction to commemorate, he always refuses to choose. ” ( Humanity )

In the Imperfect one of the present one deals still with exchange between the observation of the events and the continuation of the concerns which one can be those of Alain Finkielkraut: the defense of secularity; the defense of a republican School; a certain idea of the school and culture where the ideal of générationnelle transmission, in time, should prevail on that of communication between contemporaries, in the present and then also, the concern - recovery of one of the topic-keys of the thought heideggérienne - caused by the proliferation of the technique. The privilege of the present which characterizes the modern societies, as well as their lightness not to want to wonder about the questions of the technique, find the interrogation of Finkielkraut on the heritage, the transmission, the report/ratio with the tradition.

Us others, modern: Four lessons (2005). The book is thus presented by the author:

“With what Descartes does it determine us? As lately as yesterday, it was possible to answer: to return to us methodically, polytechniquement Masters of all things to relieve the fate of the men and to make their life more pleasant. But here that realities born of the philosophy of the modern man are ingénient to contradict the ambitions of this philosophy, to transform its promises into threats, to function for themselves. It became difficult to oppose, without another form of lawsuit, calculations of the reason to darkness of the superstition because the processes which the reason unchains do not have anything reasonable. It is this paradox, it is this philosophical surprise reserved for philosophy, it is this shock of modernity by itself which I wanted inlassablement to explore and question in the lessons that one will read. ”

Us others, modern wants to be a development on various problems of the time. In these four lessons, it examines the various aspects, positive or criticizable, of modernity. It stresses contradictions of technical rationality and the modern reason, as them lead to create “processes which do not have anything reasonable”.

Finkielkraut was interested in the interior reversal of very different personalities, Roland Barthes or Vassili Grossman. Each one in its time and its history, is France of the Glorious Thirty, for one or the Soviet Union Stalinist, for the other, lived one paradigmatic moment of modernity and made an also exemplary experiment of life. They are these painful, and singular experiments, - because for Barthes it was that of died of his/her mother, and for Grossman, the discovery of the camps -, which have them, through the traumatism and the loss, released of the duty to be modern. Finkielkraut shows how they were, through experiments of mourning, returned to the truth of their condition of human beings, across the presumption of modernity with regard to the past and across the belief to have to adhere to their time. Becoming aware that they were surviving , they thus discovered their responsibility with regard to the future, through the assumption of responsibility of the past. Against the compulsive and so modern tendency to the liquidation of the past, it is of its conservation which it from there will try to make so that the human ones that we are can still have a world. This concept of world which comes from Heidegger, via Hannah Arendt, is synonymous with a livable world for the human ones and so that it is not the “immonde” which feared and about which Lacan spoke.

All in all, after the theorists of the École of Frankfurt to which it is attached by the criticism of the reason as it insanity produces, after Heidegger and Hannah Arendt of which it takes again the warning statements about the destruction of the world, after Leo Strauss turning over to Old, after Nietzsche also, of which it shares the critic of the contemporary nihilism, Finkielkraut is classified among the thinkers who continue the “criticism of modernity”. He was regarded as a defender of the republic, adopting from this point of view the criticism of the democracy of mass, and his thought defined as preserving of the values of the tradition, like Hannah Arendt. The debates in this connection relate to this point of knowing how to consider the relationship between the two poles, that is to say the criticism of modernity and a position which could be known as preserving.

The wire which traverses all the work of Finkielkraut is the criticism of modernity.

He also criticizes what he considers being of the illusions of “the thought resulting from 68” and accompanying it. Thus Guy Overflow and the situationnists, Gilles Deleuze and Guattari, and more generally the Progressionism which would work the vision of the policy and the history, distance derived from Hegel.

This criticism of modernity always doubles at his place of a defense of the culture, of a defense of the freedom and free thought, constitutive of the democracy and inspired by philosophy (Spinoza, Locke, more particularly) as well as certain political, republican values, resulting from the philosophical tradition, that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in particular, against those of the company of mass as them threaten the democracy, as of others before him developed of Nietzsche to Leo Strauss and Heidegger while passing by Jacob Talmon, etc His reference to Tocqueville is on this explicit point. Its criticism of modernity fits in the heritage of work of Leo Strauss, itself raises Heidegger, like was Hannah Arendt.

