Pave: Think Less

Le jour 69 de Sarko

DON'T THINK SO MUCH, FRENCH GOVERNMENT SAYS

PARIS July 22, 2007 (IHT) - In proposing a tax-cut law last week, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde bluntly advised the French people to abandon their "old national habit":

France is a country that thinks. There is hardly an ideology that we haven't turned into a theory. We have in our libraries enough to talk about for centuries to come. This is why I would like to tell you: Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves.

Well, it is not hard to imagine the ridicule from soi-disant French thinkers that greeted this poorly crafted adhortation. The French -- riding on the backs of Montaigne and Descartes and Pascal -- really believe themselves to be a nation of thinkers.

"How absurd to say we should think less!" said Alain Finkielkraut, the philosopher, writer, professor and radio show host. "If you have the chance to consecrate your life to thinking, you work all the time, even in your sleep. Thinking requires setbacks, suffering, a lot of sweat."

Bernard-Henri Lévy, the much more splashy philosopher-journalist who wrote a book retracing de Tocqueville's 19th-century travels throughout the United States [American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville], is similarly appalled by Lagarde's comments.

This is the sort of thing you can hear in café conversations from morons who drink too much.

Or, in M. Levy's case, from morons who write too much.

The fact that celebrity and newspaper philosophes have purposely misconstrued Mdm. Lagarde's jokey point -- a little less time wallowing in idle drivel, a little more time on the job -- provides an insight into the depth of the French deep-think. Here is another:

On Thursday, a widely reported TNS-Sofres poll of more than 1,000 people concluded that 39 percent of the French think that it is possible to get rich by winning the lottery; 40 percent believe that getting rich can happen through work.

Government lotteries are founded and prosper on this sort of deep-think assessment of low percentage plays.

And here, the professional philosophes demonstrating more of that penetrating chat-think:

Some intellectuals find aspects of [Sarko's] man-of-the-people style a bit inelegant. Even his preferred athletic activity, jogging, has been criticized as somehow anti-intellectual.*

In a post-midnight round table on French television this month, Finkielraut, the philosopher and a Sarkozy supporter, called on him to abandon what he called an "undignified" pursuit.

"Western civilization, in its best sense, was born with the promenade," Finkielkraut said, noting that thinkers like Aristotle, Heidegger and Rimbaud all were walkers. "Walking is a sensitive, spiritual act. Jogging - it is management of the body."

His fellow guests agreed.

"It is a change of rhythm - it's called Jimmy Carter," said one, reminding viewers of the American president who brought jogging into the White House. "And Bill Clinton," said another.

Not that we would defend Messrs. Carter and Clinton as thinkers -- much less athletes -- but why athletics should be blamed for lousy presidents is beyond us.

Mens sana in corpore sano. Ho, no such athleticism on M. Finkielkraut's philosopher's radio gab-fest.

We note that Socrates fought as a hoplite at Delium and often drank too much. Just the sort of anti-intellectual robustness abhorred by our casual French philosophers who expend themselves to the physical limit by leaning into microphones.

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* Mdm. Lagarde, herself a champion synchronized swimmer, is also, no doubt, unsuitably athletic.

PFFT (What is this?): More thinking on the job, less pretend-thinking at the troquet 3½ | Rayonnement français 0