University Diaries » Levy Gets Botulism

Leading French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy has been caught red-faced for praising the work of a philosopher who, it turns out, was invented as a joke by a journalist from a satirical daily.

In his latest book “De la guerre en philosophie” (Making war in philosophy), Levy quoted Jean-Baptiste Botul, an expert on German philosopher Immanuel Kant created by journalist Frederic Pages.

Levy acknowledged late Monday that he had often quoted Botul’s work “The sex life of Immanuel Kant” during many public appearances and in the pages of his latest book…

Didn’t look twice at a book titled Sex Life of Kant?

Charles Bremner, in the Times, elaborates:

In his latest book, published this week amid the traditional adulation in the media, Lévy, 61, attacks Immanuel Kant, the 18th century philosopher. He calls him “raving mad” and cites as his authority Jean-Baptiste Botul, a 20th century philosopher.

The trouble is that Botul never existed. He was invented as an elaborate joke in 1999 by Frédéric Pagès, a literary journalist, who wrote works in his name. One was titled “The Sex Life of Immanuel Kant.” His school, known as Botulism, subscribes to his theory of “La Metaphysique du Mou” [The metaphysics of the limp].

In “De la Guerre en Philosophie” [On war in philosophy], his new book, Lévy writes that Botul had proved once and for all “just after the second world war, in his series of lectures to the neo-Kantians of Paraguay, that their hero was an abstract fake, a pure spirit of pure appearance.” …

The Neo-Kantians of Paraguay? Isn’t that an emo band?

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MattF Says:
February 9th, 2010 at 9:22AM

Comments via Arthur Goldhammer.

Dave Stone Says:
February 9th, 2010 at 9:56AM

“Oh philosophers get me so randy,”
Said a buxom blonde madchen named Candi.
“Marx refused to implant,
And Immanuel Kant
But Hegel turned out to be handy.”

david foster Says:
February 9th, 2010 at 11:19AM

Maybe not quite up there with the Sokal Hoax..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

..but sounds pretty close

Alexandra Says:
February 9th, 2010 at 11:56AM

Um, the satirical paper is a weekly.

And this is much better than the Sokal hoax. This is a front-page “philosopher” attacking Kant by relying on a “writer” whose inventor never even tried to cover up his tracks. There is a wikipedia articl on Botul that makes it clear he doesn’t exist. So not only is BHL sloppy, he doesn’t use a computer and clearly doesn’t work with anyone who does…

Another of Botul’s “works” is listed as “Landru, precursor of feminism”. Landru was a famous serial killer of women duing WWI. He recruited his victims in the lonely hearts sections of newspapers, dispossessed them of their assets and then burned them in his kitchen stove.

Margaret Soltan Says:
February 9th, 2010 at 1:35PM

Good points, Alexandra.

Isn’t it possible that BHL doesn’t write his books?

This is the sort of thing that happens when other people write your books, and you put your name on them.

Timothy Burke Says:
February 9th, 2010 at 4:06PM

Oh, I think it’s even worse in this case: he does write his books. I think it’s been very clear for a long time that this is about the level of intellectual care that goes into his work, that he is the “philosopher” that his particular public requires. If he didn’t exist, they would have to invent him. Arguably that’s exactly what they did.

Margaret Soltan Says:
February 10th, 2010 at 6:38AM

Tim: You might be right. OTOH –

Scott McLemee agrees with me:

That BHL cited [Botul] as a serious work of scholarship would strongly suggest that he has an employee or two toiling in the erudition mines for him. If so, it is an interesting question whether the person who actually read Botul misunderstood the nature of the book — or passed along the citation as an act of sabotage…

I’ve written about too many plagiarism cases in which other people seem to have done the research and writing (Charles Ogletree, Alan Dershowitz, Doris Kearns Goodwin) to be surprised by this possibility — especially for man about town BHL.

J Write Says:
February 10th, 2010 at 12:42PM

What am I not getting? BHL used an argument. He credited the wrong source, which is sloppy work perhaps, but it does not make the argument wrong. Who cares who wrote it, or if no one at all did? If you would find out that Immanuel Kant never existed, and that his philosophy was an elaborate joke perpetrated by Fritz Joseph-Mcdonald of Sweinstaadt in Bavaria,would that affect your assessment of his philosophy?
By the way, J Write doesn’t exist either–he’s a made-up character I just made up. Pray do not let this effect the manifest veracity of “his” words!

University Diaries » Now that more and more people are speculating that Bernard-Henri Levy… Says:
February 11th, 2010 at 11:34AM

[…] so much fall for an obvious hoax as fail to monitor the staff that writes his books (background here), this might be a good time to revisit medical […]

Mikhail Emelianov Says:
February 19th, 2010 at 5:01PM

Does anyone know if this small book was ever translated into English? Pages’ book, not BHL’s.

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