He was opposed with constancy to the “thought of the period 68”, for his libertarian aspect, and also with the versions evolutionist and economist of the Marxisme, ainsiqu' with the ideology of the progressionism in which he detects an illusion. Alain Finkielkraut wants to clarify what he regards as generally accepted ideas and false beliefs, on which according to him the modernity rests and of which he intends to denounce the dangers.

progressionism, it is the idea that all is political, and that indeed one can reach a better world by a radical upheaval of the institutions, the revolution or the elimination of the malicious ones. The inaugural sentence of progressionism was written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “I hate the constraint like the source of all the evils of mankind. ” The evil is thus a reality political or economic, it is not any more one fact of nature. From where this amazing mission assigned with the policy: in finishing with the evil. Nourished this hope, the left progressist did not want to see the horrors made on its behalf. And when she saw them and ended up condemning Soviet Communism, it was to defer at once its Messianic impatience on Cuba or China. The left antitotalitaire, contrary, took as a starting point Soljenitsyne and by the dissidents to denounce not only the difference between the communist ideal and reality, but also the danger of an ideal of final eradication of the evil. One could believe that the Berlin Wall involved in its fall the illusions of progressionism. It is the opposite which is true. The antitotalitarism disappeared at the same time as the totalitarian system.

Alain Finkielkraut criticizes certain illusions of left, i.e. of a revolutionary left with what he judges being his drifts (support of the Third World and driving multiculturalism with the relativism) from the point of view of a position which would be that of the left antitotalitaire.

Like Leo Strauss indeed, he thinks that the relativism leads to the Nihilisme. And, with Péguy and Arendt, he thinks that the destruction of the tradition leads to the destruction of the culture. However according to him, of our heritage, we are indebted and responsible for the future generations, like also theorized it Hans Jonas. And if we do not have the right to destroy it, they is because we are only the holders, not the owners.

Inspired by the writings of Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Lévinas but also Charles Péguy, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Philippe Muray and Milan Kundera, it analyze the illusions of modernity and the embrittlement of the social link. It is caught some regularly, in particular in the defeat of the thought , with the cultural “relativism”, according to which all the cultural beliefs, manners and inventions are worth.

Comment can one be Croatian?

Comment can one be Croatian? (1992): The author tries to answer a political question and philosophical: “Why the nightmare of the 20th century did survive the fall of the Berlin Wall? ”

He collaborates in many reviews of which the reviews Argument and Égards . He is among the first intellectuals to be engaged for a Western intervention in ex-Yugoslavia. It also defended the right of Croatia to the secession against Large the Serbia, in the name of the principle of the defense of the “small nations” which are a pledge of freedom.

Work on the anti-semitism

After the imaginary Jew where he explains why the descendants of the victims do not have any title to present themselves as victims which they are not, and in which he analyzes the problem that the temptation of the identification constitutes, he still writes

a voice comes from the other bank (2000): “That to make, now that the memory of Auschwitz does not have any more declared enemies, to withdraw the exercise of it from his/her off-hand or worrying friends? What to make to avoid at the same time the crispation and handling? ” a text on the memory, in the wire of the imaginary Jewish : how not to forget, whereas nobody has the right to be identified (with the victims), how to transmit without adapting a tradition which, universal, does not belong to anybody in particular?

In the name of the other, reflection on the anti-semitism which comes (2003) is a test what it perceives like the rise of a new form of anti-semitism. In the name of the other is a call with the responsibility and the awakening of reality: according to Finkielkraut, the insults anti-semites are not isolated facts. But analysis of the front door author all on the evolution of the anti-semitism: “yesterday, Celine or Drumont reproached to the Jews their cosmopolitanism, their lack of fatherland; today, it is their overflow of fatherland which the anti-semites reproach them, their attachment at a community and a country”.

Quotation extracted the work: “One needs courage to carry a kippa in these wild places which one calls quoted sensitive and in the Parisian subway: the Zionism is criminalisé by always more intellectuals, the teaching of the Shoah appears impossible at the moment even where it becomes obligatory, the discovery of Antiquity delivers the Hebrews to the uproar of the children, the insult " salt juif" made its reappearance (in Verlan) in almost all the courses of school. The Jews have the heavy heart and, for the first time since the war, they are afraid”.

