Jean-François Revel

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Jean-François Revel (Marseille, France, January 19, 1924 – April 30, 2006 in Kremlin-Bicêtre) was a French politician, journalist, author, prolific philosopher and member of the Académie française since June 1998. He was born Jean-François Ricard, but later adopted his pseudonym Revel as his legal surname. 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^{[citations needed]}.

Portrait taken in 1999

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.

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: 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 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 latter book, Revel criticised those Europeans who argued that the United States had brought about 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 her own self-interest, is also acting in the interest of us Europeans and in the interests of many other countries, threatened, or already subverted and ruined, by terrorism."

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.

[edit] 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

[edit] Quotations

"... 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