How the French think : an affectionate portrait of an intellectual people PDF
Preview How the French think : an affectionate portrait of an intellectual people
How the French Think 9780465032495-text.indd 1 6/30/15 12:06 PM 9780465032495-text.indd 2 6/30/15 12:06 PM How the French Think An Affectionate Portrait of an Intellectual People Sudhir Hazareesingh A Member of the Perseus Books Group New York 9780465032495-text.indd 3 6/30/15 12:06 PM Copyright © 2015 by Sudhir Hazareesingh Published by Basic Books A Member of the Perseus Books Group All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be re- produced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10107. Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chest- nut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected]. Designed by Jeff Williams Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hazareesingh, Sudhir. How the French think : an affectionate portrait of an intellectual people / Sudhir Hazareesingh. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-465-03249-5 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-0-465-06166-2 (e-book) 1. Philosophy, French. 2. France—Intellectual life. I. Title. B1801.H39 2015 194—dc23 2015022738 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 9780465032495-text.indd 4 6/30/15 12:06 PM For Karma, who makes everything beautiful 9780465032495-text.indd 5 6/30/15 12:06 PM 9780465032495-text.indd 6 6/30/15 12:06 PM CONTENTS Preface ix Introduction: A Yearning Toward Universality 1 chapter 1: The Skull of Descartes 19 chapter 2: Darkness and Light 39 chapter 3: Landscapes of Utopia 61 chapter 4: The Ideals of Science 87 chapter 5: To the Left, and to the Right 107 chapter 6: The Sum of Their Parts 131 interlude: New Paths to the Present 155 chapter 7: Freedom and Domination 161 chapter 8: Writing for Everybody 187 chapter 9: The End of History 211 chapter 10: The Closing of the French Mind 235 conclusion: Anxiety and Optimism 257 Acknowledgments 271 Notes 273 Index 323 9780465032495-text.indd 7 7/15/15 2:09 PM 9780465032495-text.indd 8 6/30/15 12:06 PM PREFACE I began observing French public life as an adolescent in my native island of Mauritius in the 1970s, when I was drawn to the country’s culture, history, and politics by a variety of influences. First, my secondary school, the Royal College Curepipe, where we were served a copious diet of French classics, from Molière and Racine to Saint-Exupéry, Gide, “hell is other people” Sartre, and the inevitable (and already somewhat irksome) Camus. The family setting was essential, too, notably because of my father, Kissoonsingh, a Cambridge- and Sorbonne-trained historian who worked as principal private secretary to the prime minister of Mauritius, Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam. He cultivated close ties with politico-literary elites in France and Africa, in particular the Gaullist writer and France’s first minister of culture André Malraux and the Senegalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor. Another inspiring figure was my brother, Sandip, a devotee of Napoleonic history, thanks to whom I plunged with relish into all aspects of the emperor’s legend. There was also the French cultural attaché in Mauritius, Antoine Colonna, a close friend of the family who was a native of Corsica (and thus a living link with the mythical birthplace of the emperor). Antoine provided us with subscriptions to French weekly periodicals such as Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Point, and L’Express, enabling me to remain closely attuned to French political and intellectual life. The French like to divide things into two, and the bifurca- tion of the time was between those who gathered around the liberal president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and those who favored the left-wing parties of the Union de la Gauche. My sympathies were very much with the latter, espe- cially with the Stalinist French communists, whose valiant past and unrelent- ing dogmatism appealed to my adolescent sensibility. I absorbed the writings [ ix ] 9780465032495-text.indd 9 6/30/15 12:06 PM
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