BHL falls for Neo-Kantians of Paraguay
It’s almost too good to be true. France’s (self-)declared national philosopher-as-action-man, Bernard-Henri Lévy – known by his initials BHL, both to adherers and opponents – has finally set the cavity seal on his credibility. In his upcoming book De la guerre en philosophie (About War in Philosophy), due to be published on 10 February, he quotes approvingly from a series of lectures held in 1946 by eminent philosopher Jean-Baptiste Botul to Neo-Kantians in Paraguay, revealing to them that their hero was ‘an abstract fake, a pure spirit of pure appearance.’ Only problem is that Botul is the actual fake, invented by Fréderic Pagés, writer for the satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné (_The Chained Duck_ or The Chained Paper). The title of Botul’s opus magnus, La vie sexuelle d’Emmanuel Kant (first made accessible to world public in 1999), should have set the alarm bells ringing for M. Lévy, as in the title the man from Königsberg, trading an E for an I in his first name, already seems to have a love affair with a 1970s soft porn star. But that sounded just too good to the formidable vert galant BHL. Too good to be true.
Read the initial news story from Nouvel Observateur here.
An English write-up from the Times here.
And you can become a facebook fan of Botul here.
It’s almost too good to be true. France’s (self-)declared national philosopher-as-action-man, Bernard-Henri Lévy – known by his initials BHL, both to adherers and opponents – has finally set the cavity seal on his credibility. In his upcoming book De la guerre en philosophie (About War in Philosophy), due to be published on 10 February, he quotes approvingly from a series of lectures held in 1946 by eminent philosopher Jean-Baptiste Botul to Neo-Kantians in Paraguay, revealing to them that their hero was ‘an abstract fake, a pure spirit of pure appearance.’ Only problem is that Botul is the actual fake, invented by Fréderic Pagés, writer for the satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné (_The Chained Duck_ or The Chained Paper). The title of Botul’s opus magnus, La vie sexuelle d’Emmanuel Kant (first made accessible to world public in 1999), should have set the alarm bells ringing for M. Lévy, as in the title the man from Königsberg, trading an E for an I in his first name, already seems to have a love affair with a 1970s soft porn star. But that sounded just too good to the formidable vert galant BHL. Too good to be true.
Read the initial news story from Nouvel Observateur here.
An English write-up from the Times here.
And you can become a facebook fan of Botul here.