In In the name of the Other. Reflections on the anti-semitism which comes it worries about resurgence in France of an anti-semitism “of left” and “progressist”. What does not prevent it from criticizing the French Jews which do not feel French with whole share and do not accept the rules of the game republican.

After the series of acts revealing the resurgence of a new wave of anti-semitism and the antione, in particular in 2000-2001, Alain written Finkielkraut:

“This time, they are the potential victims of the exclusion and the racism which are the spearheads of this violent anti-semitism. For the first time, we are in the same boat. It is a judéophobie which borrows its sales leaflet from the apocalyptic anti-semitism of Europe of the Thirties but which nourishes exploitation of the israélo-Palestinian conflict, as one saw in Durban. We undergo the repercussions of this phenomenon in certain suburbs whose Bin Laden is explicitly the hero. Professors - as representatives of the Republic, France in what it has of better - and the Jews are aimed at the same time. There is a war against the firemen, a war against the professors, a war against the Jews. When there is a Jewish professor, it is an aggravating circumstance; he carries two yellow stars. But let us not forget that there is a yellow star of the professor. The government is very guilty not to defend the Republic when it is attacked, under pretext that it is it by other people that those of which one with the practice. But one would be wrong to completely isolate the demonstrations anti-semites from a vaster movement whose Jews are not the only targets. It is not the moment to disunite us France by showing it since the hatred of which we are the object aims also France. ”

The school question

It on several occasions positioned like taking the defense of the school of the Republic against teaching reforms which it considers rather harmful. Thus, he declares in an interview given to the Express train (March 7th 2002): " When you worry about problems of orthography in a primary class, the teacher answers you: “I know, but I am not sure to finish the program because of the discoveries”! The price to be paid for these new activities, introduced by the reform, whereas nobody asked them, is a generalized delay of the fundamental trainings, such as the control of the langue". In this standpoint, it falls under the line of Hannah Arendt, which is attacked in a test become famous, with the American educational context of the Années 1960, which organizes according to her, the failure of the training of the children thanks to teaching methods which she criticizes very highly and of which she dismounts the faults of reasoning on which these methods rest. These are these criticisms that Alain Finkielkraut shares and which it quotes, to fight against reforms in France that it considers it likely to produce the same effects.

In an article of the newspaper Le Monde (" The cuculturelle revolution with the école" , May 18th 2000), it summarizes its positions thus: " Jaurès wanted that the children of the people receive a culture equivalent to that which the children of the middle-class received. The parents educated and warned of the middle-class dream today that their children profit from a culture equivalent to that which they received and they are ready to put the price at it. They use of all the stratagems, all the subterfuges and all the removals to find an elementary school, then a college, then a college - deprived or public - where the communication did not détrôné the transmission, where the emulation is not taboos, where the idea of merit is regarded a democratic asset and not as a scandal for the democracy, where one does not lean with misery to make shame with the thought, where other dimensions of reality are taken into account that social environment and other dimensions of time that the topicality, where the difference between information and knowledge is not fallen in the lapse of memory, where secularity was not overcome by the idolatry of the consoles".

He is consulted by the governments on the school questions, for example the Thélot Commission. Its position on this subject is that of the defense of the “value of the study”, against the teaching theories, which he denounces like playing a part in the aggravation of the inequalities.

In 2003, it has devoted to questions of teaching current work, To teach letters today , where one notes his defense of the republican idea, levelling and émancipatrice, with origin of school and in which one finds his analyzes of the causes which put in crisis teaching, in particular the priggish pedantry of a certain language hyper-technique, which makes the school uneven and moves away it from its objectives.

