Bertrand de Jouvenel

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Bertrand de Jouvenel
Born(1903-10-31)31 October 1903
Paris, France
Died1 March 1987(1987-03-01) (aged 83)
Paris, France
Alma materUniversity of Paris
Spouse
Marcelle Prat de Jouvenel
​
​
(m. 1925; died 1971)​
Relatives
  • Henry (father)
  • Sarah Boas (mother)
  • Colette (step-mother)
  • Renaud [fr] (brother)
  • Bel-Gazou
    (half-sister)
Family
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Bertrand de Jouvenel des Ursins (31 October 1903 – 1 March 1987) was a French philosopher,

political economist, and futurist. He taught at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the University of Manchester, Yale University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley
.

Life

Bertrand was the heir of an old family from the French nobility, coming from the

Le Blé en herbe. In the 1930s, he participated in the Cahiers Bleus, the review of Georges Valois' Republican Syndicalist Party. From 1930 to 1934, Jouvenel had an affair with the American war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. They would have married had his wife agreed to a divorce.[3]

In his memoirs, The Invisible Writing, Arthur Koestler recalled that in 1934, Jouvenel was among a small number of French intellectuals who promised moral and financial support to the newly established Institut pour l'Étude du Fascisme, a supposedly self-financing enterprise. Other personalities to offer support were Professor Langevin, the Joliot–Curies, André Malraux, etc.[4]

However, that same year, Jouvenel was impressed by the

Pierre Drieu la Rochelle.[5]

He was in favour of Franco-German rapprochement and created the "Cercle du grand pavois", which supported the Comité France–Allemagne (Franco-German Committee). Here he became friends with Otto Abetz, the future German ambassador to Paris during the occupation.[6] In February 1936 he interviewed Adolf Hitler for the journal Paris-Midi,[7] for which he was criticised for being too friendly to the dictator.[citation needed]

That same year he joined

Parti populaire français (PPF).[8]
He became the editor in chief of its journal L'Émancipation nationale (National Emancipation), wherein he supported fascism. He broke with the PPF in 1938 when Doriot supported the Munich Agreement.

After the French defeat in 1940 Jouvenel stayed in Paris and under German occupation published Après la Défaite, calling for France to join Hitler's New Order. He fled to Switzerland just before the liberation of Paris by the Allies. Jouvenel was among the very few French intellectuals to pay respectful attention to the economic theory and welfare economics that emerged during the first half of the 20th century in Austria, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This understanding of economics is shown by his work The Ethics of Redistribution.

Jouvenel's mother passionately supported Czechoslovakian independence, and so he began his career as a private secretary to Edvard Beneš, Czechoslovakia's first prime minister. In 1947, along with Friedrich Hayek, Jacques Rueff, and Milton Friedman, he founded the Mont Pelerin Society. Later in life, de Jouvenel established the Futuribles International in Paris.

Dennis Hale of Boston College has co-edited two volumes of essays by Jouvenel.[9]

Later in his life, Jouvenel's views shifted back to the left. In 1960, he complained to Milton Friedman that the Mont Pelerin Society had "turned increasingly to a Manichaeism according to which the state can do no good and private enterprise can do no wrong."[10] He was sympathetic to the student protests of 1968 and critical of the Vietnam War.[11] He also expressed support for the Socialist François Mitterrand.[10]

Sternhell controversy

libel, two of which the court upheld. However, Sternhell was neither required to publish a retraction nor to strike any passages from future printings of his book.[12]

Bibliography

  • Après la Défaite (After the Defeat), 1941
  • On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth, 1948
  • The Ethics of Redistribution, 1951
  • Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good, 1957
  • The Pure Theory of Politics, 1963
  • The Art of Conjecture, 1967

Notes

  1. ^ a b "Bertrand de Jouvenel's Common Good Conservatism – Daniel J. Mahoney". Law & Liberty. Retrieved 20 November 2021.
  2. ^ "Bertrand de Jouvenel's Shared Fantastic Conservatism". Long Island News and Law. 17 April 2021. Retrieved 20 November 2021.
  3. ISBN 0701169516
    (hardback).
  4. ISBN 0090980301
    . p. 297
  5. ^ Le siècle des intellectuels by Michel Winock, ed. Seuil, p. 410.
  6. ^ Bertrand de Jouvenel, Un voyageur dans le siècle (1903–1945), tome 1, éditions Robert Laffont, Paris, 1979
  7. ^ "Les grandes interviews du siècle: Adolf Hitler". Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
  8. ^ Laurent Kestel, " L'engagement de Bertrand de Jouvenel au PPF de 1936 à 1939, intellectuel de parti et entrepreneur politique ", French Historical Studies, n.30, hiver 2007, pp. 105–125[ISBN missing]
  9. ^ "Dennis Hale". Boston College.
  10. ^ a b Rosenblatt, Helena (2012). French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day. Cambridge University Press. pp. 214–219.
  11. ^ De Dijn, Annelien (2010). "Bertrand de Jouvenel and the Revolt Against the State in Post-War America". Ethical Perspectives. 17 (3): 386.
  12. ^ Robert Wohl, 1991, "French Fascism, Both Right and Left: Reflections on the Sternhell Controversy", The Journal of Modern History 63: 91–98.
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Further reading

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