Why Has French Intellectualism Declined? And Why Is Its Reputation Still Intact?

While in the new millennium the quality of French intellectual life has plummeted, its reputation remains. Shlomo Sand bracingly compares media-friendly intellectuals such as Houellebecq, Éric Zemmour and Alain Finkielkraut to Nazi-collaborating writers such as Robert Brasillach and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. Like such past figures, Sand argues, they cling to a France that is “totally imaginary” and yearn for it to be purified of the Other. In 1940 that meant Jews, in 2018 Islam.