Its position on the school is thus summarized by Elisabeth of Fontenay, philosophical ( Le Monde , February 3rd 2006): “a passion of this school to the Frenchwoman, of which it notes with despair that she did not know to be offered to the children disadvantaged like a real chance of integration, and that she functions more correctly only for the children of the middle-class men. ”

Radio broadcasts

Alain Finkielkraut animates each week an emission on France Culture, Répliques , in which it receives guests who it makes dialog, often presenting of the marked oppositions, it introduces a third voice, his, in counterpart. The emission gave place with various publications to the editions of the Tricorn, with Mona Ozouf, Pierre Manent, Philippe Meyer, Jacques Julliard, Pascal Bruckner, Jean-Claude Guillebaud, Tzvetan Todorov, Gerard Israel, etc Premier volume of a series, what can the literature gathers a selection of the best emissions Répliques among those devoted to the literature. They are gathered by the set of themes of the capacity of the literature: into which direction the writers do change the world, either as Jean-Paul Sartre within the meaning of the political commitment heard it, but with the direction where they reorganize our perception of the world, the beings, the values, the present or the future? Through the literature, it is our existence which is changed.

Another volume, To teach the Letters today (Tricorn), shows the emissions on the questions of teaching to keep of it trace, and in addition work in complement of that of the collective Sauver the Letters , one of the most important defenders, with Sauver mathematics , of a levelling school whose principal value would be the study.

Controversies

Polemics around the war in Yugoslavia

During the Wars of Yugoslavia, at the sides of Bernard-Henri Levy, it is with the avant-garde of a face of defense of the Croats then Bosnians, sensitizing the French public opinion with their fate It criticizes the film Underground of Emir Kusturica, when this one receives the palm of gold to Cannes: he denounces a pro-Serb work and shows his author to be nostalgic Large Serbia. He writes as follows: “By rewarding Underground, the jury of Cannes believed to distinguish a creator with plentiful imagination. In fact, it honoured a servile illustrator and slap-with-the eye of criminal stereotypes; it carried to naked the version rock'n'roll, postmodern, décoiffante, connected, americanized, and turned to Belgrade, of Serb propaganda more the untruest driveller and”. It will be learned later that he had not seen film, that he however criticized as well on the bottom as on the form.

Finkielkraut qualifies its position and its theses the “anti-modern ones”, because of its critic of the Progressisme, the “right-with-the hommism” and of what it calls, following Emile Durkheim, the “religion of humanity”, for which it estimates that the immoderate compassion of the other deteriorates the political reflection.

Finkielkraut and communautarism

In 2002, Alain Finkielkraut makes these remarks: “Here it is the true shock of civilizations: the Occident lives under the mode of criticism, and the Muslim world - laic elites included/understood - under that of paranoia. ”. The same year, it is shown by the sociologist Daniel Lindenberg to be a “néo-reactionary”. The work of Daniel Lindenberg is highly denounced by the people whom it aims as well as many intellectuals who point the lack of rigor of the concept of “Nouveaux reactionaries” itself.

In his criticism of modernity, Alain Finkielkraut is caught some with the Communautarisme, which according to him threatens the company when the idea of Nation is surbedded. Its standpoint fustigates the Moslem communautarism, and a renewal of anti-semitism that it associates with it wrongly or rightly. Its remarks sometimes started controversies.

May 24th, 2002, Alain Finkielkraut comments on the work of the journalist Italian Oriana Fallaci, the Rage and Pride , with the very polemical and hostile contents with the Moslems, in these terms:

“Oriana Fallaci with the badge deserves not to be let intimidate by the virtuous lie. It spills the beans, it endeavors to look at reality opposite. She refuses the narcissism pénitentiel which makes the Occident guilty of that of which it is victim. She takes with the word the speech and the notes of the adversaries. But, as it has some large on the heart, it goes too far. She writes with of Pataugas. She yields to generalization. She does not resist temptation to lock up those which she calls the wire of Allah in their bad gasoline. It is what will make it possible the virtue to take again the hand and Télérama to denounce the lepenisation of the spirits in Europe contaminated by the populist “virus”. ”

the position of Alain Finkielkraut starts a polemic: it is shown to make the bed of the islamophobie and to sink in the reaction. The philosopher thus emits a corrective measure in which it specifies that Oriana Fallaci " succumbs to racism " , and that he is not the enemy of the Moslems.

