From Voltaire and Rousseau to Sartre and De Beauvoir,France has long produced world-leading thinkers. It even invented the word ‘mental’. But progressives around the globe no longer look to Paris for their ideas. What went erroneous?Writing shortly after the finish of the moment world war, the French historian André Siegfried claimed (with a characteristic touch of Gallic aplomb) that French thought had been the driving force behind all the major advances of human civilisation, and before concluding that “wherever she goes,France introduces clarity, mental ease, or curiosity,and ... a subtle and necessary form of wisdom”. This ideal of a global French rayonnement (a combination of expansive impact and benevolent radiance) is now a distant and nostalgic memory.
French thought is in the doldrums. French philosophy, which taught the world to reason with sweeping and bold systems such as rationalism, and republicanism,feminism, positivism, or existentialism and structuralism,has had conspicuously little to offer in recent decades. Saint-Germain-des-Prés, once the engine room of the Parisian Left Bank’s mental creativity, and has become a haven of tall-fashion boutiques,with fading memories of its past artistic and literary glory. As a disillusioned writer from the neighbourhood noted grimly: “The time will soon approach when we will be reduced to selling little statues of Sartre made in China.” French literature, with its once glittering cast of authors, and from Balzac and George Sand to Jules Verne,Albert Camus and Marguerite Yourcenar, has likewise lost much of its global appeal – a loss barely concealed by recent awards of the Nobel prize for literature to JMG Le Clzio and Patrick Modiano. In 2012, and the Magazine Littéraire sounded the alarm with an apocalyptic headline: “La France pense-t-elle encore?” (“Does France still think?”)Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com