{"id":6838,"date":"2015-11-20T04:47:52","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T04:47:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/11\/20\/ever-hear-of-andre-glucksmann\/"},"modified":"2015-11-20T04:47:52","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T04:47:52","slug":"ever-hear-of-andre-glucksmann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/11\/20\/ever-hear-of-andre-glucksmann\/","title":{"rendered":"Ever Hear of Andr\u00e9 Glucksmann?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Berman, The Death of Glucksmann<\/a>.  (HT: Ingvar Odegaard) Excerpts:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Andr\u00e9 Glucksmann was a great man, and he played a great role in history. I think that, in the world of ideas, no one in modern times has played a larger and more effective role in marshalling the arguments against totalitarianisms of every sort\u2014no one outside of the dissident circles of the old Soviet bloc, that is.<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

Glucksmann worried about dreamy visions of world peace. Dreamy visions seemed to him a ticket to war. He had a lot to say about the Soviet Union and its own weapons. He argued that, in the face of the Soviet Union, nuclear deterrence and common sense were one and the same. Pessimism was wisdom, in his eyes. He wanted to rally support in the West for the dissidents of the East, which was not the same as staging mass demonstrations against Ronald Reagan.<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

Intellectually speaking, he did not care if old-fashioned leftists of a certain kind accused him of betrayal. His own rebellion was to reject political ideologies altogether. The leftists denounced him as a right-winger, and sometimes the press picked up the clich\u00e9, but this, of course, was never accurate. You have only to read two pages by Glucksmann to appreciate that he is not a man of conservative instincts. He is outraged by injustice; he is moved by the despair of the most desperate; he doesn\u2019t give a damn about hallowed traditions. These traits of his were constitutional. His final book is about Voltaire\u2014I wrote<\/a> about it for Tablet\u2014and, in that book, he mounted a defense of the Roma, or Gypsies, in France, people so downtrodden they have ended up deformed and ugly, doomed to the pathologies of organized crime. In France, to defend the Roma has not been in fashion. But France\u2019s most principled intellectual was on their side.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is true that, in the French election of 2007, he came out for the conservative candidate for president. This was Nicolas Sarkozy, and Glucksmann\u2019s endorsement aroused the harshest denunciations of his life. He could not walk in the street without being rebuked by the leftwing passersby. As it happened, he came to the conclusion, after a couple of years, that his endorsement was a mistake, which he regretted.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Paul Berman, The Death of Glucksmann.  (HT: Ingvar Odegaard) Excerpts: Andr\u00e9 Glucksmann was a great man, and he played a great role in history. I think that, in the world of ideas, no one in modern times has played a larger and more effective role in marshalling the arguments against totalitarianisms of every sort\u2014no one … Continue reading “Ever Hear of Andr\u00e9 Glucksmann?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-and-political-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}