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News

News: March/April 2005

French Philo Savaged • Nature vs Nurture in Birds • Iris Murdoch Throws Light on Alzheimers’ • Pentagon Tried to Build ‘Love Bomb’ — News reports by Sue Roberts in London and Lisa Sangoi in New York

Charm Offensive

A blistering attack has been made recently on Bernard-Henri Levy, France’s highest-profile living philosopher. Investigative journalist Philippe Cohen has published a damning book called BHL – A Biography, in which he dissects both the man and his work. He accuses Levy of “over-simplifying any complex issue for mass-consumption, thereby impoverishing French intellectual debate and demonising any opposing points of view.” Cohen further claims that the ideas set out in the philosopher’s work French Ideology helped to accelerate the rise of France’s National Front.

This is not the relationship with the press that Levy has come to expect.

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