In 2003, Alain Finkielkraut was shown by Tariq Ramadan to show identity Communautarisme. Ramadan required in an article diffused by the European Social forum that the Jewish intellectuals " condemn the policy of Israël" with the same firmness which is awaited Moslem intellectuals for the policy of states like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. According to Tariq Ramadan, Alain Finkielkraut would not be any more one intellectual universalist defending the universal human rights, but would develop analyzes communautarists, which would lead it to take contestable positions. Alain Finkielkraut precisely regards Tariq Ramadan as the type even of the representative of the communautarism, and he shows it to have written a text with the relents anti-semites (in Le Figaro , October 31st, 2003). Other intellectuals (Bernard-Henri Levy or Andre Glucksman) made the same reproach with Tariq Ramadan. The article of Ramadan was refused by the press (Le Monde, Libération) before circulating on Internet. Independently of this polemic, Eric Hazan, in the collective work Anti-semitism, the intolerable blackmail, Israel-Palestine, a French business (the Discovery 2003), reproached Alain Finkielkraut a loss of objectivity on this subject, and sees in him “the Star Academy of the French Zionism”.

The newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique enters a proliferation of amalgams and “skids”: its remarks on the team of France of football, on the urban riots of November 2005, or its recent remarks on the Jews and the multiculturalism (“there is no future for the Jews in a multicultural company”), throw the disorder on a sometimes qualified thought processe of communautarist, even of racist. Certain intellectuals, journalists or writers like Mona Chollet or Denis Sieffert, see in the remarks of Alain Finkielkraut “ the history of a shipwreck. The shipwreck of a thought which is not any more one so much it loses foot with what, however, should found it: reality ”.

Alain Finkielkraut indeed opposes his designs of nation and republic to the Multiculturalisme and the interbreeding, Israel opponent with a certain “creolity” which it presents like harmful or which it considers instrumentalized with respect to Israel designed like a “non-métissé state”. With being caught some with the multiculturalism, Alain Finkielkraut would have yielded according to his detractors to a certain communautarism itself. Thus, the sociologist Michel Wieviorka qualified Alain Finkielkraut of “republicano-communautarist”:

“It preaches the republican idea one day on France-Culture and, the following day, in Haaretz or on Jewish radios, it is presented in the form of an intellectual taking part in the Jewish world”. Wieviorkia estimates thus that Alain Finkielkraut “belonged to this whole of intellectuals who, for 25 years, have proposed a outraged vision and " républicaniste" republican idea. Blow, its remarks became more and more spell-bindings and moved away from realities. They were contradicted by the operation even of the French institutions. By permanently hold a speech praising the promises of the Republic, whereas these same promises are not held for everyone, Finkielkraut was locked up in a logic spell-binding, which can lead only on extreme remarks and the call to police repression” (Nouvel Observateur, 11/25/2005).

In a Discussion with the ethnologist Jeanne Favret-Saada Alain Finkielkraut answers that it does not take part in " the enthousiasme" for the multiculturalism which appears to him to raise of the “relativism”. Its position consists in defending the cogency of the universalism which does not have anything incompatible with the recognition cultural diversity. “It is (...) with this tare of the cultural relativism that it would be necessary to be attacked, and not, in the name of the Human rights, with all that other companies could produce one day. To test a visceral and political attachment with the Human rights, should not return to us unable to include/understand the companies which neither invented them nor practiced. ” Alain Finkielkraut carries out consecutive corrections with the caused polemics, where it is defended to have had racist theses.

Matter on the riots in the suburbs in 2005

Following the riots of 2005 in the French suburbs, Alain Finkielkraut, even give an interview to the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz which introduces to it Alain Finkielkraut as being “ a deviating voice, very deviating. Mainly because it does not emanate from the mouth of a member of the National front of Jean-Marie Le Pen, but of that of a philosopher formerly considered as one of the spokesperson most eminent of the French left ”. Alain Finkielkraut has held of the remarks which were considered racist, by Mrap at least.

Alain Finkielkraut denounced the assembly of this interview by " journalists who wanted to him nuire".

