Jean-Francois Revel passed away April 30, 2006 at the age of 82. A classically educated French philosopher, Revel (give name Ricard) left academia in 1963 to write. During the 1960s he confounded his liberal and left leaning colleagues by becoming a champion of freedom and capitalism during the Cold War. His last major work as a staunch defense of the United States following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Having a very incomplete education, I only became aware of Revel's work when reading The Monk and the Philosopher, which consists of a dialog between Revel and his son Matthieu Ricard. Matthieu Ricard holds a doctorate in biology and is a Buddhist monk who works closely with the Dalai Lama, acting as an interpreter and a participant in the Dali Lama's work with the science of the mind.
Revel's most popular work is "Without Marx or Jesus" written during the Cold War.
I share Revel's commitment to freedom, but have come to believe as John Kenneth Galbraith espoused, that freedom appeared in the 20th century not because it was "right" or it was "inevitable", but because large scale automation lifted the yokes of the middle class. Freedom seems to now be taken for granted, this we do at our own peril. The adoption of totalitarianism is all too common by those in possession of power, for it is in the near term a much easier approach to the act of governing, to a point.
I am currently enjoying reading a long out of print book, "On Proust" by Revel where in this updated version he takes a not so subtle shot at the current post-modernist literary criticism that is the regime-du-jour in modern academia.
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