Pascal Bruckner

Pascal Bruckner
Pascal Bruckner (2009)
Born	(1948-12-15) 15 December 1948 Paris, France
Occupation	Writer, essayist

Pascal Bruckner (French: [bʁyknɛʁ]; born 15 December 1948 in Paris) is a French writer, one of the "New Philosophers" who came to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s. Much of his work has been devoted to critiques of French society and culture.

Biography

Bruckner attended Jesuit schools in his youth.^[1]

After studies at the universities of Paris I and Paris VII Diderot, and then at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Bruckner became maître de conférences at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris and a contributor to the Nouvel Observateur.

Bruckner began writing in the vein of the nouveaux philosophes or New Philosopers. He published Parias (Parias), Lunes de Fiel (adapted as a film by Roman Polanski) and Les voleurs de beauté (The Beauty Stealers) (Prix Renaudot in 1997). Among his essays are La tentation de l'innocence ("The Temptation of Innocence," Prix Médicis in 1995) and, famously, Le Sanglot de l'Homme blanc (The Tears of the White Man), an attack on narcissistic and destructive policies intended to benefit the Third World, and more recently "La tyrannie de la pénitence" (2006), an essay on the West's endless self-criticism, translated as "The Tyranny of Guilt" (2010).

From 1992 to 1999, Bruckner was an active supporter of the Croatian, Bosnian and Kosovar causes against Serbia, and he supported the NATO bombings of Serbia in 1999. In 2003, he supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein, but later he criticized the mistakes of the U.S. army and the use of torture in Abu Graib and Guantanamo.

Le Sanglot de l'Homme blanc

Le Sanglot de l'Homme blanc (The White Man's Tears), published by the Éditions le Seuil in May 1983, was a controversial opus. The author describes what he sees as the anti-Western and pro-Third-World sentimentalism of some of the Left in the West. The essay had an influence on a whole trend of thought, especially on Maurice Dantec and Michel Houellebecq. The title is a variation on Kipling's "White Man's Burden".

Criticism of multiculturalism

Bruckner's polemic stance against multiculturalism has kindled an international debate.^[2] In an article titled "Enlightenment Fundamentalism or Racism of the Anti-Racists?", he defended Ayaan Hirsi Ali in particular against the criticisms of Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash. According to Bruckner, modern philosophers from Heidegger to Gadamer, Derrida, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno have mounted a broad attack on the Enlightenment, claiming that "all the evils of our epoch were spawned by this philosophical and literary episode: capitalism, colonialism, totalitarianism."^[2] Bruckner agrees that the history of the twentieth century attests to the potential of modernity for fanaticism, but argues that the modern thought that issued from the Enlightenment proved capable of criticizing its own errors, and that "Denouncing the excesses of the Enlightenment in the concepts that it forged means being true to its spirit."^[2]

Books

• Parias: roman, Seuil, 1985, ISBN 978-2-02-008732-2.
• Lunes de fiel: roman, Seuil, 1981, ISBN 978-2-02-005856-8.
• Evil angels: a novel, Grove Press, 1987, ISBN 978-0-394-54138-9.
• Les voleurs de beauté: roman, B. Grasset, 1997.
• Le divin enfant: roman, Seuil, 1992, ISBN 978-2-02-013215-2.
• The Divine Child, Rupa & Co., 2005, ISBN 978-81-291-0302-4.
• La tentation de l'innocence, Grasset, 1995, ISBN 978-2-253-13927-0.
• Temptation of innocence. Algora Publishing. 2000. ISBN 978-1-892941-56-5. 
• Le Sanglot de l'Homme blanc, Éditions du Seuil, 1983; Simon & Schuster, 1986, ISBN 978-0-02-904160-4.
• The Tears of the White Man: Compassion As Contempt, The Free Press, 1986, ISBN 978-0-02-904160-4.
• La tyrannie de la pénitence, Grasset, 2006, ISBN 978-2-246-64161-2.
• The Tyranny of Guilt. Translator Steven Rendall. Princeton University Press. 2010. ISBN 978-0-691-14376-7. 
• Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy. Translator Steven Rendall. Princeton University Press. 2011. ISBN 978-0-691-14373-6. 
• The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse: Save the Earth, Punish Human Beings,^[3] ISBN 9780745669762.

See also

• New Philosophers

Notes and references

External links

• The Asterix complex, interview with Pascal Bruckner at signandsight.com
• Pascal Bruckner at perlentaucher.de – das Kulturmagazin (German)
• Boycot Durban II By Pascal Bruckner, 16 June 2008
• Philosophy: Pushing the Limits. An Interview with Pascal Bruckner. Listen or download Bruckner interviewed by JK Fowler on February 26, 2011.