The Elisabeth philosopher of Fontenay then takes his defense with arguments testifying to his indignation in front of what she regards as a calumny:

“In front of such an outburst of hatred, one can only worry and ask how some makers of opinion could come to this terrifying reduction, this promotion of a choice of words feverishly marked and sometimes falsified with the statute of final revelation on the major truth of a man. No doubt that holds with the place that Finkielkraut in the intellectual world occupies. Because this countryside will have made burst the permanent paradox which constitutes it. How to deny indeed that its capacity to be moved and to fight on all fronts, its manner sometimes embanking to expose its point of view, to hold up without prudence the dissension, impassion and exhaust the ones, antagonisent the others? With what is added, of course, reputation of media philosopher that one made him. However, this too easy designation translates an ignorance of the philosophical place and policy where it is located. This reader of Hannah Arendt, which attempts to think the event, does not scorn to use, each time it of with the possibility, the media of his time. But what it brings there, it is all except a desire to allure, since, developing theses as hétérodoxes as lengthily meditated, it does not fear to face insulation and reprobation. ”

The passages having carried to controversy are in particular:

In France, one would like to reduce these riots to their social dimension, to see them like a revolt of the young people of the suburbs against their situation, against the discrimination from which they suffer, against unemployment. The problem is that the majority of these young people are Blacks or Arabs with a Moslem identity. Look at! In France there are also immigrants of which the situation is difficult - of the Chinese, the Vietnameses, the Portuguese - and they do not take share with the riots. This is why it is clear that this revolt is ethnic and religious .
people say that the French national team is admired by all because it is black-white-beur. In fact, the team of France east today black-black-black, which causes sniggers in all Europe.

Alain Finkielkraut known as " not to have controlled the formulation of the article" either that its translation and affirms that its remarks were " deformed by the journaliste". To the beginning of the year 2007, Alain Finkielkraut granted a long maintenance to the drafting of the site Grioo.com, Community site black, in which he is explained on his thought and tries to clarify this polemic.

As for the denunciation of the collapse of the school it is one of the main causes of what seemed to be a feature of the riots, that is to say their ethnic character: the poor being massively the children resulting from immigration, they are the demonstration of a failure of the school of the Republic. E. of Fontenay still explains it

Its detractors underline then the propensity of Alain Finkielkraut to hold of the remarks " douteux" then to excuse itself some with the reason of deformations and awkwardnesses.

It in addition pinned what it considers being the anti-semitism of Dieudonné, which illustrates according to him a new anti-semitism uttered in the name of the antiracism. Finkielkraut considering Dieudonné more dangerous than the FN for this reason:

“the principal spokesperson of this theology in France it is Dieudonné, it is him which is today the true owner of the anti-semitism in France, and not Front National. But in France, instead of fighting his speech, one precisely does what he asks: one changes the teaching of the colonial history and the history of slavery in the schools. One teaches there today the colonial history like an only negative history. One does not teach any more that the colonial project wanted to also educate, to bring civilization to the savages. One speaks only about the plundering and domination, attempts to make use. But makes of it that is what Dieudonné wants? It requires a “shoah” and for the Arabs and the Blacks, but if the shoah is put and slavery on the same plan then one is obliged to lie, because it was not a shoah. And it was not a crime against humanity because it was not only one crime. It was something of ambivalent. Thus it also of slavery is. It started well before the Occident. ”.

He denounces the new anti-semitism, that he considers an anti-semitism islamo-progressist, and affirms that the face antiracist exploded in France: Mrap does not fight any more against the anti-semitism, and Dieudonné preaches an anti-semitism in the name of one supposed defense of the Blacks.

