The Virus in the Age of Madness

As seen on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS 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 Levy 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, Levy 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, Levy 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 stirring alarm addressed to an unsettled world."--Kirkus Reviews
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

Bernard-Henri Levy 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.