Maidenly moderation, Colin Welch, Spectator, August 4th, 1984 Commentaire d’Henri Astier sur l’article : Cet article du Spectator rend compte des bonnes feuilles de la traduction anglaise de Comment les démocraties finissent, parues dans Commentary en juin 1984. L’auteur, Colin Welch, n’analyse pas en profondeur la pensée de Revel, mais reprend à son compte ses […]
Mark C. Molesky reviews Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline by Richard A. Posner (Harvard University Press, 2002). Published in Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America’s Disastrous Relationship with France (2004). I can remember with great clarity the book that more than any other haunted the years of my adolescence: the French journalist/ philosopher […]
Revel’s Uncommon Insight by Apoorva Shah, Thursday, April 1, 2010 On La Grande Parade / Last Exit to Utopia
OpenDemocracy, 4 May 2006 Jean-François Revel, who died on Sunday 30 April at the age of 82, was not just the grand old man of French political literature; he was a leading exponent of freedom in the tradition of Raymond Aron, Alexis de Tocqueville and Montesquieu. Revel, initially a philosopher, made his name in 1957 […]
Cunning like a heldgehog. In memory of Jean-François Revel, man of letters, man of integrity, friend Par Simon Leys The Australian Literary Review, 1 August 2007 G K. CHESTERTON, whose formidable mind drew inspiration from a vast culture – literary, political, poetical, historical and philosophical – once received the naive praise of a lady: “Oh, […]
Paru dans le Times Literary Supplement le 30 novembre 2001, by Henri Astier. Reviewed books: – Régis Debray, L’Emprise, Gallimard, 146p, FF75, ISBN 2-07-075861-3 – Régis Debray, I.F. suite et fin, Gallimard, 190p, FF85, ISBN 2-07-076069-3 – Tzvetan Todorov, Mémoire du mal, Tentation du bien, Enquête sur le siècle, Robert Laffont, 356p, FF149, ISBN 2-221-09079-9 […]
Critique parue dans le Times Literary Supplement le 5 février 1993, par Henri Astier. Books reviewed: – Bernard Lacroix, Jacques Lagroye, eds, Le président de la République, usages et genèses d’une institution, Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 416p., 180F, ISBN 2 7246-0613-2. – Jean-François Revel, L’Absolutisme inefficace, ou contre le présidentialisme […]
Critique du Regain démocratique, paru dans le Times Literary Supplement le 28 août 1992, par Henri Astier. Half-a-dozen essays written in the 1970s and 1980s established Jean-François Revel, a philosopher/journalist with a zest for anti-Gaullist pamphleteering, as France’s leading anti-communist intellectual. In best-sellers with dire titles like The Totalitarian Temptation or How Democracies Perish, Revel […]
Critique de L’Histoire de la philosophie occidentale, à l’occasion de sa réédition, parue dans le Times Literary Supplement le 13 mai 1994, par Henri Astier. This one-volume edition of Jean-Francois Revel’s two-part Histoire de la philosophie occidentale (first published in the late 1960s) covers thinkers from the pre-Socratics to Kant. It is a jargon-free narrative […]
By Henri Astier Pierre Boncenne, Pour Jean-François Revel: Un esprit libre Plon, 343 pages, 21 euros, ISBN 2-259-19920-8 Pierre Boncenne has written the first book ever about Jean-François Revel. The fact that it was published after his death goes a long way towards proving its main point – the greatest French thinker of his age […]
Hommage à Jean-François Revel dans l’émission Du Grain à moudre du 2 janvier 2007. Les invités sont: – Pierre Boncenne. – Jean-François Sirinelli. – Alain Besancon. – Jacques Julliard. Présentation par Brice Couturier. Durée de l’émission: 55 minutes Critiques de l’émission: Par Hoplite
First published in The Times Literary Supplement in September 1st, 2000 and untitled «Worse than Hitler». Jean François Revel, La grande parade, Essai sur la survie de l’utopie socialiste. Paris: Plon, 346p., F129 (€19,66) 2-259-19056-1 Reviewed by: Henri Astier Before the collapse of communism many people on the left in the west took a bleak […]
Presentation on Townhall.com
Par Henri Astier First time published in the Times Literary Supplement on the 18th of March, 2005 Version augmentée par rapport à celle publiée dans le TLS. Books reviewed: Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization, New York, Oxford University Press, 308p, $28, £19.99, ISBN 0-19-517025-3 Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works, New Haven and London, Yale […]
A study by reviewing three books on this topic, by Henri Astier. This article was published by the Times Literary Supplement on January 10, 2003 under the title “La maladie française”. Jean-François Revel, L’Obsession antiaméricaine, Son fonctionnement, ses causes, ses inconséquencesPlon, 302 p, 20 euros, ISBN 2-259-19449-4. (English version: Anti-Americanism) Philippe Roger, L’Ennemi américain, Généalogie […]
Spilling the Beans in Paris and London by Henri Astier. First time published in the Contemporary Review, in June 1994. Anglo-saxon readers don’t need to be reminded who George Orwell is, but a few words of introduction might help in the case of Jean-Francois Revel. A philosopher turned journalist, Revel has been one of France’s […]