References

Works

Books

To slow down, portemanteau words! (1979), Threshold.
new disorder in love (in collaboration with Pascal Bruckner) 1977
the imaginary Jew 1981, Threshold
future of a negation , 1982, Threshold
the wisdom of the love (1984), Gallimard.
the Defeat of the thought. Paris , Gallimard, 1987. Coll “White”. can
the Vain Memory, of the Crime Against Humanity (1989),
Comment one be Croatian? (1992)
lost humanity (1996). Paris, Threshold.
Mécontemporain. Charles Péguy, reader of the modern world . Paris, Gallimard, 1992. Coll “White”.
Ingratitude. Conversation over our time with Antoine Robitaille . Paris, Gallimard, 1999. Coll “White”.
a voice comes from the other bank (Gallimard, 2000)
Internet, worrying the extase (Thousand and One Nights, 2001): Writing with Paul Soriano.
Comment can one be Croatian? (Gallimard, 1992): The author tries to answer a political question and philosophical: “Why the nightmare of the 20th century did survive the fall of the Berlin Wall? ”
a voice which comes from the other bank . Paris, Gallimard, 2000. Coll “White”.
vain memory: crime against humanity , Gallimard, 1992
To think the XXe century , Polytechnic school, 2000
Of the men and the animals , Tricorn, 2000
the imperfect one of the present. Short parts . Paris, Gallimard, 2002.
To teach the letters today , Tricorn, 2003
beats of the world. In collab. with Peter Sloterdijk . Paris, Pauvert, 2003.
In the name of the Other. Reflections on the anti-semitism which comes . Paris, Gallimard, 2003. : test on the rise of a new form of anti-semitism.
Us others, modern: Four lessons (Ellipse, 2005) - Price Guizot-Apple-brandy 2006
what can the literature of Alain Finkielkraut, with Mona Ozouf, Pierre Manent, Suzanne Julliard (collective), ED. Stock, coll “Tests”, October 2006, 295 p., ISBN: 2-234-05914-3
Talks on secularity. With Benny Levy (Verdier, 2006)
what the literature (Stock, 2006) can
illustrated Petit fictionnaire: the words which miss with the dictionary , Points Threshold, 2006
What France (Stock, 2007): a series of discussions with French intellectuals on France, the French identity, the question of the nation and post-national, etc…
the Quarrel of the school , Stock, 2007
Discussion with Jeanne Favret-Saada: http://terrain.revues.org/document3013.html

Articles

Jews vis-a-vis the religion of humanity. The Debate.
Love and Utopia. Interview carried out by Andree Fortin (Sleepless night, No February 12th, th and th - March 1984, p. 46)
the direction of the heritage. Discussion with Alain Finkielkraut. Label France, No 38, January 2000
Promises and threats of science. “Counterparts”, France-Culture. Transcription of the emission of February 17th, 1996. Alain Finkielkraut receives Claude Allègre and François Lurçat (Alloy, No 27,1996)
Hystérie and heritage (Release, 22 February 23rd, 1997): reflection in connection with the business of “without papers” in France
the policy is a risk to be run. Discussion with Alain Finkielkraut. Realized by Valerie Lanctuit. Glances, No December 30th, th and th 1997
the world of hatred and the slogans, Le Monde, December 12th, 1997
to finish some with the postures morals. Maintenance. Le Figaro Magazine, April 10th, 1998
the cuculturelle revolution at the school, Le Monde, May 18th, 2000
memory and its double. Discussion with Stephan Floccari. Humanity, May 18th, 2000
gregarious France, Le Monde, June 6th, 2000
I acknowledge any matter of the “business Renaud Camus”, Le Monde, July 7th, 2000
“the Holy Spirit against spirit of time: a homage to Joseph Ratzinger”, Regards, number IX, autumn 2005, pp. 15-18.
I assume (remarks collected Sylvain Cypel and Sylvie Kauffmann) Le Monde, November 27th, 2005

On Finkielkraut:

Christian Authier, “Alain Finkielkraut or this present which do not pass”, the independent Opinion, No 2510, May 10th, 2002

See too

External bonds

Institute of studies lévinasiennes, rested by Alain Finkielkraut with Benny Levy and Bernard-Henri Levy
Many texts and emissions of Alain Finkielkraut
contradicted charges carried against him: Site of the emission Counterparts
America-Europe, which dialog after the Atlantic fault? Video online of a debate Finkielkraut/John MacArthur, editor of Harper' S, organized in Montreal in 2005
" Alain Finkielkraut, buffoon of the roi"
“a philosopher, one time, a rout” by Yannick Rolandeau

Criticisms of its books

'' In the name of the Other '', interview, the Express train

; by the magazine Lira

'' the mécontemporain ''

'' Ingratitude ''

'' lost Humanity ''

'' Us other modern ''

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