The Virus in the Age of Madness

by Bernard-Henri Lévy

Overview

A trenchant look at how the coronavirus reveals the dangerous fault lines of contemporary society

As seen on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS: “A stirring alarm addressed to an unsettled world.” (Kirkus Reviews)
 
Forget the world that came before. The author of American Vertigo serves up an incisive look at how COVID-19 reveals the dangerous fault lines of contemporary society.
 
With medical mysteries, rising death tolls, and conspiracy theories beamed minute by minute through the vast web universe, the coronavirus pandemic has irrevocably altered societies around the world. In this sharp essay, world-renowned philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy interrogates the many meanings and metaphors we have assigned to the pandemic—and what they tell us about ourselves.
 
Drawing on the philosophical tradition from Plato and Aristotle to Lacan and Foucault, Lévy asks uncomfortable questions about reality and mythology: he rejects the idea that the virus is a warning from nature, the inevitable result of global capitalism; he questions the heroic status of doctors, asking us to think critically about the loci of authority and power; he challenges the panicked polarization that dominates online discourse. Lucid, incisive, and always original, Lévy takes a bird’s-eye view of the most consequential historical event of our time and proposes a way to defend human society from threats to our collective future.


A portion of the author’s proceeds will be donated to Binc (The Book Industry Charitable Foundation).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300257373
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	07/28/2020
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	1,043,304
Product dimensions:	4.80(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, activist, filmmaker, and the author of over thirty books. He is widely regarded as one of the West’s most important public intellectuals.

Table of Contents

Prologue vii

Chapter 1 Come Back, Michel Foucault - We Need You! 1

Chapter 2 Divine Surprise 17

Chapter 3 Delicious Confinement 39

Chapter 4 Life, They Say 55

Chapter 5 Goodbye, World? 75

Notes 95

Editorial Reviews

A stirring alarm addressed to an unsettled world.”—Kirkus Reviews

“The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted every facet of ordinary life, from work to school to how people interact socially. Philosopher/activist Bernard-Henri Lévy contends that the pandemic has produced new social mythologies. . . . In The Virus in the Age of Madness, Lévy analyzes the politics and power relations operative in all these mythologies, and also what the mythologies tells us about ourselves. Throughout he argues that these mythologies, however ubiquitous, are neither insightful nor helpful. Rather they serve as a distraction from addressing the complex array of challenges at hand. They are a fantasy—a bad-faith detour into madness—that stems from the population's collective inability to confront the world."—Choice

Praise for the Author

“Bernard-Henri Lévy does nothing that goes unnoticed. He is an intellectual adventurer who brings publicity to unfashionable political causes.”—New York Times
 
“Only France could produce a phenomenon like Bernard-Henri Lévy, . . . As celebrated as any rock star, he speaks uncomfortable truths.”—Vanity Fair

“We need Mr. Lévy’s voice—clear, unconstructed, unconstrained, real—to help us.”—Wall Street Journal
 
 “A writer of enormous power and vitality.”—San Francisco Chronicle

 “Bernard-Henri Lévy, perhaps the most prominent intellectual in France today, [speaks] truth to power.”— Boston Globe

From the Publisher

2020-07-07
A pointed book-length essay about how the pandemic may lead to insidious societal changes.

French philosopher Lévy invokes scores of eminent thinkers, including Foucault, Lacan, Plato, Pascal, Sartre, Camus, Genet, and Latour, among many others, to mount a strong, sometimes strident warning about the social, moral, and political consequences of the pandemic. Calling his book “a midpoint review,” he claims that “First World Fear” is causing a rejection of globalization and retreat into isolation, ignoring worldwide famine, poverty, and oppression. Although he concedes that sheltering in place, wearing masks, and following hygienic measures are needed to contain the virus, he advocates “examining concretely, precisely, and in detail the complexity of the measures that need to be taken, in the world now, to combine the health emergency with the protection of people’s livelihoods.” Even though he condemns those who deny science—Donald Trump, et al.—Lévy is skeptical of placing “blind confidence” in doctors. However, rather than raising questions about physicians’ current claims, he weakens his argument by citing historical instances in which doctors promoted eugenics and other “harebrained” ideas. His concern here seems, as he suggests, “far-fetched.” The author scorns those who insist that the virus is sending a message—nature’s warning against environmental exploitation or God’s wrath to humanity led astray—and similarly chides romantic narcissists who see confinement as a path to self-knowledge. “More than most,” he writes, “I am a partisan of repairing the world.” However, he sees a dark future where autocrats use the virus to enact authoritarian agendas—as is occurring in Brazil, Turkey, China, and elsewhere—and where there is “the transformation of the welfare state into the surveillance state, with health replacing security,” and the social contract replaced by “a new life contract…where you abdicate a little, or a lot, of your core freedoms, in return for an antivirus guarantee.”

A stirring alarm addressed to an unsettled world.

Kirkus Reviews