A book a day: Alain Finkielkraut: Pearl fisherman

Original Language: French

Títutulu Original: Pearl fisherman

Year of publication: 2025

Translation: Elena M. Cano e ïñigo Sánchez-Paños

Valoración: highly recommended

Two covers in rigorous black and white coincide in the high levels of me tsundokuthose that foresee an immediate reading. That of the always postponed (and not yet translated into Spanish) The age of David Bowie of Paul Morley and that of this Pearl diver from Alain Finkielkraut. I play the similarities, since from the cover of both books there is a frontal look of two disinhibited characters without too many objections to express things as they see them, through their artistic or cultural channels. And also subject to the possibility of being misunderstood or taken from context by certain sectors, we use some euphemism far Purists little breasts in the critical sensealways eager to jump to the jugular of whom disagree, from whom it is exposed to the controversy. It is true that comparing Finkielkraut with Bowie may seem to more than one as something aberrant or pretentious, but discordant voices are welcome here.

In Pearl diver, Finkielkraut – that is photographed with shelves full of books in the background – part of phrases of favorite authors to develop their articles. The French philosopher chooses mostly classic authors as a starting point of these fifteen pieces, allowing some slight heterodox rap (the last article, almost a manifesto, borrows a famous phrase of a stanza of The Beatles) but deploying from there some keys to the argument that has turned it, thanks to its presence in Francophone media, in the object of controversial lively. And we must appreciate that his attitude is, while scholarly and based on an extensive philosophical, literary, social knowledge, that of someone who does not have to account for his opinions before anyone. Neither audiences nor electorate, especially. Although I do not usually feel comfortable with the left -handeds woke, His approaches to how traditional lefts, in their blind effort to cover any minority or disadvantaged sector, attend wear and discredit that have been paid based on division and stupor to some inconsistencies in their approaches, condemned to decide between one or another oligarch, between one or another religious integrism. And that is the tip of the iceberg of these writings, which they cover, and nobody is fought in a metaphorical sense of receive, From the comfortable memory lagoons of the educators, the obsession with the tabula ruined with the past, to the rise of anti -Semitism, the bad digestion of the French -conservative, aging, aged society – of the growing influence of the communities appropriate, not only of the ancient colonies, but of the constant migratory flow.

One can align with some approaches or not, of course, but Finkielkraut is brave (or even reckless) in showing his own without filing characters. I like his style and his firm and considered forcefulness, his little signaling of another enemy other than passivity, abulia or even dropout by overwhelming, for comfort, by subscription of the opinion that gives better revenues, which occurs so much in European societies. Ask for a certain reaction, and it doesn’t matter if it can adjective it as a reactionary. Claims not to cancel the past per se And he does not seem to lift his hand in favor of nostalgia, that feared concept, denosted and ankylosed. You will coincide or not, but more philosophers are needed like that.

Other Finkielkraut books reviewed at Ulad: here